Mother’s Day Dahlia

Okay, okay, so Mother’s Day has come and gone. Like, several months gone.  But I posted earlier about what I did for Father’s Day, so it only seemed fair to share what I did for my mother.

I wish I could claim this was my idea, but it wasn’t! It came from Megan Reardon of not martha. She posted a lovely (and very detailed!) tutorial on how to make these over at Holidash. She used a thicker red felt for her tutorial, but I chose to go with a slightly thinner purple (mostly because it was what I had!).  This was fairly labor intensive but I just love how it came out.  I even did a little personalizing on the back:

And here it is on the mom herself!

I liked how it came out so much that I made another one for myself! I’ve put mine on a barrette so I can wear it in my hair. It is kinda big though – it’s more like a small hat than a barrette!

Secret Stash Objects

For Father’s Day this year, my dad announced he wanted a Kindle.  Now, this is actually a bit unusual for him.  Usually he asks for things like “more time with you kids” or “my car needs vacuuming.”  So to have him actually want something specific was remarkable.  Which also meant, of course he was going to get it.  We all chipped in for it, but we still felt like he should have a few more things to unwrap.  My brother got him a really nice leather case for it.  And I got him a book.

It may seem an odd choice. But my dad has worked for insurance companies all of his professional life. He was a little surprised to see this after he’d asked for a Kindle (even made a half hearted “Wow, this is, really, uh, nice”), but then he opened the book past the first few pages and realized what it was:

And then he just laughed. Mostly with relief that we hadn’t bought him some clunky insurance book for Father’s Day.  It’s a Kindle disguise!  This way he can take the Kindle with him to work and make it look like he is reading something official and important while devouring the latest mystery or thriller of his choice.  I’d meant to take more in production shots of it while I was working on it, but I forgot until I was nearly done.  The process is remarkably simple.  To find some directions, I just googled “hollow book” and got lots and lots of choices.  I mostly followed these directions with a few modifications:

1.  I used PVA instead of Elmers glue.  It is acid free and intended for use with paper and books.  I still mixed it 50/50 with water.  And a small amount was plenty.

2. After gluing all the edges, insert a piece of waxed paper between the glued pages and the rest of the book.  This will keep the whole thing from sticking together while it dries and avoids the use of spacers.  Also, because the book is pressed truly flat as it dries, there is little to no warping of the pages.  I left mine glued for about an hour before I went back to it.

3. I also used a big blade and not a little exacto knife for the cutting. However, I used a proper box cutter (you can see part of it in the photo above) and not one of  those with the break away blades.  Those just aren’t sturdy enough in my opinion.  Also, I didn’t glue another page onto the top of my stack.  I just erased the marks I’d left and it looked fine.

As a further present, I’d tucked an amazon.com giftcard inside so he could buy some actual ebooks to go on his Kindle.  He seemed quite pleased with the whole thing.  And the Kindle fit!  Well, mostly. I’d gotten the specs for it off the website and left a little room to be generous.  And it was just right as far as length and width.  I did have to make it a little deeper (the Kindle is fatter in person), but that was an easy fix.

I knew today was the day to blog about this when I was reading my boingboing feed this morning.  They posted about  Yiting Cheng’s “Secret Stash” project.  As they said, it’s “a series of everyday objects modified to include clever little hiding places”:

Brilliant!  This takes the idea of hiding in plain sight to a whole new level.  There is an awesome little video about the work here.

[via boingboing]