Bubbling Around

Tutorial Birdie Magnet

Making a bird magnet is easy and fun. You can follow the tutorial here or you can download the worksheet and print it out. It has the same instructions. The only thing that’s different is that I’ll use pictures here. They aren’t on the worksheet. If you download the worksheet, let me know what you think about it. Are the instructions clear? Are there any mistakes in them? Grammar? Spelling? It’s the first worksheet I’ve ever made and I’m definitely looking for some feedback. Oh and for those of you who are confused about the 92days logo, 92days is my Etsy shop (there isn’t much to see at the moment though ) and basically the name under which I make my crafts.

Download the worksheet

What will you need?

• felt in different colors
• thread
• scissors
• needles and pins
• magnetic tape
• the bird pattern (download the worksheet – 1.1MB)

How do you make it?

Step 1
Cut out all the pieces from the worksheet. You can first copy them on another piece of paper if you want to. You’ll need two pieces of the body in one color and the wing and the beak will be in a different color.

Step 2
Stitch the beak and the wing unto one of the body pieces. You can do this with a normal stitch.

Step 3
Sew the eyes. Sew three or four horizontal stitches and than sew three or four vertical stitches on top of them so you get a circle. Make sure you do this with double thread.

Step 4
Pin the two pieces of the body together with the wrong sides facing eachother. Stitch them together with a blanket stitch. You can find a great tutorial on that stitch right here.

Step 5
Stick some of the magnetic tape on the back of the bird. You might want to add some glue to attach it more firmly.

And voila! You’ve got yourself a cute bird magnet.

Birdie magnets

I love making these! They are so easy to make and I still have a lot of felt scraps. Perfect!

I’ll post a tutorial on how to make these soon.

Tutorial: Home made vanilla ice cream

Alright. Since some people are interested in the home made ice cream recipe, I decided to write it out (and translate it from Dutch to English – please excuse the funny words I sometimes use to describe the ingredients and how they look ). You won’t need an ice cream machine for this recipe, but you will need quite some time. This is perfect to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

What will you need?

• 150g sugar
• 10g vanilla sugar
• 5dl cream
• 4 eggs
• 3 bowls

How do you make it?

• First of all start by whipping the cream in a big bowl until it becomes nice, soft and light. Set it aside.
• Crack your eggs. Put the egg yokes in the one bowl and the egg whites in the other bowl.
• Mix the vanilla sugar and the regular sugar with the egg yokes until you get a somewhat crumbly, yellowish mass. Now comes the part for which you’ll have to take your time. Take a table spoon and start adding the sugar-yokes-mass to the whipped cream. Don’t put everything at once in it or the whipped cream might loose it’s lightness and we don’t want that. Every time you add a couple of spoons to the whipped cream, slowly stir everything until it get absorbed by the whipped cream.
• Once that’s done, you’ll start by whipping up the egg whites until they are fluffy. You’ll have to add egg whites to the whipped cream mixture as well. Again, do it slowly, a couple of spoons at a time. Make sure the egg white maintains its fluffiness! It will give volume and a bit more lightness to the ice cream.
• You are now ready! You’ve got yourself a big bowl of soon to be ice cream. Put it in a container and put the container in the freezer. Every 45 minutes for about 4 hours you’ll have to go and check on your ice cream. When the mixture freezers too fast, ice crystals will start to appear and you don’t want those in your ice cream. So, every 45 minutes you’ll have to stir the mixture in the container. And of course you can lick of the spoon after you’ve done the stirring.

When will the ice cream be ready?
It depends on the size of your container. When we made our first batch, we had a large container filled (the one in the picture I posted here) and a much smaller one. The ice cream in the smaller one was almost entirely frozen after the four hours. The one in the large container was still extremely fluid after that amount of time. We had to wait until the next morning for it to be frozen.

More questions? Feel free to ask in the comments!

Blegh

I’ve got the flu in combination with a cystitis. Yup, quite the combination. I went to the doctor this morning and he prescribed me some antibiotics (ugh) and rest, which means I don’t have to go to work this week. On one side I’m not that happy about being sick, on the other side I do welcome those days off with open arms. They are more than welcome.

Even though I feel like crap, I can’t sit still. I’ve been laying in bed most of the day, reading or surfing on my laptop, but I need to be doing something other than that. I’ll probably end up crafting or watching some movies that are on my to-see-list. I will rest, but I will do it my way.

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish

He’s doing it again. Jamie Oliver, the English chef, made a TED talk about how obesity is taking over the western world and causing a lot of deaths, even though it’s a disease we can prevent by having a better food education. It all starts at home, at school and in the supermarkets. I truly hope people will listen to him. I know I will. I applaud his cause.