A Geeky Crafty Holiday

I love this time of year because the holidays give you a legitimate reason to make/create stuff; stuff that you wouldn't have an excuse to make during any other time of year.

I started out the month of December by making a Wreath of Khan for my front door.  I saw one last year going around Pinterest, but it was just a plain green wreath with a couple of pictures of Khan scotch taped to it.  I thought I could do it better and make it match my snowy snowflake snowman décor.

I used a tutorial I found on Pinterest for a basic yarn wreath.  I loved this technique. Wrapping yarn around Styrofoam is quite relaxing and meditative.

I then cut out some pictures of Khan, glued them to glittery snowflakes, and then topped it all off with a Spock snowman ornament that I found on Etsy. 

One of the offices I work at has an ugly sweater contest every year.  I had my heart set on a sweater I saw on Amazon (a sloth wearing a Santa Hat), but it was sold out completely by Cyber Monday so I decided to make a sweater instead.  

I started out with a plain black sweater.  Since I’m geeky and love word play (note The Wreath of Khan above)  I designed a Dalek the Halls sweater. 

The nice part about the sweater was that it was supposed to be bad so if I messed something up, all the better.  The hardest part was getting the lights to stay peeking through the larger holes in the sweater. Duct tape and wire were needed.  I made the Dalek and holly out of felt and used safety pins to adhere everything to the sweater, including the fuzzy puff balls that my cat became obsessed with.

I didn’t win the contest,but it didn’t matter, because I had a fun time making something. Also how often do you get to wear a sweater with lights, a dalek with reindeer antlers and jingle bells to work?

I had a few friends over this year to decorate Ninja Bread Cookies. My fine motor skills are not the best.  I tried to make Agent Mae fighting Evil Agent Mae/Agent 33 (thanks Liz for giving me the idea).

The other girls had some nice gingerbread men skills.

Picture by Taryn Kearsley

Picture by Liz Mocelo

We also made ornaments/decorations. Each girl made something to share with the others.

I made wine cork reindeer.

I have some talented friends.

picture by Liz Mocelo

Knowing that my skills do not excel in the gingerbread arts, I almost scraped my last project of the season.  I tried to figure out how I could make a gingerbread house without actually having to build a gingerbread house.  I thought of the idea of  having a smashed gingerbread house ,because I had a feeling that is what I would have ended up with if I actually tried making one for real anyway. All I had to figure out is why the house was smashed and smash always makes me think of The Hulk. So I made a Hulk SMASH gingerbread house. 

I had a great time making geeky crafty stuff this holiday season.  Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to make next year.