JoshPrime Makes Stuff

Hey reader, I know its been a minute while since we have had a non-house related post. Fear not, there will be more house drama next week, but this post is about something totally different. On Christmas morning I opened a present that contained a 3d Pen! Cue Link opening a treasure chest music . Special thanks to the stuffed animal that was credited with getting me this amazing toy . Link would never be able to work this thing. Especially not Nintendo 64 Link, as he only had two fingers: his thumb and a mass that would typically be the other four. There are a lot of really cool people out there on YouTube making neat stuff with 3D pens. My current favorite artist online is Jazza from Draw With Jazza . He made a sweet dragon his first time . I discovered him because of his trending video using mermaid sequins to make art. Slight tangent: Jazza is amazing and has some great content out there on YouTube. I especially enjoy his style swap challenges , where he draws cartoon charac...

Hey Reader, This week we aren't making something from scratch. Stop throwing things! It is going to be fine. I have something super exciting to talk about: making and installing a racecar bed in the media room. As you are aware, my media room is designed to be a drive in movie theater that has been a lot more challenging than it might have first appeared. This is largely because I insisted on smooth walls and obsessed for months on end. Fortunately, smooth wall purgatory is over and we can no focus on fun things, like getting the room filled with toys. My idea has always been that the movie room would be decked out like a drive in movie theater, complete with a racecar bed. Not only is it a clever idea (if I do say so myself), but it is also a way to finally own a racecar bed of my very own without having to spawn. I want it to be known that this idea is based off of Disney's Scifi Dine In Theater , but there are countless folks who are making similar experiences in their...

Hey Reader, Now that the media room is all painted, it is time to start decorating! After months of painting and skim coating, I am finally at a place where I can start to put stuff in the room! The first thing I want to put in there is a fence. That probably sounds strange, but I want this space to feel as much like I am hanging out outside as I can - minus the sunscreen, bugs, and other people. The first step in the outdoor illusion is putting up some fencing around the outside edge of the room. I had hoped that I could make huge amounts of progress on this and really have something to show you this week. However, I went to the store to buy my fencing and quickly discovered that my tiny car is not spacious enough to fit the fence segments and me at the same time. All I was able to get home right now was the four posts that will support the fence. Stupid fences and my non-tardis car. It would have been great to have all the pieces I needed at once, but it actually works out o...

Hey Reader, It is time to talk color! Now that my media room is smooth and flat, I get to make it more than just a beige box. Every room in this house is nothing more than a big beige box. The builders even went so far as to paint the baseboards, the ceiling, the walls, and all the doors the exact same shade of beige. Who wants that much beige in their life? Certainly not me! I wanted something really bright in the blue family. This room will likely be dark a lot since it will be for watching movies and playing games. Therefore, I feel like the walls need to be bright to compensate for the lack of light. Further, blue will give it more of a feeling that you are outside once the fences and car are in place (more on that later). Before I can get blue on the walls, I need to get the box to be a little less beige. That starts with baseboards. I was really worried about painting my baseboards. It isn't that baseboards are particularly hard to paint, it is just that with carpeting I...

Hey Reader, I know we have been talking walls punctuated by mediocre crafts for a few months now. I have to admit, skim coating has proved to be a very worthy adversary in my quest for smooth walls. I have been sanding and reapplying Spackle for what seems like years. Everything in the house is covered in an inch of white dust, it looks like the home of a stock trader before the internet bubble burst (thats a cocaine joke... did it make sense... whatever moving on). Last we checked in on the walls project, it was a huge struggle and I had made a major error in priming the walls too early. I hate to admit this to you, reader, but I was pretty defeated by the walls. I actually got a contractor to come in and look at the walls and give me an estimate for their services. I had found a website called home advisor that had connected me to some people. Can we talk about that for just a second? I signed up (unintentionally since I thought I was going to get some estimates) and immediately ...

Ok reader, It has been over a year of blogging once a week. I was thinking back on what I was writing about last Thanksgiving. I had made some absurd cheese ball creation. This year, I am not in the holiday spirit. I mean, I love the holiday that's not what I mean. What I mean is that I don't have a Thanksgiving related project today. Maybe I will pick it up late like my Halloween costume. I don't really see the need to celebrate holidays on the day that they happen. Why not put up a Christmas tree in June? Really though? Is it any less weird to have serious fire hazard in the shape of a tree in your house in December? Does turkey taste less good in March? I have tried it and let me tell you, turkey is always delicious. Celebrate your holidays when you damn well feel like it. I am gonna start putting up Halloween decorations tomorrow and just see what the neighborhood thinks. It worked for the Adams family. Anyway, this week I have something little. I was just trying t...

Ok Reader, I gave you a short break from my constant wall talk. Now we are back at it full force. Here is the situation: Wall smoothing has been an insane amount of work. All that talk of rue-ing aside, I have enjoyed it for the most part. However, the epic tale of wall smoothing is about to take a turn. It finally appeared as if the wall smoothing was done and I started thinking paint colors. Since this room is designed to look like its night, I wanted a dark blue. It isn't a huge room, so I had to think about not making it too cave-like. I happen to like caves myself, but that is a whole separate conversation. I settled on a pretty bright blue color. My thought was this: if the color is really bright, that will compensate for it being a room that rarely has the lights on (since its for movies of course). I bought a tester of paint. I have some questions for the painters among us. There are whole aisles in the home improvement stores of paint. I went wandering down their to ...

Hey Reader, After making a non-functioning mouth out of paper, I decided to try something a little more challenging. How creepy would it be to have a functioning mouth made of paper? What would a paper mouth eat? It would have to be soft things since that mouth had no teeth. I suppose if I was making a functioning mouth, it would have to have teeth, but chewing would be tough since the teeth would probably be made of paper. I would think that soft things would make the most sense, but liquid and paper mouths probably aren't a good mix either. Think of the paper cuts when making out. Especially since that last mouth had a tongue like that scene in the Mask. I am not going to make this hypothetical any less disturbing with this next project. We really are a far cry from cranes and fortune tellers at this point. Turns out that this project is actually using two different pornigami patterns. The pants are one pattern. Meanwhile the paper protuberance coming out of them are actual...

Hey Reader, Welcome back to Halloween costume making with me, JoshPrime. If you recall, I am going as Red Guy from the viral YouTube video series, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared . Did you know there new episodes are coming? Check out the trailer titled " Wakey Wakey ." In case you have forgotten, when we last checked in on this project, their was yarn everywhere.  The next step is usually taping the hair to itself in wefts, and then running the tape through the sewing machine to finish up and seal the hair wefts. I did this most recently with the Arin puppet . There is so much more hair this time, and I didn't have as wide of a workspace, so the taping was going to have to come after I freed it from the clipboard. Typically, you want to do the taping before cutting the hair because it is so much easier to work with as a unit rather than strand by strand. I still managed ok, and if I had a wider clipboard where I could spread the hair out, I would still have do...

Hey Reader! The hardest part of having a new house, besides the incessant people trying to scam you, is not having anything where you want it to be. As I continue to toil away on walls and plan big projects like window re-framing and other amazing interiors , my other projects fall to the side. I was actually just about to write, "my smaller projects." I never really thought of my puppets or quilts as small projects until I took on a whole house. This is some next level stuff I need to get used to. The timelines are longer, the work is harder, and progress is significantly slower. The reward is coming soon though, I can feel the walls getting closer to completion. So you probably gathered that walls are not done, based on the paragraph. This means that another week has gone by with no visible progress, and my craft and media rooms are still crammed in boxes in what will eventually be the guest room. That can be frustrating for wanting to progress reasons, but also for mak...

Hey reader! This post is not very photo heavy. Sorry about that! This whole blog has always been craft projects and stuff. I have been making shirts online for a while and never thought it would be appropriate to include them since they aren't a craft. Technically speaking, this is a making blog, so making stuff should count no matter what! Yay rationalizations for not having a craft room finished yet! I have made some fun shirts in the past. For Kirk's birthday a few years ago I did a Gremlins themed shirt. I went with a deep cut and recreated the Peltzer logo that is used by the main dude's father. If you aren't familiar with Gremlins, shame on your face. Since the podcast is deep in season two of Dollhouse. It was time to make new shirts to commemorate! I do all my shirt editing using Photoshop. I am fortunate enough to have one of the old copies before they completely sold out and went to a month to month pay model. I have no interest in that, especially how i...

Hey Reader, This project has really been on the backburner lately, and sadly it still kind of is. I did want to give you an update though. When we last left it over a month ago, I had just laid down all the squares in the pattern I wanted. I also quipped that my blog would probably become a lot of quilt posts because I enjoy quilting these rag quilts a lot. A lot has happened since then, namely buying a house. It will probably be a while before I have the time for a quilt again! Anyway, I said I wanted to give you an update so I am going to do that. Just like previous quilts, I sewed the lines and created little rows of quilts all together. It is still important to be careful about orientation of the strips so that I didn't accidentally double up a patch - even though I am doing a crazy non-pattern, I did avoid same patters sharing a side with each other. This is going to be like my last rag quilt , in that it is very very warm. I was getting hot just sewing it together. I ...

Hey Reader! We are back at it with another edition of the ongoing and exciting saga, "JoshPrime vs. Textured Walls." When I started telling people that I planned to de-texture my walls, the most common response was "your walls are textured? I hadn't noticed." After I internally seethed with rage at other people's lack of ability to see the thing that causes me so much sleepless nights, I explained that my walls were indeed textured. I then tried my best not to get into a tirade about how much I hate textured walls, and then began explaining the process. I will fully own than "my best" frequently meant a rant of 10 minutes or less. The next thing that people would say is, "that is way too much work you should just live with the texture." Reader, it is like the people around me don't know me at all. My cousin warned I would rue the day I started this project. My parents explained that it is an art form and that I could become obs...

Hey reader, We only talked about bathbombs two weeks ago, but here we are making another batch. As I said before, that is largely because I forgot to write about the 3rd attempt and didn't notice until I sat down to write up this most recent attempt. My sincere apologies for such a grievous error. I am sure you have been chewing your fingernails to nubs wondering if I have figured it out. This time, you will find a horrific story. Mentally brace yourself for the horror show you are about to witness. Not since Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a recipe gone so badly. See that is funny because in that movie they make food out of people. Wow this blog must be really niche if it combines discussion of cannibalism with bath bombs. Whatever. pictured: not a WB character I have gotten much closer to success, but still I am not making the perfect Lush bombs I want to be making. Each of my attempts has been too powdery or too greasy. My newest suggestion was to try witch hazel. Am I the o...