Posted byLast Thursday, we posted the first of what we hope will be many Offbeat Homies Weekend Challenges. We gave readers a choice of two DIY challenges: nerdy cupcakes with sanding sugar, or faux taxidermied unicorn heads.
Team Unicorn
This was definitely the more challenging of the two DIY options, since it takes several days to dry and the tutorial involves a lot of gloop and materials. We tried to compensate for the difficulty by giving readers free-reign (horse/unicorn pun? har har?) to make any animal they wanted. The result? A couple unicorns, a tentacle, and a fucking JACKALOPE.
Let’s start with Mich’s tentacle!
My husband just walked out of the gaming room and into the kitchen
Him “WHAT the fuck is that?”
Me “An octopus tentacle”
Him “But what is it made from?
Me “Paper Mache”
Him “Oh, is that one of your Offbeat Bride things?”
Me “Well, Offbeat Home, but yes”
Him “Ah” [walks back to the gaming room]
Linadee went way above and beyond going for TWO unicorn heads, complete with GLITTER:
Offbeat Homies Weekend Challenge: nerdy cupcakes or unicorn heads!?
We're heading into a three-day holiday weekend here in the States, and I figured that after the success of Megan's hilarious cooking challenge, it would... Read more
And look at it sparkle:
Lojolane should get an award for attempting the BIG ASS UNICORN head. Unfortunately the BIG ASS UNICORN head was too big ass to dry in time.
Superman (Offbeat Bride’s assistant editor) took the whole taxidermy idea and went DIY off-roading, producing this amazing Jackalope:
She’s got a full tutorial on how she did it coming up, although I think it’s basically going to be like…
- Get sculpy
- Be really talented
- ???
- JACKALOPE!
Team Cupcake
Ok, while this may have been the easier of the two options (cake mix + sanding sugar), the nerdy component definitely kicked things up a notch.
Amalaa’s amazing Doctor Who cupcakes:
EXTERMINATE!
Lily’s sweet-ass D&D cupcakes:
Offbeat Bride’s contributing DIY editor and the queen of the geeky sanding sugar, Liz, made panda cupcakes (including SAD PANDA):
Eilonwy’s Pistachio Cupcakes with Orange Flower Glaze and Sanding Sugar are retro with a kick:
(Here’s her full recipe!)
Rachael definitely wins an award for going for retro nerdy (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!) with bonus pet rat (Splinter!) action!
Oh, and she even made a BONUS CUPCAKE!
Amy and Shesaidsvengali BOTH went for X-Man colors for their cupcakes:
Morgan made Despicable Me cupcakes, although [putting on judge hat] we’re not sure we see any sanding sugar, so these may not technically be part of the challenge:
Offbeat Mama’s editor, Stephanie, appears to have broken out of her “ugly DIY” trend with this lovely RAINBOW CAKE, covered in sanding sugar:
SO! THAT WAS FUCKING FUN
We should totally do this more often, don’t you think!?
“SO! THAT WAS FUCKING FUN
We should totally do this more often, don’t you think!?”
YESSS!
Everybody’s stuff was uhmayzin’!
Those sculpting skills are making me mad jealous. I want a tentacle sculpture!
I can’t wait to see the finished result on that one. Mich, is it dry yet?!
The bottom two fuckers, oh sorry I meant suckers are still a little bit damp.
But maybe we can have some painting action tomorrow.
I need to go out an buy some more acrylics because my husband is now fully on board and has requested it be a purple octopus tentacle!
The gamer in me wants to know if this has anything to do with Ultros.
That’s a very impressive tentacle you have there…
sorry, no Ultros here (I just had to google to find out what that was)
just an octopus obsession!!!
I LOVE THE TENTACLE!
The conversation between your husband and you made me bust out laughing. Groom and I have the same conversation at least twice a week. (He is prompting me to say that he knew he wasn’t the only one.)
I would buy one….
These are all so great!! Totally do more of these.
Squee! I’m so happy to see all the awesome that we brought to the table. And that jackalope. Hot Damn.
Psst, editors. It’s Lillie, not Lily. Thanks!
OMG!!! I am so excited my sparkly wonky weirdos made it on the site!!! My unicorns have actually really come in handy now that theyre on my dresser drawers Ive started hanging my jewellery off them!
Moar tentacles, pls! Also: massive crush on TMNT cupcakes.
This was so cool to see what everybody came up with.
I’ve been whimpering softly in hope this sort of challenge will become a regular ritual — next time, I want to be gutsy enough to try a craft project.
These are all so great! Glad to see all the artsiness of the site used for the greater good of nerdiness.
The paper mache taxidermy was a huge bust at out place. I’m blaming tropical storm Beryl. (so…much…humidity….)
Are there any pictures of the paper mache disaster? Failed DIY pics are my favorite.
No failpics of my failbat I’m afraid, but my husband is still working on his Invader Zim Minimoose. I’ll post a pic of it when he at least gets all the bits attached.
invader zim mini mooose?!!!! MUST SEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beryl ruined my plans to participate too. I wanted to make cupcakes, but my electricity kept going out 🙁
I guess there’s a lot of North Florida Homies! Beryl totally sucked the fun out of this weekend. No cupcakes, no paper mache…Our power was out on & off all weekend too 🙁
And then Jen got the idea to get The Musician to make mounted origami taxidermy…
Yay! My rat made it on Offbeat Home again! And my cupcakes. 🙂 See, this is what happens when you have long conversations with friends about what they’re wearing to your upcoming Souperhero party (come dressed up as a superhero to a soup themed potluck!). I had Teenage Mutant Turtles on the brain…
Him “Oh, is that one of your Offbeat Bride things?”
Me “Well, Offbeat Home, but yes”
Had to laugh at this. My husband basically asks me this anytime I start with “so I read something really interesting/cool/fun while I was at work today…”
YAY for my tentacle getting featured!!!!!
Ariel, we definitely need to do this again… but I wanna see you join in this time as you forced me in my sleep deprived state to start paper macheing late on friday night!!!
I’ve already got this weekend’s challenge all ready to go! And this time I won’t be out of town all weekend, so I can totally participate!
can we have a sneak peak of what resources/materials we might need earlier on in the week?
it would help us get prepared, might get more people to participate and have us all guessing at what the crafts might be?!!
Yes! This would also give us living in the future (eg Australia (who aren’t having a long weekend)) enough time to join in. 🙂
Woohoo! It’s a long weekend in Western Australia this weekend, so looking forward to this!
LOVE the D&D cupcakes idea. Definitely gonna use cupcakes (4 squares) & mini cupcakes (1 square) for baddies next time I play.
I know NOTHING about D&D, but do you get to eat the baddies when you destroy them?
We totally did! These were mini cupcakes, but they were still a little too big to use practically in the game. So we used tokens during the game, and when we killed someone, we ate the corresponding cupcake. I also made cupcakes to represent our party members, but they were ugly, so I chose not to photograph them.
This will be my tutorial for the jackalope. Naw, jk.
TENTACLE FTW!!!!
OOPS! No, my cupcakes (Despicable Me) weren’t part of the challenge, shame on me for being a week behind in my Offbeat Home reading, or I would have totally added sanding sugar to them anyhow! They actually just happened to be a special treat for a Memorial Day BBQ. Sorry for the confusion guys (:
Ps, Everyone’s creations are STELLAR! I will so be making a unicorn head in the very near future.
I truly enjoyed that challenge! I am looking forward to taking a crack at more of them on the future! Yes!
I’m planning on doing a cyberman head fauxidermy to go along with my Doctor Who stuff. /crossfingers. Maybe my husband won’t notice the house is slowly converting into a Doctor museum ;p now if only I could make it bigger on the inside >.<
Lojolane!!!! I saw your update finished fantasmagorical creation via facebook, but when I went to comment in Flickr I had to sign up and I hate doing that, so I swore and closed the page. However, loved the final product!!! Would love to hang that baby uni in my homestead! Nice work.