Tuesday, February 19, 2013

DIY Super Senior Invites

There's probably nothing I like more than to be tasked with making something however I want.  So when D from church asked if I'd like to make invitations for the super senior luncheon, I jumped at the chance.

First of all, the "super senior" title is given to those eighty or older. And there were 45 people/couples on the invite list. 45!!! Our church is not that large, but we have the most impressive senior population.  I think it's awesome!

Anyway, I was given the information to put inside, and here's what I came up with:
Cream card, with a sheet of metallic origami paper on top.  A faux belly band made of embossed (cuttlebugged) gold cardstock, topped with a paper cut cross crown decal.
See the wave pattern on the embossing? I was so excited to find it at a craft store in Hawaii.  Our local stores don't carry many asian-y designs so I got a little crazy over on the island. :P

Inside is a piece of  faux-vellum (really just tracing paper since it is much cheaper) with the theme verse printed on it.

It's kind of a run on sentence..but I dunno. I just kept it as it was written in the instructions >.>" Editor I am not.

And the main invite..in big font so it's easy to read!

Yay! Forty-five invites!

I've also been tasked with decorating the tables..Any ideas? All I know is the placemats are pretty washi paper printed with purple flowers..so I guess purple is the designated color.

Overall, I'm just really honored to be able to help with the party!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Little Bunny Update

As Katsu and Mochi approached their seven month old mark, signs of puberty were present. Everywhere.  They both took to spraying urine outside - onto the floor, the rug, whatever was withing five feet of the cage. Gross.  Katsu (the dude) decided his cardboard oatmeal container would make a good bunny substitute..if you know what I mean.  Things were getting pretty nasty.

So after an endless game of phone tag (by both Sak and my mom (who pretended to be me, since I have phone-phobia)), we finally got an appointment for surgery at the local humane society.

The night before the surgery, I let each one out of the cage (one at a time!) for some floor exercise.  Katsu, hormone-filled as ever, decided to play romeo.  I don't really know how he did it, but somehow he jumped back into his cage (a good 2-2.5 feet up), then out on top of Mochi's portion of the cage.  In his hunt for a way into the female apartment, he scratched his leg on something (probably a cage tie-down wire?). I came back from whatever it was I was doing, and saw a trail of blood all over the house. WHAT.

We found him hiding behind the cage, licking his fresh wound. He wasn't limping, but we needed to stop the bleeding so Sak grabbed a towel and wrestled him down, while I pressed a clean cloth against his leg until the blood clotted. Kinda scary though, and quite a mess to clean up afterwards.  It was a good thing the vet appointment was the following day!

Sak dropped them off  in the morning, and was late to work since someone cut in front of him in line. :P The vet checked them both out first, and said that Katsu had torn his hind nail a bit, which was the cause of the bleeding. Good thing it was nothing too serious!

My brother picked them up later in the day, and the poor bunnies were seriously drugged up!
It took Katsu about half a day before he started moving and eating again.  Mochi, probably due to her more invasive surgery, still isn't moving much.  She'll eat if I put the food right in front of her, but it's probably too painful for her to walk around.  They didn't give us any bunny pain-killers either, so I can only imagine she's feeling pretty bad!

In two weeks they'll be allowed to hang out together (yay!), and I'm thinking of getting them a new cage/hutch when that happens. They chewed up the plastic sides of their current cage, which makes the shavings/food/poo fall out easier. I know, gross.

I'm hoping they'll soon be less moody and territorial, but Katsu is still "fond" of his oatmeal container. I wonder if that habit is here to stay, or if it just take a while for the hormones to die down? I guess we'll see.

In sorta-bunny related events, Sak gave me a cute little orchid for Valentine's day.
Last week I found my older orchid from Cousin T's wedding (which had finally bloomed again after a good 6 months!) wilting.  I wailed a bit about the misfortune, and went to go inspect the poor plant.  Turns out the stem was totally broken...but it was propped against the wall so you couldn't tell. >.>"  Yep.  It was broken-Darth-Vader-cup all over again. I guess I'm scary when I'm mad, cause Sak's first instinct when something breaks is to hide it and hope I won't notice. :P

In any case, he said one of the rabbits ran into the bookshelf and knocked it over, thus breaking the stem.
I put it in some water, but it's a goner.
I don't know how long it'll take for a new stem to grow, but I accept the half-apology orchid in any case :)

Lastly, some quick Valentine's favors put together for co-workers:
I used one of the heart cut-outs that come with the silhouette software and backed it with a circle of cream paper. Simple, but pretty cute!

One of my co-workers looked down at it and asked if I had a cricut.

"No, I have a silhouette, but you've probably never heard of it."

Crafting hipster. @_@

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Fairy Tail Kid Cosplay

With the same idea of the kid-Link cosplay outfits, I wanted to make another set of costumes for my fellow otaku's kids.  They are Fairy Tail fans, and I will say right now that I have only read a couple chapters of the manga..so I got advice from another friend before deciding which characters to do!

I chose Happy (blue) and Pantherlily (black), two winged cat-things:


(images from fairytail wiki)
First, wings! I made foam wings, inspired loosely by this tutorial.

I cut three layers of craft foam for each wing based on a roughly drawn pattern.
After gluing the three layers together, I added some cardboard (for strength) and foam to connect two wings.
Staple down some elastic straps and glue more foam on top. (I ended up adding another set of staples perpendicular to the first set for more strength..they aren't shown in the pics though.)
(I ended up sealing the whole thing together with hot glue since the white glue wasn't strong enough.)
Totally cute!
I'm fairly certain these didn't last long though. Glue is only so strong :P

Anyway, tails next! I simply sewed some fleece together, turned it inside out, and stuffed it with batting. (approx. dimensions of fabric was 5" x 19", so after being folded in half, width is 2.5")
For the end, I sewed the tail shut with some velcro straps inside so it could be attached to a belt loop or something.
Add a simple fleece cat hat, matching shirt, and that's it!
Pantherlily also included a velcro belt.
I think they got a kick out of it! Not sure if the kids knew what the characters were, but that's not the point, is it? Lol.
He looks happy enough!

Monday, February 4, 2013

V-Day Card 2k13: Zelda Heart

Wow. Where did January go?! Typically Jan-March move pretty slowly for me, but this year is different! A lot of things have been happening at work and at church, some of which I'll share later, but it's been keeping me pretty occupied lately! Hopefully February will be a little more moderate :P

Anyway, V-Day is around the corner, which is one of my favorite excuses to make fun cards!  Check out this year's design, which is a lot more sophisticated than the onion and farting guinea pig from past years. Haha!


Silhouette cut on cream linen paper, with a thin red liner.
The discerning eye might recognize the heart as the (new) heart container from Zelda.
(source)
But even if you don't play Zelda, it's still a pretty cool looking heart, yeah? :)

Anyway, I'd love to send you a card! It'll be blank so you can give it to someone you love (or like, maybe a little). The card is about 6.5" x 4.75" or so, and comes with a plain envelope. Just let me know in the comments or by email if you'd like one! (pengawenga{at}gmail)

By the way, have you seen the new love stamps? It sucks that postage prices went up, but these are really cute!
(source)
*Update 2/10/14*
Thanks for finding my little blog and for your interest in my card, however this post is a year old and I don't really have any cards left :P  I do giveaways every once in a while though so feel free to stick around in the future :)