As I death march to my new job tomorrow, lets reflect on some of the nice things I’ve done with my two and-a-half weeks off.
K2 and I did our annual Halloween Gingerbread houses! I went with Wednesday Season 2. Basically, I got the crow cupcake toppers on Vine and was like “what can I do with these…” — Then BAM, Wednesday. So I did her and Enids balcony.
Lots of lessons learned on this one. We both hate the day of dough making and baking. It’s a whole damn day. My oven vent hood was on for song long (I run it when the oven runs because sometimes husband can smell gas upstairs from the oven) that it turned itself off. Yeah. Then I made my own sugar instead of using candy because I needed clear. I did colors in cupcake trays and then poured off the rest to a pan as the instructions for edible glass say. But I think it just got too warm because it was the last to get poured and because there was a bigger mass. So it came out yellowish and not clear. The strings that ran between the cupcake molds are clear, so I think that’s what happened. UGH. So we used UV resin. And that didn’t go great because it was overflowing into each other. And even though the window actually looks great with natural light behind it, the lights inside have an extremely blue glow. And it took over an hour of standing at the stove to make that edible glass. Damn.
I also wanted to make railings for the balcony and I did, but the sugar was too wet, perhaps? I did the roof line bird spikes at the same time as the railing and they dried perfectly. The railing was a no go. I was going to do it again, but… fuck it. We were already three days in. Baking takes a whole hard won day. WHOLE DAY with two of us. Then we did a day to ice our sides before assembling. Then a day to assemble after they dry and finish off details. I decided the stone pillars gave the impression enough for the railings. No one cares but me. I cant sculpt gargoyles either, so we got pumpkins. Enid carved a happy face in hers. Wednesday’s is small and knocked over by the one-eyed raven and yes, that bitch has a silver eye.
I had also done two colors of purple for the roof. I was going to do individual shingles. But the icing was too runny, so I just did this and swirled it. Honestly, that was for the best. Win on that. This would be the end of an entire dormitory so I just cut the back off with the entry door to their room. But it looked so bland and weird that I did it up for Dia De Los Muertos. That’s totally on theme for Season 2 as well.
“I’ve never seen cultural appropriation done with such panache.” – The best Gomez Addams
For Christmas I’m going simple. I want to do obnoxious Christmas colors since I was very refined last year. I want gaudy traditional.
I’m back to my cat diamond art painting. Six panels done now! I like that it worked out that I get to do the black cat and pumpkins the end of October. Probably in to November too ’cause this next week for me is insane busy (New job, Christmas Concert, Physical Therapy, Tattoo Day, Plant Expo, and Circus).
Give me a break, this this has 108,185 square diamonds in 55 colors. Most of which are black. Also, I took a break from this one to do Moon Bats for Drills and Chills:
So I guess it’s back to the grind. It was nice having some time off. I wish I’d have pushed it back further, but I did not. Probably better not to get too happy and content not working.
Making progress on my epic Halloween diamond painting. Five of the 8 panels are complete!
I’m taking a short break to swap to my small diamond painting for Drills and Chills. It’s a Halloween event where you can win prizes! This painting wouldn’t count because you couldn’t start until September. So I’m doing this small one from Michael’s:
You might think I’ll never finish both before Halloween, but I have some time off coming up. Possibly. Very likely.
I might have found a job! It will be as a contract to the government. I’ll be doing hardware configuration management in aviation. It’s working for a temporary boss I had.
The benefits aren’t as good, but they’re better than unemployment! And I love my boss. She won’t be my boss boss cause I’ll be a contractor again. But my boss only cares that I make her happy, so SCORE.
Problem is less PTO and not fronting me ANY. So starting late October with 0 PTO. Awesome.
HOWEVER, it is just in time for me to leave my job with a payout incentive to quit. Right in the nick of time! I have to choose by Tuesday. They wanted to try to get me the offer Friday, but it didn’t come so hopefully tomorrow.
I’ve been numbing out my life stress with Diamond Painting. Have you heard of this? Diamond Panting? I kept seeing Diamond Paintings in Amazon Vine. On amazon they can them “5D” which is just so cringe. I don’t know what the hell dimensions they think the 4th and 5th are, but it bothers me. Not my point.
It’s Paint-By-Numbers meets Bedazzling. So no actual artistic skill required. Like less skill than paint by numbers because you have to stay in the lines on that. You’re just sticking the bling on the spots with the numbers. I felt kinda bad about the whole no-skill required thing. Like I’m too good for that, because apparently, I’m an artistic craft snob. But yall, I get why it’s taken off. It’s so fucking zen and satisfying. It’s like when “zen tangles” took off.
Is that two words? “zen tangles?” Or is it like “zentangles?” “zen-tangles?” You remember – when everyone was doing those line patterns we all did back in school on the sides of our notebook pages? But it became like a legit adult art form? Anyway, that didn’t last long. Moving on.
So from what I can tell, Diamond Painting started getting really big around COVID because in lockdown people needed shit to do. We needed tedious shit that was going to take days of work. So it became a thing. Now chinese drop-shippers are on that shit. So that’s how it entered my sphere. So fuck it, I ordered one. Well, I ordered a set of six plant designs. I knew they’d be shit quality but I figured I could use three or four for my office. I say office, but yall know I work in a cubicle so don’t think I’m fancy.
After over a month of waiting, one arrived. Yeah, just one. They changed the listing from the set of six to a single one. And I still have to pay taxes on these Vine items so it was listed at $20 — So I’ll pay like $7 and this piece of shit is NOT WORTH $7. I gave it a 2 star review. Really, that was generous. I gave it an extra star because it had an “AB” diamond. I’m getting ahead of myself.
I had this canvas and like that’s a fuck ton of bedazzling. I was very intimidated. Combine this with the fact that the “tools” kit arrive broken and was absolute SHIT, I couldn’t start here. I know from everything in life that quality is better. This is really true for any art form as well. Talk to a master of any art – seriously like blacksmithing, glass bowling, stained glass, wood working — whatever skill. They will tell you — those expensive tools are nice, but they’re better for the beginners who can’t afford them. If you’re good, you can do your skill with shit tools. They wish they had the good tools when they started because life would be so much easier. So I wanted to get started on a good foot. Something quality.
From youtube videos, I found that they all worship this company called “Diamond Art Club.” Well, lucky for me, Diamond Art Club sells shit on Amazon. So I ordered up a set of non-intimidating coasters. I also ordered some dirt cheap accessory kits. This was an excellent plan. If you want to get started in Diamond Painting, I recommend these things:
Diamond Art Club Coasters (this link is to their website, but they’re cheaper on Amazon in price and shipping — but the section won’t be as great). They’re like $15 on Amazon.
This kit of supplies from Art Dot. It’s got a comfortable pen, diamond trays I like better that then fancy Diamond Art Club ones and a GAZILLION times better than the shit green “boats” that you get with cheap kits (which was broken in mine anyway). It’s also got release papers for when you advance to canvases — must have. It’s got DAC color code label stickers for storage. We got a good roller to smush those diamonds down, a straightener to make it look like you don’t suck, and sealer for a finished project. Yeah — all that under $15. BUY IT.
So then I made this:
IT’S SO SHINY! Not intimidating either. I did this in two evenings, but I’ve done others in a single evening after work. I love that they’re on wood so I can sit on the couch and do them. They even come with cork bottoms. And the Diamond Art Club kits comes with really nice tool kits. A nice pen, better wax, and a nice tray. I still prefer the fat Art Dot pen from that kit I linked though. Also those trays. So soon I did all the coasters in the kit:
I told my Sister-In-Law about this new Diamond Painting thing I was doing. Turns out, my brother gave her a painting for Christmas! She’s been working on it but its very tedious and she wasn’t enjoying it much. So I sent her all the shit to do the coasters. The coasters, the kit, plus extra trays. (Note — that coaster kit comes with great tools so you don’t need the additional tools kit or anything else. The extra tools kit is if you plan to do more stuff like canvases). You can buy 15 Art Dot trays super cheap ($7) but I don’t think you need that many anymore so I’m not going to bother suggesting them. Anyway, all of that sent to her via Amazon was $36. So excellent gift idea there. She did her set of coasters faster than I did! She had one done the night she got the package. They’re very satisfying, yall. Like do it.
At this point I’ve started diamond painting to drown out the family and work stress. So I was ready to conquer the shitty plant canvas. I paid for it, I was going to do it. Here you can see what I’m talking about by Paint-By-Numbers. There are symbols (in this particular canvas numbers) that have a key to tell you which gem color goes there. The canvas is covered in glue. You stick the diamond/gem/drill on the dot. They call them “drills” in Diamond Painting. I don’t know why, they just do.
So it took a long time but I go that canvas done. I used the release papers to section it off. So I think they best method for conquering the canvases is a section at a time. The newer canvases even come with covers that are perforated for you to tear off just a square at a time. So to use the release papers, you just remove the cover all together. Then you place the release papers on small sections so that you can remove just one paper to work on that section. I split this canvas into 12 sections. Some nights I did 2 sections.
This was a BIG learning experience. It was a super cheap kit. So it arrive folded. Yeah. Even after I put the drills on it, there was still a big fold across it. So I knew I’d need to mount it to a canvas board. I had also watched a lot of youtube videos and had too much information for my experience level. I had seen a tip about covering any gaps in the canvas with mica powder. Your girl is a craft queen, I have that! Also, the background had so much white and there was pink wax stuck in there. I wanted to clean it up before the mica powder. I had seen a tip to clean your trays with hand sanitizer because it works amazing at getting any wax out. So I dumped hand sanitizer on it and used a tooth brush. TERRIBLE idea. I don’t know if it’s because these drills were so cheap, but I think I took the shine off.
I pushed forward with the mica powder anyway — we’re in it now. White all over the background. Then I went too far — green on the leaves. Fuck. The green took away the darker colors on the canvas that had shown through and now it looked lighter. So I got black to darken up the dark edges of the leaves. Then FUCK ME, some dripped in the white. God, what a cluterfuck. OK, no way in hell that dark smudge is going anywhere now. So I gotta embrace a color. What would work for the background… purple. The smudge was at the bottom so I started there. I wasn’t loving it. So I decided to just do the bottom. Then I had ruined it like 3 times and should have never fucked with this shit so I sealed it and mounted on the canvas and declared it done. TA-DA!
It looks good in my office anyway.
Then I moved on to a big girl canvas! The leaves had 9 colors. This one had 33!
Look at how fucking beautiful that is! And it’s the good brand, not a chinese drop ship and it really does make a difference. This kit had special drills too! AB means aurora borealis. They have an iridescent coating on top. Also Fairy Dust which have a very fine glitter on top. This one deserve beauty shots:
Here you can see what I mean by working a section at a time. See how I was working a rectangle and doing each color just in that rectangle:
By this time I had discovered Facebook “destash” groups. Even though the big Diamond Art Club canvases are super expensive – they play on FOMO and some people just buy a hundred. So I had seen a kit I loved but was out of stock. I put up and ISO (in seek of) post. Someone offered it to me at cheaper than cost with shipping included. Fuck yeah bitches.
Now this canvas is 40 inches. So a lot. I’m cutting it into 8 smaller sections. Apparently this is sacrilegious. But it also has some people curious. So I might finally dive into youtube craft videos and do a video of how I do it. It’s on the maybe back burner.
I know this will be a huge undertaking and if I try to just power through it, it won’t happen. So I picked up some stuff to do in between sections of the big kit. I got another set of coasters. I ordered some “Mini Dazzles” (link goes to the website, but again they can be purchased on Amazon). I got the 80’s set and already made this cute cassette tape:
I also picked up the most ADORABLE Otter from the good site and a chinese drop ship polar bear. The polar bear has sunglasses and lots of neon colors so it just looks like it would be a fun one to do.
So if you haven’t heard from me in a few weeks, I’ve been under a lot of stress and self-medicating by sticking dots to canvases so I won’t think about what a fucking clusterfuck everything is. The world, my job, my family. It’s all going to HELL. So shiny dots it is.
Before we get started, this post is two months late. In fact, I’ve already posted our 2024 Christmas Gingerbread House post (Click here). So that post is actually a lot more informative. I only realized I hadn’t posted this one when I went to reference it for that one. My bad! So I recommend you read that one first as it has lessons learned from this one that we implemented in the second build. However on this one, we went in blind. And it was a clusterfuck. It ended up fantastic — but this is a valuable lesson in just because someone looks awesome, doesn’t mean they’re better than you. They just covered their shit in a ton of icing.
We roped in K and ran with it. Now, Halloween is my favorite holiday. So rather than wait for Christmas, I went all in for Halloween. I can say (since that’s already been posted) that the Christmas build went better, but my Halloween house was much more elaborate. We had TONS of candy and we made templates. I went advanced. I wanted Adam’s Family vibes. But I made it on the fly without taping it together — so there were a lot of errors. You’ll see. Look at all that candy!
This is the same Gingerbread recipe we used for the Christmas House but was our first go. It was a mess. a sticky sticky mess. I can see that it’s a lot more wet here, that might have been a problem. It’s also a lot more brown because I dumped in some coco powder for color.
Perhaps due to the wetness, These pieces bubbled while cooking so we had to pull them out and roll them. They also bent and curled like crazy while drying. So watch this shit. You’ll see some serious fuckery in my pieces. Also, as I said on that other post — if you’re baking pieces that are touching — re-cut those lines halfway through because this shit is concrete.
So here you can see my finished pieces that had windows getting ready to go in. The windows are just broken up jolly ranchers. Like I said in the previous post, you do this AFTER the cookies are baked. The jolly ranchers melt fast and they’d burn long before the dough cooks.
I’ll also point out, I tried sugar-free jolly ranchers. I noticed they were made of isomalt which is what they use in all the fancy TV competitions. So I did most of mine in Sugar-free. I didn’t have enough though, so I did end up with some regular. Some things of note:
Sugar-free is far more expensive.
Sugar-free dries solid. The regular jolly ranchers always feel a little sticky to the touch. They can also drip if you put icing directly on them (as seen in a few of my Christmas House windows).
The regular jolly ranchers are more translucent and bright. The color is so much more vibrant and they light up better. Add on the cheaper price and fuck sugar-free.
So the first bit of fuckery I want to point out you can see here. Look at the piece with three stories of windows. Look at how fucked up that texture is. That’s because we were trying to keep them from curling by putting pans on top of them and I forgot the parchment paper on top. So I had to scrape it off a pan halfway though baking. That’s never gonna go well. You can also see on the back piece that I’m holding up how wonky the lines are and that the bottom corner curls up. This led to a lot of gaps where pieces joined which required a lot of icing coverage. One of my roof tiles also curled insanely because noone was watching it while I was rotating in new stuff.
I wasn’t thrilled with the color of this gingerbread. So the next morning, I mixed up some violet royal icing and watered it down to a wash and washed all my pieces in purple. I LOVE IT. First, very Halloween. Second, the flaws and ugly spots where there are wrinkles and dents are now bright purple instead of dark holes! Because more icing settled in those areas. I fucking love this technique. That’s why I repeated it on the Christmas house. It was fucking perfect on this Halloween House.
In these next photos, you can see that the side to right in the Louie picture has the brighter regular jolly ranchers. See what I mean about them looking better? You can also see two full size roof pieces I made. Welp, remember how I never taped this thing together? Yeah, I had to saw on that and break it as best I could in half. Live and learn. You can also see the fuck ton of small pieces to make my porch and stairs. You know what I did on the Christmas Gingerbread house? I made the fucking stairs with caramels and iced over them. LOOK HOW MUCH WORK THAT SAVED. You can also see how curled some of my pieces are. That’s where two batches of black icing will come in later. You can also see that lovely fucked up piece I scrapped off a pan.
This house was turning into such a fucking disaster that I don’t have many in-progress shots. I do have this one I want to share though to show the level of fuckery we are talking about.
There are a few things to see here:
Look how I wedged a piece of gingerbread in that side gap LOL
The first floor roof covers my already decorated windows.
Also, if I keep the bottom roof line for the porch, my door will be covered. So I’m going to have to raise it for the porch which will cover part of that already decorated window too. Whatever. Choices had to be made.
Most obviously, what the fuck happened to my second story windows? Why is one half covered? This is what happens when you just make a template on the fly.
I’m just going to have to ice over it. I’ll scrape off the candy and iced edges and cover it in icing. Like a FUCK TON of icing to level it up and block the light.
This is why the purple icing on this (and mimicked on the side tops) has that texture. There was so much icing that it kept slipping down and I kept pushing it back up. Well, as it dried, it cracked. So I leaned into the “texture” it was creating.
It looked really bad with just a really short window — so I MADE IT A CIRCLE WINDOW! Genius. See how epic disasters can work for you?
One more cluster fuck that almost didn’t see the light of day. I found an adorable Nightmare Before Christmas themed house online and they made the roof look like metal sheeting. I wanted to do that! I wanted to have a swirl of burgundy and black. To get their texture, they used a tile grout tool dragged over the royal icing poured out. Well, I guess my royal icing was too watery? Because there was no way mine was going to hold a shape that sharp. I also didn’t have that tool, so I decided to wing it with a fork!
Well, it wasn’t going to hold the fork texture either so for over an hour, I had to keep stroking it horizontally to get the ridges. Do you see my color swirls? No? That’s because they were obliterated during this process. More and more every time I did it. Now it was just a really ugly ass color. UGH. We will wait.
By the next morning, it had not solidified like the lady on the internet promised it would. So I popped it in the oven on a super low heat. This might be what cause the next problem. It was a very fragile honeycomb crumbly texture. So crumbly. It was impossible to cut my straight metal roof pieces (though I did try wit ha pizza cutter). So I just salvaged what pieces I tried to cut that didn’t shatter 100%. I had those laid out on three pans and hoped I had enough. Then I started shingling the roof with the pieces I had in some kind of manner. It was so so so bad. I almost just ripped it all off. Husband came down to see how I was doing and we discussed ripping it off because it looked so bad. And there wasn’t enough contrast with the purple siding. Also, the pieces were of very uneven thicknesses because some broke off the “back” bit — it was really weird. And the edge would just crumble if you thought about touching them. So I started outlining the bigger pieces in the purple icing to keep them from crumbling. Ran out, eventually switched to black.
Even then it was a hot mess of crumbling icing. But the black was at least making it pop a bit more. So I leaned in and started outlining the cracks that were forming. I outlined over the divots that were missing. I outlined around every piece to keep the edges protected (and together). I was kinda salvaging it! I placed big pieces over areas I had filled in with crumbled bits and just outlined around the new ones. It was not anything close to my aim, but I was achieving “decrepit” roof! I worked out for me! Triumph over adversity!
I also used a fuck ton of black icing covering all of the joins. Notice that in some areas, that black icing is REAL THICK. If you would like to look at the front of the tower, you will see how the right side of the tower has black icing three times thicker than the left. Well, it matters which pieces are back to back when assembling and that right join was wide on the front and the left was wide on the side. Fuck me! So when I iced the joins, my windows and door were so far off center it was comical. Like maybe this is why my second story window was covered? Kidding, that was its own fuckup. Welp. I guess we’ll just go with… more black icing? It worked for the roof. So um yeah… Just a really thick line of icing to make them look centered! SWEET! Yeah, I used two full batches of black icing on this house. That’s how much shit is filled in with black icing.
Now, another hot mess was that side I had to scrape off a baking pan. The gnarly bent one with all the deep divots and valleys. How the fuck was I supposed to fix that? Guys, I guess we’re doing a vine.
Yes, a vine climbing up the house that conveniently crosses all of those areas. Ooooo, what it it’s even all up on the third story roof! Like those vines that grow on my own house that grow into the gutters if I let them grow unchecked for too long. YEAH. I guess it would kind cover like the corner of the house ’cause I can’t have all this vine on the side and none on the back. And making it look “rooted” in that corner will let me cover that massive 1-inch+ gap at the bottom where the back and side join. WIN!
So you see? This house is fucking epic. It’s way “better” than my Christmas Church! I mean, “better” is in quotation marks because build-wise, this is a cluster fuck. Looks-wise though. I’m good. This is the shit. I am so fucking proud of this house. I’m almost even more proud because of how fucked up it was at points (hence there being no photos of those points). It was so bad, I wanted to scrap it. But I continued on. And it came out amazing! And some of the best bits – the crazy roof, the vine, the circle window -were never intended — they were just damage control! None of that was in my vision for this house at all. Even the heavy black icing covering gaps just makes it very gothic and Halloween.
Lastly, a few details. Lots of pumpkins! I wanted a porch with stairs just so I could put pumpkins on them. The pumpkins are Braches Pumpkins that were Moms favorite Halloween candy — plus some orange and green M&Ms for little and immature ones. I dyed shredded coconut green for the lawn. Look at my bat sprinkle door handles!
There were supposed to the three stairs but it ran out of room. Since I fucked up the stairs, I had to fix some size discrepancies with caramels sculpted like clay and iced over. Also, That’s how I came to the caramels-can-just-be-the-stairs in the next iteration.
Does anyone else think the windows look like gaping open muppet mouths? That was not intentional.
Last year, K2 and I did more elaborate gingerbread houses than usual. We stepped up our game. We still did kits, but we were more elaborate with decorations. Then, for Halloween, K2, K, and I went all in on Halloween houses. We made them FROM SCRATCH. I just went to grab you a link and I did not post it. I suck. Probably because deciding which pictures to use (meaning: not posting all 30 angles and combining some in photoshop) and writing it up takes a while. I’ve been working on this post for 3 days. But DAMN. That one was epic so it’s coming. I’ve looked at my media files three times to make sure but — nope, there’s no photos of that uploaded. WTF?
Anyway, so for Christmas, we REALLY wanted to step it up. I went all out on Halloween because that is my favorite. K and K2 just did regular house shapes. But I went ALL IN. We did it all from scratch and they were great. So we decided to do it again for Christmas, obviously. This time K and K2 upped their game and I’m reeling mine in a bit. I decided to simplify from the Halloween elaboration. I wanted to do a church with a steeple. Nice, but not the complexity of the Adams Family House. Plus I’ve done this before. Big house shape plus tiny house shape for steeple. Bam.
So here we go:
Day 1: The Bakening
Since these are from scratch, we had one day scheduled just to get them baked. For the Halloween houses, we made three batches of dough but didn’t use it all up by far. So this time we started with three batches. I also died it brown to get some color. I had far fewer (so so so fewer) pieces to make on mine, but K and K2 scaled up a lot, so that wasn’t enough. So we made another two batches (we might have made a third too). Pretty sure K2 had to go to the store for more eggs, but we had no choice — no way were we gonna get close. We didn’t have brown dye left, so from there, the gingerbread pieces all had a very cool swirl effect as we combined batches. I liked it.
I think K2 came over at 4pm and I was done at 2am. Yeah. Lot of baking. I mean it took us a damn long time to get it all rolled and cut and spread all over my kitchen — but you can only fit so much on one cookie sheet and there’s only three racks in the oven. So yeah, my oven was going all night with me rotating stuff in and out. The key is a fuck ton of parchment paper and counter space.
We do paper templates and follow that for the pieces (I also keep the labeled templates to match up the pieces later when assembling). This “gingerbread” recipe has no fat in it so it doesn’t spread at all which is nice. It’s also basically concrete. It’s a pain to baby sit because it wants to curl as it cooks and dries, but it is solid as fuck. If you need to cut apart your pieces (if you have two pieces adjoining on the sheet), recut it halfway through baking because this is solid.
We learned some things from the Halloween Houses:
1) This shit is so solid it does not need to be as thick as you think to be sturdy. When I tossed my Halloween house in the trash, I tried to break it apart and was unsuccessful. So I just tipped it off my counter into a bag. It hit the floor tower roof first and didn’t crack. SOLID.
2) Cutting windows by hand sucks. My house Halloween house had a lot of windows. Cutting them out by hand sucked a lot. So this time, I bought a bunch of geometric shape cutters. Oh my lord, thank you. Clean, perfect cuts. I combined the tear drop and rectangle for gothic windows on mine. Circle and rectangle for arched windows on Ks. We did big and small combos for wreath shapes. K2 went fucking nuts with circles for snowmen and stars and diamond/parallelograms. Just yes, buy cookie cutters.
3) Royal Icing is also concrete. We do hot-glue our houses together (cause aint nobody eating this shit). You only need to glue to hold it until the icing dries. So this time I only used a bit of glue because the icing is going to do all the holding – as evidenced by my trashing of the Halloween House.
4) Caramels can be structural. My Halloween house had a fuck ton of pieces because I did a porch with stairs. I had to use caramels to fix the sides of the stairs and it occurred to me that I could have just used caramels for the stairs. It’s basically clay. It won’t hold up on its own — but you only need it to hold up until your icing dries it solid. So THIS TIME, my stairs are totally caramels. In FACT, we forgot to cut two sides for me front off-shoot so I used caramels. (One got cut, but somehow not a second one.) That’s why I had to ice over those walls when I assembled it.
So here is 2am that night before I finally went to bed! My church is the greyish one on the island (I didn’t paint the roof pieces) and K and K2s are on the counter. I also meant to have a window on the front but there was a lot of cutting happening and it just got missed. Do you see all the pieces we made?
I “painted” the Halloween House purple and loved the results so much that I had to do this one as well. I always do an over-the-top red and green candy house for Christmas houses. So I wanted to go a bit more elegant this year. I wanted an icy blue-grey for the church. I nailed it, but when I was painting it, it felt like a huge fail. It was much darker than I wanted. This dough soaks up liquid like a desert so keep that in mind. And when it dried and the white sugar came through it was perfect.
This is basically just an extremely watered down royal icing that I paint on with a brush. The Halloween House had one or two layers and this has 3 or 4. What I adore about this finish is that it takes the ugly parts and makes them shine. The marbled lighter bits are the grooves and dents and cracks and imperfections. Since more icing settles in those places, it looks lighter/closer to the icing color when it dries. So it is a gorgeous way to keep the character of real baked pieces. The key is that it is a wash, not actual icing. You aren’t icing over the pieces, just washing them with a little bit of sugar (well, royal icing with a ton of water). It should be very drippy and painted on with a paint brush. You’re basting the gingerbread. It should soak into the gingerbread. I also loves that when it dries, there is a very subtle sparkle from the sugar crystals. I just adore this method.
Making Windows
If you’ve never done windows on gingerbread houses — you are missing out! They’re so easy! Throw in some battery powered LED lights while assembling and it’s fucking magic! You just cut them out when baking. They’re filled with melted hard candy. We used jolly ranchers. Separate by colors and bang them up a bit. They don’t have to be pulverized, but break them up a bit. Pretty sure any hard candy can work. butterscotches can do a nice cabin glow.
Cut the windows out and then bake.
After the ginger bread is done (cool or hot, doesn’t matter), put it on baking paper and fill the holes with candy. Put a lot in there. When it melts it will lose a lot of the volume of the bits you just sprinkled in plus some might seep around the window on the back side. Do NOT do this with the raw dough. The candy will melt very fast and will burn long before your dough finishes cooking. Do this with finished cookie pieces only.
To get the stained glass effect seen here, clump colors together in piles. Watch it because it won’t take long to melt. Once they are a uniform puddle with no lines between colors, pull them out and let cool before removing from the pan. If you are quick, you could swirl the colors with a toothpick before they cool.
NOTE: White sugar will not even come close to melting before the candy, they don’t work together.
Day 2: Decorating and Assembling
This is a minimum two day process since you have to bake everything. Day two is assembly and decorating. It’s easiest to decorate the sides before assembling. You have a nice flat surface to work on and stick stuff to.
I used black icing to outline my windows and do the stained glass lines. I used a darker grey/blue for decorating. I did a foundation of edible ball bearings (cake pearls?). I also did some swirls to add detail. Then, I assembled with hot glue and covered all my edges, joins, and caramel walls/stairs with the grey/blue icing. By this time, K2 was done with hers, so we have a photo of Louie watching me ice a roof edge.
After she left, I worked many more hours. Silver pearl things got added around some windows to brighten up the black and in a few details to sparkle. It was also looking a bit too generic and non-Christmas. So I made a wreath to glue on later and some garland on the windows. The green bits are sour gummies cut into pieces. The red bits are from a Christmas sprinkles pack we bought last year (save your candy from year to year — no one is eating this shit).
Day 3: Roofing
I needed another day to work on mine. I had assembled the church. It was iced. So Day Three, I started with trees. They are ice cream cones wrapped with sour gummy strips. Then I decided to tackle the roof. It is cinnamon toast crunch. It took 3+ hours. Louie watched TV with me though.
I decided that was a LOT of cereal roof visually, so I added some snow drifts of shredded coconut. I love them! Were they perfect? Hell no. But you know what? You can just pull off whole sections of cereal you fucked up with too many snow drifts and redo it and no one will ever know. You got a whole box of cereal.
To finish off Day Three, I used the rest of the white icing and covered a big area on my base and sprinkled it with the shredded coconut for snow.
BTW, our bases are cardboard wrapped in craft paper. We used doubled up boxes (so 4 layers of cardboard total). Put the boxes in different directions to each other so the creases for the flaps don’t’ line up. I wanted to use solid green wrapping paper but I couldn’t find any. Last Christmas, I used a green gift bag that had a glitter border and it was pretty awesome. I bet scrap fabric would work. Anything you have around to cover the cardboard.
Day 4: The Finishing
Yeah, I needed another day to work on it. Day three was a work night so I couldn’t stay up late. Day four was mostly finishing touches. I glued the wreath on the front of the church with hot glue. I decided the back needed a wreath but I didn’t have any more circle shapes, so I glued a bunch of K2s parallelograms together and glued them to the house. It was fat and I glued it on before decorating so I thought it would be a disaster but I kinda love how huge it is. It took a ton of chopped up gummies to cover.
I topped all of the trees with extra sour gummie cuts to cover the ice cream cone tops. I made little gum drop tiny trees by the church doors topped with some of our star cutouts. I added “bushes” of gum drops. I really committed to that.
I used more of the red sprinkles to decorate the tree in front of the church. And two more star cookies of different sizes for the tree topper. That’s their grand Christmas tree. I couldn’t use the red icing because it just wasn’t red enough even though we used the entire jar of red color. There are some red M&Ms on the tree and wreaths too.
Then, as my final touch… I added a little gingerbread man sprinkle by one of the door trees. I like to think a little girl left her teddy bear there by the tree.
SHE’S DONE! Light her up!
Detail shots:
Front and back:
Side A and Side B:
Holy fuck, I am so damn proud of this one! EVERYONE LOOK AT MY CHURCH! The little star Christmas tree toppers! The trees! THE WINDOWS! Look at my snow drifts!
I like to really throw my all into some projects just so I can be proud of myself and show them off. Remind myself I still “got it.”
You know whats so weird? This “elegant” gingerbread house was far cheaper than a traditional one with all the candy. Sure, it takes longer because the details are all icing. But it required hardly any actual candy. Green gummies, green gummy strips, sprinkles and jolly ranchers (plus the cereal and coconut). Usually you have to have a huge host of different candies for variety. That means it’s actually a lot cheaper to make this fancy style.
Sentimental Throw Backs
This house is a bit of a throw back to the second real gingerbread house I made with my mom back when I live in a shitty apartment in college. We did a church with steeple then too. It also had the cinnamon toast crunch roof. It even had a hershys chocolate door too! So this pleases me greatly. Momma would love it and want to keep it forever.
Another throw back — the cat destruction. It was a well known “secret” that Jack would sneak onto the counter every night and lick the icing off the gingerbread house. It was hilarious seeing bald spots appear. He never did it in front of us. But every morning there would be missing icing spots or M&Ms with the colorful shell licked off. It was part of the tradition for me.
Well, I noticed the coconut around the Halloween house was disturbed a lot and I just prayed to GOD it wasn’t a mouse. I never saw Louie do it, but I did suspect he might be the culprit. Lo and behold it is him. Louie don’t give a fuck so he got right up on the counter and started eating it right in front of me. Little fucker! And I will 100% allow it because it’s tradition.
1/2 C corn syrup (the recipe says honey, you could use molasses. Corn syrup is cheapest)
1 TBS warm water
4 eggs
(Fuck spices, no one’s eating this)
6 C flour
Optional: Food coloring if you want that gingerbread look you would have gotten from the molasses, spices, and brown sugar. This is gonna be sugar cookie pale so maybe add some brown food coloring if that’s your thing. On this Christmas house bake, we did add all my brown to the first batch. Then we made more and didn’t have food coloring so we just combined them and got an awesome swirl effect.
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
Bake that shit until it’s dry. I’ve done it twice and it varied a lot. Just make sure it’s dry but don’t over cook it.
BABYSIT IT — this might bubble and it certainly likes to curl. We’ve used it twice and it varied so much.
The original recipe says: Bake the pieces at 325 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, rolling the dough once after 10 minutes. I don’t know if we used too much water, but this took a LOT longer. Just look and tap it. If it’s shiny and soft, it’s not done. I actually flipped these pieces so they’d just hurry up and cook. Maybe I just cooked them too long? No one’s eating it, it’s fine.
The original recipe also says to put a pan on it while it cools to prevent curling. Probably not a bad idea. IT CURLS. Babysit it.
1/2 tsp cream of tartar (no, I do not measure this shit. I’ve also forgot it in some colors and didn’t notice a difference. I just sprinkle it in there. It’s cheap)
First, it’s like Christmas, so let’s jump to the end and then go back to the beginning. Here’s where we’re going: LOOK AT THIS MASTERPIECE!
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Ok, so in the beginning, I had an interview. It went well. I was chatting with the interviewer about boardgames after we were done and she asked if I’d ever heard of Quacks of Quedlinburg. I had not. I wrote it down in my very professional interview portfolio to look up later.
I pulled it up on Board Game Geek to give it a glance. It had a long list of award nominations and finalist titles and a “few” wins:
2022 Årets Spel Best Family Game Winner
2020 Origins Awards Best Family Game Winner
2019 UK Games Expo Best Board Game (European Style) People’s Choice Winner
2019 Hungarian Board Game Award Winner
2019 Guldbrikken Best Adult Game Winner
2019 American Tabletop Casual Games Winner
2018 Meeples Choice Award Winner
2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres Winner
2018 Golden Geek Best Family Board Game Winner
2018 Cardboard Republic Daredevil Laurel Winner
Yes, those are just the awards it WON. Clearly she wasn’t over-hyping it. I also liked that it can be two player. I recently received a long-awaited Kickstarter game that we have yet to play because we need a minimum of 3 players. So 2 players — fucking-a! I immediately added it to my Amazon Wishlist. Along with a game organizer to go with it.
The Broken Token Game Organizer
I’ve never had a Broken Token game organizer. I know the brand. I know it’s reputable. I’ve just always found them so… ugly. I love me a game organizer — game changer (literally!), but damn. However, I did look at the Amazon reviews and saw this photo of someone’s customization:
For my birthday, my wonderful husband got it for me! Woot! I love a craft project! So I dove in. I spent over a week on this. First, I stained the wood and assembled the boxes with glue. Then I hit a roadblock, which I knew was coming.
When A Hindrance Becomes Your Greatest Asset
The Amazon Review photo had been done with stickers/paper. I did plenty of that in my booknook and that’s why I know we have an amazing black and white printer but a very shitty color printer. The resolution isn’t great and you can see the print lines. So just not gonna work. I could print and paint over it, but I’m not that good at painting small details — I have shaky hands.
So have you ever heard that overcoming obstacles makes a better product? Like in the first Deadpool movie. You know when Deadpool forgets his big bag of guns in the taxi? Well, that wasn’t just any old gag. There was supposed to be a huge scene there with all those weapons. But their budget got axed so they couldn’t afford that scene. So the amazing scene that ended up in the movie replaced it. That’s one example. They had to forgo all the FX budget and do a practical scene. This EPIC case I just made is another perfect example. I couldn’t just print my graphics, I had to make this shit for real.
Aside from the labels, I could do everything else practical. I know I have an excellent black ink printer so I ordered some clear sticky paper to do the typeface. I could paint under it and then just stick the type over my paint. Yay!
Gathering Pieces
Remember when I talked about my nightmare Hobby Lobby trip? Well, during that trip, I looked for things I could use for this project. I really wanted some of those tiny brass label holders that you put on photo boxes. They did not have any. So I got metallic puff paint to make something up. I also found some cute tin corner details in the wood craft section for 99 cents (for the four pack)! Were they black? Yes. Irrelevant. Then I looked through all the charms and jewelry bits. I found a pack of six insanely tacky photo charms. They’re really cheap brassy gold and the fake “diamond” inlays and thin plastic. PERFECT.
So I snipped the charm loops off with some wire cutters and painted all that shit in enamel gold paint — going for a brass accent look. Then I used paint to fill in the center of the photo charms for each player color. In the final photos, you’ll see they look like cabochons. So funny story. I was going through my glue stash and found Mod Podge 3D in there that I had bought for some project and never used. I’m pretty sure I thought it was clear puff paint but it’s not! It’s a liquid to fill bottle caps or pendants to seal things in. What? So I filled up my cheap pendants and daymn — they look amazing! Yall these were six for like $6 and half off. I’m good.
I also picked up some earrings I had hoped to use on the ingredient drawers but they were too small. I ended up using one of them on the black book spine. A bat charm also makes an appearance — I TOTALLY already had that! Again, just snipped the loops off with wire cutters and painted them the brass color.
Layout Time
So at this point in the project, I had decor bits and boxes. I had decisions to make. Do I use the corners as true corners? They look kinda cool sideways. I gotta cover this ugly engraving work too. Do I want to do books like the one I saw? How could I do a potion shelf?
It was time for Photoshop. I love making decisions like this with photos so I can see the different options side by side. So I laid out all the boxes I had and put it in Photoshop. I used the clone tool to fill in some missing wood bits. I googled some playing cards to visualize where those would be in the finished product. And I took the Amazon Review guy’s labels to play with just for the visual. This is what I came up with:
Thankfully, the ingredient drawer fronts could be installed backwards so no worrying about that engraving. The flap in the middle (it flips up to reveal a shelf) could also be installed backwards. I was not so lucky with the other two compartments. I’d have to work something out to cover those.
The book compartment was the worst. That had to go. I couldn’t just paint books because it was engraved. Also, a bit of 3D wouldn’t kill anyone. So I made my book spines with sculpty clay! I used a earring on the black notebook. I modeled the fat green book after my own leather happy book where I have lots of Four-Leaf Clovers and cat foot-prints and even butterfly wings. I envision it being a similar book for herb identification. Oh and I totally had some glass skull beads for an upcoming booknook, so I tucked one of those guys in.
Now We Paint
I’ve moved my crafting from the kitchen table to the living room for two reasons. One: I totally mess up the nice table every time I do stuff on there. Two: Louie gets really needy when I’m ignoring him. This way he can sit by me. Kills my back though.
I color matched the ingredients to the corresponding game tokens. I just used good old acrylic paint on the books and labels. You can see I printed out a fancy outline for my puff paint and to show me the rectangle to color in. I did not outline the squares with puff paint because, as you can see on the Rubies box in the final photos, I can’t do straight lines.
I had been hemming and hawing over what to do with the bottom compartment. I considered covering it in leather bias tape I had or maybe red felt? But It was looking very busy with all the colors. I wanted more wood to show so I decided to do a monogram. To cover the engraving, I cut an oval out of the sticky clear paper for the flat surface (all of this is Mod Podged so no worry about the adhesive strength). The Q is the same Q in the games logo. Does the puff paint work on that Q look shitty? Yeah. But I spent over an hour and like 50 Q-Tips trying to get it reasonable. I’m really proud of my puff paint filigree though.
I also had to add handles to the player token drawers. I didn’t install the wood ones so I could use my swanky cabochons. I did leave a small bit of the opening though so I could thread something through. I had thought maybe tassels. However, when I went to grab my skull bead, I realized I have Evil Eyes! How much fun would Evil Eyes be in my alchemy cabinet? So I grabbed those and the copper beads from the Sherlock Booknook and made some little pulls. I LOVE THEM. Holy fuck they’re fantastic!
I also used a lot of stain markers for clean up. More about that in the Lessons Learned section at the end.
THE FINAL BOX
So look! Here’s my alchemist cabinet! I am beyond thrilled with this! Can you believe I would have just printed off graphics if I had a good printer? What? This is AMAZING. I might store the game in its lid like this. Like just put the guide and player boards in the lid and slide this in over it and just put it on my game shelf like this. I think I will.
Lessons Learned
I learned a lot on this crafting journey. I’d like to pass some of that on to you.
Glue Spots. So I glued my boxes together after staining the wood. Well, where any glue spread or I touched it with gluey fingers, there were noticeably shinier spots. That’s why I had to use Mod Podge– I coated everything so it all had the same sheen.
Mod Podge and tolerances. I used “Extra Matte” Mod Podge. I’d have rather used regular, but I didn’t have enough and I was using stuff I had. So it was Extra Matte or Super Gloss. Well, this stuff is thick. And that made the tolerances of the sliding pieces off. UGH. So where the trays slide into cutouts in the wood… well, I had to sand that down. I chose to sand down the cutouts to make them wider where they slid in rather than the trays. It sucked. I’m glad that the Mod Podge adds a coating plus strength in that it’s just more glue — but damn.
Mod Podge looking “Flat.” In some areas where there was too much Mod Podge, they clouded. This happened on my tin corner decorations. It also looked bad on the back of the flap. The wood is rougher on that side and since I installed it backwards to get rid of the engraving, that was out. I fixed this with Stain Pens. They’re made to fix/hide scratches in furniture — so worth having. I also buffed a bit of that gold enamel paint back over the raised metal additions to bring back their luster. This actually makes them look more aged since they’re less shiny in the nooks. Over all though, I’m not down with the Mod Podge I used. It ruined the tolerances so I had to spend hours fixing that with nail files. It messed with the shine. Also, it has a rough feel. I think the “Extra Matte” fucked me over.
Stain Pens are AMAZING. So this is layers of wood. So the stain didn’t go all the way through every layer of wood. This left the center of the wood edges lighter. Stain Pens to the rescue!
Stain Pens are shiny. I also used the stain pens to cover some mistakes. Notice how non-square my paint labels were. Squared those up. I told you I used like 50 Q-Tips getting that monogram right. Well, wiping away metallic paint leaves a bit of a color. Fixed that with Stain Pens. But even going with the grain, it was so obviously different where I used the pen over the Mod Podge in levels of sheen. So basically, I covered the front of everything in stain pen. I mean, it looks fucking awesome — but I only did the fronts. I wouldn’t be able to get into the nooks and crannies with the pens even if I wanted to.
Clear Sticker/Tape over paint — not great. So the paint was obviously not perfectly flat. This led to light refraction and you could see the areas behind the sticker paper I had printed the text on even after I Mod Podged everything to the same sheen. This sucked. I had to solve this by painting over the sticker paper with paint again. Obviously, I couldn’t get right up against the text though. This led to a ghostly sort of shadow around the text. It works, but it was not intended. I’d say it looks awesome on some of them, like “Fortune” and “Ghost’s Breath.” On those it adds to the look. It’s not noticeable at all on the white and grey. It is noticeably bad on the red Toadstool and Rubies though. Oh well. I stand by the printer making me do this all for real being the greatest thing to happen. But I’d totally print those labels and then add the 3D around them.
Puff Paint is for people better than me. I can’t draw a straight line to save my life. Also, a consistent squeeze to get a uniform thickness is impossible. This shit requires skills I don’t have. I’m thrilled with my filigree on the drawers/trays though. It’s abstract so it doesn’t matter that it’s not uniform and perfect. Also it was done by starting by squeexing out a blob and pulling away while releasing the squeeze — this led to nice drop shapes.
Paint this interior of the game box. I’m really glad I realized how much of the box would actually show through. What alchemist cabinet is backed in freaking cardboard? So I painted the inside of the box all black before putting this in there. Pro move. I’m so smart.
Feedback for Broken Token on This Exact Box
I don’t like that the ingredient trays aren’t drawers. That sucks. The player tokens are drawers that slide in and out. The ingredient trays are just trays with a lip that slides about a centimeter into the frame. 1) this looks awkward when using the trays on the table to play because they have those stupid tabs on the sides. 2) I can’t use them as drawers like I want. I’d much prefer these had bottoms like the player token drawers.
It kind sucks that you can’t open the books compartment without removing the Fortune and Rubies tray. This is a super small complaint since you’d have to remove those for play anyway. But it also has the same stupid tab problem of the ingredient trays.
Since the box isn’t rigid and you gave us no drawer slides, the side with the ingredient trays can bow out slightly. This means the ones in the middle can come out of their tabs. Seriously, these should have been drawers. It would have fixed this too. There’s nothing holding that column to width anywhere but the very top and very bottom.
I like the swing out bottom compartment. That’s fun.
The ingredient trays need separators for the different values of the tokens. I’m going to add these with painted cardboard because I really do think you need those to play the game more efficiently. It would let you know at a glance if one item is out and also making grabbing what you want easier.
First Game Play(s)
Husband and I actually gave this three plays on Sunday. Once in the afternoon and twice in the evening. We love it. It really is a good game! It’s fun! This picture is the last game where I was DESTROYED so ignore that. I did get 13 rat tails on that last turn though so fucking-a. I love the rat tail catch up mechanic!
There is a lot of luck here — but also a lot of resource management going on. It’s not coincidence husband won all three games. If the game was longer, you could even it out a bit. Only having 9 rounds means that the BEST your bag will get is 1/3 cherry bombs (8 cherry bombs plus assuming you bought 2 ingredients each of the previous 8 rounds). I wish we could buy more ingredients per round.
So far we’ve only played with the starter set of of books, so I’m sure there will be a lot of changes when we change the ingredient books up. Hawkmoth kinda sucks in only 2 player. I know it will be great in larger games though. It’s still a good game for two player! But Hawkmoth sucks for just two.
This is a great length of game for two players — just about 45 minutes.
Five Stars!
Future Plans
I’m going to make some customized player tokens to go around the score board. I’m cool with the wood discs for the rats and water drops though — don’t see any need to upgrade those. I’m actually going to buy insanely tiny glass vials with cork tops to make color-coded potions for each player!
I HAVE to get the Herbs and Witches expansion. Not too thrilled about the Alchemist expansion, but I really want that Herbs and Witches one. It has a better rating on BGG than the original game! I probably should have got the big box that just had the expansions. But then my organizer wouldn’t fit… so nevermind.
I might put the Evil Eye bead pulls on a nice string or ribbon instead of the seed beads. I’d like them to hang more freely.
I’m going to use cardboard to make separators inside the ingredient trays for the different chip values.
I want to get chip “sleeves.” – plastic to go around the cardboard. Would I ABSOFUCKINGLUTLY LOVE the BGG Geekup acrylic tokens? Fuck yes, I would! But that would be $42 for the base game plus $30 for the expansion. So damn.
I’d like nicer bags, but not any of the ones I’ve found for sale to go with the game. Does anyone sew? Like I like that the bags are black. I don’t want them to be color coded to the player. I want black. I think a nice black crushed velvet would be fucking sweet! With like a silky liner? Chef’s kiss! I wouldn’t mind the silky liner being matched to player color (maybe even the drawstring too). Or even them all having the same color liner on all of them– like maybe a grey? Or purple? They’d have to be the same size cause they gotta fit in my box. But yeah, I’d love a soft nice bag upgrade. But not in garish colors — I like the black bags. I might buy just some velvet bags later that aren’t intended specifically as an upgrade for this game.
Crafts and more crafts… And cards… And decorating…
So, I’ve got a lot going on. Two different craft projects. Plus Christmas decorating. Plus Christmas cards (expensive and so much work. Why do I do these? Like I can’t break the streak. That’s why). And tomorrow I gotta pick up the Thanksgiving ham. So my counter is full.
Speaking of crafts, you know it’s the good shit when there’s a skull and crossbones warning on it.
Actually, that wasn’t the good shit. It fucked me over. It’s supposed to go over the top of EVERYTHING. Including a few layers of sealant. I wish it had specified that. The second I put it on, my enamel paint just dissolved. I found out about the sealant thing when I googled “what the fucking fuck.”
These paw print ornaments are killing me. But I won’t give in. As I told you, the top coat I previously used was old or something and left yellowish bubbles and streaks. Maybe THIS SHIT could have saved it. So I got mineral spirits to try to get it off. After so much elbow grease, I had barely anything off. So we brute-force it: repaint. Now keep in mind, everything I do to these takes two days. One day for front to dry, then another for back. And then actually another for the writing on the back in the paint step.
So I repainted. They look amazing. Time for top coat! FUCK ME it disolved the paint. So repaint the ones I tried and fucked up.
I’m going with something I know this time, bitches. Modpodge. Super gloss Modpodge. Got the back done and second coat on the front now. It says you can do a second coat after an hour (I waited a day) but it takes FOUR MOTHER FUCKING WEEKS TO CURE?! Sweet baby Jesus, are you kidding me?
For mine, that’s fine. They’re dry to the touch so I can hang them. But I gotta mail my brother-in-law his! What if the packaging leaves dents? Or sticks to it for some reason? FUCK.
And I thought Pottery Barn was smoking crack.
As seen here in my text messages, Pottery Barn prices are insane.
Is that a hilarious National Lampoons Christmas Vacation pillow? Fuck yes it is! Do I want it? Oh hell yes. Is it $70? Also yes. Who are you catering to, Pottery Barn? Who?
Well, this weekend, I needed craft supplies (enamel paint in red). It’s cheapest at Hobby Lobby. I know that is insane, but it’s true. $7.99 online or $2.39 at Hobby Lobby. It was also half off Christmas and I needed lights for our tree.
Y’all, I’ve never seen Hobby Lobby so chaotic and full. FULL. The giant ass parking lot was full. You could barely move in there. The longest string of lights they had was 100 count, so fuck it, I got a ton of those.
I saw these cute blowmold Christmas Trees at the front. Would possibly be cute to have. And half off! I had to find one with a price tag though. Holy Mary mother of god! FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS EACH.
Who are y’all marketing to? Who? A fucking blowmold? Seriously? What the fuck is happening? Tariffs haven’t kicked in yet, y’all!
Plants!
My plants are doing well. Look at my Thanksgiving Cactus of Friendship blooming right on time! I love how the red turns to magenta on the tips of the petals! Stunning. Today the second layer opened up!
Also, husband helped me put up the main Christmas tree because my anxiety was killing me. So I had to move plants around. Plus the end table. And I’m over wintering some things (I haven’t even brought in the lemongrass from the garage yet). So Louie is now… JUNGLE CAT.
Aging without any grace whatsoever
How’s menopause (perimenopause)? I’m glad you asked. Terrible. I’m not having nightly panic attacks anymore. I need to remind myself they were nightly. But I do still have them around once a week. Also, I’m moody and I’m hot.
We went to the Venardos Circus for my birthday. It was going to be 50s and down into 40s when it let out (fahrenheit). So maybe long sleeves? I wore a thin long sleeve hoodie. Big mistake. The second I got in Ks heated car I was like, I have made a terrible decision. Even inside the tent. I switched seats with husband because K2s commentary is honest to god, half the joy of the circus. But when I switched and realized the seat beside him was open, it was heaven! I wasn’t between two hot people!
Where can I get Christmas tank tops? Not joking. Want.
Also, I’ve reached the age of “I have to pee.”. Like, I used to be able to hold my bladder for hours. Gotta pee? It’s fine, I’ll go when I get home. No more. Now my body gives me like one “I gotta pee.” Then, if I ignore it, all the following “I have to pee” signals will be accompanied by a small bit of pee. Too much information? WELL ITS MY LIFE. So at the circus, my brain was like “I gotta pee.” I’m not allowed to ignore it anymore so I had to use a freaking porta potty! The shame!
I thought Gods punishment to Eve eating the apple of knowledge was painful child birth. The Bible don’t say shit about menopause. Of course neither did anyone else in my life.
Fuck getting old. I’m supposed to be happy and child free with money. Not peeing a little, moody, sweating all night and waking up to panic attacks.
It is a crochet Brontosaurus. I used Benet Baby Velvet yarn. It is VERY soft. The pattern is from Palana Design on Etsy. It’s the No Sew Mamenchisaurus. I wouldn’t say it was easy. That might have been my yarn choice though. This velvet is crazy hard to see your stitches in. She has videos that are much needed. Especially when I realized she was crocheting in a different direction than myself. That matters. I think the pattern could have been helped by naming where you were (“like 8 stitches around the leg” or “decreases should be on top of the tail”). So my body was a big attempt at me mathing it even so the legs were spaced appropriately. My stitch counts pretty much never matched up, so there was a lot of winging it.
I would also note, this might be considered yarn art and not straight crochet. That’s because I went back on the tail and neck and heavily altered them with stitches after I was done. I made the neck thinner, chiseled the chin, and made the tail taper a lot more. The neck suffered from my stitch count problem. So it was narrower at the base than at the head. So I tightened it up to match the base width. The yarn is so hard to see stitches in that I can get away with it.
That said, I would totally make it again. I would stress less and I would watch more of the videos because yall, she’s not crocheting in the same direction as me and that matters on some parts. I feel like the directions are so confusing because there are so many increases and decreases per row with no indication of where you are in the row. So If I do it again, I’m winging most of it. Now that I know the basic happening, I could wing the body and tail and neck. And if I was focusing on winging it to make it look good and not following the pattern exactly, maybe his head wouldn’t be turning just a little. It doesn’t look bad at all, but that wasn’t something I was aiming for.
This took about 5 sessions. I did the feet with K and K2 while watching a Christmas movie. Then I did the body which picks the feet up (no sew). I did the tail one night. I did the neck and head last night. Then this morning, I shaped it up a bit and highlighted under the eyes.
I love it. He’s may happy purple dinosaur.
Oh and no knocking the pattern! I didn’t design this or figure out how to do the shapes. I love the hump on the back, I love the clever neck hole situation. It’s adorable as fuck. Theirs looks way better than mine! I bet if I didn’t use such a hard yarn, it would have been better. But damn this velvet is so soft.
I would also say that since this is no sew — meaning everything is fully crocheted together, this would be an indestructible kids toy. There are no seems to be torn. Of course you would need to stitch the eyes and not use the plastic ones. But yeah, without the plastic eyes, I’d hand this to a baby no problem.
The correct touch sensor wire finally arrived from China. With that, I could finally finish my Sherlock Booknook. I was a bit nervous. Sealing it up meant I couldn’t keep tweaking it. It meant I couldn’t pop off walls for good photos. It meant calling it done. Finite. And there were still a few minor tweaks. I needed to fix the trap door. Cover where the battery opening shows in the hall. I could do that with the suitcase by the clock, but then what would I put where that had been to cover the glue spot on the floor?
It took a bit, but I finally dove in.
Why is the wire still barely long enough? I have a whole wad of light cords but this guy has to shortcut behind the staircase to reach. Also, wiring it up first meant that I couldn’t keep laying the top to the side while I worked…
It is FINISHED
Introducing… SHERLOCK THE BOOKNOOK.
Standing at a short 9.1 high x 4.3 wide x 7.1 inches deep, she is tiny. Her upper floor is less than 5 inches of ceiling height. She is tiny but extremely mighty in detail.
Notice all side have been customized to the show. With heavy coats of modpodge sealing everything. Finishing it all off is a lining or fine faux leather trim across all edges. So soft to the touch and nice clean sealed edges. Even a lovely cushioned leather edge to sit on. While the graphics, a show poster on the back and the opening credits scene on both sides, have been printed in black and white, I selected a brown 1/4 inch faux leather bias trim for the edges. This is because it wasn’t available in black. Or for other reasons you may choose to insert here.
A Conversion
As stated in other posts, this kit is a conversion. I don’t have the skill to start from scratch, so I chose a generic “Detective” Booknook (The Rose Detective Agency by Cutebee) to convert to reflect the amazing show: BBC’s Sherlock.
I fucking nailed it. Obviously, it is not Sherlock’s flat from the show. However, I like to think if Sherlock moved, this could be his new place.
Also note my elimination of the very generic “The Detective House” and flowers across the front. Fuck flowers, this is Sherlock. It has been replaced by a hand rolled clay brick facade. Did I need to cut and paint all those bricks individually? No. Would I do it differently if I were to do it again? Perhaps just making one piece and scoring it to look like brick? Yes. I would.
It is slicker and cleaner. I flipped the front plate to have the fancier steampunk bobble at the top. It’s better like this. Also, you’ll note yet another iteration of the chandelier to replace the “Detective” sign above the desk. We’ve had a few iterations, but we ended up somewhere good.
Baker Street
Let us start our tour at Baker Street. The entrance to Sherlock’s new apartment. Er, flat. In this kit, the upstairs is surprisingly sparse, but the alley is pretty full. I basically did what they did, just better.
I got out paint. Some flat wood items were replaced for fake flowers, sculpted broken clay pot pieces, a tiny plastic gun that would fit on a dime. Old wanted posters were replaced with easter eggs for the show and PlayBills. The address and road name were corrected.
There are few changes here from the last iterations. Both from seeing the side-by-sides in my last post. I trimmed the flower bushes by at least half. I also made the color a yellow cast in the alley. This really makes the hallway stand out and gives it a seedy criminal vibe.
For the yellow glow and the chandelier upstairs, I used the same technique. I took a small acrylic ring I had a pack of already laying around. For the chandelier, I printed stained glass and glued that along the ring. For the alley, I placed the ring in the middle of a orange cupcake wrapper and glued the edges up. Both are attached above their LEDs with hot glue.
The Hidden Hall
Changing the alley light to yellow, really makes the inner hall and stairs pop. There are a few easter eggs for fans in here too. I solved my battery door and stray sharpie mistake by placing a suitcase at the bottom of the stairs next to the umbrella stand. Happy Accidents as Bob Ross would say.
The hall table still has the package and letters Mrs Hudson left for Sherlock to retrieve. Including an ominous beige envelope with Moriarty’s red wax seal.
The Upstairs Flat
Here we reach Sherlock’s (new) main room. You’ll see I added a LOT to this booknook. It seems like the original is a bit sparse for a booknook. Also that chair is terrible. So lets look at mine.
The first thing you will notice is the comfy sitting chair for reading newspapers. Also someone’s newest interesting book, “The Mind Palace.” The newspapers are piling up because Sherlock can’t be arsed to clean. The table holds only a tiny hand gun in case Sherlock gets bored and wants to shoot things or needs to quickly call the police.
The next area you’ll notice is the desk in the corner. The pile of mail in front is where it falls as Sherlock enters his flat. It stays there until Mrs Hudson cleans it up, even though she insists she is not his maid. Lots of easter eggs here. It looks like Sherlock has “confiscated” Watson’s laptop again. Of course he has his trusty phone by his side and his skull to talk to (in spirit – I know, it’s just a print).
This iteration sees a much slimmer laptop. It still displays my favorite scene from Season 2 Episode 1 where Sherlock unlocks Irene Adler’s phone. It’s my favorite episode. Now that the box is sealed, a lot of the easter eggs can only be spotted by a vigilant eye from the clock cut-out above.
The secret passage is also fully functional. Where it used to lead to a medieval stone hall and wooden door lit by candle, we now have a city fire escape. You’re welcome.
If we look to our left, we see the dressing table and the entry door. This is where Sherlock chose to draw his new smile (in the yellow paint from the can of evidence in the Blind Banker, season one). Where it used to be on the wall, he still enjoys shooting it on the door when he is bored.
More tiny seed beads beads capping vials and a flask (made from beads) add a bit of depth to the flat shelving by his desk. The purple shirt of sex is represented in scarf form.
Lastly, looking to our right, we see Sherlock’s case board. He’s tracking Irene Adler, Moriarty, and is for some reason concerned about Mycroft.
Watson’s old medical cane is in the umbrella stand. Lots of easter eggs for a few shows here. The taxidermy bat moved from his fireplace to above the clock. I also spent a lot of time adding depth to this flat bookshelf. The bottom shelf I completely cut the books out to add depth I could fill. I capped the bottles with more seed beads to add texture. I also placed a few 3D books to fill the dark holes behind the 2D printed ones on other shelves.
That’s all she wrote!
So there you have it. I’m done. Booknook number 2 is complete! It was such a fun journey. I’m thrilled with the end result. I learned a lot too while doing this one. It was really fun to stretch it out and savor it with customizations and tedious little projects (baking and painting tiny bricks, anyone?).
I’m so proud!
Make sure to check out my previous posts on this build for fun details you might have missed.
My first venture into miniature. NOTE: I added a kitty cat that was too big for Sherlock’s alley. He’s by the blue shelf.
Where we are:
Still working on Sherlock. The inside is finished but I cannot assemble until I get the new touch sensor which is coming from China. I’ve done the new outside, but it doesn’t look clean yet. I’m going to finish the edges with faux leather bias tape trim. Then I’ll show off the finished project in all its glory.
Where we’re going:
This was on a big sale on Amazon. I paid 50 for Sherlock, got this one for $30. So yeah, I grabbed that up because I knew this was the next one I wanted to do.
I’m not going to start this one until Sherlock is 100% complete. I have no idea how long that will be. I will probably crochet a penguin with a sun hat in the mean time. I’ve also ordered some stuff for this — like a better witch broom, some little bottles, and MORE CATS.
A future?
Yall, I want to open an online miniature shop. I’ve gotten into this little world and people sell the most awesome shit and it costs SO MUCH MONEY. And people buy it! Also, some stuff you only want like 1 or 2 of, but have to buy a huge pack.
So I want to get a 3D printer and print some of my own things — laptops, TARDIS’s, what have you. Make some stuff — maybe a leather bound River Song’s Journal? Custom books. Whatever I want! Bulk buy shit from China and sell it it smaller amounts for crafters. Maybe get in on third party kits. And shopping for stuff at the craft store that can be converted to mini (like the cameo earrings to wall cameos) — was so fun. Throw in some thrifting of doll house stuff. I think it could be fun. Oh an yeah, I’m gonna sell a TON of rock and crystal chips.
I honestly think that with about $2k I can get the website, a selection of inventory, and a 3D printer to get it started.
Now this is down the line. I have other financial priorities. I COULD do it now. BUT, I’d rather get my savings back squared away and finish my tattoo (which I can’t do until I replace the savings that were spent on the deck and pool repairs last summer). Until then, I can keep doing minis and get a feel for what people want.
I already know custom books and mini nerd things (AKA TARDISs) are in high demand. Someone posted this 1cm TARDIS on a facebook group I follow and the comments BLEW UP with people wanting to buy them. They weren’t selling though — it was just a custom 3D print they made with a scaled down FREE pattern. Etsy is full of shit like sets of super tiny Harry Potter books. Hell, do you know how SWEET I could make River’s journal? I could either do actual embossed leather like her’s — but honestly for it to be so small, I might do the covers in clay and paint them. Could use sewing pins to do the embossed details…
Like I’m serious yall. I think I want to start a fun little side business. And then I can just make fun little things to sell! I can even sell fully finished nooks. Like, they’d cost a ton — but some people DO sell them and there is a market. At least the kits would pay for themselves.
