Friday Musings #37

I've been marathoning Game of Thrones. I finished the first book when I was on vacation and decided that I was just going to watch the TV show from here on out. I don't have the time to sit down and read it all in one sitting, and I can't keep the characters straight when I read a few chapters a week. I am loving the show - I finished season 2 in 4 days. I wanted to include gifs from the show in this post, but I'm too afraid of what I'll find on tumblr.

I know some crazy shit goes down this season and I am both looking forward to and dreading the Red Wedding episode. I've managed to not know what happens yet, but I'm assuming it is a wedding where everyone I love is going to die.

I am constantly surprised by this story and how it makes me start rooting for the characters I hate - they all have such dimension. I think Tywin is a horrible excuse for a human being (like seriously - give Tyrion some love - he is obviously the best of all your offspring) but dammit if that man doesn't swoop in and save the day. TWICE now!

Reddit is doing a Game of Thrones gift exchange which I fully intend to participate in.  (Sign up ends July 5th) I'm happy I'll be caught up before Comic-con so I can finally understand the costumes and maybe I'll hit up their panel/get some sweet swag. Winter is coming and I'm pretty damn excited about it!

Tea With The Doctor

These are tea cups I painted for the Reddit Doctor Who exchange. I got really excited when I saw that my match was a tea lover. I thought it'd be great to make a Doctor Who themed tea set. I brainstormed for a while what to.

I came up with four designs that I thought wouldn't be too hard to paint. I then went searching for a canvas and ended up buying a set of Gracie China, Ruffle Collection tea cups. The ruffled saucers are beautiful! I ended up dropping the first set I bought and broke a cup. (skillllz)

Luckily the second set I ordered came quickly and now I had back up cups in case I really screwed up painting. My next step was to figure out what kind of paint I needed for porcelain. The good people at Michael's suggested Martha Stewart's Glass Paint. I used the Michael's app to get 40% off a set of the gloss opaque paints which I thought had all the colors I needed. WRONG. After starting to paint the Union Jack, I realized what I thought was red was actually orange and what I thought was black was dark brown. Thankfully I had some extra cups!

I used the Martha Stewart Spray Paint System to paint all the saucers black. It was kind of like using magic! I didn't get the ratio of paint to primer right at first and it was a little runny, but I got the hang of it eventually. Then I used a toothbrush to flick yellow, orange, and blue specks on the plates to make them look like SPACE.

After letting the paint dry for a day, I hand painted the DW TARDIS on each saucer - some of them turned out better than others.

I originally tried using masking tape to cover up the white spots for the windows but when I peeled the tape off, a lot of the paint came with it. I ended up just repainting it by hand.

I also painted phrases on the bottom of each tea cup. The brushes I bought were nice because they had a VERY fine tip so that helped with the writing.

As you can see, my lines aren't all that straight, but I figured that way people will know they're hand made. I'm not sure if my Dalek cup is really recognizable - I wish the handle looked more like a toilet plunger - but I think the Exterminate! makes it better. 

This is probably my favorite one of the four. You can't really tell, but for each cup I painted the same design on both sides. I also thought the handle on the 10th's cup was looking a little lonely, so I added some 3D glasses. 

The paint takes 21 days to cure - or you can bake them for 30 minutes. Afterwards, they're supposed to be dishwasher safe. Though I'm not sure I would actually trust them in the dishwasher.

Oven time!

So that's the basic rundown of the Doctor Who tea set! I have 2 tea cups left that aren't broken/painted with an orange Union Jack so I think I may have to paint myself a TARDIS and 10th Doctor mug. And maybe throw a bow-tie somewhere in there. 

We Are Here to Change the World

One year I was at MGM Studios in Walt Disney World when a screaming crowd ran by the store my friend Megan and I were in. Megan looked at me and said "Grab your camera, I bet it's somebody famous!" So we ran outside and who did we see but the King of Pop - Michael Jackson. I was standing TEN feet from MJ. I grew up watching his music video marathons on MTV (you know, when they used to play music videos). Black or White and Will You Be There were two of my favorite songs. (I loved Free Willy.) This was a very exciting moment for me. He was surrounded by Disney security, but still let a few of his fans in and shook their hands. Megan and I didn't get that close, but we do like to tell people how we rode Star Tours with him. (Okay, so we were in different cars - but that's just a technicality.) After that I loved MJ even more - and man could he dance.

I was in London with my sister when I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died. It just seemed unreal. I remember two very tall British men walking past on the street and telling us. It probably wasn't until the next morning when our hostel was blasting Black or White at breakfast that it really sunk in. Every bar we went to was playing Man in the Mirror (which I'm ashamed to say didn't even register on my favorite MJ songs until that weekend.) It's hard to believe it's already been 4 years. RIP buddy. We'll always have Star Tours. 

Disney Magnets

I got back from my RI/ME trip about 2 weeks ago. Then I was crazy busy catching up with work and making some crafts for the Reddit Exchanges I was in. I made these magnets for the Disney Exchange. My sister made some with family pictures for my mom a few years ago and I have wanted to make them ever since. They make a great gift and you can customize them anyway you want!

These are all the tools I started out with. I bought 2 different sizes of clear flat marbles from Michaels. They were only about $3 each (so this is also a relatively cheap gift!). Then I found a bunch of different Disney photos I liked and sized them to fit to the marbles. If you'd like to make the same ones I did here is a pdf of the stills I used. My giftee is also a Doctor Who fan so I made a few magnets with the Karen Hallion Disney mash-ups.

Next I put some glue on the pictures and placed a marble on top. If you're making these - use any clear glue. I bought this Dimensional Magic Mod Podge which I read the label like 10 times and couldn't figure out what "Dimensional Magic" meant. It wasn't until AFTER I had glued all the marbles to the pictures that I realized it's meant to dry on top of things to give it texture and NOT to actually glue things together. Oh well, it still worked thankfully!

You really have to be picky about which marbles you use. A lot of them have cracks or ripples in them and distort the picture. I'd say about 1/3 of each of my packs weren't usable.

I let the glued marbles dry for a day and then used an exacto knife to cut them out.

Once they were all cut out, I placed a magnet behind and tah-dah! Home made magnets!!