Month: November 2012

Halloween spider hat tutorial

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This Halloween, I decided to challenge myself to make part of my outfit. I have a some specific rules about my Halloween costumes – firstly, that I don’t wear wholly pre-packaged outfits. Nothing off the peg for me, thanks! Thirdly, it has to be scary, or based on a Halloween theme. I guess this is pretty European-centric of me, because I know in the US, Halloween isn’t restricted to spooky costumes. But I love spooky things, so I’m always up for dabbing on the fake blood! Thirdly, I try to dress up as a different version of myself – this sounds very weird, but by that I simply mean that instead of dressing up like a specific person or character, I instead try to imagine what I would wear if I was a witch, vampire, or whatever. I’m sure a lot of people do the same thing! Last year I actually broke this rule when I dressed up as Morticia from The Addams Family, but hey – rules are meant to be broken…

As I’ve been doing this Halloween thing for a good many years now (ouch, how old am I?) I’ve already cycled through the obvious candidates – zombie, witch, vampire. So this year I decided to confront my fears head on and go as ARACHNIA! SPIDER WOMAN. Very scary. Mostly, it’s because I had seen these amazing cobweb style hats, and I wanted to wear one… Unfortunately for me, they were all pretty expensive, so I decided to make my own version. Startlingly, I really didn’t need to buy much in order to make this – but then again, that’s because I’m a failed craft nut, who had bought too many supplies and never used them.
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So, here is what you need to make your own cobweb hat! Halloween hat tutorial

Supplies:

  • Sinamay hat base – any colour, round
  • Black felt
  • Pins
  • Wooden skewers
  • Black paint
  • Paint brush
  • Black embroidery thread
  • Needle
  • Hairband
  • Scissors
  • Plastic spiders

Method:

    • Cut your skewers in half – they form the arms of the cobweb. Also, cut off the pointed tipsHalloween hat tutorial
    • Paint your skewers black – you might need several coats of black paint to get rid of all the streaks. This gives them time to dry while you continue with the rest of your project.

Halloween hat tutorial

    • Cut your felt a little larger than your hat base, then pin in place.

Halloween hat tutorial

    • Sew the felt onto your hat base with the black thread.

Halloween hat tutorial

    • Once you’ve covered your hat base with felt, you can either attach the headband now by sewing it on, or wait until you’ve constructed the cobweb. Either way, it can get fiddly! When you want to attach the headband, pin it in place, then use your thread to secure it in two places onto the base.
    • Time to make the cobweb. Your skewers will be arranged in the classic spokes pattern, like this.
      Halloween hat tutorial
      So, now you sew each spoke onto the hat using your black thread. Sew in two places to make it extra secure – just loop around the skewer, back under, and around again, almost like sewing on a button. You might find your cobweb looks more even if you sew four skewers on at the compass points, then fill in the gaps afterwards. Also, remember to leave a small gap in the middle so that your skewers don’t sit on top of each other. Place a plastic spider on this at the end to hide the gap! Before you add in your final skewer, though, grab your black embroidery thread bundle, and tie the end carefully onto the end of your final skewer. Then sew on as the rest. Tying the thread on at this point will make it less fiddly to attach!
    • This rope demonstrates how to arrange the black embroidery thread onto your spokes to create the classic cobweb effect. Taking your embroidery bundle, weave the thread around the skewers, creating a loop over each stick to keep in place. This is tricky. You need to keep the sticks pulled apart so that the thread stays tight across the loops. Even so, you’ll find that it’s very difficult to keep everything looking tight – but that’s part of the homemade charm, right?

Halloween hat tutorial

  • At the end of the sticks, tie your thread off, then trim the end. If you haven’t attached your headband, do so now.
  • For some optional final touches, add in a fake spider in the centre of your web to hide the spokes, and add another, smaller spider dangling from a thread at the front of the hat!

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So, that’s how to create your own cobweb hat! Here’s a slightly better picture of the hat with the spider in the centre!

Halloween hat tutorial

Anyone going to give this a try next year?

A decadent diet dessert

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When you’re on a diet, sometimes all you can think about is what you can’t eat. Sugary treats, cream – desserts in general, really. Low-calorie puddings tend to consist mostly of jellies, fruit, frozen yogurt, or cake bars – which are okay, but not always the sort of thing that sends you to that comforting, cozy, little sugar-high paradise that you seek when you’re feeling deprived. However, it is possible to find some low calorie desserts in the supermarket that definitely taste like a treat, and look like one too – and better yet, they don’t break the bank. I’m talking, of course, about toffee cream meringues! UntitledChocolate, cream, toffee, and a heck of sugar, all for 130 calories? Yes, please! These cost £1.09 for two at Tesco, and you can also buy a similar product from Marks and Spencer (which tastes better – crispier meringue – but naturally, costs more). Since I discovered these, I’ve scoffed my way through one every night for four days, and I’m not sorry at all – they are delicious. Separate the delicious halves of the shell and eat them like buttered toast, with a cup of tea, in front of the telly. The best post-workout snack I know…*

* I don’t know much about post-workout snacks. But hey, toffee cream.

Glitter and glimmer: Effie Trinket’s reaping nails

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I’ve always been a tad lazy when it comes to nail varnish – if you call lazy sticking to plain colours! Nail art and decorations always felt a bit beyond me, but when I saw Effie Trinket’s amazing reaping nails in The Hunger Games, I knew I had to try and replicate it for my Hunger Games party costume! While my finished nails look nothing at all like Ms. Trinket’s, I am actually really pleased with the effect that I came up with – glittery gold over festive fuchsia, just right for the holiday and party season coming up! Glitter and Glimmer nails

To achieve this effect, I layered two coats of Fuchsia Hype nail varnish by Bourjois, and allowed to dry. Then, using a makeup sponge, I patted over bronze Glimmer by Topshop three times – once over the whole nail, second just the top half, and the third time, just the tips – making a graduated effect where the bronze shade was much thicker towards the end of the nail. Then I covered the whole lot with Saffron London’s gold glitter, and finished with a top coat. Honestly, this is probably the most complicated thing I’ve ever done to my nails – but it definitely wasn’t difficult, it just involved a lot of stages and layers. I used to find that my nails took so long to dry if I applied more than one coat, but these days it seems like formulas dry quicker, so it’s not as much of a pain as it used to be…

Anyone else tried to do an Effie on their nails? What did your end results look like? And, if anyone gives this a whirl, let me know!

Kickbox Fastfix: A Review

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If you’re a Jillian fan, or have used her 30 Day Shred or Ripped in 30 videos, you’re probably really used to Jillian’s 3, 2, 1 method, where the circuits are all very structured around strength, cardio and core, and involve a set number of each before circling back around for a second set. This structure is one of my favourite aspects of the workouts – because you always know where you are and what you’re supposed to be working on – but it also means that very often, her workouts can seem stale or samey, as they’re based on the same general principles.

Kickbox Fastfix really throws something new into the mix with kickboxing moves and a new approach to the workouts that left me feeling energised and ready to commit to a new workout style – at least, for a while! There’s a fairly hefty introduction, explaining the form for all of the kickboxing moves, which I reckon could be the downfall of quite a few impatient would-be kickboxers. It’s a little frustrating having to work your way through this tutorial – burning no calories, really – before you can get stuck in with your workout, but you really can’t skip this as you’ll have no idea what’s going on when you eventually begin! I’ve only watched it once, but I managed to pick up the moves easily just from this first run through.

The second point is that you need some body co-ordination to be able to pull this off without a lot of practice. I personally do not consider myself to be the most coordinated person in the world, but I can get the hang of workout sequences and rhythms after a few goes – my husband is not so lucky, and spent a good few minutes of his workout staring at the TV in puzzlement. The sequences can be very long, involving multiple styles of punches and kicks before starting back at the beginning, and I also found that some of them could be simplified rather easily, which made me wonder whether there was a reason Jillian had set them up the way she did to start with. For example, it’s much easier to memorise on the fly ‘jab, jab, hook, hook’ than it is ‘jab, hook, hook, jab’ – and if you’re repeating on a loop, there’s no real difference – or is there? Regardless, I reckon anyone can master these eventually, but it might take a little longer for some people.

I definitely enjoyed this new approach from Jillian – it’s nice to have something in my collection that doesn’t fall back on the old 3, 2, 1 approach, which I can bust out if things are feeling stale. Davina’s kickboxing DVD was always a favourite in our house anyway, so I’m glad I’ve got Jillian’s version, too! The workout consists of three levels, each about 25 minutes long, which means there’s a decent amount of variation – and it’s not too taxing to tack one level onto the next to create a longer workout, either.

Let’s face it, nothing makes you feel more bad-ass than a bit of kickboxing – and Jillian is certainly the queen of fitness bad-assery!

Kickbox Fastfix is currently available in region 1 only, from Amazon.co.uk.

Body Revolution comes to the UK!

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Great news for Jillian fans here in the UK – the fitness guru has finally launched her amazing 90 programme here! You can purchase the entire thing here: http://www.hsm.tv/fitness/product/jillian-michaels-body-revolution for £99.99, which is a great price considering what’s included. You get (and I’m quoting from the site here) “15 all-new DVDs, Resistance Cable, Fitness Guide, customizable 90-day Fat-Burning Meal Plan complete with grocery lists, delicious recipes, and daily menus, 90-Day Journal. PLUS, a bonus 7 day Kick Start Your Metabolism diet plan to detox your body and help you curb your food addictions.”

As for me, I’m not able to purchase one of these programmes, but I’m currently working on a variety of Jillian DVDs and a calorie restriction of 1200 daily. I recently purchased Extreme Shed and Shred, so expect a review of that soon!

Anyone out there getting the Body Revolution? Let me know what you think! Or, if you’ve already got one, how did you get on?