Olivia makes stuff.

ianbrooks:

LOTR Illustrated Guitar by Vivian Xiao

Exquisitely detailed enough to be crafted in the forest realm of Lothlórien, this beauteous guitar was not forged by elf nor man, but by 16 year Vivian Xiao with sharpie markers! Depicting Nazgul, Minas Tirith, and even the all-seeing Eye of Sauron, this divinely-engraved instrument could surely inspire even more Led Zeppelin songs. Check put Vivian’s website for details on purchasing and commissions.

Artist: Deviantart / Tumblr / Facebook (via: Obvious Winner)

this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life and puts my guitar-decorating attempts to shame

katydidnot:

~~here it is~~ FEMINIST SKILLJOYS, issue one! a zine about making stuff, available ONLINE NOW FOR FREE or~ in physical copy for trade or a couple bux (covering postage basically) just message me or email me~

A BIG THANKS TO: all the contributors to the zine (allison jean, olivia, dena, stacey-marie, r.b., fiona, lonna, rose l, hannah, and ethan) plus everyone doing the in person skillshare tomorrow and also kt for giving me printing tipzzz and letting me do the skillshare at the really really free market AND begrudgingly martin for thinking up the title pun

there is already so much more i am excited to include so i am definitely planning a second issue. you should email me if you have something to contribute! I AM ALSO planning a q&a section in the next issue so if you have questions about a specific craft or skill send me an email too and to the best of my ability i will see if i can find an expert to answer your query. ~~  batselke (at) bellsouth (dot) net  ~~

(also the part where there are way too many pages of me talking is going to be fixed in the next issue, this is because this is a part of my term assignment — my ~praxis project~ — for my final women’s studies course. i feel like actually a lot of the goals are self-explanatory though so definitely future issues will be way more just about making stuff)

Guys I am in this and it is super great, Katy is super great and so are all the other talented people who contributed. Check it out!

Made some bracelets from eucalyptus bark plus embroidery thread. You can also do these with tulip poplar bark!

katydidnot:

i got this book at barnes and noble yesterday. me and olivia and daniel are going to learn to make natural dyes! WHAT WILL WE CREATE. daniel’s done a little dye-making before with violet but i have never done any of it. i am excited to learn! i’m really excited to dye with pokeweed berries because as a little kid i used to draw all over my body with it and the  color looks super vibrant in the dye examples i’ve seen. if anyone has any natural dyeing advice (in general, or if you are from around here and know where to find stuff) lemme know!

FUTURE CRAFTS I am super excited about

MAKE YOUR OWN INSANELY EASY CHOCOLATE BARS!

My mom taught me how to do this recently and it’s the best thing ever. It doesn’t require very many ingredients and the only cooking skill you need is the ability to operate a microwave.

Ingredients:

• A bag of chocolate chips
• Whatever mix-ins you want in your chocolate bars. I used dried blueberries, sliced almonds, and salt, but other than dried fruit and nuts you could also use marshmallows, other kinds of candy, your favorite cereal, crushed up potato chips, cinnamon, graham crackers, coconut, or anything else you think would taste good!
• Either some waxed paper or tinfoil or a pan greased with butter (or anything else that will keep the chocolate from sticking without ruining the taste). If you’re feeling fancy you could try pouring them into a mold, but again you’ll have to grease it first.
• A microwave

Directions:

1. Prepare your pan/wax paper/foil/whatever you’re using.
2. Heat up the chocolate chips in small amounts in your microwave. I like to do it in a mug cause it’s easier to manage than a big bowl. It’s very easy to heat chocolate too much and ruin it, so microwave the chocolate chips in 20 second intervals and stir in between each heating. It’ll melt faster than you think!
3. Pour the melted chocolate into your designated receptacle. 
4. Sprinkle on your mix-ins! You can also try putting them in your container/on your paper first and pouring the chocolate over them, like I did.
5. Heat up more chocolate chips if needed and repeat the process until you’ve made as much as you’d like.
6. Put you chocolate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to cool and harden.
7. Take it out of the fridge. If you greased your pan properly, it should pop right out (if you used wax paper, you should be able to peel it off). You can cut your chocolate into bars or wedges by scoring a line along the top of the chocolate using a knife where you want to cut it, and then carefully breaking it with your hands—it should break right along the line you made.
8. Eat them! These would also make super cute and easy gifts wrapped in some colorful paper or foil. 

sciencesoup:

Manga Farms

Manga publishing is a huge business, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, but what happens when the books are no longer wanted? They’re sent to secondhand bookstores, passed down under they’re tattered and worn, recycled and turned to pulp… But Koshi Kawachi, a Tokyo-based artist whose works often feature water and recycling themes, has come up with a fun and eclectic way to give the old comics a burst of new life. His concept is quite simple: place an old comic upright in a dish in a sunny, airy spot, sprinkle some seeds over it, water them, and wait for sprouts to peek out from between the printed pages. Radishes, buckwheat, broccoli, rocket, basil, and many others will work—and of course, so would any book or comic. You might balk at the idea of sacrificing of a perfectly good book—but you can always use a hated one, perhaps one with a particularly weak storyline that you can (literally) breathe some fresh life into it. Paper is potentially a good fertiliser, and if the nitrogen content of pulp could be boosted and the ink made more environmentally-friendly, then Kawachi’s idea could open up imaginative possibilities for book recycling and indoor farming.

I wanna try this!

learning some embroidery by stitching a heart on the pocket of my favorite vest