craft – Casa de Berry

2017, craft, knitting, Uncategorized

Things I have made

September 14, 2017September 13, 2017by casadeberryLeave a Comment

My knitting and crocheting has been a constant this year, often with miss Cherry Bo by my side while I count rows and track patterns. With autumn a week away (at least on the calendar, since we are gong to hit 80+ degrees this week) I started working on my family’s cold-weather accessories.

Despite my constant feeling that I need more hours in the day to work on my projects, I am pretty happy with the items I have been able to make so far this year.

What was supposed to be a Christmas 2016 present ended up being a January 2017 gift instead when the original was ruined due to being much too over sized and my own frustration – in the end, however, both Steve and I were happy with the results:

ocasey

This is a very comfortable sweater, in the squishiest yarn ever (Knit Picks City Tweed) and he’s worn it proudly several times.

For myself, I made a sweater by one of my favorite designers – I had bought the yarn at Michaels and the sweater is just lovely to wear, very cozy.

meara

However, I will say that two of my favorite pieces are the sweaters I’ve made for my boys in their beloved green.

I love the fact that living in Wisconsin as we do now, I can make them these sweaters that will actually get worn.

I’ve also made some lighter tops as layering pieces for myself:

as well as various hats, scarves, and mittens.

I’m currently working on a cardigan for myself and have made a couple of winter hats but I’d like to make a few more scarves and hats for the boys and Steve. I usually have three or four projects that I work on at any time, and wish for more hours in the day to finish them!

If you’d like to see all my projects and works in progress, I track them all on Ravelry.

2016, costume, craft, decor, halloween, holiday, october, parties

Our Halloween Bash

October 31, 2016October 31, 2016by casadeberry1 Comment

This is the first time we have a) thrown a Halloween party, and b) co-hosted an event with another couple. Our friends J & H are pretty awesome people — and she knits, like me, so you know she’s cool — and we decided to combine our party lists and have a joint bash at our house.

If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen several of the details Steve has made, and it was pretty cool to see our decor “in action” during the party.

Now, let us welcome you to our party:

We chose a pretty iconic couple as our costumes:

Our boys were Sans from Undertale and a (not so) terrifying T-Rex:

Our guests ranged from Futurama characters to the villainous Joker, to Luigi and Diet Coke to Khal Drogo and his beloved Khaleesi. We also had Egyptian royalty, Indiana Jones, Nemo, Harry Potter, mad scientists, Frankenstein and his bride, groovy chicks, Miss Scarlet in the library with the rope, the Tardis, Walter Sobchak, Rosie the Riveter, and many other friends who made our party so much fun.

Word has it that the mysterious Lord Stonehouse, ancient owner of our home, made an appearance at midnight, but it remains a rumor.

Steve worked super hard to transform our home and I think he did an amazing job, and H made delicious food for everyone to fill their bellies – thanks to everyone, friends old and new, for coming to our party!

2016, costume, craft, halloween, husband, movies, october

How Steve made the Gipsy Danger costume

October 19, 2016by casadeberry4 Comments

A few of you have asked how Steve made our son’s costume from the movie Pacific Rim – I asked him to write down an overview of the process.

Disclaimer 1 – he’s not a newbie. He’s been making costumes for a few years now and while some of the techniques were new to him, he’s always been good at putting things together. There is no way I could make something like this. I can sew and knit and make jewelry, but I’ve never made stuff like this.

Disclaimer 2 – he’ll be traveling for work in the upcoming days and won’t be available for any further or more detailed explanation. There are a lot of good tutorials on YouTube for building armor like this out of foam, and some cosplayers are very good at sharing their techniques as well.

Here it goes:

I started the build using a program called pepakura that ‘unwraps’ 3D images into their component sections. There is an artist on http://www.therpf.com which is the Replica Props Forum – a home for cosplay and movie prop reproductions. He ‘built’ the model for Gypsy Danger and I used this to print out the helmet. I printed it on cardstock and assembly was pretty easy with hot glue.

Once I had a basic shape and size for the helmet, I then used EVA foam mats which are the anti-fatigue floor mats that you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes or other home-improvement stores. If you find these on sale, STOCK UP! They aren’t cheap and you will go through them… I cut the foam mats into parts and bits and used hot glue to bond them. Almost all of this was done by eye. I wasn’t going for an EXACT duplicate of the movie, but a close approximation.

Here is someone that did a complete screen-accurate build – http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=191528&p=3267895&viewfull=1#post3267895

I followed many of the online tutorials for cosplay armor of Master Chef (Halo), Iron Man, and a few others. The real key is using a heat gun (not a blow dryer or embossing tool but the actual ~$30 one you buy at the hardware store) to heat mold parts into curves.

For the lights, I bought some very cheap book-lights from a Dollar Store. I glued these in place with hot-glue.

I sealed the foam with a glue wash (50% white glue / 50% water) for some sections and spray rubber (FlexiSeal or equivalent) for other spots that I needed to cover some bad seams with filler. Then I painted the entire thing in a base coat of exterior latex paint. This gives the armor a consistent and smooth coating. Over that, I used auto-body spray paint that had a slight metallic reflection. The movie Gypsy Danger was more of a naval battleship blue, but my son wanted it more metallic.

The visor was a bit of yellow plastic sheeting from the old-school notebook dividers that one uses in primary school – Like these – http://www.staples-3p.com/s7/is/image/Staples/s0204755_sc7?$splssku$

Under the entire suit, he wore a black turtleneck and black stretchpants that I picked up at the sporting goods store. While I was there, I spotted some Lacrosse gloves that were close to Gypsy Danger’s gauntlets, so I grabbed them (most expensive part of this build) and painted them the same way as the rest of the costume.

Also for the chest, I used an old CPU fan and powered it with a 9V battery so it would spin. 🙂

The build took me about 50 hours over the course of 2 weeks and I didn’t finish until the Halloween Morning. But I was learning through trial and error and that cost me a lot of time.

All the best!!!

Steve

2014, birthdays, boys, craft, february, parties

Aidan’s Skylanders Birthday Party

February 25, 2014March 6, 2014by casadeberry1 Comment

Tomorrow is our oldest’s birthday, he is turning nine and we couldn’t be prouder of what a wonderful boy he is. He requested a Skylanders party, and he asked that it be on his birth month, so we held the party last Sunday. We were lucky to have wonderful weather that day so most of the festivities took place in our backyard.

Games:
We decided to have a couple of games that would appeal to a variety of ages – we chose darts and a ball toss. Steve (of course) created the game boards:

I had purchased a set of decals specifically for the ball toss board, which ended up looking like this:

The darts board:

Set up in the backyard

And with balloons:

Piñata:
Aidan requested villain Kaos as the piñata and Steve obliged:

I helped a bit with the black robe but most of it was Steve’s work.

Cake:
Aidan chose the Skylanders portal of power as his cake design. It was Steve’s first time working with fondant, and he knocked it out of the park with the detailing:

Aside from the cake, we also had sheep and water cupcakes 😀

Kids could earn coins from games and the piñata loot, and then buy various items from “Portal Master Aidan’s Trading Post”:

The items corresponded to the elements in the game, i.e. candy eggs and LifeSavers for Life, gummy worms for Undead, Pop Rocks for Magic, bubbles and whistles for Air, etc.

Kids big and small had a great time and even some grown-ups ended up trying the games later on.

Steve says goodbye to his creation 😀

Our boy had a great time playing with friends and family, and so did we. As tired as we are the day of (I got one hour of sleep the night before) and after, we truly love throwing parties and having people over. Steve did a great job on everything and we were both happy how the party turned out. Of course, we’re planning the next thing already, but we’ll take a couple of days to enjoy the “party afterglow”.

2013, costume, craft, halloween, husband

Labor of Love

November 1, 2013by casadeberry21 Comments

Because, in the end, that’s what it was.

My husband Steve has been making costumes, piñatas, and cakes for his boys for the past few years. I figure we are close to the time when our kids, or at least our oldest, won’t want a homemade costume any more. Maybe that won’t happen, but I will always remind my kids that the endless hours spent in the garage, the numerous trips to Home Depot or Lowe’s to replace a dead part or buy more X-Acto blades, was all worth it the moment they saw their costume and the smile reached all the way up to their eyes.

Credit goes mostly to Steve, of course, who is given a challenge and decides to knock it out of the park, but to the people that help in different ways – Gran, who came over and painted and glued and kept Steve company until 4 in the morning one night. Grandpa, who goes to every school parade to cheer on his grandsons, and who helps them get ready in the classroom.

Yeah. By the way, those are penlights 😀

Our boy at his school parade:

Side and back views of Gipsy Danger:

(by the way, our son’s sweetheart is somewhere on these pics, but I didn’t tell you that – sshhhhhh!)

Steve also made the call to go to Aidan’s karate studio party in the afternoon. He was desperately wanting sleep but Aidan was very excited about going, so daddy went, too:

My friend J’s daughter and Gipsy Danger had a lot to discuss:

There was a costume contest, and my boy posed and flexed for the judges.

There was a little drama around trick-o-treating time, but all was well in the end, and now my dining room table is full of Gipsy Danger parts. We’ll save the head, of course, for our (someday) Hall of Fame. Aidan loves the gloves he wore as part of the costume so those are being worn today 😀

My husband’s dedication to making our boys’ lives magical is definitely something I am thankful for.

2013, costume, craft, halloween, husband

More costume progress pics!

October 29, 2013October 28, 2013by casadeberryLeave a Comment

Or, as I wanted to title this post, “I used to have a green bowl”

But it was meant for a greater destiny

Steve has been coming home after long hours at work, and then putting in long hours into making this costume for our oldest:

His mom has been helping him, and we went paint shopping yesterday:

Our boy has been very patient trying things on:

Again and again

Now, if you saw the movie you’ll probably recognize the costume. Otherwise, you’ll have to be told what it is, like I was 😀

Two more days, people!

2013, boys, costume, craft, halloween, husband

The guessing game begins

October 16, 2013October 15, 2013by casadeberry3 Comments

My husband has started work on our oldest’s Halloween costume. It is pretty darn awesome so far – here’s a (tiny) sneak peek!

Here are a few of the costumes we have made in the past:

Aidan as Drago from Bakugan

Alex as Wubbzy

Alex as Godzilla

Aidan as the Xenomorph from Alien

Most of the work here is Steve’s. I sewed the wings for Drago and made the Wubbzy outfit while Steve painted the face on it and shaped the tail. Everything else was done 100% by him. Long hours of work, lots of attention to detail, lots of love for his sons to have a great costume. Most of the time he stays up the night before Halloween to make sure every detail is perfect, and then gets rewarded by the boys’ excitement in wearing their fab costumes at their school parades.

It has worked so far that whenever one of our boys wants a homemade costume, the other wants a store-bought one, so when Alex was Godzilla, Aidan was Captain America. Last year Alex wanted to be a monkey so we got his costume from Old Navy. This year, he wants to be a monkey again, which makes it easier on Steve 😀

I’ll be posting more sneak peeks of Aidan’s costume as progress is made!

2013, craft, outdoors

Bird Buffet

July 8, 2013by casadeberry3 Comments

We’ve prettified our back fence, and it was time to share some summer goodness with our lovely bird friends. After all, they brighten our lives with their singing, it seemed a fair trade off to give them some food and water.

Our oldest chose a feeder the hummingbirds could not possibly miss:

We’ve had lots of visitors since putting it up. I took a great picture of one drinking, but we hang up our laundry to dry and some of my delicates were in the background and as much as I like to share with y’all, I’m not sharing pictures of my underwear.

My youngest chose patriotic colors for a little birdhouse – it lives on the fence, near our flower pot frames.

He was very interested in that bird seed!

Alex and Steve getting another bird house ready:

Isn’t it pretty?

Steve hung the white bird house and the hummingbird feeder away from the windows so we can see the birdies feasting:

Our backyard is now not only full of color, but full of movement and music with the birds flying in for their refreshments all day. We had a lovely weekend, hanging out together as a family and working on little projects.

Wishing you all a wonderful Monday!

2013, craft, mom

Colorful cupcake stands

May 10, 2013May 9, 2013by casadeberry1 Comment

This year I am missing my mama. She is in Peru, spending time with friends and family until next month so a mother’s day phone call will have to do. Still, I decided to do a little crafty goodness with some pieces I’d had for a while and set up a colorful table.

The pretty purple flowers grow in our front yard so they came in handy. The three little stands were made from plain wood circles and candle holders from Michaels.

Isn’t my mama stylish in her red wedges, summery white pants and peasant top?

I don’t remember this picture at all, she found it last year and gave it to me in the little frame.

I painted the candle holders in different colors, gold, mocha and pale pink (actually Valspar’s Apricot Ice, which my youngest chose), and cut out circles from 3 coordinating scrapbooking papers for the tops:

I hadn’t planned on the papers to coordinate with the flowers but that’s how it worked out!

So, happy mother’s day, mama, I can’t wait to see you in a few weeks!

2013, craft, kitchen, under 5

Stencils + Sharpies = Lovely Dish Towels

April 12, 2013April 13, 2013by casadeberry4 Comments

A few weeks ago I bought a set of stencils for super cheap. I think it was $3 or so. Mainly because the front stencil was of a fleur-de-lis, of course. I started on a flour sack towel I had leftover from another project.

I was pretty happy with my first effort and since our new range has a handle for towels on the oven door, that’s where this pretty towel went:

I also love the look of Moroccan tiles, so I chose the stencil that looked most like a similar tile to me:

I did these in the dark red color and really like them:

I just eyeballed it and didn’t measure the spacing or center, it was my first try and I just wanted to see how this went — and I’m really happy with the results. A super easy craft, under $5 per towel. Incidentally, I saw a deal on Tuesday of two towels for $35, with the same image as I used on my first flour sack towel project. Pretty crazy, huh?

Have a great weekend!