Sunday, August 19, 2012

Sharpies + Dollar Store Mugs= Fun

I'm sure you've seen these if you spend anytime on Pinterest. Designing your own mug for yourself or as a gift is fun and cheap. I'm thinking of doing some as Christmas gifts. Finally got around to trying this out for myself.

If you google "Sharpie mugs" you can find numerous tutorials on how to do it. Supplies/Directions are easy:

Sharpie
White ceramic mug

Draw what you want, bake at 350 for 30 min. Let cool, hand wash only.

Could it be more easy? I think if you wash it in the dishwasher though, the design will fade faster or come off completely.

I copied a design I saw on etsy. It always makes me lulz.

Nik <3

Nyan Cat Cake Extravaganza!

This weekend we attended Geekfest in Killeen.  Its a con sort of event where people dress up, they have Magic tournaments, a cake/cookie/cupcake contest, vendors, robot builders, and the best part is the location is part of a planetarium.  They have cool videos, star talks, and laser shows. 

This is only the 2nd year of the event, and I like that about it. Its fun to go and participate, but its not to big and annoying with lots of people.  I keep finding the older I get, the more my dislike of people outweighs my like of attending events.  This year we decided to enter "The Cake is a Lie" contest.  There are 3 categories, cookies, cakes, and cupcakes.  Our entry was 1/2 cake and 1/2 cupcake, but we were put in the cake category.  There was only 1 entry for cookies, so we decided if we do it next year, we are doing cookies.  We didn't win anything, but we had fun making our entry, and the "celebrity judge" was Peter Mayhew.  He is the man who wore the Chewbacca costume in the original Star Wars movies.  This made me happy in a nerdy way, he ate one of my cupcakes!


We were judged on taste as well as appearance.  We decided on doing matcha green tea cupcakes, with butter cream frosting.  Our design?  Nyan cat, of course.  First we had to make the base for Nyan Cat, and the cupcakes, which were to be the rainbow that follows behind him. 




We made these the weekend before, and froze them so that way all we had to do was frost everything.  The frosting part took about 4  or maybe even 5 hours, because we had so many different colors (11 colors, if you count white as a color!)



I made a HUGE batch of butter cream frosting (4 sticks of butter, 7 cups of powdered sugar!) and then colored smaller batches as needed to do the rainbow and Nyan Cat.


 Finally, after maybe 6 or 7 hours of total work, our creation is complete!



Clearly we are not professionals, but I still LOVE what we accomplished, and so did a lot of other people!  We had some pretty stiff competition though,  it was a small contest, but there were a few participants who seem like they are professional cake decorators.  


Above are the winners, and below are the other participants, that like us, did not go home a winner.  



I don't think this is going to make me jump feet first into the competitive world of cake decorating.  But we would like to do it again next year.  We have already been brainstorming on what we could do next year.  I like that ours was so colorful and creative. 

Nik <3

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Bam! Minecraft shoes!

I know I shouldn't have delayed this post so long, but I was so busy that it took me longer to get them done that I had planned. 

My inspiration came from these shoes here, Kyozokicks.  About 6 months ago they made their way across my Pinterest and across Geekcrafts.com.  It wasn't long after that I decided to do a Minecraft party and had the idea to do my own pair.  I followed this tutorial here, except I used a more puffy type paint.  Little Bro helped me by doing all the gridding, I did the painting. 

They didn't come out nearly as perfect, but I still think they are radical.  J loves them.  He wore them today. 

Supplies:
-Shoes
-Fabric paints in 3 shades of green, and 1 shade of gray/silver, and black
-Popsicle stick
-Pencil
-Can of shoe waterproofer




This was my first time doing anything with shoes, and I am happy with the results.  It wasn't until later that we had a cool surprise when going to bed.  I was glad I could capture a good picture of them later.



Everyone in the house agreed this made the shoes a million times cooler.  If we were ravers we would be so hip happinen'. Or something.  that made me think of this.

Hope you enjoyed!
<3 nik