Getting ready for the Deathly Hallows

I'm extremely busy getting everything ready for the midnight screening of the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which is tomorrow night! As you know i'm dressing up as Hermione Granger and i'm just making a few more additions to my costume. Although i'm not sure if going as Hermione is the best idea anymore... I cannot get Danger Granger out of my head!! :)

Here is the Platform 9 3/4 sign that I made the other night just before my friends came over for a HP movie marathon. I made it very quickly and the whole thing is held together with Blutack so that I can pull it apart and reuse the paper. Oh yes, i'm that cheap.

We ate a lot of junk food and I wrote little signs for them so give them more of a Wizarding feel. I definitely want to have a proper HP party one day and put lots of effort into the decorating, these are rather pathetic.

Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (Jelly beans)

Cockroach Clusters (Clinkers)

Cauldron Cakes (not even cauldrons, instead cute little stars)

Honeydukes Chocolate Frogs (Freddos)

Office Olympics

The humour of The Office is not for all people. I know that i've tried the original Ricky Gervais version many times but I just don't find it funny. For this reason I never cared to watch the US version because everybody knows that the UK always does it better. Plus Steve Carrell just bugged me.

I don't even remember what made me suddenly want to watch an episode. But I did, and that episode made me want to watch more. So once again I went and bought a few seasons on DVD. For most of the first season I would cover my eyes embarrassed for Micahel and by what Michael did to others. But he soon grew on me and now I love him. I still don't find the humour of Steve Carrell movies particularly amusing but i'm so glad I gave him a chance. Although to tell you the truth, it was Jim Halpert that won me over.

I made this altered book for my partner in an Office swap. It is based on the season 2 episode: Office Olympics and is a guide to hosting your very own workplace Olympics. I have to say the deleted scenes were EXTREMELY helpful when making this - they reference the rules of the games a lot more than the actual episode did. It was especially helpful for understanding Dunderball.

This was my very first altered board book and it took me so many hours to rip all the plastic and orignal papers from the book so I just had the cardboard left. It was only after I started on another book that I realised it wasn't supposed to be that hard. I had chosen a near impossible book to work with. I now know that it most cases the top layers should just rip off all in one go.

The original book was a Wind in the Willows picture book. I covered the front in a scenic scrapbooking paper and then overlapped sports themed stamps over the top. The Dunder Mifflin logo is from the NBC website.

The words on this page come from the opening ceremony speech that Jim gave. When you read it out yourself you need to add an echo after every few words :-)

Skeet Schruting. Pam named this game in the deleted scenes. Since the game is all about throwing office supplies into Dwight's mug, that's what I decorated the page with. I'm not at all happy with it although I do like the white note stapled to the bottom. I scrunched it up so that it looked like Pam had screwed it into a ball to throw it. If you look closely the words are those of the fax Jim wrote to Dwight when he was pretending to be future-Dwight (fyi, my favourite opener).

Hate Ball is actually just paper football renamed by Kevin because of how much Angela hates it. I made a paper football which is hanging off the side.

Pam Pong. The cute Pam and Jim pictures are from google images. When I find the original artist i'll credit them.

I found the instructions for Flonkkerton (the national sport of Icelandic paper companies) on this website. Hilarious. I took this photo before I had completed the page.

This lovely back page was given to me in a swap.

There are more pages in the book that I didn't take photos of, but I can't remember what the games were. It was unbelieveably hard to part with this book. And not just because it took every minute of an entire week to put together!

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

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!

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.