DIY Life

I often wonder: when everyone is making LP bowls, LP coasters and now, LP bookends out of our adolescent artifacts, what is the world coming to? However, after seeing HRG's clever bookends idea over on Craftster, I willingly rifled through many worn album covers, feeling a few pangs of nostalgia, and finally settled on a Diana Ross (the later years) album and a generic Christmas album.

With hot water bubbling on the stove, and steamy water pouring from the faucet, I fumbled around trying to dip, pour and bend the albums at a right angle using a giant wooden spoon as my tool.

Now come on, a wooden spoon? The result was not so good. Read on to see what happened on my second attempt, and how to get it right the first time.

Cupcakes have come into vogue as a sweet alternative to the traditional wedding cake. No fussing with cutting the cake, and guests can choose from a variety of flavors. Besides that, a well-decorated cupcake is just plain adorable!

If you have a couple hundred guests, though, that's a couple hundred cupcakes, at least. Where on earth do you serve them? Cupcake stands are the norm, but generally these hold only a couple of dozen.

If you're an enterprising DIY bride, however, you might just want to craft a cupcake stand to beat all cupcake stands, and put a solid 375 cupcakes on the one, enormous tree! You could consider it the centerpiece to the reception hall!

About a month or so ago, a set of Lord of the Rings amigurumi made by Sammi Resendes (Craftster user Artoo1121) and her boyfriend were prominently featured on a number of sites. The dolls were unusually detailed, with full cloth outfits resembling their film costumes, painted "embroidery," and tiny polymer clay accessories like helmets and staffs. However, there were no instructions for you to make them at home.

Since then, however, Sammi has posted free instructions for how to make the Fellowship of the Ring in crocheted doll form on her blog, Geek Central Station. There are several patterns:

• The Hobbits and Gimli
• Aragorn and Boromir
• Gandalf and Legolas

The hitch? The clothing patterns aren't free: they can be purchased from the Geek Central Station Etsy shop for $7. That price seems reasonable to me, given how much work went into them.

In the meantime, amigurumi lovers will want to keep an eye on Geek Central Station: Indiana Jones is the latest character to join the fun, and a line of Star Wars dolls has also appeared, with some patterns available for purchase. Sammi says the cast of Futurama will be next! [via]

Everyone needs coasters, right?

A set of Scrabble tile coasters were recently one of Craftster's featured projects. They're simple, requiring more patience than time or skill. The creator, Jessfun23, glued Scrabble tiles to thin cork sheets in clever drink-related patterns, then coated the tiles with a sealant.

She chose Mod Podge, but any waterproof, non-toxic clear sealant should be OK. Some sealants might yellow over time, but there's no ideal soft base for coasters that won't deteriorate over time anyway (most coasters have a finite life span by definition). Another Craftster user, TracyinNH, was inspired to try this project with a felt bottom and denim edging, for an entirely different look. You could try running a metallic gold paint pen around the edges before applying the sealant, or edging each coaster with glue and glitter. The possibilities are endless.

Acquiring the letter tiles for this project is probably the largest obstacle to hurdle. I did some research, and was able to find some surprising and interesting options... not just for sources of tiles, but also for the look of the tiles themselves. There's even a totally different way, shown in the photo above, to make a similar coaster. You'll find something for almost everyone, including your favorite l33t g33k, after the break.

Welcome back! In yesterday's Let's get "LOST", we discussed ideas for a themed Lost party. One of the best ideas is to create faux DHARMA Initiative ration labels for party food; today, we'll look at ways to do that. We'll also take a gander at some other cool Lost crafts from around the web, including some genius home-brewed t-shirts.

Creating DHARMA food labels

Image editing programs like Adobe's Photoshop are indeed the way to go if you want to create DHARMA labels for your party food (or your office supplies and toiletries, depending on the level of your fandom). The DHARMA logo itself is a modified feng shui ba-gua.

A while back, InsanelyGreatTees offered printable DHARMA food labels for you to download, but Disney, ABC's parent company, asked them to stop. The PDF has been removed, but you can still take a look at the labels themselves, and be amused by the official-looking stamp on them: "Download removed at the request of the Hanso Foundation". This will give you a good idea of what you're trying to create.

You may also take a look at this photo taken on the set of Lost, where you can clearly see plenty of DHARMA rations; there are further photos in that series. Some good home-made rations can be seen in a photo by Flickr's Sahba, "Sheyda's Dharma Initiative food labels" (and a second, close up photo with the same title).

To go about making your own DHARMA labels, you probably don't need exact duplicates of the labels on food on the show: go for reasonable facsimiles. All labels should be black print on a white ground, with a DHARMA logo and sans-serif text. This is an easy task if you use the right fonts. The rest is just the correct label shape (like a hanging tag, with the corners clipped off the top end) and black lines and outlines (which can be done with pens and a straight edge, if you are unable to draw them in an image editor).

To use a dingbat or symbol font as clip art in an image editing program, simply use characters from the font the way you would use any other text, but change the size. A standard size for text is around 10-14; to change a font to clip art, you can start with 200 or 300, which you'll have to type into the "text size" box (it won't be on your drop-down menu, if there is one). Adjust the size from there until you're satisfied with it. (This process was also described back in my Print Gocco Holiday Card tutorial.)

It turns out that a visible number of us on the writing staff here at DIY Life are obsessed with ABC's Lost: if any posts get written on Thursday nights in the next few months, between watching the show and hanging out on spoiler sites for crumbs of information about what might happen next week, it will be entirely coincidental.

OK, I'm joking... a little. The point is that I don't know anyone who feels lukewarm about the show: it's either devoted love, a combative relationship ("They're driving me crazy! Why do they keep introducing more mysteries?!"), or complete disinterest.

It seems like this anecdotal observation also plays out in a few other places, like in the Craftster community. Please join us after the break for a look at plenty of mostly-recent Lost projects from Craftster and a few other places, with spoilers through Season Three. We have fish biscuits and DHARMA Initiative soda -- don't miss out!

T-shirt recon is a rising fad but what about those other old shirts? Men's dress shirts that are no longer in style, he just doesn't like or have that stain on the sleeve that make wearing it to work impractical.

I found this photo tutorial for a recon of a man's dress shirt into a very sweet little girl's dress on the forums at Craftster. With a pair of scissors and a sewing machine the poster took a rather boring old shirt from a thrift store and made a charming sun dress for her daughter.

The poster's tutorial seems quite complete and easy to understand including photos to help you get this recon right. I can see this project working with any old grown-up shirt that buttons down the front. If you choose to try this one out have fun and don't forget Step 1, apply snacks frequently.

If you strive to be a somewhat organized person, that you know that storage boxes can be an invaluable possession.

Magazine storage boxes are handy, not just for storing magazines, but also for your kids' books, cookbooks, file folders of semi-important papers and craft supplies.

Price, however, can be a big deterrent in having as many magazine storage boxes as you'd like.

Want to learn to make them yourself? If you have any old cardboard boxes and Mod Podge, you have the makings of endless magazine storage boxes. For close to free? Sign me up!