Gettin' Crafty

...and pretending I'm pinteresting

I've been all sorts of grown-up in the past month: applying for lots of non-4-am-style-jobs, signing a lease (+10 grown-up-points!) and I even let the doctor draw my blood despite the fact that: A. I was using that blood and B. I have a hardcore-panic-reaction to needles ever since I stepped on an up-side-down-pin-cushion (something I would entirely advise against). On another note though, I've also been mildly crafty crocheting myself some borderline-homeless-dude-glove-things and making myself a kindle case. Tada!

I love my Kindle. I love it even more after finding out how useful a compact-yet-endless-supply-of-books is when commuting to school /living overseas. I wanted a Kindle case to avoid losing my dear Kinny to an untimely-end-by-screen-damage, but my word are they expensive! Seriously -- most  cases cost a 1/3 to 1/2 as much as the Kindle itself. Not cool people.

[I've also got a whole rant about how nonsensical it is that other e-books and cases don't work with kindles and vice-versa, cause it's idiotic. Dvds, cd, mp3 and freaking cassettes work in other brands' players, so why not e-books?  Makes about as much sense as country-coding dvds --Also stupid. Ranty-rant-rant.]

Anyhow... I decided to just make my own case. Recent pre-moving-cleaning-o'-my-room resulted in compiling the disturbing amount of unused notebooks/journals I own into huge piles. Although the upside to my unruly addiction to notebooks is that I had a great little "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake" journal that I got on sale at some point from Barnes and Noble. So 1, 2, 3, I converted it from a cute notebook to an awesome kindle case in the span of just one episode of Castle:

1. Removed most but not all of the pages.
First I just carefully torn out most of the sections of pages. I left in about three little sections, because the notebook's spine is slightly thicker than my Kindle and because it gives me some note-taking/thoughts-on-books-recordings space in the front which seems pretty handy. (I also left in just a couple of pages in the very back)

2. Glued in elastic hold-in-place-bits.
After trying a couple of other types of glue, I switched to a hot glue gun, which is honestly right up there with duct-tape, so it should have just been the first thing I tried. Naturally it worked the best. I glued the ends in place with the elastic around the back of where I wanted it to be, then once it dried/cooled I just flipped 'em round into place.

3. Prettied it up.
I covered up the glued-down-edges with the pages I had left in the back, plus more hot-glue-gunning to be sure everything stayed in place. Then I put a bit of black ribbon over the torn-out-messy-looking-spine. And I moved the pocket from the inside of the back cover to the front so I could still use it -- with the very artistic tactic of ripping it out of the back and gluing it inside the front. Yup, I'm oh-so-skilled.



And so voila! I have an awesome meme-inspired-cupcake-themed-home-made-ish-kindle-case-with-note-taking-pages-included. It would be just as easy to make a case for a nook/ different sized kindle/ ipad, as long as you find a notebook it fits. 

I decided against using the other cute-notebook-of-the-right-size that I found in my room, because it had a magnetic closure and I don't know enough about technology to know if that would have bad-effects on my kindle over time. Better safe than sorry.

Now I'm off to read some of my abundant collection-of-public-domain-and-therefore-free-to-download-classic-lit on my well-dressed little Kinny-the-Kindle.

P&P and LBD

Guess what today is?
Today is January 28th, 2013 and that makes it the 200th anniversary of the publications of Pride and Prejudice! Yay alliteration and congrats Jane Austen!
It's a brilliant book and there are a couple of wonderful film/mini-series adaptations (Collin Firth!). However my favorite by far is the current vlog-style-adaptation-on-You-Tube-produced-by-John-Green's-brother-Hank-Green-of-nerdfighteria. It is the most clever and engaging adaptation I've ever seen. I may like it even better than the book, although my inner-lit-major recoils at that blasphemous thought.

Lydia-as-Lizzie and Lizzie-as-Darcy
for a Jane-Austen-Dance-Scene
It's super clever in context, trust me. 

This web series is really amazingly well done though, so well done that I actually like Lydia! The loud-crazy-ditsy-trouble-attracting-little-sister-Lydia, at this point I adore her and her videos are some of my favorites. (And I may or may not stand around hipster-filled-concerts overly-engaged with my best-y about the lives of fictional characters, but I sure wouldn't admit that over the interwebs)
Regardless of my border-line-unsanity though, you should check out the Lizzie Bennet Diaries to celebrate P&P's bi-centennial birthday. Go now and watch the first handful by clicking on this poorly constructed sentence.  But ye've been warned, once you are hooked there is risk of severe addiction. These guys not only are on youtube, they tweet, and pin and have facebooks and the cleverness abounds everywhere.
To top it off Lizzie may have answered a question from me in one of her videos and it may have been my favorite internet moment ever. Although this kid's peptalk may be my new favorite moment on the internet now -- you should check out that too.
Happy birthday Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Bing, and Darcy! And well done Miss Austen and the LBD team!