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. 

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!!

Drawing Cookies

I've mentioned Reddit Gift Exchanges in past posts. 2012 was the first year I participated and boy did I participate! (I did the Book, Doctor Who, Halloween, and Secret Santa Exchanges). Of course I made cookies for my secret santa! I feel like Reddit gift exchanges are all about the right amount of non-creepy stalking. You get your match and then go through all of their Reddit posts, and Google them to figure out the kinds of things they like. I decided to make cookies and draw pictures on them of my secret santa-ee's interests. 

I used Wilton's FoodWriter markers to draw on iced sugar cookies. Unfortunately I only had black, green, orange, pink and purple, so kinda limited what I could draw. Next time I do this I will definitely buy more colors! I also used edible Christmas decals on some of them. I'm not sure how they taste, but they sure are pretty! 

I think my favorite part about the cookies was the packaging. I took a cleaned out Pringles can and made my own label to put over top. The cookies fit in perfectly! I also added the recipe for the cookies on the back. 

If you'd like to participate in any of the Reddit exchanges, sign ups are going on now for a book exchange, a tea and coffee exchange, snacks exchange, hats and scarves exchange, socks exchange, and Pokemon exchange. It's SO FUN. More pictures of the cookies after the jump!

Gift Exchanges

I love presents. I love giving them and I love getting them. My whole family does - that's why at Christmas time, our tree looks like this:

No room for all the presents! 

Today I got an email from RedditGifts announcing their new gift exchanges. I've done 2 of these before - a book exchange and a board game exchange and have been really happy with both. Gifters on Reddit are really thoughtful and go above and beyond. I actually feel pretty self conscious when giving because I think my gift wont be as cool as others. But in the words of Echo - I try to be my best.

In today's email they announced 6 new exchanges which include HALLOWEEN and DOCTOR WHO!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. Guys - I LOVE these 2 things! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE them. I mean, look at the cell phone cover I just got on Saturday:

And if you don't know me already, then you'll come to know how much I love Halloween in the coming weeks as I can guarantee 99% of my posts will be about it.

Anyways - if you've never done a RedditGift Exchange - then I highly recommend it - you'll definitely get something awesome. And if Halloween and Doctor Who aren't your thing - they also have exchanges right now for Makeup & Nailpolish, Ties, Postcards, and Cubicle decorations. Time to start brainstorming on what Halloween/Dr. Who things to give others!!