Failure is an Option

I had a post for yesterday, but it was a present I made and I haven't gifted it yet so on to other things...

I'm posting this up a) because I failed to post something yesterday, therefore crushing my hopes of an every-other-day update and b) because I'm failing MISERABLY at this friendship bracelet thing!!

I saw this pin for a Friendship Bracelet tutorial and since I never learned how to do the chevron style as a kid, I figured now's as good a time as any! Whirly Bird, the blog with the actual craft, linked me over to HonestlyWTF for a tutorial on how to make this oh-so-fashionable bracelet. Now, I'd already failed at an eight strand braid, but surely this would be easier? No doubt mine would come out smooth and sassy like this one, right?

WRONG!

This is currently the state of my chevron friendship bracelet trial run...

Normally, I would give up and throw the rest of this god-awful embroidery floss in the trash-- really, you have no idea the headaches it's given me! I started out wanting to use that orange with grey for a nice, chic look but the grey would NOT come untangled and I've had almost the same problem with the yellow and blue here!

But, I am going to follow my favorite advice, I am going to Keep Calm and Carry On. Updates to come, no doubt, and hopefully I'll perfect the pattern on these fall colors before my special surprise...

Ana's A

My niece Ana is the girliest tomboy I know-- she's all about running around and finding new things to get in to, but if you ask her to dress herself, chances are she's going to come out in pink and purple! Her birthday was a few weeks ago, and I really wanted to see if I could re-make this "wreath" but in a more kid-friendly way (she's Pre-K) and on a slightly smaller scale since it would have to travel across the Pacific Ocean:

(via)

Here's the final version of mine-- I did forget to put something up there to hang it with, buuuut they'll figure it out. I would suggest using the coke top trick or wrapping the yarn like the inspiration piece. 

It turned out pretty well, I think, for winging it, and a step by step tutorial is below!

Materials: Yarn, wooden frame, wooden letter, embellishments, scissors.
Cost: About $15, which includes the yarn and glue that I'll use again.
Time: Wow. Wrapping things in yarn is really involved-- it probably took me three hours, maybe even four. It was stop and go, so I don't want to include the down time, but it was pretty involved!
Conclusion: Yeah, it was involved, but I'll totally do this again. I didn't have the time to paint the frame like the inspiration piece, but depending on the person it may be just as well to wrap it in yarn-- everyone at work wanted one!
Tips and tricks: I purchased a smaller wooden frame and a smaller letter at Michael's for about $1 each-- you could go with a bigger one like the inspiration piece, but you'll just spend more time on it! (and probably more money unless you have leftover frames lying around!)

Gather all your materials-- I'm not very good at this yet, so that's why the A already has yarn attached to it...

Pink yarn, to be specific

All of my yarn wrapping involved healthy doses of glue-- it dries clear and makes ya look super crafty and talented!

Front of the A fully wrapped

Back of the A fully wrapped

Tail of the A-- it won't look perfect because it's super awkward, but you just have to play around with it to get the right look

And on the tip, we have lots of glue and layered yarn!

To start on the frame? Dot of glue. Totally dot of glue.

First side wrapped-- I thought the detail on the corners added a little flair to it. There was glue involved in this as well...

The dark spots are the brackets that used to hold the frame back in place-- I bent them all the way back using the handle on my scissors to push them all the way down. They stuck out a little, but after they were covered in yarn, they didn't pose a threat by design or by poking.

I left the bottom corner open so that I could add the flowers in...

A in the middle

I decided to get fancy and try to "suspend" the A in the middle-- this took a lot of playing around to get the tension right and the color on color right.

Close up of the wrapping-- you want to know what there's a lot of in this picture? Glue.

Flower one... these are bigger than I thought!

The tie off on the second half of the tension string. I had to run it through the top and then back through to the bottom corner to make sure the letter had enough tension and support.

Back of the frame at the end

I still had another flower, and the good thing about making a present for a little girl is that they love everything over the top!

Final product without the flash-- does a good job of emphasizing the tension strings!

Dinosaur Eggs

(via)

I wanted to do these red and white nails sooooo bad but no such luck-- instead, I went for dino eggs! OK, so I know that dino eggs don't look anything like they did on the TV show Dinosaurs (yeeeeaaah 90's throwback whaaat!) but these nails remind me of dino eggs!!

The wraps base that I put on was a little wrinkly, so instead of doing the matte coat I decided to make it polka-dotty!

I'd wanted to do smaller polka dots, but since I didn't have a fine paint brush, I went with a q-tip 

Not too shabby!

The first dab will be light on paint in the middle, so just dab some more on after a second

Of course, it will take a few tries to get it looking right...

The finished product! Only one hand this time, a table managed to break half the nails off the other...

I've heard from a lot of reviewers that the matte coat will really show the flaws in your brush strokes, so since the base coat made mine majorly flawed I decided to do something fun! It is pretty funky and makes me smile, so I'll definitely do this again!

Products Used: Sally Hansen InstaDry Mint Sprint and Sephora coffee in NY

Time: About a half hour, all told. The Sephora paint went on a little thin so I had to do multiple layers. The InstaDry polish was PERFECT for this project with the dots!

Cost: I already had the InstaDry from the last project, and the Sephora teensy bottle was $1 on clearance, plus a q-tip which was probably worth about a penny and I had them laying around. Definitely a low-cost project!

I'm Blue Dadadeedadada

So I swear I'm going to go to Michael's soon and start doing some Pinterest stuff that ISN'T just nails and food! But, for now, you get my "I wish it were summer so I could actually be at the beach seeing these colors" nail job as inspired by the Candy Cane Stripes I found via Pinterest from Chloe's Nails! I took Chloe's advice and tried Scotch tape to do the edging, and I have a few thoughts on that I'll share at the end-- for now, enjoy the process!

1. Scotch Tape rips up half the base polish on my thumb... it also leaves wavy lines. Perhaps I should cut it with scissors instead?

2. OK, put all the tape on at once so I don't have to fuss with doing each nail while another is wet

3. I cut all the tape with scissors and decided to use different kinds of stripes on each nail to see if I could get the barber pole effect-- make them look like the stripes were moving from nail to nail!

4. Oh, hey, look. I pulled off more...

5. But this time I tried pulling it off with tweezers and it worked a little better! The base coat was pulled but not all the way off and I was able to smooth it back down.

6. I did have a lot of problems with the tape stripping off itself and leaving small chunks behind; the tweezers came in handy here as well.

7. Here's what the first round looked like before fixes

8. A little bit sad, but not too shabby for a first go, right?

Here's the first hand finished product including a clear coat

Here's the second hand, finished product including top coat. 

As noted above, I think tweezers are a definite must have for this type of project-- the amount of fixing I had to do was insane! I did the bottom coat (Sally Hansen Capri Blue) on Sunday afternoon and had to do several layers-- probably four --to get the depth of color I wanted and I noticed a lot of that coming off on the scotch tape. The stripes coat was a Sally Hansen InstaDry type and I will be interested to see how "regular" polish behaves.

For next time, I think I will probably put a clear coat on over the base to keep that layer of color (no matter how small) from coming up and potentially protecting me from fixes. I'll also have fine tipped tweezers for those pesky left behind bits of tape.

All that being said, people were still blown away-- I actually held up the line at my hair salon because everyone wanted to see! Needless to add, the 5th grade girls at my after school program were ALSO impressed and stomped off pouting about how their mothers never let them do anything cool like that. I highly doubt that they have ever asked their mothers for scotch tape and nail polish!

I'm also considering doing something like this with those same girls at work, and to do so it would be much easier to have a stencil, so I'm going to work on making one out of index cards and I'll let you know how that goes!

Products Used: Sally Hansen Capri Blue, Sally Hansen InstaDry in Mint Sprint
Time: About a day all told-- I spent about four hours on the base coat to make sure I had the color I wanted and waited overnight to make sure it was dry enough, then cut up all the Scotch tape, painted them all again, then did the fixes, then did the clear coat... you get the point. BUT, I think in the future it will take less time!
Cost: Under $10 for both of them on sale. I'm all over the cheap polish, and I think I paid $4/ea or less. Plus, I'm definitely using them again!

Sesame Noodles with Beef and Broccoli

This is an example of when you see a perfect looking recipe and it turns out completely delicious but perhaps a little bit different looking. I feel a little less badly about how my version below turned out compared to Sandra's over at The Daily Grind... she seems somehow less [insert favorite derogatory comment about MS here] than Martha Stewart AND she has adorable daughters!

Here is Sandra's noodle dish, as circulated on Pinterest:

And here is the end version of mine:

Granted, I didn't bother to set mine up in a pretty bowl and then use a decent camera to shoot it, however mine's a bit... dark. On to the recipe, though, and I think you'll see why mine turned out so differently!

You will need a box of linguine, a bag of steam in the bag broccoli, about a half pound of stew/stir fry sirloin and fixin's for the sauce...

For the sauce, you will need:

(you should ignore the rice wine vinegar... it just stuck its nose in)

1/2 cup of soy sauce (this is the major difference-- I used a half cup of dark soy sauce as opposed to 1/4 cup of low sodium)
1.5 tbs sesame oil
4 cloves minced garlic*
1 tbs minced ginger*
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs agave nectar
Juice of half a lime*
Siracha (or other chili paste) to taste

Of course, I made a few adjustments for ease and ability to store things in my kitchen...

This is minced garlic from the farmer's market-- I also used powdered ginger and, in the right hand corner there, is a jar of lime juice... 

* So, since I made these changes, here is my estimate of what I ended up using:
1 tbs minced garlic
1 tbs powdered ginger
1 tbs lime juice

Clearly I can't tell you how it fares against the original recipe, but it ended up quite yummy!

Now, down to business!

Cooked up a box of linguine (yes, that was the only clean pot, don't judge me!)

Pour all sauce ingredients in to a bowl for whisking together (discipline the white wine vinegar for sneaking out of the cupboard in the first place)

Do as the bag says

We had stew beef for ours, so I sliced it up a little thinner to cook without oil in a pan

When all of that was done, I tossed the pasta in a bowl, tonged out the broccoli (because nobody likes broccoli water in their pasta), and tossed the beef in...

Then I whisked the sauce one more time, poured it in, and mixed it all up!

And VOILA!

DINNER!

Rating: Definitely easy, as long as you're not likely to catch things on fire when you cook

Cost: Inexpensive, but not cheap-- if you don't already have some of the sauces in your cabinet they can be a few dollars a bottle to stock up on, BUT worth it because you'll use them again! Plus, there are tons of leftovers, we've made at least three meals out of this!
Time: About 30 minutes
Conclusion: We will DEFINITELY be eating this again. It's healthy, yummy, and if you brown the beef ahead of time the only thing you have to spend time on is the pasta. Great weeknight dinner!