This is best made the day before you plan on wowing the world with your mad dip-mixing skillz, as it allows time for the mixing and softening of the … I don’t really know why, it just tastes better the second day.

You’ll need – 4 Red Peppers, One 500ml container of sour cream, 1 small jar of mayonnaise, 2 Tbsp dried parsley, 1 Tbsp dill weed, 2 cloves of garlic, Salt and pepper to taste

1. Realize it is one hour before all the stores close on thanksgiving weekend and panic while you run out the door for ingredients, forgetting the grocery list so you have to return home to get it. This step is not required, but it makes the process more exciting.

2. Realize all your knives are in the dishwasher. Wash one off, cut off the tops of the peppers and remove the seeds. Slice peppers in half.

3. Roast peppers on a baking sheet with melted butter drizzled on top at 350 degrees until the skin starts to blacken. The internet says roasting a pepper should take 20 minutes, but it took about an hour in my oven, so what does the internet know. It needs to be pretty soft and if the skins are a bit black all over it makes it easier to peel off later. I have actually done this in the toaster oven before and it works fine.

4. Mix all other ingredients in a big bowl. No, a bigger bowl. If you think your bowl is big enough, go one size bigger.

5. Cool off the peppers, if you like your fingers. If not, go ahead and burn them off while handling hot peppers. Peel the skin off the peppers as best you can. Try not to think of how they look like prune-y feet that have been in the bath too long.

6. Dump the peeled peppers in the bowl and mix with one of those stick blendy things. You know what I mean, right? Here I’ll show you.. It’s gloopy from the dip, but I hope you can see what I mean…

(Stick Blender Thingy)

7. The dip will turn pink when you do this. Mix until you see no pepper chunks and the dip is a consistent colour. Taste test and add more garlic if it “needs something.”

8. Find something to dip in the dip. Fingers work, but the guests look at you funny if you do that, so maybe use pumpernickel bread cut into cubes, pita or naan wedges.

9. Sit back and enjoy your new status as king or queen of the world.

We’ll start with an easy project, but something you need to get started making early since you have to make so many.

For our wedding favours we decided to make coasters for each guest to take home – 2 per guest or four per couple so that even people who came without a date would still have a matching set. We were told that if you have good wedding favours you will have none left over after the wedding and we think we did okay because there weren’t any left for us – I had to make some more for ourselves later.

The coasters we made from bathroom tiles from the hardware store. A box of 75 tiles cost about $70, giving us a final price of about $2 per guest. We bought 5 boxes and tried to carry them home ourselves since we only live across the street. Don’t do that. They are damn heavy. We almost died.

The only thing else we needed to buy was a roll of cork lining. Then came the fun task of cutting 1400 cork circles – one for each corner of 350 stone coasters. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. I had a cork cutter from work, but a 3/4″ punch would work well – or you could cut grids and use square feet for the coasters.

Here’s where hubby-to-be comes in. You can either use the “if you loved me, you’d do this for us” or “you can either do this or sign all the thank you cards by yourself,” but whichever you choose, set him up with the tiles, some epoxy glue (the kind you mix together – or some other glue for tile surfaces) and the 1400 little circles. It’s better if you don’t let him see all the tiles at once, just keep bringing in more little piles, or else he may refuse at the beginning. One cirlce per tile corner and you’re good to go.

Then you can package them in little bundles of two. I printed little tags (using black chancery font – like I used for all the wedding stationary) and cut lengths of 1″ wide velvet burgundy ribbon. I attached them with antiqued brass eyelets and used the eyelets to string thin black ribbon to tie the coasters together and place them on each place setting. Ta-Dah!

Year after year I lament not having a classy way to display our incoming Christmas cards, especially since we have some pretty creative family & friends, many of whom make their own card designs that are worthy of a gallery showing. Last year I finally did something about it and now I have a place to display the cards and I have spruced up one of those annoyingly random pillars-in-the-middle-of-a-room thingies like we have in the rec room. It’s exceedingly easy, colour customizable and takes about 5 minutes.

1. Confuse or con your friend named ________ (insert gullible friend’s name here) to drive you to the craft store near your house because your sorry butt is too broke to buy a car.
2. At the craft store, spend waaaaaaay too much time browsing the stamps and eventually wander over to the discount ribbon bin. It doesn’t have to be the discount ribbon bin, that’s just where I found mine. If I had not had this ribbon already, I would have bought some of the beautiful ribbons in the new Martha Stewart line that have been highlighted on Black, White Bliss and Try This At Home recently. The ribbon I used is 3 inches wide, velvet and quite sturdy. The edges are wired, but that is not required. Any ribbon will work, as long as you like it.
3. Place the ribbon in a large plastic bin and forget about it for about two years.
4. Pull out the ribbon again and dust it off. Tie a nice puffy bow in one end of the ribbon and cut from the main roll so that both tails are even. I just used a shoelace bow, but if you are a professional bowtie-er or a Marine you might know some better bow knots to make. This one seems to work.
5. Take the remaining ribbon off the roll and let it hang. Tack one end of the ribbon strand to the back of the bow using tiny safety pins or thread. I sewed the ribbon strand onto the bow with burgundy thread and the back of it looks a little like Frankenstein’s neck (sorry.. Frankenstein’s monster’s neck) but it really doesn’t matter as long as it holds. How strong the tacking has to be depends on whether or not you have children or animals who will play the “let’s pull on this and see what it does” game.
6. Buy a roll of cork WAY too large for your project. Not sure why you need to do that, but that’s what I did so I am just writing it down with all the rest. Line your cupboards with the leftover cork.
7. 
8. Cut a long strip (or many smaller ones) equal to the length of the ribbon strand, from the bow to the floor, if you want it that long.
9. Affix this cork to the back of the ribbon strand with hot glue or some other adhesive. Don’t sew it on or the cork will just crumble. In my pictures the bow is already on the wall for this step, but only did that so I could use one hand for the pics. You can do all this on your workbench, of course.
10. 
11. Place your bow at your desired height on the wall with a tack or one of those sticky hook thingies. I don’t think “sticky hook thingy” is the official name for those things, but maybe it should be.
12. Trim the ribbon (and cork) with a V pattern at the height to which you would like it to hang under the bow. Tack the bottom of the strand and cork to the wall to keep it straight and against the wall.
13. Use tacks to tack up cards as they come in, as below. I didn’t have any cards yet, so I hung up random stuff I found for the picture. We have a lot of random stuff.

TA DA! Done. Now send me a card so I can put it up there. Um… please.

1. Go to a free font website. These websites post fonts made by up-and-coming designers and many of them can be quite good. Some of my favorites include:
http://www.fontempire.com/
http://www.1001fonts.com/index.html
http://www.getfreefonts.info/
http://www.fontstock.net/
http://www.searchfreefonts.com/fonts/p37.htm
http://www.abstractfonts.com/
http://www.fontmaniac.com/
http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.downloadfreefonts.com/
http://www.urbanfonts.com/

2. Click on the “download” button beside a font that you like and save the zip file to your desktop.

3. Once downloaded, open the zip file with winzip (or another archive unpacking program) and save the files to your desktop too.

4. Find the file with the file extension ending in TTF. This stands for true type font, the most popular type (and the only one I know how to install). Right-click on the file and “cut.”

5. Using your folder explorer go to your hard drive (usually C:) and find the folder called “WINDOWS.” Double click to open the folder and look for a file called fonts. If you get a message the first time you try to open the windows folder warning you that changing the contents of this folder could damage your operating system or something like that just click “continue anyways.” You won’t be doing anything damaging to the system.

6. Right click on the folder labelled “fonts” and go down to “paste.” Once you have pasted the TTF file on the fonts folder a little window will come up telling you it is installing the font, then it pops away after a second.

7. Open your program and make sure your new font is included in the drop-down menu.

If this doesn’t work for you or if you have any questions, fee free to contact me!

EDIT: PLEASE NOTE – for some reason, on some computers, if you extract the zip file right into the fonts folder the fonts won’t install automatically, which is why I advise unzipping to the desktop and then cutting & pasting the file into the fonts folder.

The best way to make yourself sub-conscious about your photography skills is to marry a photographer. But despite the self-doubt, there are also some upsides to having a skilled eye and a $2000 camera around the house. And you get to use the “if you can spend that much on a camera, why can’t I spend that much on a kiln?” speech. In lieu of this, I advise a digital camera at the least. They don’t cost an arm and a leg anymore; you can get a decent one for only part of a shin, maybe a tibia or two. Adam uses a Canon Digital Rebel and I also have a Panasonic Lumix for back-up (like, for when Adam is inconsiderate enough to use his own camera that he paid for when I need it) and I find I can take decent pictures with it, though it took a bit of practice to get used to composing a picture on the digital screen without the aid of a viewfinder.

But, remember, before you start shooting, put the camera strap over your head. I can’t really see how this will improve your pictures, but Adam swears the camera will blow up if I don’t have the neck strap on and swears it has nothing to do with the fact that I drop nearly everything I pick up.

There are a million articles about lighting, DIY light boxes, and how to place your products. But I have found that one of the keys to god pictures is to be careful about how you compose the final shot. The following are some different types of shots that I try to include in every listing, if possible:

The Full Product Shot
Obviously, you need to have at least one of these per listing. This is like a pictorial summary. The full item is shown, composed pleasingly, and the basic shape and form are presented.

The Macro Shot

From this shot alone it is impossible to tell what this item is. But it looks interesting and pretty curious and attractive so people will be drawn to it. I highlighted the intricate patterns of the beads, the twists of wire and the joints of branches. It doesn’t matter if I can tell what the object is at a glance because you will have at least one full product shot in your listing.

The Low Angle Shot
This shot emphasises the texture and depth of cut for this woodburned decorative map I made. Not only is it a nice looking picture, it gets you looking at the detail of the piece and makes you want to run your hands over it to feel the texture you see in the picture. This is a shot taken along the horizontal plane of the piece, either across the top or along a side, and it will not be useful for every product (such as clothing or bags) but works great for highligting the beauty of the leather covering a handbound journal, for instance, or the texture of a dynamic cabochon. Again, not evident what the full product looks like, but it will be used in conjunction with the full product shot.

The Size Comparison Shot
This can be tricky. Almost everyone seems to use money, but that is not practical on a site that caters worldwide and may be reaching buyers that are unfamiliar with the size of your money. I have also heard it said to use something from nature since that will be universal but I find it very hard to find something natural that grows or forms to a consistent size every time. Acorns, leaves, pine cones all have enough variability between individual samples that the size comparison could be misleading.

There are a few things that will be more or less consistent the world-over. A wine cork is a good bet, or sometimes even a beer cap (not recommended for selling children’s items – the beer cap might throw people off as to your true intentions).

The Product-in-Use Shot
This one is hard for me to demonstrate since my items are mostly home decor so when I take a picture of it sitting on the table that is what it looks like even when it is in use. This is more important for jewellery sellers and clothes & Accessory designers

The Shot of Your Cat Sleeping on It
Whether or not you want to, you’re bound to get at least one of these if you have a cat and look away for one second. That’s why the studio is cat-free. Well, I try to make it cat-free, but Chuki calls the shots around here so I usually have little say in the matter.

I hope these tips will help you take shots that will draw the eye to the artistry of your work and hopefully get people interested enough to want to buy it so they can see the true mastery for themselves.

1. Accidentally break the hard plastic lid of a sample jar from the lab, rendering it useless for actual sample containment. Try to break the lid on a wide-mouth, fairly stubby jar. Take the useless jar home.

2. Take apart the dot matrix printer (circa 1980) that VJ kept for no conceivable reason. Retrieve metal rods from printer interior (note: a hammer and some re-directed bitter angst about something will be needed for this step).

3. Buy some “NuLustre 55″ resin from Rona, Deck Stain aisle. After writing to the company to point out how lame the product name is, read all safety precautions on the package.

4. Go back to Rona because you forgot to buy epoxy that will work on glass surfaces. Get sidetracked by the unfinished furniture aisle and buy a really cute bench for your front entrance. Try to explain to your husband why the glue you went to get cost $100 and needs to be assembled. Convince husband to assemble the bench, while you go back to your bead spinner.5. In a disposable container, mix 1-2 tablespoons of the resin in the NuLustre kit with 1-2 tablespoons of the hardener, also in the kit. The amount depends on your container size – you will want about an inch of resin in the bottom of the jar. You must have the EXACT same amount of each, so the “around that much” measurements you usually employ for cooking will not work. If you use measuring spoons or cups for this step, DON’T use those cups or spoons for food again, unless you don’t mind growing a mutant arm out of your neck. I know that sounds cool, but trust me, it isn’t.

6. Mix the resin and hardener VERY well with something you will not use for food in the future. A Popsicle stick – after you eat the Popsicle, of course – is perfect for this, and you get to eat a Popsicle too, so bonus!

7. Pour the resin mix into the bottom of the jar. Then stand the metal rod from the printer up in the jar and secure in position with tape. Then use more tape. Then, because it is still tipping to one side, use more tape. In fact, just use the whole roll. You’ll end up using it all anyways.

8. Allow the resin to dry over night with the stick in place. Remove the tape, crinkle it into a ball and throw on the floor behind you. If you happen to hit the cat with the ball of tape, you will be treated to a 15 minute show with the kitty running from room to room trying to dislodge the ball of tape that has attached itself to his fur and which he is convinced is evil. And if you really didn’t just “accidentally” hit the cat with the tape, but actually stuck it on him to see what he would do, you should be ashamed of yourself. I would never do something like that just for a little entertainment. Never. I swear. What??

9. Forget to properly test if the resin in the jar was fully dry and just dump some beads in. If they stick to the surface because you were inpatient about drying times, then you have to scrape all the beads off the sticky resin again.

10. Take a flat marble-thingy from one of the decorative plant pots. If you don’t have any, go to your mom’s and get some. They always have tons of those things. Don’t really know why yet. Some Mom-classified secret, I guess.

11. Affix the bead (flat side against the jar) to the bottom of the jar with epoxy. Make sure it is in the middle or your spinner will wobble, not spin. No one really needs a bead wobbler.

12. Pour beads into the spinner. Make a right angle bend in the wire you would like to put the beads on and place into the spinner with the “hook” facing to your right. Spin the spinner by the metal rod in a clockwise direction so the beads are traveling against the hook. Some will jump up onto the hook. You have to play with angles and stuff at this point, but you’ll get it, you’re bright.

13. Forget to kink the end of the wire so when you pull it out all the nice beads you just loaded onto the wire fall back off again all over the studio floor. Damn, those were delicas, too.

14, Now you have a completely homemade spinner you can use to make beautiful flowers like this one!