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.

Moving On by Light Give Heat

Light Gives Heat is a very snazzy organization that decreases world-suck and increases awesome by providing steady employment for women in Uganda and spreading their stories and beautiful products to the rest of the world. Most of my bracelets/ necklaces and purses are from Light Gives Heat and I love them all.  The products are beautiful, the stories are full of hope, and it all equals out to lots and lots of awesome.

Pinteresting?

I love the internet. It allows me to chat face-to-face with friends in different time-zones, countries, and on the other side of a significantly sized ocean. Plus wonderful Youtubers to watch and Facebook to keep me updated on friends' big milestones and little first-world-problems. Though there are exceptions: StumbledUpon = never gotten into it, Tumbler = baffles me, and Twitter = only seems logical with a smartphone.  To be fair though I'd most likely get hooked if I spent a bit of time on them. I didn't understand Pinterest before either, it wasn't that I disliked it or anything. I just sincerely did not grasp what it did.  To solve my befuddlement I spent an afternoon poking around on Pinterest. Although I'm still not positive exactly what purpose it serves, and I'm not fully addicted yet, I was indeed won over by this little bit of brilliance that I came upon:

Source: sprwmn.blogspot.com via Megan on Pinterest

My bedroom, bathroom, couch, and anyone-who-lives-with-me-and-is-to-any-degree-opposed-to-bobby-pins-everywhere would very much benefit from this clever idea.

And I suppose the crafty/home improvement ideas and inspiration side of Pinterest is what makes the most sense to me.