I OPENED A STORE

Hi everyone! With my recent return to crafting, I've opened an Etsy shop!

You can buy coasters and hair ties here.  Much more to be added soon (including planner pages and custom glitter stationery)!

Unfortunately, I am only offering US shipping at this time. If you see anything you like and you are outside of the US, send me an email or a message on Etsy and I'll make something happen!

Touched On An Airplane, Not By An Angel

If you've been reading my blog for some time, you know I sleep on airplanes a lot. And you know I sleep strangely.  Here's a new story.

About a month ago I was on a plane flying back to California after a vacation in Maryland. I fell asleep...SHOCKING. At some point, I felt something weird on my right leg.  It was really really wet. I thought maybe I was dreaming.  Dreaming that I had peed myself, or fallen sideways into a pool, so I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep.

Then, I felt something again. "Oh my gosh, I'm ACTUALLY peeing myself," I thought.  I opened my eyes only to see the man next to me trying to clean up his apple juice, which he had spilled all over his left side, and my right side. He was patting down the side of my upper right leg, with one of those plane napkins. You know, the "napkin" that has no function, because it doesn't absorb anything. It's thin and un-napkin-y. 

The good news is that I didn't pee myself (that's always something to celebrate!).  The bad news is that I had apple juice on my leg. 

But because I was really really tired, I barely acknowledged the apple juice or the man who spilled it.  My eyes opened barely enough to see what was going on. I think the man apologized but I really have no idea. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

When we finally landed I realized I had been sitting with apple juice seeping into me for about 3 hours...

Valentine's Day Nails!

Hi, Readers! Happy almost Valentine's Day! Or Sad almost Valentine's Day...whichever you prefer, really. 

I wanted to paint my nails festively, seeing as they had been purple (Ravens!) for about the past month, and was looking for a cute demo. I found FleurdeForce's tutorial and decided to try it!

If you want to see how it's done, keep reading (or check out Fleur's video!)

You'll need a base coat and top coat, and two colors. Of course, you can use any colors you like (pink and black would be awesome!), but in keeping with the V-Day theme I chose two pinks. And a bobby pin.

Seche Vite Ridge Filling Base - $ 7.00
Essie's Fiji - $ 7.79
Nicole By OPI - Kardashian Kolor - All Kendall-ed Up - $ 7.99
Wet N Wild - Wild Shine - Clear Nail Protector - $ 1.50
Bobby Pin

After applying my Seche Vite Base, I applied two coats of Essie's Fiji, allowing the first coat to dry before applying the second. 

I waited about 20 minutes to make sure everything was dry.

Then, I put a few drops of hot pink polish on a paper plate (using the applicator brush).  Using one end of the bobby pin, I dipped it into the polish and made two dots, side by side, on my nail. With the bobby pin, I brought the two dots together and pulled down. 

Hearts complete!

I waited another 20 minutes or so before applying a generous coat of top coat.

Send me pics if you try this! And send Fleur pics too!

Twitter

Me - @meliswein

Fleur - @fleurdeforce

SUPERBOWL

I was lucky enough to get to go to Superbowl XLVII (Also known as the Harbaugh Bowl, or the Harbowl, I've decided to call it Blackout Bowl 2013. If I'm feeling extra weird I'll call it Ray's Winning Everything Bowl. Taylor Swift* is calling it Sports Ball.) in New Orleans, Louisiana to watch my beloved Baltimore Ravens take on the San Francisco 49ers.

It was my first time in New Orleans and let me tell you, it is everything I hoped it wouldn't be (in the sense that it was everything I always thought it would be...and more). It was during Mardi Gras, so on top of the crazed football fans in town for the big game, there were a lot of topless ladies.

I walked Bourbon Street aka Drunk Road. My 12 year old cousin so aptly said "Of course the people there are drunk. It's call BOURBON." I'm not worried that he knows what Bourbon is. I'm worried if he knows what it tastes like.

Then of course, it was SUPERBOWL TIME. Holy moly grand canoli it was amazing. What was really neat, was that everyone attending the game was just so thankful that one, their team was playing, and two, they they were lucky enough to get tickets, that no one was really trash talking. Sure, people we're competitive, but no one was shunning another. I thought that was cool. I'm sure you're thinking that's really lame.

I got to see a few people I hadn't seen in 5+ years. The best was one of the guys saying "Hey, maybe the Ravens can go to the Superbowl again so we can see each other!"

By now I'm sure you know the Ravens won by the smallest margin, after giving up a 22 point lead in the 3rd Quarter. I'm sure you also know that there was a blackout...a 34 minute blackout. What you probably don't know is that I didn't even realize it at first. I'm not oblivious. I was on the side of the stadium that kept power. All 72,000+ of us engaged in the wave. I also met the nice man next to me. His name was Wade. I hugged him so so tight when we won. There is a small possibility that his name was John.

Baseball season is soon, y'all. Pitchers and Catchers reported yesterday. Everyone else reports tomorrow. REPORT!


*Again, not the real  T Swift. It's a code name.

I dreamed a dream...

This has nothing to do with LES MISERABLES, so sorry if you're here because of that. I'm not sorry that I got you to visit my blog!

Aaaaaanywayyyyy. I have very vivid dreams with the weirdest plot lines. Very. Vivid. Weird. Plots. So I am going to recount some of them here, purely because I think they are so bizarre and I want to make you laugh today.

Once I had a dream that...

-I gave birth.  To a beer bottle. Then my mom made me give it up for adoption.

-the music teacher at my high school tied a bunch of us together by the wrist, with fishing line, and forced us to smoke weed.

-I was part of "The Lying Game" and Sutton and Emma were triplets. I was the third. My reveal caused some massive tension.

-I met Taylor Swift (this time I'm talking about the actual T Swift)

-I was kidnapped outside of Discovery Zone (DZ! Where I can really cut loose!)

-A guy I was dating brought me breakfast in bed. It was a Chipotle burrito bowl.

-I finally got to see what the upstairs of Val and Holly's loft looked like in "What I Like About You"

-My dog was kidnapped and recovered at Discovery Zone. Apparently dog's cut loose there, too. (I had this dream after my dog passed away...)

There was also the time I fell asleep with a bag of plastic knives under my pillow.  Surprisingly I don't remember any dreams from that night. It's probably because the knives cut into my brain and destroyed me.

DIY - Duct Tape Flowers!

So I still have a lot of duct tape. I'll probably have a lot of duct tape for awhile. I decided to make flowers! I'm not entirely sure if there's a good use for these, but they're certainly fun to make!

First, I rolled a good amount of green duct tape around itself to make the stem.

Then I ripped some duct tape, about 2 inches in length. (I didn't use a ruler. Just kinda eyeballed it. Don't worry if they are all a little different.)

Then, fold one corner down, leaving an "L" of sticky showing.

Fold the remaining corner, so that you're left with something that looks like this. There is probably a name for this shape, but I don't feel like looking it up.

Add the stem and fold the triangle/petal around.

Continue with this, alternating the placement of each piece.

After those 16 pieces of tape (4 pieces of each color), this is what my flower looked like. 

It was very small. And kinda sad looking.  So I repeated this process with 16 more strips. 

My final result!

Again, I have no idea what I'm going to do with this. It would probably look cute taped to the top of a gift. Or it also might not look cute. I don't know. Let me know if you have ideas for how I can use this.

Here are two other tutorials that I found. Awesome crafting blogs!
Tutorial 1 Tutorial 2


If you make these, send me a picture! Tweet me @meliswein or email me: undiagnosedspaz@blogspot.com