How to hang a picture without losing your deposit
Let’s Learn a Thing today! I hear a lot of comments on Offbeat Home about the difficulty people have with hanging things, so i’mma put on my Housewife hat and lay it all out for you: how to hang art on notoriously-difficult plaster walls OR! how to break the rules of your lease the smart way. (If you do it right, no one will know!)
How to make a mounted jackalope out of a fur coat
Are you coveting the look of the taxidermy trend but don’t want to fork up the cash for a real antique? Tired of the limited selection of real animals? You’re in luck: today I’ll show you had to make a faux animal head from junk you have lying around the house and thrift store supplies.
From dining room to Questing Lounge: how to make a customizable table top-game board
A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I created an adventuring party to start playing Dungeons and Dragons 4.0. We all got together one night and played using some miniatures harvested from HeroClix and a tiny map from a Lord of the Rings tactical fighting game.
While the first experience was awesome (we made those skeletons PAY!), we realized we needed more than one map if we ever wanted to adventure anywhere else. None of us has the money to dump into buying thousands of maps or printing them off. We needed a cheap and reusable playing surface.
Make art out of band tees so you can prove you listened to them way back when
I stopped buying band t-shirts at concerts a long time ago because they never fit quite right. Men’s tees are too big and the girl’s “babydoll” sized tees are always too little, even if they claim to be an extra large. But I already have a huge collection of shirts: NEW CRAFT PROJECT!
5 lamps you can handmake to add sculptural surrealism at home
Cheap good lamps are hard to find, am I right? I’ve been on the search for them in big box stores, clearance aisles, antique shops, and thrift stores all over the midwest, and I’m still lighting most of my living room with clamp lights. If you’re in the same boat, I have been scheming schemes. Here are five lamps you can handmake.
There’s no shame in not doing it all yourself: people exist who can do your projects FOR you!
The DIY movement has been in full force since oh, say, 2008. Its resurgence started before that, but that’s when it seems to have tipped over into a popular topic, when indie crafters got cool and became a thing you could be. The internet makes it hard NOT to see clever new things to make or fix or repurpose, and for some people crafting becomes a problem because the information is so available.
Thanks to the Internet’s cornucopia of information and ideas, I’ve very much taken on the attitude that I CAN MAKE ALLLLL THINNNGSSSS, even though truthfully, I’m fair-to-middling at making things. Given a little time and good supplies, we can make a good go at most things — which is a damn slippery path to the mindset DO IT YOURSELF OR IT DOESN’T GET DONE! Which doesn’t have to be the case.
How to build a constellation light for a little astronomy in the bedroom
Evita’s been sharing her tutorials on Offbeat Home all year — remember the starry window pelmet? Or her sewing machine-cum-computer-desk? She RETURNS! And you’ll be thrilled.
This tutorial makes a lovely, simple
First aid for broken vinyl toys
Finn got a little adventurous in my studio the other day — one minute he stood proudly on the supply rack, and then he woke up on the carpet, kitty standing over him, his leg snapped. So now I need to fix him. Here’s the non-collector method of fixing broken vinyl toys.