Making a Kindle cover

There is something to be said for long-term craft projects that you pour lots of energy and love into. There is also something to be said for a craft project that transitions from a little idea in your head to a final product in an hour and change. Today's project falls into the latter category.

A few years ago, Josh surprised me with a Kindle. Though I maintain my love for hard copies of books, the Kindle has become part of my reading routine, especially thanks to our local library's Kindle book lending program. I wondered recently if I should consider getting some sort of case for it - and then forgot about it.

Then I saw a tweet containing a picture of a simple-enough Kindle book cover, and I thought, I want to make one of those.

I set off on a Google search and came across the "Kindle cover from a hardcover book" tutorial that became my inspiration and guide. I went off in a different direction a couple of times, but the final result is pretty similar and so that post deserves much credit.

Basically, you take a hardcover book and remove the pages and then cover it with fabric that you secure with hot glue. My route to the finished product was different because I tried to use supplies I already had on hand, and that didn't include the quilted fabric suggested in the instructions, so I started adding some makeshift padding with some quilting batting scraps and the hot glue gun.

Because of the batting, I wanted to wrap up the whole book with the rest of the cotton fabric. This is where the project started to feel a lot like using grocery bags to cover textbooks back in middle school and high school. I'm not even sure how honestly I can make that comparison, because my dad was so good at making perfect book covers that the number of books I actually covered myself is low. I may have texted my dad to ask for his book covering tips during this project.

I didn't take any more "in progress" pictures because I was working quickly with the glue gun and largely off the cuff. I tried to wrap the cover pretty tightly but with enough room to close nicely. I ended up wrapping the book like a present, with the fabric edges ending in the spine. Then I decided to put a little band of purple fabric in the spine to cover the edges and "hemmed" that with an iron. Along the way, I had attached the fabric to all four edges of each side with hot glue. No sewing in this project.

Then I made a little pocket out of another scrap of fabric, ironed a little hem on each edge to make a nice crease, and hot glued three of the edges to the left side of the cover.

That last picture spoiled the surprise of the last step: adding the elastic. That's the only part I had to go out and buy. I tried some elastic I had from another project and it was way too thick. It did not do the job. This dainty elastic was just right.

And here it is closed:

To be sure, it's definitely not perfect, but I like that something a little sturdier is protecting my little e-reader. I am happy with the results of this quick project.

Midweek update

Wow - this week is flying. Here are a few updates (all from today):

• I received a clean and cavity-free bill of health from the dentist today. Whew.
• Today it was 40 degrees and I ran two miles with Wish and three more on my own. The part with Wish was slow going because he hates puddles, so he would gingerly and disdainfully try to avoid them at all costs (which didn't work out well, considering that our route was about 70 percent puddles). It was still nice to get outside with him - and really nice to not have to wear gloves or any kind of hat or headband!
• Tonight: the monthly craft night I've been doing with a few friends. This month's installment included more crafting than usual (with the Olympics on in the background), pizza and a bundt cake. I also got to see our friends' baby as well as one of the sweetest bulldogs I could ever hope to meet.

That's a good, full Wednesday. It felt great to get out before the snow flies again tomorrow.

Marvelous Monday: Week 49

It was a chilly weekend with at least a few more months days left in this cold snap. Brr! Here are some more marvelous tidbits about the weekend and upcoming week:

1) I have obtained a Minnesota-shaped cookie cutter and am very excited about it. I botched a batch of sugar cookies this weekend so I missed an opportunity already, but I am going to try it out sometime this month. More cookie-making is on tap for tomorrow night, too.

2) I finished my sort-of-holiday table runner over the weekend! Here it is on top of a red tablecloth, just to show you the fabric (I did not stencil this one):

3) It's officially grapefruit time at my house. I had the first grapefruit of the season (possibly of 2014) this morning for breakfast and it was wonderful.

4) I spent a few minutes today wandering aimlessly around the library after picking up my reserved copy of Eleanor & Park. (Thanks to Steph for this recommendation!)

5) I had a great yoga class tonight. We spent a few minutes at the start of class practicing deep breaths, because the teacher reminded us that we all tend to hold our breath in cold weather (not to mention the shoulder-hunching that goes on), which does no one any favors. It's so true! Take a deep breath, right now!

What's marvelous about the start of your week? Do you love or hate grapefruit? Do you have holiday decorations up? And what are you reading?

Runners

Ha, ha. A different kind of runner than what I usually write about: table runners!

It all started at Halloween. Remember my proud, tall pumpkin?

I don't mean to be too gross, but in the interest of full disclosure, the pumpkins went downhill really fast - literally over the course of, like, 36 hours. I have no idea what happened, but it was disgusting.

I don't think his big old grin helped his structure. Anyway, I'd rather not ever think about that pumpkin again. The point is, I was in the mood for some new table decor after that fiasco, and I was intrigued by the idea of table runners.

I'll pause to apologize quickly to my mother, who has been a fan of table runners for many years. My siblings and I used to wonder why one would ever need a table runner, unless that person needed something to wear as a scarf or shawl. Mom! I'm sorry we poked fun at your runners!

Anyway, I got a couple of yards of fabric (thanks, Joann Fabric coupons!) and googled tips for making a table runner. I started with a gray chevron print, and I'm not sure why, because making the zigzag edges look even made this particular project harder than my first runner probably should have been. Really, it is mega-easy and the assembly took me about 20 minutes. I sewed two edges together, flipped it inside out (so the seam was inside the runner), and folded the short ends in about an inch and sewed them shut, too, before sewing a seam along all four edges to finish it. I didn't want the runner to hang over the table (though that seems to be how most look) so I kept the entire length just shorter than the table.

Here's how it turned out:

This link shows you how to do it without sewing at all. I was browsing that link when I got to page 2, when the author wrote, "Since I was planning to paint my table runner, I chose a thick white duck cloth, also known as sail cloth or canvas."

What? Paint a table runner? Duck cloth!?

I had been searching for a print fabric that incorporated that orange-red-purple combo of which I'm so fond - but now it turns out I could just paint my own runner! I got some small tubes of acrylic paint and a couple of sets of Martha Stewart stencils and got to work.

Stenciling is satisfying largely because of the moment just before you pull the stencil away to see how your work looks. See? You really want to know what's underneath the stencil! (I did, anyway.)

I tried a table runner with a random hodgepodge of designs on it.

For awhile, it wasn't quite working out. I like it now, but I think I might like more pattern or just less white space. It was definitely fun to practice using the different stencils and see what application techniques worked and which ones smudged.

Then, with half a yard left of duck cloth left, I decided to try a more regular pattern. Ready for the before and after for each one?

Red:

Orange:

Purple:

You get the idea. I should note that most of the stenciling was done with my faithful Canine Craft Loather by my side.

I should also note that the stenciled runner was not a super quick project. If you are stenciling designs in close proximity to other designs (like both of my runners), you have to let the paint dry or at least set before putting another stencil on it. I did most of the second runner on a leisurely weekend day, when I could swoop by the table and do 10 minutes of stenciling at a time, and then finished it up in little windows over the next few days.

Then I ironed the edges and sewed those down, and it was done!

I still have fabric for a gently holiday-themed runner that I'm planning to tackle soon. Stenciling a runner makes it a longer project, but if you're just working with plain old fabric, I learned that it's a quick, cost-effective way to change up and add some color to a room. (Next up: white duckcloth and more orange paint for University of Tennessee checkerboards!)

Marvelous Monday: Week 40

How did it get to be the 40th week of 2013?

1) To follow up yesterday's post about the finish line: I think these photos from a Pioneer Press photographer explain, better than I ever could, about why I love a marathon finish line.

2) Lunch run today! The sky was a super-deep blue and the leaves were lovely.

3) Speaking of leaves: I'm in the preliminary steps of a craft project involving leaves. Yesterday after the marathon I had fun puttering with my collection, much to Wish's utter dismay:

4) Josh made sirloin, bacon and black bean chili yesterday, and the leftovers tonight were equally marvelous.

5) It's playoff baseball time and that will never fail to be marvelous to me.

What's marvelous about the start of your week, Reader? Please share!

The old and new picture frame

Recently I acquired what I think was a busted (non-functioning) light. This doesn't sound particularly noteworthy, except for the part where I thought to myself, That looks like a nice picture frame.

Game on!

It's basically a square frame with 25 five-inch squares, in five columns and five rows, so first, I ordered a bunch of photos. I had planned to do 5x7-inch photos because each square is five inches, but I quickly remembered that 25 5x7 photos are a heck of a lot more expensive than 25 4x6 photos. I decided to print 4x6s instead and grab a white piece of tagboard to serve as my "matting" for each photo. I cut the photos down to 4x4 inch squares. I measured out the squares with a yardstick and pencil, then taped photos in the middle of each square with double-sided tape.

Then I popped out the frosted glass and picked up a new piece of plexiglas from the local hardware store for $8. (You can custom-order glass and plexiglas there, which I think is neat. Also, somehow this project jumped ahead of our coffee table's broken glass panel in the priority line.)

Then I put it all together.

Voila! Here's the final product, sitting on my bookshelf ladder. You might recognize a few.

Next, it was time to explore locations for my new frame. I thought about hanging it over our desk, but I honestly just didn't feel like making sure that the frame wouldn't fall and crash onto my sewing machine and computer.

Then I saw the perfect space on our bookshelf. This bookshelf came with our apartment, and I remember being asked on the tour if we wanted the landlord to get rid of it, and we basically yelled, "NO!" It's one of my favorite parts of our home, partly because of its little ladder for reaching the highest shelves. Anyway, I ran into a little roadblock here because I thought it surely wouldn't be that hard to condense a shelf's worth of books by choosing a couple dozen to donate - which, as book lovers know, is an impossible dilemma. I suddenly came up with all kinds of reasons why I might need a textbook I haven't cracked open in a decade. I shuffled some things around and was finally successful.

Here it is!

And, you know, me posing with it. Just because. Probably just because I don't perch on the ladder as much as I should.

I was worried that the pictures would be too small, but I can still appreciate each one even when I'm sitting on the couch across the room. I am by no means a master repurposer, but I love this effort's result.

Disapproval

DEAR HUMAN,

OH PLEASE, NOT AGAIN!

YOUR HOBBIES ARE SO BORING.

LOVE,
WISH

The new project

Tonight I started my first quilt.

And now that I am one-seventh done with the actual quilt's material - one row! - and I think the worst is behind me, I will proclaim that there were about 30 minutes this evening when I was sure it was going to be an absolute mess. If this thing really comes together and you ever stop by to visit and snuggle up with this quilt, you can just take a discreet peek at Row 6, patches 3 and 4. They are bad news! Crooked, scraggly, bunchy, strange news.

But then I finally got my mind around how to arrange the strips in a way that actually made sense instead of guessing how they were going to fit together, and then the whole thing started to go a lot more quickly. It will also help if I can cut more straight strips of fabric.

For now, I am just happy that this little project is finally off the ground!

Craft mayhem

I just got home from a celebratory Punch Pizza dinner with a friend - she is having a baby boy in 2013! - and my home has already started to overflow with a trifecta of craft projects:

1. One involves using something called fusible interfacing for the first time.
2. One involves asking a boy's mother for the measurement from one far corner of his eye to the other outside corner.
3. One involves getting out my trusty scrapbooking paper cutter (and required Wish's help earlier today).

Oh my, Reader, the kitchen table that greets Josh when he gets home is going to be quite a messy surprise!

I will update you accordingly. Good night.

And P.S. Are you finishing up any holiday crafts (or other kinds of crafts)? Please tell me about them!

Basketball and crafts

Hey, did you watch the NCAA basketball championship last night?  I watched the second half.  Later, I decided to revisit my bracket because I was so pleased that I had actually picked Kansas to be in the championship game. (And KU won, in my dream bracket world.) Turns out that I didn't pick Kentucky to even advance to the Sweet Sixteen in my bracket - instead, I picked Florida to represent the SEC against Kansas.  I totally didn't win.

Onward.  Crafts!!!

So there's this blog, Young House Love, that Nat told me about awhile ago. The tagline, per the website, is "1 Young Family + 1 Old House = Love."  Not hard to get behind that premise, right?  It's about this couple, John and Sherry, who blog about renovating their home (the good and the bad).  Anyway, I love it, and last week, Sherry posted about covering pieces of cork in fabric to hang behind clothes in your closet, to use as a vehicle for all of those magazine pages you tear out and mean to store in one convenient spot.

Josh can verify that our home is full of these weird little torn out pages, tucked into magazine piles and files and left on tables. I also have little fledgling idea piles in strange corners of our home...like the collection of dogs I'd like to someday have.

I read the post and thought it sounded like a neat idea, but ruled it out firmly and immediately because our closet is, well, too tightly packed for such an idea to work in that space. But then over the weekend I'm driving to Joann Fabric to get some materials for a sewing project, and all of a sudden, I want that corkboard, badly! I have to make one of my own!

And all of a sudden, I knew the perfect place for it, too.

So sad and lonely! Such underused space!

I won't recap the whole step by step process because Sherry obviously did it very well - and like the time I posted about cooking recipes from Pioneer Woman, it feels a little strange to document a project on my blog that I'm tackling only because I saw it documented on another blog.  (Super weird!)

But all you have to do is buy a pack of those little corkboard pieces, duct-tape them together, and wrap it in fabric and duct-tape the ends. Really, really easy. It took no more than eight minutes.

And voila!

One of my 101 in 1,001 items is to create and maintain an inspiration board.  It's yet to be determined if this board will be the space for that specific project.  After all, it's basically in our kitchen, which is definitely a safe space but just not a very dreamy one.  I think this might end up being a hybrid of an inspiration/idea board and visible storage for upcoming events/ideas/recipes/coupons I spot during my breakfast reading.  Maybe then I won't find coupons that expired in, like, 2005 carefully filed away - and to think: the magazine article about how to do a fishtail braid doesn't need to sit on my table for weeks and weeks anymore!

I migrated the dog pictures, too. Yay!

I may not have triumphed with my bracket, but I am happy about this pretty new spot in my home. Thanks to Young House Love for the idea!

Gingerbread houses galore

This holiday season, I had the good fortune of stumbling into not one but two gingerbread house projects. 

Actually, this is misleading. The honest truth, frankly, is that I did a healthy amount of crowing about how badly I wanted to make a gingerbread house, and two groups of people helped make it happen!

Part I

I'll start this story by giving thanks to Josh's sister-in-law, Dawn, who should be commended for not brawling me when I invited her children at Thanksgiving to make gingerbread houses with me at Christmas.  She came home from the store one day last week with a fabulous gingerbread house kit!  Lala and Loco and I immediately got to work.  The kids and I set up the house with the kit's frosting and let it set for awhile, but I'll set the stage for how the rest of the project went by noting that we flagrantly disregarded the gentle "wait 15 minutes before decorating" suggestion on the back of the box.

It started out very nicely!  (Note one of the kids flying across the background.)

There was a bit of a lean, though.

And early in the process, one of the gingerbread men required emergency surgery. So sad.

  

And then there was more lean. 

I am noticing Loco in the near background in all of my photos, and I'm not ready to rule that his actions did not contribute to our house's eventual demise.

Then it all went!  Luckily, my fellow homebuilders were the perfect audience for this.  In fact, as soon as we finished decorating, Lala and Loco asked if it was time to dismantle and eat it.

As you can see, they were not sad in the slightest when the whole thing collapsed.

Lesson 1: Wait 15 minutes.  Do not let eager children convince you to bend this rule.

Lesson 2: No stress!  The eager children are rooting for it to fall down!

Part II

Last night, my plane touched down at MSP, I scurried home, and within five minutes of opening the door, I had an apron on and was kneading dough for potica, a bread my family makes every year over Christmas. The gingerbread house was scheduled for potica intermission (i.e. while it was rising). I had received reports via text that my mom, brother and sister had already assembled the gingerbread house's structure, with at least one collapse, mixed results, and some profanities. 

Lesson 3: Gingerbread houses are hard to make.  They're just hard, okay?

It started out simply enough.  In contrast to my first gingerbread house adventure with Lala and Loco, there was no consumption of frosting.  My mom made this Very Effective frosting that was apparently not edible.  (That should not be called frosting then, should it?  Hmm.)  We let it sit, and sit, and sit - the lesson learned by all. 

Lesson 4: Let it sit for a long time before you decorate it!!!

Then we started decorating.  First, almonds for shingles.  You can get a good look at the windows here, a tip my mom learned from my grandpa: crush up Lifesavers or Jolly Ranchers and bake them in the cutout.  Voila!  Stained glass windows!

It got more and more serious. Sprinkles came out. Trees were made from ice cream cones.

The piping rolled on.

A tiger joined the fray.

Here's the final result, surrounded by my sister, her boyfriend, me, and my brother.

Believe me. I am staring at it right now, approximatey 20 hours post-construction. This thing is not falling down.

I s'pose the technical rubric for success means that only one house this year met the criteria, but heck, Lesson 5: I loved making both of them.

And the crafts roll on

Ooh, I am excited about this one, Readers.

If you are a runner or love one, you probably know that a runner's home is scattered with old race bibs.  (No?  Just me?)  When I started racing, I saved each bib as a souvenir and never got out of that habit.  Now, I never want to throw one away, but I never know where to put them, either.  At best, they were housed in a ziploc bag.  At worst...well, at worst, they are in various corners of my files, bookcase, magazine stacks, refrigerator, and so on.

I've seen bib organizers for sale in running magazines, but they seem really expensive for what they are.

Solution: Try to make my own!

Earlier this week, I found myself in the craft aisle, collecting supplies.  I found two blank unfinished picture frames for 99 cents each, a tube of paint (purple) and paintbrushes for the same price, a basic three-hole punch, and a stack of ring-clip things.

We also bought a basic drill, partly because Josh wanted a drill for our home and partly because I was overcome by wanting to make this bib book that night.

Then I had to collect my bibs.  I found about 20 of them in my preliminary search, and I know others will pop out of the woodwork in the near future.  I am so excited to have one place where I can put them!  I love how colorful the bibs are.  Some are plain - I'm sure it's cheaper - but it's fun to see the ones that identify specific races and think about how that race went for me.

While the drill charged, I got to work on the first coat of paint.

Then Josh drilled two holes in each frame, lined up with where the bibs would be punched, of course.  We put the two rings in, and they just barely fit.  Then I worked on finished the paint, and let the frames sit overnight before finishing the book.

The next morning, I jumped out of bed to finish my craft project.  I added my bibs lovingly.  I set up the picture in the frame with a piece of glass from an old 4x6 frame (I told you the frames were 99 cents, right?).  For the cover, I chose a photo from one of my favorite running memories, when I set my current personal record (PR) for 26.2 at the Madison Marathon in 2008. This actually momentarily fired me up to work hard for the next year so I can add a new photo for a new (PR) in a marathon next fall.  

But I digress!  Here's what it looks like from the inside:

And here's the final product!

I am very happy with it.  At long last, my bibs have a respectable home!

(Note: I reserve my right to do Marvelous Monday on Tuesday.  Marvelous Tuesday.)

Black Friday

Reader, do you love this Black Friday stuff or do you wish it would all just go away?

This year, I am ducking it almost completely, because I'll be in a city that doesn't have too much interest in Black Friday shenanigans.  I have experienced it once in my life, though.  One year in college as part of a job duty - long story short - I appeared on local morning television dressed up as a fairy tale character.  (I guess I was too tired at the time to remember which one.)  My family got quite a kick out of this, but the early bird gets the worm, and when I was done working at, like, 7:15 a.m., I hit the mall and cleaned up.  I did get a red down comforter for something like $30 that I still use all the time.

Anyway, although I love a good sale just as much as the next person, the whole idea just kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies.  In the interest of full disclosure, though, I admit that I am scoping out a few deals:

1) My mom alerted me to a really good deal on a sewing machine.  Because I'll be away from my computer, she's prowling the sales on my behalf - probably/hopefully on Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday.  I am very excited to get started on this sewing machine adventure and am grateful for her for helping a daughter out.

2) If you live in Minnesota or want to run a race in Minnesota in 2012, there are some curious deals I've been noticing in the running community.

Team Ortho is running (ha, ha) a special on all four of the half-marathons they host each year. Even without this special, I probably would've ended up doing one or two of the races - but they are all fun events, spread out through the year evenly enough so I'm usually looking for a longer race around that time anyway, so it's a pretty good deal for me. 

Front Runner is having a 50 percent off sale all of their races (running, duathlons and triathlons) in 2012.  That is a killer deal because while a half-marathon on sale is still a chunk of change, a 5K on sale adds up to a mere $12.50 if you register between today and Monday.  They have a lot to choose from all through the year, and I plan on signing up for at least two or three.  They are low-key races and always fun.

That's the scoop.  Are you already home with bags of deeply discounted goodies, or did you stay in bed this morning? 

Friday's five

I will provide a partial mini-break from Halloween musings by dishing out five recommendations for things I've been loving lately:

1. I get hooked on the oddest mix of TV shows.  This season it's "Up All Night" on NBC, starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph.  It's about two new parents adjusting to life with a baby.  Despite the fact that the main characters end every practically sentence directed at each other with "Babe," which I find exceptionally annoying, I love this show.  It makes me laugh out loud.
2. World Series baseball!  Readers, you are a diverse group.  I think some of you might be waiting for the leaves to fall so I stop posting pictures of them, while others are waiting for baseball to be over so I quit yammering about it.  Both groups have to wait just a little bit longer for me to move onto new topics.  If you have any interest in baseball at all, you know that Game 6 last night was a crazy game.  It was a must-win for the Cardinals, and they got huge hits in the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings to force a seventh game in the series.  I recommend that you watch that game tonight!  If the rest of the series is any indication, it won't be boring.
3. Books and book club.  I would love to recommend Cleopatra for your November reading list, if only I were more than 60 pages into the book.  My friends in book club fared similarly, but the host coordinated a wonderfully themed party last night, with the movie "Cleopatra" on TV in the background and ancient Egyptian desserts!  Thumbs up for themes!  Up next: On my Kindle, I have Interpreter of Maladies, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society waiting for me.  I think Potato Party is at the top of the list - although I will keep working on Cleopatra, too.
4. Learning how to use my camera.  I briefly noted this goal earlier in the week, but it is obviously an ongoing project.  I have a Canon Powershot SD 1100, otherwise known as a standard point-and-shoot digital camera.  So far, my biggest piece of progress is tinkering with what I think is called the "long shutter mode," which is making the lens stay open for several seconds (of my choosing) to let more light in for night photos.  (Obviously, you should not accept my explanation as any sort of official language or advice.)  I stood outside my apartment last night and probably confused some neighbors as I took two-second, four-second, six-second, and eight-second photos of the building's lights to see the differences.  So cool!  I can't wait to learn more manual functions.
5. Finally, I procured a glue gun yesterday from the fabric shop.  I want to get a sewing machine this winter, but man, a glue gun works wonders in the meantime.  I got home from book club and decided to assemble the first phase of Saturday's costume with the glue gun, with the baseball game on in the background.  The game kept going and going, so I hunkered down for the night, and by the time the game ended at midnight, I had unexpectedly finished the whole darn thing - with lots of help from the glue gun.  I am pretty happy with the final product and hope it stays together long enough for me to run 3.1 miles in it.  

I'll share the full costume in the next day or two, but because you are undoubtedly frail with all of the suspense, Reader, here is a little preview:

 Have fun this weekend!