Who's the leader of the club that's great for you and me?

M.I.C.K.E.Y. M.O.U.S.E!

My sister and I are going on vacation to Disney World later this month. I have been twice before but it will be my sisters first time meeting The Mouse. We are both so excited and I wanted to make her something special for the occasion. We will be having breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and friends and i'm sure that we'll meet many other Disney characters while we wander the park, so I decided to make her an autograph book.

I was inspired by a similar Mickey shaped book I saw on Etsy.

The complete book. Her name begins with an 'A'.

Tied together with string and a bead.

Little cartoons which are supposed to be of my sister, my brothers and I. I know the little ones will insist on signing the book so I designed a page which they could write on. Cute characters were found with Google images.

The rest of the pages:

Baby Tigger and Lumpy

Close up:

Back cover:

I can't wait to return to Disney! My home away from home! <3

Pixelated Mario

My 5 year old brother loves to see the things I make with perler beads. More than that he loves Super Mario and co.

I made a few examples for him and then left him to make whatever he wanted assuming that he wouldn't last very long. How wrong was I?! He spent about an hour ever so carefully placing bead after bead to create Mario. I was extremely impressed with his patience in making this! Plus he made an original design whereas mine are simply variations of ones i've seen online.

Tall Cards

Is there anyone in the world greater than Joss Whedon?

The correct answer to this is of course, no. There is nobody greater than Joss Whedon. I know it. Nathan Fillion knows it. And a whole bunch of others do as well.

Joss has brought so much good into this world. Buffy, Angel, Dr Horrible, a new script for Speed but best of all, dare I say it, is Firefly. There is NOTHING cooler than a space cowboy.

Ever since the first time I watched the Firefly episode, Shindig - I have wanted to play Tall Cards - the poker type game played by Jayne, Simon and Book. I never did anything about it until a Firefly Craftster swap. That's when I knew I had to make it for my partner.

Unfortunately the episode wasn't very helpful when trying to learn the rules of the game. Luckily for me I live in an age where if you have a problem you head straight to the Google. And that's what I did.

I found an amazing website that provided me with rules and even the cards to play Tall Cards! My only problem was that it didn't look anything like the cards they used in Shindig.

So with a little help from the Firefly Companion: Volume 1, I was a able to create this deck of cards. I'm not sure that my partner will ever play Tall Cards, but I hope she agrees that they

sure are pretty. Perhaps even in the infamous words of a Dr Simon Tam, pretty pretty??

The box: Decorated with different strips from the Firefly comics.

The back of the cards. Thanks to the book these look just like the ones featured in Shindig - the only difference is that mine are not metal (I also darkened the colours slightly because I thought it looked more authentic)!

These are made using altered Pokemon cards. Papers are glued to each side of the Pokemon card and then the cards were cut down. I do wish I had used a smaller card though - the callouses on my hands from all the cutting lasted for ages!

In progress shot.

72 cards in total. The 6 suits are: apple, peach, strawberry, banana, plum and orange. Each suit also has a tortoise, dragon, unicorn and phoenix card (instead of King, Queen etc). All the fruits and animals are painted with water colour crayons.

These are the true colours on the cards. The flash didn't work on the other photos which is why the colours look duller.

The 6 suits.

All the cards in the strawberry suit.

All tied up with string.

The Tall Cards - one for each suit.

The bets. In the episode when Book, Simon and Jayne are playing Tall Cards they don't bet with money, they instead make bets using chores around the ship which they write on scraps of paper. I tried to make my bets look exactly the same, I did add a few chores which would be relevant to my partner as she has school aged children. Garbage, dishes, septic vac, homework etc.

Here is everything all together - including a set of rules, which I burnt the edges of and stained with tea. Nobody ever takes good care of the rules :)

All tied up.

I had a lot of fun making this game and would love to make one for myself. Unfortunately I still remember just how long it took me to make this and I just don't have the time to dedicate to such a large project.

Please link me to your version of the game if you've made one. I'd love to see it!!

And I just have to add.... this game was a featured project on Craftsters 2010 Papercraft Board. I'm so proud! :) THANK YOU!

The proof in the pudding

Christmas is my favourite time of year! And this year was even better thanks to A Very Glee Christmas!! (although my coworkers might have something different to say on the subject...)

To make up for the fact that Rachel Berry was belting out carols every day in the office, I decided to make some Christmas treats to share.

These are mini chocolate-chip muffins decorated with a buttercream icing. The "cherry" is half a gummy bear turned upside down. The leaves are just mint leaf lollies cut with scissors into about 10 small pieces. So simple! And much more delicious than actual Christmas pudding.

They were very popular at work and didn't last past 11am each morning. However i'm going to have to think of something else to make next year if Glee decides to bring out another album...

NCIS tarot cards

My partner in the NCIS swap on Craftster also happened to be in the tarot card swap which I had been unable to join. Combining the two seemed the perfect excuse to get both out of my system! :)

Finding the correct screen captures turned out to be the most difficult part of the whole process, but i'm fairly happy with the end result.

Let me know if you can think of better moments or captures for the many cards I did not make. I plan on making a set for myself one day and using them as wall art so that I don't have to alter both sides of the card!

This is the box the cards are kept in. Altered with paper, stamps, stickers and a drawing of Abbey done by Kate in one of the early episodes.

I managed to even find a quote about tarot straight from the show! I knew straight away it was a sign that I was meant to be making these cards. I can't remember the characters name that said the quote but she was a small town Sheriff with a crush on Gibbs.

And now the cards. For these I altered novelty giant playing cards - about 3"x5" in size. They were so easy to work with! Much better than the pokemon cards i've used before.

O - The Fool

Like these was anyone else's face that could belong on this card!

The back of each card is made with a corresponding paper and has 'NCIS tarot' stamped onto it.

I - The Magician

I was extremely unsure with this card. Ducky is not really the saving lives type of doctor that might be equated with a magician. But what he does and who he is are both pretty magical. Plus, I really love the picture. Sadly, the camera flash made some of the detail disappear.

III - The Empress

I was completely against making Jenny the Empress, but my sister insisted that it was supposed to be her card. Especially since I was making Gibbs the Emperor. I'm not sure where my head was when I chose the photo - it's awful!

IV - The Emperor

The Boss Man. I like that this card has a somewhat patriotic feel to it. I can't recall if Vance was a character when I made these - perhaps this should have been his card. Although I do not like him.

VI - The Lovers

I had not planned on making this card because although relationships have been had or hinted at, there are not any couples within the main cast. Plus, i'm a die-hard Kate/Tony fan so that probably would have upset some people! I did not want to use future couples (Toby/Ziva anyone?) or former relationships. None of them seemed to fit... and then I remembered! I just love Dinozzo!

VII - The Chariot

The NCIS van! Hands down, the most difficult capture to locate.

IX - The Hermit

Gibbs in his basement. This was probably on par with the van. Getting Gibbs and his boat is the same frame doesn't happen too often!

XV - The Devil

I do love me some Fornell, but he IS F.B.I!

XI - Strength

McGee carrying Kate - with his eyes closed so he doesn't get accused of looking up her skirt! I just loved their relationship! I think the episode was See No Evil (2x01) with Abigail Breslin.

XIII - Death

I was not going to make this card either because I did not think it would be particularly tasteful to have one of Ducky's cadavers on a card. Then I recalled a picture a certain Italian Special Agent had once drawn....

Queens of Wands

Wand/gun.... same thing, right?

and saving the best till last...

The Queen of Cups

Abs and her Cafpow!

All together. Pretty!

Suggestions of other cards I could make next time? Are there any moments or characters which perfectly suit any of the cards below?

The Hangman, Wheel of Fortune, The Sun, Judgement, The World, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, Temperance (Bones tarot cards??) and then of course the four tarot suits - swords, wands, coins and cups.

NCIS crime scene scarf

Last year I watched 3 episode of NCIS in a row having never watched any before. I mean, it was just another crime show, right? WRONG.

After those 3 episodes I became a crazy obsessed fan and went and bought the first 2 seasons on DVD. And now I craft for the show. My dream is to crochet a pillow with Gibbs Rules on it - just like Kate references in the pilot.

I wanted to make a crime scene tape scarf and there are plenty available online, even free patterns - sadly, all way beyond my abilities. So instead I turned to crochet. It took a really long time to make this as I cannot follow a crochet pattern either. Mid way through I gave up on the pattern and went back to basics.

For the lettering I cut out felt letters and stitched them on. I think that it turned out looking fairly cute. Or at the very least you can tell that it supposed to be crime scene tape. Right?

Happy Thanksgiving!!

A fruit turkey I made a few years ago after reading an article in Family Fun - my favourite family craft magazine!