I made these Mario shoes for one of Scott’s Christmas presents this year. They’re a replacement for his old pair that got ruined on a wet day. These new ones have been waterproofed, and I didn’t use that horribly runny light blue Sharpie, so they should hold up much better.
I completed another one of my life goals: working with glass. I got the groupon for an intro to glass class at Braden Hammond Glass for my birthday and I finally got to redeem it this weekend.
His apprentice did a cool demo where he made a pendant with a mushroom inside of it and then there was a safety talk and a demonstration of how to make beads. We were allowed to make as many beads as we wanted in the time we were there.
First we made clear beads to get the hang of the technique. It was much harder than he made it look. Some of our beads looked pretty crappy.
Then he showed us how to use the coloured glass, the shaping stone, and how to make dots.
It was REALLY HARD to make the glass do what I wanted it to do. I think my beads look kind of neat but they were not what I imagined in my mind at all. Haha. All three of those were supposed to be something completely different and then just ended up as blobs of glass smushed down on the shaping stone. I still like them a lot though!!
This one started off as a small bead with dots on it. Then my hand jerked and one of the dots attached back on to the metal stick. Oops. Now it’s a nice SHARP bead… yeah.
After you are happy with what your bead looks like you put it in a kiln to temper it and make it durable.
All in all it was awesome. I really appreciated that they were encouraging us to make lots of beads. He wasn’t stingy with the supplies at all.
Now that I’ve done the beginner class I am allowed to just book time at the studio to practice if I want. The supplies are fairly cheap. We also can now do the intermediate classes (one of them is actually glass blowing) but the problem is that they are super expensive. With the groupon the beginner class was pretty reasonable, but now the intermediate classes are like $200-$300. And the beginner class is $135 so a bit expensive for Scott to do it now, otherwise after that we could just split our supplies and book our own studio time to try and figure stuff out.
So I don’t know if/when I will get to do this again, but if you ever see a groupon for something along these lines I highly recommend it! (And please let me know too…)
I had a really great long weekend. Warm weather, lots of food, a bit of travelling. It was a fantastic way to end the summer.
Horseshoe Bay, BC
More Horseshoe Bay, BC
Me and the nosebleed shirt on the ferry
On Sunday I took the ferry out to visit Lesley who lives on the Sunshine Coast (HI LESLEY). We pretty much spent the day catching up (she was out in Nanaimo for the whole summer) and eating tons o’ snacks and BBQ. It was lovely. We watched a movie too. I can’t remember any other things we did but that’s not to say it wasn’t a fun visit. I would totally go back!
British Columbia is pretty
I stayed overnight and then we took the ferry back together on Monday afternoon.
BEFORE
I FINALLY painted our wooden IKEA Rast drawers. I have been meaning to do that for like 14 months!!
AFTER
I think they turned out decent. Not super beautiful or anything but kinda neat. At least they are more personalized now and not just ‘cheapest option at IKEA’. BTW, I am gradually turning our house into a rainbow kindergarten.
Yesterday Scott and I went to Washington, but I’m going to leave that for a separate post.
I have failed miserably so far at my photo of dinner every day plan, it’s September 5th today and I have a grand total of ONE dinner picture, and it’s from today. OOPS. I’ll wait until I have a few and then post them all at once I think.
All for now. Posts to come: our mini road trip to Washington, a back-to-school update, and MAGNETIC NAIL POLISH pictures.
OOO the pillow I used for my latest crafty project is on the cover of the new IKEA catalog!
On a trip to IKEA about a bazillion years ago I begged Scott to let me buy this Eivor cushion. We had no need for it at all but I was drawn to it (pun intended). IT SPOKE TO ME. And it said “COLOUR ME KATRINA, COLOUR ME NOW.”
So I did. Slowly over several sessions I coloured it in with Sharpies. Mmmm fumes.
About half way in I really wasn’t sure if it was actually one of my best ideas (it looked kind of horrible?) but when I coloured in the very last section I was really really pleased. I think it looks awesome now. And it doesn’t smell like Sharpie any more.
Upgrade?
Last weekend we upgraded a bunch of things in our apartment.
We installed a “screen door” out to our patio so we don’t get big stupid flies in the apartment any more. It needed to be removable so we could still use the door. All we did was buy a piece of screen at Canadian Tire and use some sticky velcro from the dollar store to hang it up. I stuck one side of the velcro to the door frame, and sewed the other side of the velcro onto the screen. Sewing the velcro was a sticky tedious process, but now we can have the patio door wide open at any hour and that makes it all worth it. No picture of that project because you can’t see anything.
We sold our old mattress and had our new firmer mattress delivered. So nice. Unfortunately there were two days in between those events so we had to sleep on the floor for two nights, haha. Hence the blanket bed in the picture on the left.
