A night to remember - a call for old pals

I´m listening to Depeche Modes fantastic live album 101 at the moment and memories are haunting me. The first boyfriend who was a big devotee, I had have, Daniel in Gardelegen... and all the records I lent from him together with his record player, just to listen to the "A broken Frame" all night long. And later, after he had broke up with me "Waiting for the night" and the whole "Violator"
I was such a fan, my whole small 16 years old life then could have been described with Depeche Mode songs!

Now I´m filled with memories of friends, whom I´m afraid, I have lost long time ago, when I moved away from my home town. This was 13 years ago...

And again, there is this feeling of loss and a strange kind of emptiness.
So, my former pals Annett Meissner, Heiko Bauke,my flat mate Maik Zellmer, Christine Schroeter and her sister Katrin Schroeter, Mandy, my sweet class mates Andrea Stock and Antje Enseleit, all you guys from Gardelegen, where once was my home, the town I still miss, the Gods may know why. And all you others, who can remember me: show up, I somehow miss you!
I don´t have anyone left there, all I ever had, all my family now can be found at the local graveyards, and I cannot stay there just 2 minutes without collapsing, but still I believe that the 11 years I lived in this cute little town where so intense and imprinting, that I´sometimes still fell and think like the little, helpless girl I was back then...

Remember how we sang those songs? That we used to drink way too much Berenzen´s sour apple on our way to the "Volkshaus" each friday night? That I was miserable and used to feel like the 5th wheel most of the time? That I so envied Christine for looking so adorable and for making new friends so easily?

Now that I´m grown up I still feel the same sometimes, but occasionally I really feel the need to let you know: I´m ok, I´m fine and my life turned out to be better than I ever had expected it would be. If someone of you reads this, I´d be glad, if you´d say hello to me :)...


So, if anyone can remember - just show yourself. please!

A very nostalgic and beeing 17 and completely helpless again at the moment

Mone

Haunted by a piggy bank and weekend plans

Of course it´s nothing special, you might think, but I´m a little proud to be honest, because my little piggy bank how to was kind of featured on Cut out+keep´s "Pick of the week":

How could anybody blame me, since I never had been honoured like this before :).

Tomorrow we will celebrate the 85th birthday of hubbys grand-aunt. So I´m busy with washing, drying and ironing the better pieces of my clothing. Meanwhile I plan my weekend activities and came up with the following plan:
1st: the polar fleece plaid for the master bedroom really needs to be finished, since hubby loves to leave the window open, even this time of the year.
2nd: It´s a shame and I really should be embarressed, but since 3 weeks or more my wallet, which I bought last august at a Dunnes store in Shannon/Ireland, is shreded and cannot be closed completely anymore. I should have sewed a new one for me long ago, but, I guess, most of you know, plans like this so often don´t work out. So again I put it on my to do list for this weekend.

The ordered wallet and pasta oil have to be delivered during the first week of December, so I have enough time left for this. The pattern is ready, I only wait for the auctioned leather to arrive here.

Let´s see, how far I´ll get with my plans...

Cheers
Mone

Featured: Catherinette Rings

I just checked my twitter and saw that SteampunkRings tweeted a new ring added to his Etsy shop check it out! I just love it... have to tell my hubby, for the first time there could be a piece of jewelry I´d like to be given for Jul :)

Crafty recources pt1 - STEAMPUNK

I just played around with some linking gadges to add some crafty sites I found and wanted to recommend, but I think, there are quiet enough gadges here in this blog design allready. So I came back to the good old link list in a posting.
If you run a site, that you think is missing here, just leave a comment with the url and I´ll gladly check out as soon as possible.

Part one will be honoring all the great sites, recorces and suppliers for the friends of Steampunk among you.

1. Ideas and inspirations

The Steampunk Home - musings for decorations and recorces for a steampunk´s home

2. Free supplies:

Free historical images
lots of historical imagaes: maps, technical, science, fashion snd so on, the resolution of the pictures might not be the highest one, but for a elegant home decoration and other non commercial purposes they work just fine.

Steampunk wallpaper - a blog full of fantastic artwork for your timeless desktop and that even for widescreen as well!

3. General informations and communities

brass goggles - an enthausiastic bunch of people who love and live the lighter side of Steampunk (just like me ;) )

Steampunk fashion - crafty fashionistas and fashionistors showing their great works

Steampunk workshop - loads of informations, links, interviews and more

4. Steampunk can be fun... it should be actually :)

Clockwork Couture dress me edition - by artist&illustrator Annie Stegg, a funy interactive way to decide on your evenig wardrobe, ladies!

How to - the papier-mâché piggy bank in 10 steps

Ok Folks, I promised and here we go: in this post I´ll show you how to make a papier-mâché piggy bank. Some of you might recall this from your childhood days, so, if you have improvements or better ways to do it, don´t hesitate! I wanna know!

About piggy banks:
Piggy banks or coin banks are quiet common here in Germany, I got my first one aged 4 to save money aunts and my Granny´s rummy friends sliped me from time to time, and when I became 6 we bought a new bicycle from this money (I´m quiet sure, Granny added the most, but it was the concept of learning how to save for something you cannot affort right away.) Nowerdays I had one, where I put all the change in and saved for my new Necchi.

So much for the idea of having a piggy bank, if you did not know these ones before.

Lets get started. First of all, of course, the list of things you´ll need for this project:

what youl´l need:

- ballons/aerostats (best take simple, round ones, at least 2, more depending on how many piggies you want to make)
- lots of old, shred news paper,
- wallpaper paste
- water
- egg carton
- loo paper roll (the carton roll from the inside)
- tape
- 2 sided carpet tape
- craft glue
- acrylic paint or opaque water colours
- 1 bigger paintbrush for the wallpaperpaste, some other paintbrushes for the colours
- clean flowerpots as stands
- craft knife
- scissors
- clear varnish spray


Ok, now you have collected everything you´ll need.

How To

1. read the instructions of the wallpaper paste carefully and prepare a small amount of it as per instructions. You won´t need more than 1/2 cup at once.

2. blow up at least 2 ballons to the size your piggy should have at the end (1 ballon is a backup, if the first one bursts somehow ;) )

3. brush the paste on one half of one balloon and stick newspaper snippets on the gluey parts. brush more paste over the glued snippets and put the balloon onto the flowerpot to let the paste and paper dry. Go on with the back up balloon.

4. if you don´t mind to get sticky fingers, go on with sticking snippets to the other half of each balloon.



5. let dry for at least 30 minutes, if the paper is dry again on most parts, repeat steps 2&4. Go on and put layer over layer, untill you have a good feeling about the thickness of the papier-mâché. I made 7 layers, because I wanted to make sure it won´t rip later.

This is the time consuming part of this project, of course, you can speed it up by gluing several layers at once, but then the paper can rip during the drying process. Again, I wanted to play safe here (at least it should be a birthday present and I had a timeline to meet ;) If you want to do this with your kids, maybe it´s worth to take the (honestly not that big) risk, just to keep the little ones interested and active in this.

5. after you have enough layers and a dry papier-mâché balloon, cut out 4 feet out of an egg carton. trim them to make sure, the piggy later won´t have any unballancing issues. Then decide, how long its nozzle should be and cut it from the loo paper roll. Using the craft glue stick the feet and the nozzle to the ballon, let dry and, if necessary, use the tape for more firmness.




6. to adjust the feet and nozzle prepare another small amount of wallpaper paste and newspaper snippets. stick them as described in step 2 - 4 on feet and nozzle until the edges are soft.
Using more snippets mold the nozzle more detailed and also mold the ears. To mold one ear I started with 2 sqare shaped snippets, which I glued together to the half, so that I got a triangle. This triangle I sticked to piggy´s head and tighten it with mor glued-on snippets. due to the still wet paste it is possible to mold the ear very good. Repeat the steps for the 2nd ear. If you are happy with piggy´s shape, let the little one dry completely.

7. paint the piggy as you like and let dry completely.



8. varnish the piggy with 2 or 3 layers of clear varnish spray, again let dry completely. Use varnish spray very carefully and not near children and pets, the best is to use it outside, at least keep the windows wide open!

9. using a craft knife carefully cut a slot for coins (and notes ;) ) into piggy´s neck. If you don´t want to make a noise with a bursting ballon, just stich into piggy with a pin and wait a while, the air will pass off qietly and after this cut out the slot.
The empty balloon will stay inside piggy´s belly anyway, but that´s ok.

10. the pigtail you can make out of paper, pipecleaners or a wire glued to thick fabric like I did and glue it on piggy´s bottom.


Idea: you could prepare some piggies for your kids and let them do only the painting.

Decorate you piggy bank as you like.

*Done*

This was the piggy bank how to. I really woul love to see your piggies, so if you consider making one, don´t hesitate to send me a picture of the result. I´ll publish them here, if you allow me to.

Thanks for you attention :)

Mone

Followup: Recent work & random tales

I just reviewed the pictures I have taken over the last few weeks and saw, that 2 projects weren´t mentioned here so far.
But the most obvious thing I learned by sorting, reviewing and deleting unneded stuff, was, that since I work for Kodak´s digital support I have taken bazillions of pictures. Of course, because I work as a technical advisor for the support staff, I need to know the products around quiet well and if I´m honest, there is no better way to find out about digital photography and what functions you prefer. I can use all of the cams and learn, run tests and finally found out, which one I love most. I don´t need a reflex camera for my purposes, I think, for my needs the Z915 or Z950 are the chosen ones, while I guess, I´ll go for the first one. I defenitely love working in this job! :)

But back to OUR business ;) 2 months ago, my lovely mom in law had have her birthday. She dreams of having a special bed by IKEA, and since we cannot affort to buy it I decided to make a piggy bank as a gift at least. It´s dreaming of the one bed and wants to be feeded with money untill we can go back to this funiture store from heaven and buy it :)



It´s made of an air balloon and papermâché, the feet are made of egg-cartons, it´s painted and finally sprayed with clear varnish. The bedcap I sewed and taped it with 2sided carpet tape over one of the freehand modeled paper ears. An How To I will publish asap, it´s a funny thing, we made these in school when I was little and I remembered making these piggies was fun.

Now 2 pieces of random stuff...

1st: Finally A picture of me, which I actually like :):
It was taken at my bff´s birthday party (she is the left one). This was one of the first pictures after having the tonsils removed, not beeing able to eat afterwards for 2 weeks and then starting with WW, because I did not want to gain the allready lost pounds again. It´s pretty amazing, how obvious the lost of 26 pounds did change the face as well ;). So, I´m quiet happy about the result and (forgive me) a little bit proud of myself too. The aim is to loose another 12 pounds, just to reach a good BMI, and then I´m fine with it again :).

2nd: Lets do a little time-warp...
When I was 3 years old, one day my dad took me on a trip to the town (we lived in a small village back then). We went for shopping and so on. In front of a toy shop window I suddenly stucked and did not want to leave, because I had seen something, I wanted to have desperately. It was a little blue bunny with white trousers and a face made of rubber. These toys were some sort of modern back then in the GDR. After I had started to cry and acted up terribly for a while, my poor daddy saw no other choice than to buy the damned thing. I still remeber me schleping it the whole way home from the bus stop, holding it by it´s lugs. It was my best friend over many years. But years later I moved and somehow lost it. I searched all over, and finally... ok, it´s not HIM, my "Blauer" (this was his name, which means "blue one") had eyebrows I had painted with a ball pen, when I had have a flue aged 5; but I got his twinbrother at ebay:

Isn´t he adorable? Just think of how old he must be, they were produced back in the 70´s and 80´s. This one, I never, ever want to loose again, because, besides I still have some photos, it´s the only item I have to remind me of my childhood.

Ok, enough childhood memories, another crafty thing I sewed last month was this:


A tiny belt pouch. It´s that small, because only my cell phone and a locker key need to find place in there. I wanted to have one for the gym, since most of my sporty pants don´t have pockets. I need some music while running and lifting some weights and use the phone for this. It´s working well with the pouch, the inner lining is made of polar fleece, so the display of my nokia gets an extra polish each time:



Again, this was a complete "free style" pattern. I only decided, which fabric I wanted to use and the shape the pouch should have. The rest was fitted to the cell phone and to the last zipper I had on stock ;).

Ok, thats it for now, just let me check the pictures for the piggy bank how to and I´ll come back with that!

wishing you a wonderfull night,
Mone

having a nap... | TweetPhoto

having a nap... | TweetPhoto