April Fools' Day Portable Milk Spill

Happy April Fools' Day! I've never been one to do practical jokes but this one from Instructables seemed easy enough (and not life-threatening, like some "jokes" out there). It's easy enough for any kid or kid at heart to make, it's portable, and scary enough to look realistic but not so scary that you'll need a defibrillator on hand.


All you need are four things:

#1 - A piece of glass (which I took from a picture frame)
#2 - Elmer's glue
#3 - A bar of soap
#4 - A knife

First, coat one side of your glass with soap. The soap will act as a lubricant and will make it easier to remove the "spill" once it dries.

Next, draw out your "spill" with the glue. The thicker the spill, the easier it'll be to come off once it's dry. I tried not to make it too cartoony (which is hard because you don't want a blob but you want it to look realistic), however size and variance is completely up to you.

And then, the waiting game. I let mine dry overnight because after 7 hours, it was still sticky.

Once it's completely dry, use your knife to poke the sides and peel it off the glass.

If your spill is not completely dry, then it's going to stick to the glass and you'll end up having a big hole in the middle. Lesson learned: be patient!

However, if you did it correctly, you should be able to place it on top of anything valuable - keyboards, laptops, iPads, your kid's homework... whatever will look the most realistic! Have fun and be prepared to face the consequences... like payback!

TOTAL COSTS: $5
$2.99 for Elmer's glue from Michael's
$2 for IKEA picture frame glass
X-acto knife and hotel bar soap already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 5 minutes + overnight (and then some if need be!)

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
I've never been one to be a.) patient or b.) good at practical jokes so I'm not surprised with this outcome. However, if you're patient, you should be able to pull this off with flying colors!

Super Mario Piranha Plant Earrings

I didn't start my Super Mario Brothers obsession until later in life... around 10 or 11, I'd say. Hey, compared to kids nowadays, that's pretty late! It started with the Game Boy and moved on to Nintendo 64 during college and Wii thereafter. When I came across these piranha plant earrings on Instructables, I knew they would be cool enough for the 10 year old in me (or the almost-30 year old me today). However, I don't recommend making these if you have a bad case of OCD because you might drive yourself insane trying to make these perfect!

All you need is:

1. White, red, and green polymer clay
2. Earrings (front and back)
3. A hobby knife to cut the clay (I used an x-acto knife)
4. 1 toothpick (and a back-up, just in case!)




First, take your red clay and make two balls, roughly the size of large marbles. Next, take your knife and cut out 1/4 of the ball.

Stick the earrings inside the red balls with the points facing up (what I'm holding in the photo) and cover it up with clay (like the one to the right). One mistake I made was putting in the earrings at a slight downward angle, so make sure they are exactly perpendicular or you might have to bend the earrings when it comes time to wearing them!

I took photos of the clay pieces next to coins so you can see just how large the piranha's are (about the size of a quarter). You're all done with the red clay... for now.

Next, take your green clay and make the pots for the plants. They should be roughly the size of a mini marshmallow or a dime.

Roll out some green clay like a green snake and then flatten it with a rolling pin. Now I recommend you take what you just rolled out, cut it in half, and use that to wrap around the top of the pot.

So you've got the base completed, now it's time to move on to the plant's stem. Roll out two pieces of green clay and snap a toothpick in half. 

Stick the tooth pick inside each piece of clay to strengthen the stem and stick it in the pot. You can see they're much bigger than a Sacagawea coin now.

Add some leaves to make it look a little more like the original.

Once your leaves have been added, it's time to put the top (red) and bottom (green) pieces together. Start by sticking the heads on by having the toothpick go through the red head. Make sure the toothpick doesn't pop out of the mouth or the side! Next, roll white clay like a long snake (on clean paper, if possible... you'd be surprised what white clay can pick up when being rolled!). Try to make it as thin as you can and outline around the "mouth" of the plant with the white clay.

Once the mouth is outlined, take some small white piece of clay and put three dots on the back of each head.

Now your clay might have different baking instructions than mine but I put mine in the oven at 275 on parchment paper for 25 minutes and gave it ample time to cool down before moving. Too little time and they might not harden, too much time and they might burn!

Once they're cool, put 'em in and enjoy having a creative and unique pair of earrings!

TOTAL COSTS: About $10 to make at least 14 pairs (which is how many earrings came in the set)

$1.49/clay from Michael's

$2.99 for earrings front from Michael's

$2.99 for earrings back from Michael's

X-acto knife and toothpick already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 2 1/2 hours

1 hour to make the earrings (because I'm OCD and wanted the pot a different size than my first try)

25 minutes to bake

1 hour to cool (which is ample time - I'm sure it takes less time to cool)

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 3 out of 5

As I said, if you're super nit-picky about details and perfection, this project might drive you up the wall (white clay staying white, the thickness of the stem, the details on the leaves, etc.). However, it's a relatively easy project to knock out in an hour or two, depending on how attentive to the details you are, and would make a great gift for the gamer in your life!

Cake Postcard

With spring comes birthdays and with birthdays come cake. So what do you do if you can't be there to see your friend or family member blow out the candles? Why not send them a piece of cake through the mail! It may not be edible but it's the thought that counts, no? I saw this DIY cake postcard on SheKnows and just had to see if it was as easy (and yummy!) as it looked.

Head to your hardware store to pick up these supplies:

* 1 large sponge (they sell 2-packs at Home Depot if you want to make two at the same time!)
* A serrated knife
* An x-acto knife
* Spray paint (I opted for brown so it would be a chocolate cake)
* Acrylic latex caulk (again, I went with brown because chocolate cake must have chocolate frosting!)
* Spray adhesive
* Paper for the "postcard" (I used an old manila folder)


First, take a sponge and using your knife, cut it at a diagonal as centered as possible. You would think it's easy to cut through... it's not. So go slowly and as evenly as possible.

If you don't cut evenly and slowly, it may come out like this. Whoops.

I also opted to cut off the end so it didn't have rounded corners.

Next, use your x-acto knife and make a shallow rectangular cut in the middle of the sponge, so as to emulate two layers and "frosting" will go in the middle.

Spray paint your sponge in a well ventilated area (i.e. - outside) and from every angle (and I mean every angle!). I missed some areas around the bottom so the yellow sponge was visible but I ended up covering most areas with caulk later. Wait for it to completely dry before doing anything else.

Once the sponge is dry, measure out how big the paper "postcard" should be. You can use card stock, a folder, scrapbook paper, whatever you like.

Cut out the card and using your spray adhesive, glue it to the unpainted side of the cake.

Now I have zero experience with caulk but by a wonderful mistake, I found a fast and easy way to apply the caulk. First, make a diagonal cut at the top.

Next, put the caulk gun in a big plastic bag and using your foot, slowly apply pressure. What will happen is the end of the caulk gun will pop off and all the caulk will come out the back, instead of through that little slit you made. Now you can just squeeze it out with your hands into the plastic bag! Neat, huh?

Do NOT try this on carpet. I was extremely lucky and didn't get any caulk on the carpet but you might not be so lucky. So again, do this activity outside or on newspapers to protect your floors.

Once the caulk is in the bag, cut a small corner off and squirt out the caulk into the shallow sections you created earlier, to resemble the "frosting" between layers of cake.

And this is the fun party - apply caulk to two sides of the sponge and swirl it around to make it look as realistic as possible. You can use the plastic bag, a paintbrush, or a toothpick to make the desired effect.

Now comes the waiting game. Put your "cake" in a safe location and let it dry for 3-5 days (mine took 4 days, though I played it safe). If you don't move the piece around on whatever you've set it on, the caulk might attach itself to it. For example, I put mine on a piece of cardboard and didn't move it at all... so... cardboard was attached to the "frosting":

If this happens to you, get off as much as you can and using a damp paper towel, you can rub off the rest.

Add a cute message (I wrote, "Hope this year turns out to be a 'piece of cake'"), run to the post office, and get your stamps (mine cost $2.70... did you know you can't take pictures inside of a post office? Random fact of the day).


Once it's addressed, put your cake in the mailbox and voila! Your cake postcard is ready to be devoured... by the United States Postal Service.

TOTAL COSTS: About $25 to make 4 (supplies from Home Depot)
$3.89 for a 2-pack of sponges
$9.99 for 3M 77 Super Multipurpose Spray Adhesive
$3.76 for spray paint
$4.33 for caulk
$2.70 for stamps to mail the postcard
Serrated knife, x-acto knife, and manilla folder already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 3-5 days to dry + an hour and a half of prep work
10 minutes to cut the sponge
5 minutes to cut the center line
1 hour to let sponge dry after spray painting
10 minutes to add caulk
3-5 days to let dry

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
This was surprisingly easy, especially considering I had never used caulk before, but the plastic bag really did help with applying. Be very careful not to get caulk, glue, or anything else on your workspace because this can get messy very quickly!

DIY Air Vase Fail

I was perusing Instructables, trying to find an easy project for a lazy Tuesday afternoon, when I came across this beautiful paper vase. It doesn't have a lot of components to it - it's just simple, yet elegant. I figured I could finish it in no time. When will I ever learn?....

If you want to give it a shot, here's wall you'll need:

1. Printer paper for the template (see original post for pdf)

2. Card stock paper for the bottom of the vase. These will need to be 2" circles but what I did was put the vase template underneath the card stock and traced the inner circle. Much easier than trying to find your old compass!

3. An x-acto knife and something to protect your table

4. Glue

Start by printing out the template and cutting everywhere you see a printed line. If you're not careful, you will rip the paper. And yes, it will probably happen.

Get used to seeing these...

If you still have all your fingers and have finished cutting on all the printed lines, you then need to cut in the white space. Now this is where I screwed up. I made too many lines and halfway down, it stopped stretching without ripping. Hopefully you'll have better luck.

This is what you're going for!

Once you're done cutting your lines, cut out the template so you're not still working with a full piece of paper. Glue your base (the 2" card stock circles) to the front and the back of the paper.

And finally, stretch out your vase. If it doesn't fully stretch out, it makes a lovely hat.

As I said, not one of my best project... but hey, ya live and ya learn! Hopefully your attempt will go much better than mine!

TOTAL COSTS: Free!
However I already had printer paper, an x-acto knife, and glue on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour
A great chance to catch up on podcasts during the excessive cutting!

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 4 out of 5
I rate this one pretty high because:

#1 - it's very hard to cut the paper without ripping it and
#2 - keeping track of which white space to cut and which to leave alone.

However, if it doesn't work out, you can always print out the template and try again!

Behind the Scenes of Star Wars Snowflakes

So this has been going around Facebook and I knew I had to do them: 


1. because we don't get snow in Los Angeles and 
2. my husband is a huge fan of the film series

Designer Anthony Herrera has done 37 designs so far so I picked three that looked the easiest and the most recognizable.

When you print them out, it's up to you to cut around the edges of the square or circle, and fold along the lines. For the circle designs, I folded in half, then in half again, then in thirds to have the design on top.

Before you even start, have a pair of scissors and an x-acto knife ready. The scissors will help for cutting out a lot of grey space, the x-acto knife will be for all the little details inside the design. Now I don't know about you but my x-acto knife can cut through 2, maybe 3 pages at a time. Have patience and for your first ones, try to go for easy designs.

Cut as much grey with scissors as possible

The easiest for me was Darth Vader, however when I got to the final page, you can see the difference in quality between the top layer of paper and the bottom:

Left was last page, right was top page. Major difference in quality!

The second easiest was the X-Wing, mainly because I was able to cut most of it out with scissors. You can see, though, the left inside part is cleaner than the right side because again, the top page was easier to cut than the last piece of paper in the stack.

Left was first piece of paper, right was last piece

And finally, Yoda cut I did. Be very careful with these really detailed designs, though, as you might almost decapitate your design.

Do not decapitate your designs!

Overall, I would recommend these for any Star Wars fan - try some of his other designs and let me know how they turn out!

TOTAL COSTS: Free!
This is assuming you have a printer, paper, scissors, and an x-acto knife on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 53 minutes
15 minutes for Darth Vader
15 minutes for X-Wing
23 minutes for Yoda

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
The hardest parts are cutting out the inside details but with patience, you can cut through no problem! Have fun!