Lumpy Space Pillow

Next to Bob's Burgers, which is awesome btw, our favorite show to watch for breakfast on the weekend is Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. On of my favorite characters from this show is Lumpy Space Princess or in short LSP.

I've been wanting to make a stuffed animal/pillow for our couch area in the living room for a while and since I bought purple plush fabric LSP was the perfect shape and colour for a first try at it.

I started by making a stencil in the shape of LSP. The shape is pretty easy to draw freehanded, I just used a picture on the internet to check how many fabulous lumps there are.

Cut out the shape twice (flip it for the second one so you get the exact shape on the same side of the fabric! I didn't do this andhad to use the not so fluffy side of the fabric for LSP's backside). Then you use a fabric of your choice for the eyes and the mouth and a golden/yellow fabric for the star on her forehead and sew these on one side of the lumpylicious shape. Above you see how it looks like sewn on from the other side.

I didn't want to buy stuffing, so I purchased a second hand stuffed animal and slaughtered it for its soft insides:

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Isn't she lumpylicious? One of many beautiful pillows to come.

And what happened to the rest of the stuffed tiger you may ask yourself? Well, the future husband needed a new hat to show off his animalistic side.

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

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

Framed Chalkboard DIY

Our kitchen has been missing a chalkboard/bulletin board for a while now. It's just nice to be able to leave a note/picture to the loved one or write down some items for the next shopping trip.Of course we have a fridge to put up notes, concert tickets and such with magnets, but it's not at eye level, so important things could be missed. I searched ebay for a used chalkboard, but no success, there were quite a few chalkboards, but they were either already gone or or too big. Most of my inquiries weren't even answered, which is pretty annoying. So we took matters in our own hands.

I decided to go with adhesive chalkboard foil instead of chalkboard paint, because it is easily removeable, easy to handle and much cheaper. The frame foils are from last years secret santa with the girls. We had a recycle secret santa where everyone brought something they don't use (anymore), but is still good or even new. I think they're from Ikea originally. I used the big frame, that's made up of 2 L shapes and used 4 of them to create a square shape.

 

The chalkboard foil is very easy to cut and mine even had graph paper on the back so you're able to cut a straight line without using a ruler.

I lined up the 4 L shaped frame foils around the square chalboard foil. The only way to do this with the ikea frames I used was to overlap the two ends of each L with the next one, otherwise the foils do not align.

The future husband got to draw on our new chalkboard first. Too bad I had to wipe off the cute dinosaur to prepare the chalkboard for the obligatory instagram post:

Well, I'm pretty sure there are more dinosaurs and other silly things to come. Looking forward to the fun this chalkboard will bring us.

This post will be part of the Creadienstag.

Shelfies!

Shelves are pretty great. They let you store things vertically as high as you want. Since we got rid of most of our furniture in Munich the need for shelves was great. Good thing my brother had these corner shelves lying around. Of course they needed some upcycling.
Once the space for the shelves was picked out I chose a colour to go with our couches and blankets.

The most annoying part about revamping furniture is the preparation. Cleaning the boards and sanding them down.
After that I mixed the paint, a lovely piggy pink in pastel.
Before and after. I'm always amazed what a bit of colour can do to a piece of furniture. The poles were left as they were in a silvery grey which actually matches our window frames.
And here it is in its natural habitat. By now it is hosting our stereo and vinyls and a few other things that are handy to have next to the couches.
Soon I'll write about our big shelf project on the opposite site of the couches, it'll be great!

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

Picturesque Month ~ 01'14

Remember the Picturesque Friday? Well, Steffi from Ohhh...Mhhh... decided that it's time for new features for her blog and sacked it. But I'll revive the picture sharing by giving you a review of the past month every month (if I remember).
Let's start it off with some Sherlock Goodness:

~ no better way to start off the new year by watching the new episode of Sherlock Season 3
~ the future husbands christmas gift coupon needed to be cashed in and we got ourselves the Sherlock Cluedo, so far Mycroft has always been the killer
~ because Cumberbatch in HD, that's why

~ what would Bazooka Crafts be without its crafts, check out the awesome chrochet snowflake garland I made for wintertime
~ the Christmas tree needed to go, so turned it into some Space Invaders
~ I made my very own LSP cuddle pillow, making of coming soon

~ wintertime sunset view over the subway station and the Berlin airport from our balcony
~ my favorite winter fruits: lychees
~ my very own weirwood; the future husband and I are huge fans of game of thrones (books+show)

~ Berlin is pretty ugly in winter, or is it ugly pretty? At Schlesisches Tor.
~ icy river Spree and a glimpse of my work building
~ opposite view of the river, nicest bridge in town I think. At Oberbaumbrücke.

~ our windows in froze last week when it was -15°C, looked pretty cool

All in all my January was pretty uneventful, shoulda coulda done more, especially in preparation for our wedding in June, but I'm still sort of calm about that.

Cheers,
Anni

Crochet Snowflake Garland

First of all a Happy New Year to you! We survived the Holidays & had a chill New Years Eve with boardgames and cheese fondue. To calm down in the evenings of the pre-christmas madness at work I crocheted a bunch of yarn snowflakes inspired by this tutorial. I didn't follow the tutorial 100% and they still came out fine, I just kindof started and made up my own pattern in my head that I followed for the rest of the snowflakes, if that makes any sense...

They came out looking like this, which was also fine because I had planned to make them stiff with starch for a door wreath.

So I drenched them in starch and layed them out on some transparent plastic foil to protect the table.

Two days later they were completely dry and stiff and the layed around for a couple of more days till I figured out how to arrange them as a door wreath. I couldn't find a good way to make a wreath so I decided to make a garland instead attaching both two and one arm of the flakes to a string of yarn. The yarn is attached to the sides of our apartment door to the hallway with tape.
Mkay, let's hope this year will be a good one. With many crafty projects, lots of wedding preparations (next wedding post coming soon!) and lots of love & fun & excitement.
Wishing you a good one!

Our Pixel Christmas Tree

Our first christmas tree is not standing in our living room, it is taped to the wall! We don't really have room for a real tree in our living room, but I still wanted to have some sort of nice decoration for our first christmas at home. When we lived in Munich we were always away for christmas so I never bothered with any decoration, but now we're at home and to get into the spirit I thought up an easy way to get a tree into the house.

I used three different kinds of paper, one very thick, almost cardboard like dark green and two shades of thin see-through greens. To give the shape more substance I taped a strip of christmasy masking tape under each line of paper squares. I then used the same masking tape to stick the paper squares to the wall attaching it in a way that the see-through bits always went up and out.

The tree is attached to the wall opposite to our couch island and next to the tv above our entertainment shelves. There are already two presents under our tree, one from me and one from the future husband. I'm very excited for our first christmas at home and so glad that we don't have to be on the autobahn for hours this year. The small christmas decoration in the teapot on the right was made by my mom. It's pretty cool too.

Have a very nerdy Merry Christmas!

This post will be part of the Creadienstag.

The Hobbit 2 ~ The European Premiere Part II + Give-Away

After my report of all the red carpet action here's the physical goodies I received that night of the European Premiere of The Desolation of Smaug.
Let's start with the autographs:

Since I work at Universal Music I got to order the Soundtrack on day one of the release and was able to take it to the red carpet to sign. It's something different from just a picture, I guess. It got kind of beaten up that night, but I'm still going to find a special place ion our apartment to display it. I'm actually listening to the soundtrack of the movie right now to get me in the mood for watching it this afternoon with my future husband.
Signatures from left to right on top: Aidan Turner(actor: Kili) - Philippa Boyens (writer/producer) - Martin Freeman (actor: Bilbo Baggins)
Bottom left to right: Luke Evans (actor: Bard the Bowman) - Richard Armitage (actor: Thorin Oakenshield)

When the soundtrack got kind of full of signatures I brought out my stack of printed out pictures.

Here I got Andy Serkis the actor of Gollum/Smeagol.

And this signature is from Peter Jackson, my personal Lord of the Rings.

Here's my Facebook Fan Area gear, thanks again to the future husband for giving me his place which got me in second row in front of the red carpet even though I only got there 2 hours ahead. They also gave us smartphone gloves to always update our facebook statuses even in the cold.

And this is very unspectacular my Golden Ticket to the European Premiere of The Hobbit. The only way you can really tell is the date on it, but it brought me oh so much joy. It really still is a mystery to me how I got one, because the fans that got them were interviewed on their costumes and how far away they came from and how long they were waiting and I had nothing like that to show really.

Inside the movie theatre there were champagne and snacks to enjoy before the movie started with all the other lucky people to attend the premiere. There were screens to watch the rest of the action above, the cast and crew standing on the balcony to take pictures and thank the fans. I got to gulp down one glass of champagne and then it was already time to head inside the movie theatre.
And then shock, where the hell is my ticket? I almost dumped out my whole bag before I found it again. That would have been just too bad, losing the ticket right before the movie. When I got in the movie had already started and when I found myself a seat and sat down I felt something underneath me. A box, the one in the picture above. Good thing I didn't squish it under my big butt sitting down. I put it under my seat to look at after the movie.

And this is what I found inside. A snack mix prepared my Air New Zealand with Middle Earth inspired snacks.
In case anyone might ask. No, I didn't sit inside the movie theatre with all the stars. I doubt most of them even watched the movie there, as they all have been to the World Premiere a week ahead and probably seen it already. Also there were about 8 theatres in the cinema that showed the film at the same time. Actually the theatre which I sat in wasn't even full of people, so knowing that I'm not so surprised I got a ticket and a little sad they didn't give out more as there was clearly more room for other waiting fans outside.
I'm really glad the movie was shown in English with subtitles, I would have hated my first impression of the new movie to be with fake German dubbing. German movies are dubbed really well, but I haven't been watching dubbed movies for like 5 years and it takes away so much of the original acting for me.

After the movie was over everyone got a Goodie bag with a mini fugure, a coin, a note pad and a small year calender. Umm... I took like 4 Goodie bags... don't judge me... I like stuff.

These are the four mini figures I got.

And the four coins from the goodie bag were also not enough for me. Walking out of the cinema there were bunches of people gathered around the dragon taking pictures and stuffing their pockets with the coins laying around the bottom of the dragon's treasure. So I stuffed my bags as well. Naturally.

But I'm not greedy, I would love to give away some of my awesome goodies.
One lucky Winner of my Give-Away will receive a Hobbit Notepad, a mini picture calendar (the one with Legolas) and two Golden Coins.
And three other lucky people will receive one Golden Coin each!

Here's what you have to do to enter my Give-Away:
Follow my blog on GFC, Bloglovin, Blog-Connect or Facebook.
Then leave me a comment telling me about your favorite character or scene from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Leave me you Email-Adress as well in case you win!

This Give-Away will end on December 26th. Good Luck!

Spoiler Alert!
PS: My favorite scene from the movie is the one with Smaug covered in molten gold, so awesome! And I love the scene where Legolas makes fun of Gloins wee lad Gimli, heart melting for LotR fans.