Are you ready for some football (crafts)?

Temperatures hovering in the high 80s. Highways clogged with Baton Rouge-bound RVs. The scent of pumpkin spice lattes filling the air. It can only mean one thing...it's fall in South Louisiana. And fall in South Louisiana means that football is back, and all is right with the world.

And what do we do when the seasons change? We craft.

I've been a New Orleans Saints fan from birth. That's not a hyperbolic statement. Within hours of existing, I had a teddy bear named after the Cajun Cannon and more Saints gear than most of the active players on their roster. While it wasn't always the easiest fandom to be a part of - let's just say I wasn't always using paper grocery bags to cover my school books - it was so worth it to be in that number when they won the Super Bowl.

Lombardi Gras

To prep for last year's season, I decided to put together some yarn wreaths to match the Saints old jerseys and it seemed like a fitting project to share today. While it was a pretty simple craft, it was a little time consuming. Your best bet is to wait for a  Harry Potter weekend marathon and knock it out while you've got ample entertainment. 

I started with a round wreath form, and did a little visual measuring to see where I wanted my retro stripes to go.

This is the closest I've ever gotten to using Geometry in real life.

After I had those sections marked off with Sharpie, I hot glued some black yarn to the back of the form. The only trick is to double back with the yarn so that you cover up the glue. After that, it's all about powering through the tedium of wrapping yarn around foam for a few hours.

When I got to stripes, I used yarn with different textures to help them stand out from the rest of the wreath. The gold yarn was also really thick, so it made this part go a lot quicker. This was vital to the crafting process, because I was pretty deep into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II and I was starting to get hit by all the feels. (I totally wasn't crying, I just had some Floo powder in my eyes.)

When the yarn-wrapping was finally done, I painted some wooden letters and used hot glue to stick them to the wreath. Again, it was all visual measuring. Nothing about this project was very precise. I made the hanger by looping a ridiculous length of the gold yarn around itself and sticking it into the foam with some upholstery tacks. So far, it seems to be working out really well. I made a second one for the sake of symmetry, and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Quick word of caution - I don't know how weather-proof these guys are. Mine seem to be living happily in our screened-in porch, but I wouldn't risk putting them on a door that sees a lot of moisture. The only thing more heart-wrenching than watching the Battle of Hogwarts would be watching four hours of yarn work wilt away in the Louisiana rain. 

Now, who dat say they gonna make some wreaths?

Adventures in Organization - A New Challenger Approaches!

Here at VelociCrafter, we don't exactly know when to quit.

Take the Warp Pipe Desk Organizer, for example. It was perfectly functional. It served its geeky purpose, and we could have easily left it at that.

Instead, we did this.

Chris used perler beads to make the extra decorations, then attached them to the PVC pipes with hot glue. It was really simple and, more importantly, really relaxing. So relaxing, in fact, that we went on a perler binge. We bought an iron at a garage sale, stocked up on every color imaginable, and invited our friends over for a week of arts and crafts nights. It felt like summer camp, and it was awesome.

We all made pretty basic stuff, except for Chris. Chris is a perler prodigy and jumped into 3D designs while the rest of us tried not to mix up the shades of blue we were using.

He used a mix of reference pictures and trial and error to make a tissue box cover. 

He even added glow-in-the-dark beads for easy access. 

He also made another pencil holder, so now we should be really organized. 

For my part, I made Navi. She serves no purpose, but she looks nice next to our Wii U controller. 

Tah-dah!

Now that you're no longer in suspense about our organization habits, I recommend that you pick up some perler beads and start your own 8-bit zen garden. If you can get past the the smell of melting plastic, I guarantee you will find your bliss.  

Until then, stay clever!

Making Excuses in Parseltongue -or- How I Spent My Serpentine Summer Vacation

*Disclaimer - This is not a crafty entry*

It always feels awkward to come back to VelociCrafter after a lengthy absence. In most cases, I definitely meant to post a new entry before we hit this stage. I probably started work on a post weeks ago, and then my ridiculous life got in the way. By the time I finally sit down to finish the entry, it's been a month since I've had anything to say and it's weird - especially when I drop off mid-series like I did this time. Rest assured, that saga will come to a close soon. In the mean time, though, I thought it might help if I explain the radio silence. If you're just here for the DIY, no worries. Come back in a few days and we'll be back to work.

I've been spending a lot of time with snakes lately. 

So far, 2015 has been a wonderful and terrible year. I finally got comfortable at work, I developed some really strong friendships, and I started to stretch the boundaries of my very small comfort zone. 

I also had to watch a lot of people that I cared about walk out of my life, and it really sucked. 

Without getting bogged down in details, I think the whole experience was very similar to burning off a bad tattoo with a laser. There's this part of you that you always expected to be there, and then one day - for whatever reason - it can't be. So there's this painful process where you're losing a piece of yourself and you know that you're not going to be the same when it's all over.

Now project that feeling over six months, and you should have a pretty solid idea of why I fled the state this summer. We surprised our Ohio friends and family with a visit, then spent a week in Texas eating avocados and napping on the beach. We made time to explore a little of Houston, and then spent a week watching Netflix in our apartment. But even while all these wonderful things were happening, I still couldn't always shake the crappy feelings I'd been carrying around all year. I also started dreaming about snakes.

I'm not even a Slytherin. 

It wasn't every night, but more often than not, my dreams were full of snakes. They weren't scary - most of the time they just slithered around and minded their own business - but they were showing up in ridiculous places. One night, I had an exceptionally bizarre dream where I was trying to buy a house in Colorado with a backyard full of snakes. I woke up while the real estate agent was trying to assure me that the snakes were actually quite cute when they huddled on the porch for warmth. This was weird even by my standards, so I decided to Google the meaning behind my slithery dream  friends.

Apparently, snakes invade your dreams while you're in the middle of a painful healing process. Since they lose their skin while they grow, they're supposed to remind us that any kind of progress is probably going to suck while it's happening.

At the time, I didn't think too much of that explanation. I was in Texas, and I was much more concerned with meeting an actual snake than I was with the metaphorical ones. Gradually I started to dream about more sensible things, and I actually forgot all about the snakes until my parents came to visit us last week. We decided to go on a nature hike one day, and ran into this guy at the nature center.

Despite his lack of fur and legs, I instantly liked him. First of all, he spent a lot of time working his way onto that tree limb. I respect that kind of tenacity regardless of the species it came from. He also had a cool facial expression, as far as snake faces go anyway.

While I was watching him, I remembered all of my snake dreams and the painful healing that they were supposed to symbolize. And, in what seems to be par for the course in my odd, little life, I found myself having a psychological breakthrough in a swamp nature center. Change is painful - losing a layer of yourself is painful - but sometimes it's necessary for growth. And if you're not growing as a person, what's the point?

I'm not saying that things won't suck occasionally; old pictures, places and situations are still going to be uncomfortable. I guess the biggest difference is that I'm okay with it now. And I hope that if you, my clever readers, are in an unpleasant situation, you realize that eventually you're going to be okay with it too. Surround yourselves with awesome, creative people who love you. Find an outlet for the crappy feelings. Make cool stuff and listen to good music. And make time to hang out with some snakes. They can be surprisingly insightful.

Stay clever.

Adventures in Organization - Level Two

     When we last met, you heard the story of my attempt at organization. That project was designed to be almost purely functional; it's for my desk at work, so I didn't want anything too flashy. The more time that Chris and I spent surrounded by PVC pipe, though, the more we started to think back to our childhoods and a certain Italian plumber...

One might call it a pipe dream.

Here at the VelociCrafter compound, we love video games. So when we had a chance to celebrate that love through office supplies, we jumped at the chance like it was a 1-Up Mushroom.

For the Super Mario Bros. version of this project, we just used green spray paint and added couplers to the top of the PVC. The couplers we found at the store were way too big, so Chris used a miter saw to cut them in half before I painted them. Other than that, this project should have been exactly the same as this guy.

Then, tragedy.

Our first run of warp pipes looked great, until their dry time was interrupted by a freak windstorm. You want a really unpleasant way to spend an afternoon? Spend it peeling newspaper off of a sticky, green PVC pipe.

If you look closely, you can read the weather forecast on the paper AND the pipes. It didn't mention the windstorm.

When that was done we tried to sand away the carnage, but some of the pieces were beyond help. Luckily, we had enough spare pieces to start over. Unluckily, that was about the time the actual carnage started. 

Full disclosure - I'm terrified of birds, so when we tried to go Round 2 with the green spray paint and THIS monstrosity showed up, I was done. That's a giant vulture. GIANT VULTURE. Note the ample scenery providing terrifying scale. Note the threatening pose a la the Night's King in "Hardhome". Even without seeing this thing hop off the roof and drag a dead body across the neighbor's yard (which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened after this picture was taken), you can appreciate why I had no interest in finishing the project that particular day. 

I gave the nightmare bird 24 hours to vacate the area, and then I finished painting all of the pieces. This time Mother Nature didn't interfere, and the rest of the project went pretty smoothly. The base is just painted balsa wood and everything is held together with hot glue. 

I did realize that there was a much easier way to pad the bottom of the pipes, though. Originally, I was stuffing foam circles into the bases and it took forever. It was much quicker to stuff Crayola Model Magic Clay into the pipes and let it solidify for 24 hours. The clay is super lightweight and fun to play with, so it was really a win-win.

That should have finished this project, and we were really happy with it - until we realized that we could take it to the next level.

Get it? Next level. I love video game puns.

Stay tuned for the next installment on "Adventures in Organization" where life, uh, finds a way.

Stay clever!

Adventures in Organization (& Power Tools)

     I am the poster child for disorganization. I’m messy. I have always been messy. You know why the url is craftsfromthefloor.blogspot.com? The floor is the only space in the apartment that can contain my mess. 

     That being said, I occasionally crave some organization in my life. Last week was one of those occasions. It was also the week that we were visiting Ohio, which meant that I had access to power tools and plenty of space to spray paint, so I decided to try an idea I'd been kicking around for awhile.

     The result:

     Originally these guys were supposed to be made of toilet paper rolls, but PVC pipe just seemed like a sturdier option. There's probably nothing more heartbreaking than having a craft disintegrate in your hands, so I decide to err on the side of caution.

     I used 2 inch pipe for the shortest section, and 3 inch pipe for the other two. I planned on having it cut at the store, but that didn't work out. The woman who worked there told me that she could only cut the 2 inch pipe, and even then she wouldn't be able to cut it straight since they didn't have a saw.(Apparently I hallucinated the guy slicing up 2x4s in the lumber department.) Then, as if to prove how little she actually wanted to help me, she took the pipe I was holding and hacked a piece off of it. When she finished, both pieces looked like they had been manufactured during an earthquake, so I decided to take my chances at home. Now, your local home improvement store might be more cooperative - this store is notorious for doing whatever the hell they want and making up store policy as they go - but you can also use your own saw. We stuck with a miter saw, and had pretty solid results. Fair warning, it's a messy job. Plastic flies everywhere and you'll definitely want to wear eye protection, but at least your pieces won't look like props from San Andreas.

Love is risking your fingers to help your wife organize her desk.

     No matter where the cutting happens, make sure to sand down the edges. The last thing you want is blood on your office supplies. Make the pipe whatever size you want. I had Chris make mine a little taller than they needed to be and stuffed cardboard slices in the bottom because I like the aesthetic.

We left a lot of room for error. We're pretty aware of our capabilities. 

     Once I had the size I wanted, I used silver spray paint on the top third of each section. After it was dry, I sprayed the bottom with purple. I let it dry and then added a layer of clear coat to keep the sparkles off my desk.

     I wasn't very precise while I painted these pieces, but you could always use painter's tape if you wanted nice lines.

     I also added a magnetic strip around the rim of the shortest section to help me get to paper clips. The strip already had some adhesive on it, but I decided to use super glue to help it out. I have been known to get pretty violent with office supplies when inconvenienced, and I thought the support might help.

Like I said, I need a lot of help with organization.

     When I had all of my pieces ready to go, I arranged them on a round piece of wood from Michael's that I had also spray painted silver. (Have I mentioned that I love spray paint?) When I had the arrangement that I liked, I traced the inside of the pipes with pencil so I knew where to glue everything. 

Using pencil on silver was not my best idea. Feel free to use a writing tool that actually shows up on the surface you pick.

     A few websites that I looked at said to use Liquid Nails to glue the pipes down, but I didn't feel like making two trips to the store (maybe laziness is the root of my disorganization) so I went with hot glue. Honestly, I don't anticipate moving this thing around too much so the hot glue should be ok. If it doesn't work out, I'm sure you'll all be able to hear my rage-filled screams and adjust your crafting accordingly. 

     And normally that would be it. But this time we let the summer carry us away, and decided that we could make this a lot more interesting. So stay tuned for Adventures in Organization Round 2 - Complete with more spray paint, a terrifying bird attack, and a hefty dose of side-scrolling nostalgia.

     Till then. stay clever!

The Aloe Odyssey Continues

     Guys, I'm getting really sick of fighting with succulents.

     The giant aloe plant is losing its arms, and the smaller one is spawning baby plants that are slowly draining its life force. No one is happy. In an attempt to keep the peace, I bought a giant planter and set AloeZilla up in his new home. I moved the cutting I brought back from Ohio in the ceramic planter I decorated a few weeks ago, and then I had to find something to do with its stingy offspring.

     Enter the puns.

Use a British accent and all will be revealed. 

     First, I picked up a cheap, ceramic flower pot and some oil-based Sharpie paint pens. My drawing skills aren't stellar, so I turned to the magic of Microsoft Word to help me out. I found a font that I liked, typed in my ridiculous British pun, and then flipped the whole thing around so I was printing a mirror image of the phrase.

     Once I made sure that the words would fit, I colored them in with pencil. I was really heavy-handed with this part; the whole point was to get enough lead on the paper that it would rub off onto the flower pot. Then I used painters tape and stuck it (colored side down) to the side.

     When I was happy with the placement, I colored over the words in pencil a second time. This left a faint lead outline that I could trace with the paint pens, which is infinitely preferable to my feeble attempts at hand lettering. The colors will change a little in the oven, but nothing too drastic.

     I added a few more details to the phrase and then used painters tape (my new favorite thing) to add the green detailing to the top. After it had dried overnight, I threw the whole thing in the oven to set the paint. Apparently the key here is to put it in the oven before you turn it on - throwing room temperature ceramics into a 375 degree oven is a terrible idea. I'd also advise you to open up your doors/windows while it cooks. We didn't, and it took us twenty minutes to figure out where the weird smell in our apartment was coming from.

     All cautionary tales aside, 30 minutes at 375 was perfect for this project.You do have to leave the oven door closed until everything is back to room temperature, though. I'm not patient, so I found a reason to leave the house until it was done. Then it was just a matter of playing musical planters with these psychopathic succulents.

     

From our family to yours,

VelociCrafter

Treat Yo' Self - A Misanthrop's Attempt At Being A Good Hostess

     When I was a kid, my mom (sensing a dangerous DIY streak in her only child) signed me up for a monthly craft club. It was called Toucan Do, and it was everything that my four year old heart had ever wanted. The crafts were easy, the materials were included, and - much to the joy of my parents - the mess was relatively self contained. It showed up every month and filled my life with happiness, felt, and glitter - and I'm 100% certain that it started my love for subscription boxes.

     One of those subscription boxes has left me with more bath and beauty products than any human could possibly use, so I decided to find a way to send it all to deserving homes. The result - the easiest craft project that has ever existed. It made my previously mentioned craft box creations look like astrophysics. In fact, the only reason I feel comfortable calling it a "craft" is that it required a field trip to Michael's.  

Tide Stain Pen? Treat yo' self!

     We already have some Parks & Rec art in our guest bathroom, and since we have a lot of out-of-state guests it seemed like the perfect way to make the VelociCrafter Compound a more hospitable place. I bought a terrarium from Micheal's, threw in some sparkly rocks, and then loaded it up with my Ipsy surplus. Now our guests have an open invitation to treat themselves to whatever they need, and I can actually find the stuff I stash under the sink.

No power tools needed on this one. My neighbors must be overjoyed. 

     So there you have it. Was it exceptionally difficult? Nope, but it cleared up a ton of space and lets me be a good hostess with minimal human interaction. Also, if it helps another organizationally challenged person figure out their life, then it's basically a public service.

     You're welcome, universe.

     Till next time, clever readers!