Harry Potter Potion Book Medicine Cabinet DIY

Is there any better way to store all of your drugs and ointments than a Potion Book covered cabinet? Didn't think so. I got the idea during the making of my Harry Potter Craft Swap package, because I was looking for a way to upcycle a cabinet I found on a walk earlier this year.


I think it used to be a sewing cabinet, but since I have way too much sewing stuff I wanted to turn it into something else.
I started by taking off all the extra shelves, compartements and the door and cleaning the cabinet. The next step with used furniture is always a sand down, because you never know how the wood has been treated before and you want the paint to stick to it properly.

Next up I sawed up 3 shelves and 6 pieces to hold the shelves in place and sanded the edges.

With a measure tape I marked the places where the shelves should sit on both sides and I nailed the six pieces in place, even side up.

This is what the cabinet looked like sanded with all the shelves in place but without a door.

Next up was the painting. I gave the cabinet and the shelves two coats of blue matte lacquer and a sloppy coat of a darker shade of blue to make it look more used. I also sanded around the edges to give it a shabby chic look.

I printed out an A3 image of Libatius Borage's book of Advanced Potion-Making and glued it to the front of the cabinet door. I used the glue underneath and on top of the picture and aditionally sprayed the front of the door with a clear lacquer once the glue was dry.

There it is, ready to hold all of our medicine, which we kept in a converse shoe box until then (too much information?). I made the necklace hanger earlier this year and it accidentally matches the medicine cabinet perfectly! I made it pretty much the same way I made the cabinet, but instead of glueing a picture on top I nailed in a bunch of nails and painted them with nail polish (get it? nail polish!).

And there's the inside! Don't judge me for the content.. always be prepared!

Alright, I hope Snape, excuse me, the Half-Blood Prince doesn't mind me borrowing his book to make me feel better.

Sectumsempra!

This post will be part of Nina's Upcycling Tuesday.

PS: Check out all these funky geeky crafts at the Nerd'n'Geek Linkparty <3

Picturesque Month ~ 10'14

~ In October you go to Oktoberfest, right? No! Not if you live anywhere outside of Munich. Also Oktoberfest usually takes place end of September...
~ Beautiful view out of my office.
~ Enjoying the last few sunny days.

~ Yay for overpriced antique flea markets on the Museumsinsel.
~ But there are some fancy schmancy stores around there where you can buy all kinds of high priced kitsch like this giant bear. That would sit nicely in our living room!
~ I was too dumb to ride a bicycle this month. No, actually someone jumped in front of my bike and I breaked and flew over the handlebar right on my head, but everything's fine! Got really lucky.

~ The husband and I spend Germany unity day at my Dad's house chopping wood, so productive!
~ I was also working on my Weasley Family Clock.

Our local hardware store offers a Women's Week every now and then with various workshops. I got lucky to get a place in two workshops (actually three, but I conveniently fell on my head right on the way to that one.) The first workshop was about getting your plants ready for winter. I chose a black currant plant and named it Joe and now Joe is ready for winter and sitting on my balcony!

The second workshop was about decorative wall design and the various techniques you can use to make your wall look more pretty like stenciling and swiping and other interesting things. Yeah... I don't really paint my walls, I like posters and pictures...

I went to the premiere of Jemaine Clement's new film What We Do In The Shadows, I dare you to watch the trailer without laughing out loud! Got to meet one half of my favorite comedy folk duo Flight of the Conchords and also the hilarious Taika Waititi, co-director of the movie. It was one of the best nights this year (you know, next to my wedding and stuff) with loads of laughter. Even though they screened the movie in German it was still hilarious and my friends all loved it. Jemaine and Taika were there before and after the movie for an introduction and a Q&A (I asked the obvious question that they must have heard before whether it was true that they improvised a lot of the scenes to which they replied, why would they, it's a documentary, it's all true *wink*.). They also hung out for a while at the aftershow party. There was free booze and everything. So fun!

Next day there was another event at a different movie theatre where they showed the film in English. This time they had a costume contest and since people are too lazy to dress up I had to to win the prize.. and I did. Jemaine handed me a bottle of New Zealand wine after convincing him I had the best costume because of my bat tattoo. Yes, I'm that desperate ;)

~The husband and i went out to eat sushi. No, we didn't finish this humungous amount of sushi.
~ Then we went on to see a man do gay cabaret.
~ And he was followed by the hilarious Daniel Sloss. 4/5 Bazooka Points for doing a comedy show in humourless Germany (or that's what we're told).

TP Christmas Tree

This years christmas tree is a little different from other trees. We kind of started a new family tradition making non-traditional christmas trees fro the holidays with our Pixel Christmas Tree from last year. Since i'm a crafter I keep a lot of stuff other people would throw away, for instance toilet paper rolls. There are so many things you can make with tp rolls, and one of the things is this christmas tree! I found the idea searching the web on this blog and got started right away.

Like many others I would imagine I watch TV or listen to stuff while I craft. This time it was The Hobbit- The Desolation of Smaug on BluRay to get me in the mood for the third part of the Hobbit trilogy. I started by following the tutorial and cutting my tp rolls into even strips and folding them in various ways. To hold them together I used glue and paper clips.

I ended up with 9 "tp flowers" and one cone for the top.

If I would have stopped here the tree would have looked like this. Pretty cool, but not enough colour and glitter for the holidays for me!


The next step which isn't in the original tutorial is to paint the "flowers". It was quite a mess! Maybe it was partly because I was watching Lost while painting and I wasn't paying too much attention on where the paint went.

I also used glitter paints to decorate the individual "flowers" after the green paint was dry enough. Not it's time to put the tree together again!

There we go! It's just right for our small apartment and it definitely doesn't needle. Do you have a real tree or an alternative or maybe none at all? I'd love to see how other people with small spaces or non-traditional beliefs decorate for the holidays.

This post will be part of Nina's Upcycling Tuesday and the Creadienstag.

Picturesque Month ~ 09'14

September started off sporty with a dragonboat tournament sponsored by my work. We got to row a couple of lines down the Spree and really didn't do so bad considering we only trained once and half of the crew hadn't been in a dragonboat before. 
Gee, look at that, that's when I still had my wedding weight off... now it's totally back on again, stupid thyroid...

Fall time is pumpkin time. And also time for lots and lots of fruit.. and some catching up with Lost. I only now got into that show, 10 years after it came out.

We finished our Tetris shelves! So cool! They don't match up in some areas, we're both no mathematicians, I guess, but they still rock our living room annd we finally have some space to put all of our DVDs and BluRays and games and lots of other stuff.

I also went to 2 Dawanda workshops this month. The first was the long night of diy. I told you about last years diy night here. This year was a little less exciting, we made pillow cases with a chalk paint stencil on it with Burda and bags out of old t-shirts.
The second workshop was much more exciting and you can read all about it here.

There was music as well.
~ I got to enjoy the fabulous Alice Sara Ott and Francesco Tristane perform Scandale at the infamous Berghain. 5/5 Bazooka points for awesome fingerwork!
~ Talisco are the new hot shit in the music world! Check them out. 4/5 Bazooka Points, but only cause I had some stupid fucker chain smoking right in front of me during the show.