Hello darlings!

I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm thinking of you. I hope everything in your lives is going utterly perfect! I miss you all and wish you all the very best. I'm sending my love and best regards xoxox


Shanna

Super Extremely late Halloween post

Hello lovelies!
  It's been wayyy too long since our last post! I haven't had a chance to do any fun crafty things but I'm just going to post some really fun pictures from Clarissa and I's Halloween!

 

Tara was the Tardis from Doctor Who, I was Daenerys from game of thrones, and Clarissa was technically a skeleton but I keep calling her my white walker haha It was so fun! We went down to West Hollywood and just walked around. They had the craziest costumes I've ever seen! For instance...there was a titanic that lit up with another person dressed up as an ice berg. Just. Awesome. Other fun things we've been up to is this new gamefly commercial I'm pretty pumped about:

It was so funny to be on set for this one. Blake Griffin was hilarious. Tara and Clarissa also helped me on the lasted syfy channel promo I set decorated:

http://vimeo.com/user20836396/review/80963266/ff6c4ad6ad

This is one of those milestones you have in your life where can look back and say "that was a huge accomplishment for me." I'm so proud of how it turned out and  still cant believe I was a given so much control over such a huge job. It was also Robert's birthday in between those two jobs. (He's the designer for both of those commercials...the big boss man I like to call him!) So I whipped up some cupcakes and since one of his favorite things in the world is arcade games...or anything to do with arcade/pinball games I made these:

Pacman cupcakes! they took forever and as always, I ran out of time so I wasn't 100 percent satisfied with how they came out but I still thought they were so cute! Well enough about me! What is everyone's Christmas plans?! I know Clarissa leaves me the 18th to fly back to Cape Coral...She's dying to open her gifts because she cant handle the suspense haha I find it hilarious!

DIY Lampshade Chandelier!

Hello lovelies! Today I'm writing to you about this lamp chandelier that I have finally finished!!!

Here's what you'll need:
4 thrift store lamp shades
4 light bulb cords (the cord that is holding of the lampshades and holds the lightbulbs)
1 piece of wood
strong enough rope to hold at least 50 pounds
2 Hook screws that will go into your ceiling (weight average over 50 pounds as well)
Wire Strippers
Electrical box
Extension Cord
A box of doodads (I'll include a photo)
Exposed wire protectors
Electrical tape
Wire cutters
And a little bit of determination!

                                   these are doodads, I have no idea what their real name is.

Alright before we get down to all the details about this lamp project, I wanted to go over the basics for electrical wiring. I used to be really intimated by this but once you learn these two essential rules it will broaden your craft horizons!
1. Never ever ever ever wire different colored wires together. Ever. All you have to do is keep like colors with like colors. In this particular project my white wires were with white and black with black.
2. You never want exposed wire touching any sort of metal.

Those two rules will keep you from creating an electrical short...which is where the power goes out.

Now for the rest!
I had a left over piece of wood hanging around from when we built my dining table so I snatched that up and painted it with a couple different layers of colors we had laying around.

Then I drilled 4 holes thick enough to feed the cords through with some room.

I took off all the fabric on the 4 lamp shades I bought from a thrift store for about $10 total.

I fed the four corded light bulb strands (from ikea) through the lamp shades after cutting the male plug piece off. Then fed that through the holes in my 2x4.
I screwed the eye hooks into the ceiling where each end of my 2x4 would end up. Then put some sturdy rope through them. To get the height of the lampshades right, I put a temporary knot in the ropes and placed my piece of wood in them and started adjusting the cords with the lampshades attached. Once I got them to the heights I liked I tied knots in the cord on the topside of my piece of wood.

Then it came for wiring. I striped the black outer layer cord from light bulb strands to get to the white and black smaller cords.

Once I did this to all four cords, I fed them through my metal electrical box into each of the holes. Then when they met in the middle, I connected the exposed wire to their matching counterparts (white with white and black with black) and put an electrical guard on each group.

You can see the grey cord in the picture above. Thats my extension cord. I wired that together with all of my lamp cords and ran it down the 2x4 and down my wall to the electrical outlet. Thats how I will be getting power to my chandelier. Then I used my doodads to fasten each of the wires in place on my piece of wood. Once everything was set, I hung the whole thing in my temporary knots and fixed them into tight permanent knots. Which is how I got this lovely set up:

I really wish I had better pictures. You cant really see how awesome these edison bulbs are. I know I probably didnt describe  this very well so if anyone has any questions whatsoever I would love to answer them! Enjoy my pretties!!!

Xoxo
miss you always,
Shanna Elyse!

Another Repurposing Project!

Hey Guys!
  Today I'm writing to you about this lovely credenza we used in a gamefly commercial. We had to cut into the back of the credenza and the top of it to do a gag where a tv popped out of it. So once the shoot was over it was going to be thrown away. I really loved the face of this piece because of the intricate pattern. So my coworker and I ripped the front of it off and I re-purposed it into a picture frame...type situation? Here's the credenza in the commercial:

Here is the face of it before I went to town:

And finally, here it is after I made some adjustments:

It came out pretty nice, I'm still debating if I like the color or not but we will see after a couple of weeks.

All I needed for this project was some light pink spray paint (which is the closest thing I could find to coral) that had primer already in it. I purchased mine from lowe's and discovered they have a whole smorgasbord of wonderful colors and of course, those had to come home with me too. On top of that I just poked some holes in the top and bottom of some art work I had and used some rustic looking twine from home depot to fasten them on there and voila new piece for my hallway!

Really it just comes down to finding things you think are interesting looking. My philosophy is to always snatch them up and figure out a project to do with them later...which can get you into trouble if you run out of time for projects BUT look how this one turned out!


As always thanks for reading.
Missing you!
Shanna xo

Unique Gift Wrapping Craft!

Shanna and mine's roommate was asked by a member of her family to make t-shirts for their yearly beach trip. Her name is Tara and she is incredibly talented. So she drew and screen printed these beasts by HAND!

They look a little something like this:

AMAZING RIGHT!? She also had to make twenty-eight of these bad boys. She then decided that she wanted to individually wrap each shirt because they're a surprise for the rest of her family. I felt honored when she asked me to help her come up with something cool to do for them. 

Here's what we came up with:

Now let's get down to business!

What you need:

1. Brown Wrapping Paper - Target - $3.09
2. Eraser - Target - $1.00
3. Paper - Already Owned
4. Stamp Pad - Already Owned
5. Twine - Walmart - $3.00
6. Xacto Knife - Already Owned
7. Stamp Letters (optional) - Already Owned
8. A Little Jewelry/Charm (optional) - Ebay - $5.00

Total: Around $12

Directions:

1. wrap the item in the paper. (duh!)

2. cut out your tags and stamp on it what you want it to say. (she needed a way to identify the shirts)

 3. wrap twine around the present, after tying once add tag and charm, and then tie again.

4. draw out the design you want on the eraser then cut down everything around the design to make your own custom stamp!! (Tara so magically made this one)

5. stamp it on your wrapping paper!

VOILA! Now you have a cute, personal wrapping paper! Happy Crafting!

Miss You Always,

Clarissa

DIY Mannequin Post Board

Hey Guys!
  I'm writing to you about this little project I whipped up a couple weekends ago. My roommates and I went to a garage sale and picked up this mannequin for $25! After we brought it home I realized we were running out places to put things...So I decided to take all of our postcards and foreign money that I had posted up on our fridge and pin a makeshift dress on the mannequin.

All you need is:
 -sewing pins (I used white ones for a more cohesive look)
 -items you want to pin on your mannequin
 -a mannequin
 -and a decorative necklace!

I started pinning on one of the shoulders and just kind of played with the shape until I was happy with it. Sorry for the lack of instructions but sometimes its more fun to embrace your most creative side! Enjoy!


Miss you always,

Shanna

Baking Tiny Strawberry Pies!

Hey everyone!
I know it's been a while...sorry! I have no excuse! I did go on vacation but I've been home for two weeks so...I come baring pies! and tiny ones at that!

 

                                                      Alright, Here's what you'll need: 

For the inside of the pie:

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all purpose flour 

4 cups halved strawberries

1 egg yolk

For the pie crust: (you can always get pre-made dough it just tastes funny to me)
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup ice water
1/4 tsp salt

Other things you'll need:
2 Mixing bowls 
Rolling pin
Pastry blender (not necessary but totally worth getting if you make pie crust often)
Miniature pie pans
Small paint brush

Get your strawberry filling started by mixing the flour and sugar.
Then cut all of your strawberries in halves and measure out 4 cups (it was two baskets of strawberries for me)
Add them to the sugar flour mixture.
You're going to keep mixing them until all the strawberries are covered and then start you pie crust...make sure to stir the strawberries every couple of minutes.
I also mashed mine up a little after about 15 minutes of them absorbing the sugar...its a preference thing no need to do it if you dont want to.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

Now for the pie crusts.
Mix your flour and salt.
Then cut in your butter with the pastry blender so the mixture becomes small crumbles of flour covered butter.
Stir in your ice water a small amount at a time.
Eventually the mixture will be mold-able and you can form it into a ball
Cover a clean area with flour and cover your rolling pin with flour as well
Grab a small section thats a little smaller than 1/5 of your entire ball.
I say 1/5 because I had four small pie tins and I wanted another section for the lattices on the top of the pies
Roll it out until its about a 1/4 inch thick... you dont want it to be so thin you can see through and you dont want it to be too thick that you wont have enough remaining for the top layer of crust.

Once you place the dough in the pan, make sure the edges are covered and trim all excess thats hanging over. Save the trimmings to re roll later.
Then comes time to put in your filling!

I filled my pies a little higher than the tin, you can always stack them higher but I barely had enough dough to cover the top of the pies as it was so just be advised.
Then comes the tedious task of the lattice work.
You should have that last section of dough to roll out.
Once its rolled out, use a sharp knife to cut small stripes along the whole thing, later they will look like this

Again, the size of the stripes are up to you. The thicker you cut them the less strawberry you will see and the smaller you cut them the more work you will have to do haha
After they're cut, I always lay one vertically and one horizontally and figure out the over under situation from there. You will need six stripes of crust for each pie. I ran out a little early as you can see with the pie in the bottom right corner. Normally though the three vertical stripes have the two on the outside matching eachothers over under route and the middle stripe does the opposite...along with the horizontal stripes.
I hope thats not confusing...its a little difficult to type something thats easier to see. Of I can answer any questions you might have!

Once the tops of the pies are beautifully finished, you grab your egg yolk and add a little water to it.
Then you will need a small paint brush or some kind of brush to paint the egg yolk onto the top of the pies. You need to do it semi quickly so it doesnt dry before you can sprinkle the sugar on top. After the pies are latticed, yolked, and sugared place them on a baking sheet to keep them from spilling strawberry goop onto the inside of your stove...trust me, once it spills in there...its like you've created a fire with all the smoke that will come out of your oven! That was my thanksgiving two years ago haha

Anyway! Bake them for 20 Minutes at the 400 degrees we set the stove to earlier and an extra two or three minutes wouldnt kill them in you like your pie extra crispy. 

Then enjoy with the ones you love! That happens to be my roommates for me, we had some baked macaroni and cheese with asparagus and moscato white wine for dinner on memorial day! We ate on our patio and then enjoyed some tiny strawberry pies for dessert!

Here's also some fun pictures from the Doctor who costumes my roommates and I created...We actually one third place in the Aprilween costume contest.

Clarissa was the Doctor, Tara was the Tardis, and I was a weeping angel. Everyone kept calling me a gargoyle and then we realized not enough people watch doctor who haha. Hope you have enjoyed my long overdue post! Maybe I'll share my vacation pictures from Greece, turkey, and Rome on the next one!

Miss and love you always,

Shanna Elyse!