Hate Photos of Yourself? Join my club!

     Ok, let’s have a show of hands: who out there loathes pictures of themselves?  I bet I’m not the only one.  When someone says, “PICTURE TIME!”  Who cringes and runs away?  If you, in a moment of daring say to yourself, “I’ll look that camera in the eye and I won’t give a crap,” do you later, upon seeing the picture, say “What was I thinking?”  My friends, we are not alone.

      Am I “afraid” of the camera, as my mother told me when I was about eight years old (which certainly didn’t help my fear of photos)?  There must be something to taking a good photo, as I’ve deduced from watching countless episodes of America’s Next Top Model.  Some of those girls are just average everyday girls, but inexplicably, they take a great photo every time.  I’m the polar opposite of that – inexplicably, I take a horrible photo every time, even when I think I’m having a good face day.  It’s not just that I have a distorted view of myself.  I have a reputation for this in my family.  I seriously make bizarre faces in the presences of a camera.  My eyes are half closed (a CLASSIC for me), my eyes are completely closed, I have a “stoned” look on my face, my mouth is in a weird “O” shape, one eye is more closed than the other… I could go on and on. 

     My sister, who is a great photographer, looks great in EVERY photo AND is the Photoshop QUEEN, patiently took multitudes of photographs of me one holiday, and then emailed me a really nice one.  I mean, really nice.  I was amazed.  It was like seeing a unicorn. 

     “You Photoshopped me.”  I said.  “Did you Photoshop me?” (That’s how good of a job she did.)

     “Only a little” she replied.

     I wanted to carry it around with me, to show people that I can, with great effort and resources, once every leap year, good in photos, but before I printed a million copies and left them everywhere, the computer crashed and I lost the photo. 

     Yesterday I got my hair cut and colored, and my friends told me to take a picture of myself and post it on Facebook.  Sounded like a good idea, until I took 10 pictures of myself in a row and in every one my hair looked good, but I looked like a mummy.  Imagine: pale face, staring at the camera, but with eyes half closed and mouth in an O shape.  Tyra Banks would tear me up.    

    I want to hear from other people who hate photos of themselves.  I know you’re out there…You’re the Facebook friends who ALWAYS have pictures of something other than yourself as your profile picture… Is it even possible for us to overcome this shortcoming?   Here’s what I find most amusing about this photo curse, though, and maybe you’ve noticed it, too.  Although there are not too many photos of me around, I noticed that when I spot one that I hated twenty years ago, suddenly, it doesn’t look THAT bad.   Hummmm, so, in another twenty years, these photos that I hate today won’t look so bad either, I’m guessing… ?  But for now, ugh.



Spring!

Daughter as mother and daughter are leaving the house one afternoon:  It smells like spring out here.

Mother (smiling to herself, because she noticed the same thing:  Yes, it does.  I like that smell.

Daugher:  Me too.  It smells like dirt. 

Mother, laughing:  It does smell like dirt. 

. . . and clean rain. 

Spring smells like dirt, and new leaves and clean rain. 

Happy Spring!

The UnBirthday Cake - a cake for the rest of us!

     As you know, there are 365 days in a year, and only one of them is your birthday.  If you know someone who pines for their birthday 364 days of the year (I'm betting that someone will be about 4 or 5 years old), you could always make then an UNbirthday cake.  I put this one together in about an hour or so.  Decorating it was another story.  Your unbirthday cake decorating can be as simple or as time consuming as you are willing to tolerate.  I won't even tell you how long this took to decorate.  I'm no Buddy the Cake Boss.

Here's what you'll need to build your cake:

...a few cardboard boxes that are in good shape, a pencil, scissors, and most importantly, paper packing tape.  You can get a roll at an office supply store like Staples.  My dad gave me this roll, believe it or not, about twenty years ago when I was making paper mache animals for the preschool where I worked.  It was much bigger then, but it's like the ever-lasting gobstopper of tape, the only catch is that you need to store it in a dry place.  If you don't, the humidity will cause the glue-coated side to stick the roll together and it will be useless.   This tape is important because any kind of plastic tape will not allow paint to stick to it.  You don't want to do all this work and then be unable to decorate your cake!

Now, take one of your boxes and round out the sides, like this:

The more bends you put in the cardboard, the rounder your cake layer will be. 

Next, lay your carboard box back down on a flat surface, take a straight edge (I use a 48" long metal ruler I bought in the Sears tool department for this kind of thing) and draw a crooked line across the top.  The more crooked, the better.  You don't want people thinking your cake layers are crooked by accident.  When I brought my cake in to school for the play, I was informed by one of the technology teachers that I'd created a truncated cylinder.  "Yeah, yeah, that sounds familiar," I said.  Don't ask me to find the volume of a truncated cylinder.  That's about the time my math anxiety kicked in.

Now you're going to put a bottom and top layer on your cake.  Place the your cake onto a piece of carboard that's large enough to cover the whole circle you've created.  Arrange the bent cardboard cylinder into a nice circle shape, unless you want a truncated oval, but hey, you're on your own with that.  Trace around your cake, drawing a circle on the flat piece of cardboard, like so:

Ignore the little slits in the cardboard - you can cover them up with your paper tape later.

Cut the circle out with your scissors, or a box cutter if you like living on the edge. Place the "cake" on it's bottom.  Does it fit pretty nicely?

 If so, flip it over and tape around the edges with SMALL pieces of your paper tape.  You need to use small pieces of tape so you can keep everything totally flat while navigating the edge of the circle.  If you use big pieces, they won't lay flat enough.  The tape I use needs to be wet on the glue side to activate the glue (hence, the humidity problem).  There may be other tapes that work, but I haven't used them, so I don't know for sure. 

Repeat the tracing and cutting procedure for the top of the cake as well, and tape that side on with your paper tape, too. 

(In this picture there's no bottom yet, but I added it later.  I should have added it first.)

For the top layer of your cake, repeat the process described above, except use a smaller box for your initial circle (my 3rd picture).  OR, you could do what I did, and cut a chunk out of the box, and use your paper tape to tape it back together.   For this second layer you don't need a bottom, just a top.    When you attach it to the first layer, you may have to spend some time trimming the bottom of the top layer so it fits on the bottom layer as snuggly as possible.

Before you decorate, make sure EVERY hole is covered up with a smooth layer of paper tape.  Holes will show up glaringly when you decorate. 

I used puff paint (which was not as puffy as I would have liked - I should have used white silicone window sealer) and I made candles out of rolled copy paper that I glued on with my hot glue gun (I LOVE my glue gun). 

A friend of mine is going to make an UNtruncated (regular) cylinder cake for a shower she's planning - she's going to use it as a platform for her TERRIFIC cupcakes.  If she starts a cupcake blog as she says she's going to, I'll post a link here. 

Have fun everyone, and Merry Unbirthday!

Alice in Wonderland

     The show is finally over and although it's kind of sad, I have already breathed a great big sigh of relief.  Some things turned out just the way I planned and some things... did not.  But so what.  I know what I would do differently next time.

 

The kids had a great time (there was crying before the last show when they started thinking that it was going to be over) and in spite of the time crunch, so did I. 

To quote the caterpillar, "Remember, Alice, inner fabulousity.  Now answer this one simple question:  Whoooooo are youuuuuu?"  

I'm closer to knowing. Thanks, Alice.

How you will REALLY use what you learned in subjects such as geometry in your life...

     Here is how you will REALLY use your geometry knowledge...

     You will determine that you can make TWO dome-shaped teacups from a balloon covered with paper mache if you cut it with a hack-saw when it's dry.

     You will realize that you need to add a slice of a cylinder on each side of the balloon so that each of the two teacups stands up nicely.  Unless your going for the Japanese sake-type teacup, you'll add a handle on each cup, and I think that has nothing to do with geometry.

     You will see the correlation between an overinflated balloon and a teapot, if you stand the balloon on its fat end.  The knot in the balloon will actually remind you of the knob on the top of the teapot's lid, so you'll take that as a cue to add a nice knob on the top, in addition to the aforementioned cylinder (ala the teacup - for stability) and even if you didn't take calculus or study black holes, you'll be able to make a spout, curve it nicely, and attach it to your balloon.  Hey, who needs that much math unless you're going to become a scientist?

     You'll sand the little devils quickly so they don't look gnarley (is that even a real word?) for your fancy-pants tea party. You'll learn all about sanding in your Technology class - back in the day (I hate that phrase) we used to call it Shop.

     After you've decided on the table linens, you'll paint them (tomorrow) and enjoy a nice cup of imaginary tea.  Bon apetite!

Tea Party Update

     I didn't realize how time consuming this would be.  As usual.

     However, it's starting to look like something. 

     I took the newspaper out of the spout (it was giving the spout its shape while the wet paper towels dried) and I added one handle on each of the cup balloons.  I have to add another handle on each (each small balloon will be two cups).  I still have to round out the handle on the teapot, and I have to attach the spout. 

     I think it's going to look AWESOME, but who knew it would take me about 20 hours to make?

A paper mache REVELATION!!!

     With all due respect to the great master, I am the Michaelangelo of paper mache.  I am the QUEEN of paper mache... 

     But seriously, I really do love to make things out of paper mache, so when I signed up to be the set designer for Alice In Wonderland Jr., the play at my school, I thought, EXCELLENT, I'll make some giant mushrooms out of paper mache.  Any excuse to sculpt out of newspaper, flour and water.  I love messy crafts. 

     Then I realized (thank goodness!) how utterly time consuming a 6 foot mushroom made of paper mache would be, and I altered my plans. I had never realized that all the props on the set had to be unbreakable just in case the kids accidentally dropped something, so that meant that the Mad Hatter's tea set had to be plastic or...

paper mache.

     I started with ballons, as you may have seen in a previous post of mine, but to make really STRONG paper mache, you need countless layers, each dried seperately (cause you can't risk stinky, moldy sculptures).  In that previous picture, you can see that I made my first layer the usual way - newspaper strips dipped in a flour and water mixture.  Nice and round, but delicate, and loaded with newsprint that shows through your first layer of paint.

     But then, something that one of the art teachers told me came to mind... "I use paper towels when I have my classes make the face masks"  Paper towels... huuuuuummmmmmmmmm.....

     So the other day I got out a roll of Bounty, and ripped that into strips for my second layer.

     Can I say OH MY!!!!

     The layers were really heavy and caved in the sagging balloon a bit but when it dried, HOLY COW, if I throw that sucker across the room, I could knock someone out, it's so hard.  It's amazing!  Not only does the Bounty make the layer super strong, but it's somewhat flexible when wet, so you don't get those annoying corners that are impossible to flatten on round surfaces.  The stuff STRETCHES a bit. Round surfaces can be rounder... you can use larger pieces and so, finish faster. And the surface is just perfect for paint of any color.  Again, I just have to say it... AMAZING!!

     I realize most of you don't give a doodle about this, but hey, I was so excited about it I just had to share.  

     Oh, and you're probably wondering, "What the heck IS that in the picture....?" 

     It's the spout for the Mad Hatter's tea pot.