DIY – Page 8 – Travelcraft Journal

November 25, 2015October 17, 2024

DIY Holiday Spice Mix

I have a present for you.

I’m going to give you the (up until now) secret holiday spice mix recipe I created myself. It was part of a set I made for family gifts one year and sold at a fundraiser another.

I looked at combinations of spices in some our favorite dishes and cuisines, found commonalities and experimented until I had the proportions just right for a delicious and versatile blend.

I’ve substituted it for pumpkin pie spice, including when I made pumpkin pie from scratch. It would be fabulous in spice cookies or sprinkled over a whipped-cream-topped dessert. You can use it to make chai or Mexican hot chocolate, or add a dash when you brew your morning coffee for pumpkin spice without all the sugar.

It even works with some savory dishes. Think Indian curries or Morrocan chicken with raisins.

Fill up a spice jar and tie with a ribbon or some baker’s twine, and give it as a hostess or holiday gift. There will be printable labels for this in an upcoming issue of our newsletter (before Christmas), so make sure you’re on the list!

Ingredients:

1.5 TBSP Ground Cardamom
6 TBSP Cinnamon
1.5 TBSP Ground Clove
3 TBSP Ground Ginger

Mix well and use as needed.

Makes approximately 3/4 cup (12 TBSP), about enough for 2 small spice jars. Give one and keep one. Or increase the recipe to make additional batches.

November 9, 2015November 1, 2015

A Fish Called Frida

This is Frida. We realized after naming Frida that the colorful Bettas with the long tails are actually males. But I’m pretty sure fish don’t care about our gender norms.

After some research I learned that (a) Bettas like having plants in their tank – both to hide in and to keep the water oxygenated (b) they can tear their fins on plastic plants (c) they can coexist with live pothos plants. There are other plants that are even more recommended for fish tanks, but I thought I’d start with what I have and add a pothos cutting to the tank. Frida likes to swim around it and sleep on top of a leaf near the surface like it’s a hammock.

Bettas are more interactive than a lot of fish. They notice you and recognize the people that feed them, doing a little happy/feed me dance when you walk by.

I seriously didn’t know one little fish could make me smile so much.

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October 5, 2015December 12, 2017

Quick Bedroom Upgrade: Line Dresser Drawers with Wrapping Paper

A photo posted by stephanieliebold (@stephanieliebold) on Jun 9, 2013 at 8:58pm PDT

I was putting laundry away and decided I’d had it with my underwear drawer. It had become an overstuffed catch-all for camis and jammies, briefs and bras, swimsuits and socks, unmentionables and mentionables, all mingled together in a messy jumble. I re-homed, re-arranged and got rid of everything that didn’t belong in there.

The unfinished wood at the bottom of the drawer seemed a little too rough for my delicates, so I started looking around the house for a quick fix.

What turned out to be perfect was this colorful striped wrapping paper.

I cut it to size, folded the uneven edge, and secured it with masking tape.

That’s it. And, 2 years later, it’s still in tact and in place – even after our recent move.

You could use odd-sized paper ends for smaller drawers (nightstand? desk?) or even reuse paper from presents you’ve unwrapped to smooth out all your dresser drawers and make your laundry day a little brighter.

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PS I was messing around with creating a page that makes it easier to find posts from my Instagrams, and I forgot that those posts would also go in my RSS. So if you noticed a bunch of random photos with dates as the title on our Facebook or in your inbox (if you subscribe), that’s all that’s about.

August 31, 2015January 3, 2018

Grandma’s Sunburn Remedy

I sunburn easily.

I blame my genes. Basically, I descend from a mélange of peoples, who, I assume, just kept walking north until they got to the regions of Europe that were cold and cloudy enough not to punish their pallid skin.

Generations later, I was born in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, wearing the maladapted melanin of my kin. Here, summer rays can be intense enough to burn a Celtic lass like me within 10 minutes.

My grandma used to tell me to put vinegar on sunburns. “The sooner the better,” she’d say. Being a teenager, I’d roll my eyes and/or ignore her advice.

Then, after one sunburn that left my skin ablaze like a village after a Viking* raid, I finally gave in and tried it. The pain was gone almost instantly. I did smell like vinegar, but I had no intentions of going back outside anytime soon anyway.

Now I wear a moisturizer with sunscreen in it daily. If I do get a sunburn, I have no problem reaching for the vinegar and gently daubing some on. Totally worth smelling like a salad dressing (or maybe a jar of pickles) for a few hours.

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*I also have Viking ancestors. I like to think of them as not the village-destroying type, though. Maybe horned-hat-wearing and fierce – like you wouldn’t want to mess with them – yet somehow kind hearted. (This may not be historically accurate.)

August 3, 2015March 1, 2022

DIY Quilling Tool

Sometimes you have to get creative to get creative. Like with our monthly CraftHack meetups – they’re free, so that pushes us to be resourceful when it comes to providing materials and supplies.

Robin Corey volunteered to do last month’s demo on paper quilling, a technique that involves winding strips of paper around a tool to get spiral shapes.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Robin Corey (@rrcorey)

While you can buy a quilling tool for around 8 bucks, ordering 20 for a free class would get pretty pricey.

She found a super solution buried in her Pinterest boards: make your own from a cork and a tapestry needle. Basically, stick the needle in the center of the cork and glue it, cut off the top with wire cutters, file any sharp edges, and you have a super inexpensive tool that makes winding strips of paper for quilling easy.

She made about 20 of them for less than the cost of buying just one, and we all got to take one home for future projects.

PS If you live in Phoenix and like to make stuff, make sure you’re planning to come to Craft Camp this Saturday!
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