KaraSchwee – Geek Crafts

Outwit Winter with 8-bit Spring

Today as I gazed out my living room window at the nice April spring afternoon SNOWSTORM in my front yard and resigned myself to an entire lifetime of winter weather, I found my thoughts wandering (trudging) to…Steve from Minecraft. Steve from Minecraft has all kinds of warm weather biomes to choose from. Steve from Minecraft can play in the snow, sure; but when he’s bored (or his feet start to go numb in his diamond boots (are diamond boots even warm?)) he can go to a desert, or a forest, or even a jungle. Steve from Minecraft can be standing in a snowy blizzard one second, and then take a step into a swamp biome and immediately find himself delicately wrapped in warm, balmy, humid rain. Not to mention Steve from Minecraft’s freshly-planted daisies that he got for his Easter party four days ago don’t take one look at the incoming north winds and promptly die in their planter. (At least, not in the XBox 360 version.) So why should Steve from Minecraft get everything?!?!

Good news! Instructables poster lirpaeel has shown us how to bring some of Steve’s coveted greenery to our very own biomes!

The best news? You don’t even need to build an ax to knock it down! (Or a sword, like the kid in the picture.)

Happy Spring!

Return of the Geek Cat

There was a lot of celebrating on the farm today. After three weeks and two days, we finally found our cat, Ari! Apparently he was hiding out in our closest neighbor’s shed the whole time. I was pleasantly surprised that even after a 23 day stint in the pitch-dark shed he didn’t really resemble Gollum at all.

In addition to more cuddles than he’s comfortable with, I’m making him these geek cat toys as a welcome home gift. (Underneath that cool cat exterior, I have no doubt that Ari is a total Whovian, Final Fantasy, AND Harry Potter nerd.) The best part? No sewing machine is needed for these adorable toys from Allons-Y Kimberly.

Oh man, remember when we posted this? What a charming place for a geek cat to hang his hat!

Magic Mirror on the Wall

I have one of those long, dark hallways in my house that’s terribly difficult to decorate. There’s just one tiny window on one end, so I’m always looking for ways to lighten it up. This evening I tried putting up three mirrors of different sizes…and it looks excellent! Clearly, if three mirrors looks excellent, five mirrors would look even better (and ten would look incredible)! I can see this quickly becoming a new obsession…

Have you seen this lovely LEGO mirror spotted on OurNerdHome? It’s singularly simple to make (and will be featured prominently in my new mirror hallway by the end of this weekend):

I particularly love the gold spray paint – something we go through a lot of at our house. Have you ever wondered which gold spray paint to use for your projects? Julia at ChrisLovesJulia experimented with several different kinds, and writes about her findings here.

What are your favorite mirror projects? I’d love to see!

Happy Earmuff Day!

Ah, yes…it’s that time again: Earmuff Day! Actually, I’m ashamed to report that somehow this very salient holiday escaped my notice until this evening, when a friend alerted me to its existence. My response was, of course, to make little miniature earmuffs out of all of my leftover pipe cleaners and mini yarn pom pom balls from previous projects and go around the house putting earmuffs on everything from the owl shaped cookie jar in the kitchen to the hurricane lamps in the living room. (My boyfriend will be so impressed when he wakes up tomorrow morning and sees my handiwork! Is there such a thing as the Earmuff Fairy? I think I sense a new tradition…)

In the spirit of Earmuff Day, here are some crafty earmuff ideas from around the web:

These Princess Leia earmuffs made me smile (links to a YouTube video with DIY instructions, thanks to DeviantArt user Taniathepirate):

I want to learn how to crochet just so I can make these Spock ears (spotted on Croshame)!

I was unable to find any instructions for these Pokeball earmuffs found on Etsy.com [via monster.loveitsomuch.com], or these R2D2 earmuffs (spotted on DeviantArt from user Bee-Delicious), but they both look like they could be recreated pretty easily with some faux craft store fur and felt:

Plus, how to create faun earmuffs (thanks to Meri Greenleaf at Elfling Blog):

So, I’m dying to know: What are you up to this Earmuff Day? Any big plans?? Hope you have a good one!

A Very QWERTY Birthday

My boyfriend’s birthday is this weekend, and I’m getting him a new smartphone(!) which has been quite the ordeal. And apparently while I have been transfixed on trying to select and purchase the perfect gift on the sly, my shiftiness has become evident to my boyfriend, who smugly mentioned this afternoon that he “knew” I was throwing him a surprise party this weekend. While this revelation was quite distant from reality, I acted like he’d caught me (to throw him off my smartphone scent)…but now I have to throw him a party, too. So since everything in my life has been smartphone-centric for the past few days, I thought: Why not theme the party around….emojis?!

Fortunately, the decoration portion of my party planning was made incredibly simple when I came across these spot-on DIY Emoji Balloons from Studio DIY, which I’ll definitely be whipping up this weekend:

…and these hilarious Dancing Girls piñatas, also from Studio DIY:

Whew! I’d better be receiving beaucoup smiley, heart, and kissy-filled texts next week for all this. :)

Hoth Is Where the Hearth Is

On cold, dark winter nights my old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere bears an unsettling resemblance to the mountain caves of Hoth. When the world outside my front door is supposed to be devoid of human forms I love to park myself in front of our little fireplace with a book or a board game. Recently I’ve been trying to think of ways to make the space even cozier, and stumbled across the rustic charm of this DIY Wampa“ bear rug” from Health, Wealth, and Home.

…and this DIY wall-mounted Wampa head created by Kat and Cam from Our Nerd Home.

The best part is that both of these crafts are handmade and don’t require any actual hunting of Wampas, so there’s no risk of running into red tape with the Galactic Alliance.

And speaking of Our Nerd Home, do you remember this 8-bit fireplace? What a creative (and surprisingly inexpensive) idea for a fireplace, don’t you think?