Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Boris and Natasha!

Simple, but Delicious, Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my biology study group last week and they seemed to be a big hit. I'll admit, I used box mixes for both, but doctored them both up a bit. I made the Chocolate Covered Cherry cake from The Cake Mix Doctor as cupcakes (Ignore what's on the back of the box and mix together: chocolate cake box mix, 2 eggs, and a can of cherry pie filling), but made a standard vanilla icing. In the spirit of the holidays, I thought about making some eggnog cupcakes that I read about on Baking Bites, but thought that might be eggnog overload. I've been on a red velvet kick, so I used a red velvet box mix (with an extra teaspoon of almond extract - love!) and experimented with different eggnog icing recipes with some Pennsylvania Dutch until I finally came up with something I liked. The red velvet eggnog cupcakes went first, but everyone who had the chocolate covered cherry cupcakes said they were the best. I loved them both ;)

Eggnog Icing
-1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
-1 1/2 c powdered sugar
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
-1/4 tsp almond extract
-Pinch ground cinnamon
-Pinch kosher salt
-1/4 c Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Soften butter in a mixing bowl. Using a hand mixer, gradually mix in the powdered sugar. Mix in remaining ingredients until well blended and fluffy.

After decorating your cupcakes with the eggnog icing, garnish them with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Things I'm Thankful for:

- My awesome family*
- My dependable friends
- My needy affectionate dogs
- The occasional afternoon nap
- Super sweet lindstrom pliers that are smooth like butter
- Good conversation, accompanied by good whiskey
- Sunday brunches

*My family spent the Thanksgiving holiday at my cousin's house. Aside from the obvious awesomeness that is Thanksgiving dinner, this family get-together was especially great because I was able to spend quality time with my cousin and his family, who I don't see on a regular basis since they moved. We took advantage of this time by trading skills. I went over color theory with him and his two beautiful and incredibly bright children as we made color wheels and he taught me how to weld.

These are the color wheels that we made. I'm going to try to put together a smaller scale template that you can download and print on cardstock to make your own color wheels. I also included areas to practice mixing complimentary colors and shading. We had lots of fun and I'm looking forward to doing some actual painting with them next time.

Here I am in some fashionable welding garb with my cousin. He welds to make parts for his jeep and has made some things around his house, like a lamp made from a wrought iron fence. Apparently I have a steady hand, which I learned is needed for pretty and consistent lines. We also played with a plasma cutter - awesome!

The Tick and Arthur vs. Halloween

  Our Mission: To protect New Orleans (The City) from tourists, gutterpunks, and other random villains while sipping whiskey. Evildoers, you face... The Tick (and Arthur!).

Alex and I made the majority of our costumes for Halloween this year. Alex did all of the fancy sewing with our skirts and bags. Like every other time we have made our costumes, we were working on them up until last minute. Alex's sewing machine malfunctioned a couple days before, causing some panic and fear of hand-sewing. Luckily, it was fixed in time and I made our antennae the day before using headbands with attached springs, cardstock, masking tape, and spray paint. Every Halloween and Mardi Gras, we swear we'll start on our costumes super early next time. It never fails. We end up super gluing/sewing/spray painting SOMETHING together as we're walking out the door to catch the streetcar to the French Quarter.

We were so surprised and excited over how many people actually recognized who we were (moreso than when we dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Mardi Gras this year). So, yeah, here are some pictures from Halloween night:

A Very Moustachioed Birthday



The Birthday Duo: John and Myself

Yeah, these pictures are a bit late. The party was over 2 weeks ago, but I've been crazy busy. Anyway, here's a sneak peek of some of the pictures. I will definitely have some more in the near future! Have a fabulous Halloween weekend!

Jewelry Shopping Ettiquette 101

This is something I wrote on an old blog when I worked in retail jewelry sales and thought I would share again:

I'm not going to lie, from my experience as a jeweler and a sales associate at a retail jewelry store, I have become a jewelry snob. My lust for well-made jewelry can be compared to neither sex nor chocolate. Solid gold seems to exude a charm unlike gold filled or gold plated metals. My knees get weak and wobbly, my stomach fills with butterflies, and goosebumps surface. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but only when skillfully incorporated into a fine piece of jewelry.

This is why I find it insulting when a potential customer decides to ask for an outrageous discount when not only are our prices amazing, but the piece of jewelry in question is of superior quality.

Here are a few tips when on the prowl for something fabulous:

Ask before trying anything on.
This is especially important for people with newly pierced ears. Trying on jewelry like earrings is unsanitary for not only you, but also for the next customer. Where I work, we have alcohol swabs readily available for customers to try on earrings. Many places don't do this. If they don't offer rubbing alcohol, just think of the many people before you who have tried them on and decided on a different pair. How gross!!

When offered an exceptional discount, don't ask for more. You may find yourself having no discount at all!
Jewelry stores are NOT flea markets. It's okay to ask a question like "Can you do a little better with the price?" but asking for 60% off is just rude. I kid you not, this happens every day for me. If asked politely, I will usually offer 10% - 20% off but never any more than this. This is standard for jewelry stores because they usually take the wholesale price and multiply it by 2.4, leaving enough for profit and commission for the sales associate. When you ask for a ridiculous discount, you're insulting the quality of the piece. I can't even count how many times I have been turned off by a rude customer and refuse the original discount.

Don't make a negative comment about a piece of jewelry.
This includes telling your shopping companion something like "Oh, don't buy that, I can make something like it instead." when the sales associate can hear. Don't get me wrong, I'm a jeweler myself and get many ideas from shopping around, but you will NEVER hear me say that to someone at a jewelry store. It's rude and chances are you don't have enough experience or are too lazy to actually do it.

Clean hands please!
Oily, nasty, dirt-under-your-nails hands are a sales associate's nightmare. Not only are you putting your hands all over the newly polished jewelry, but also all over the just windexed glass display cases! Either take some hand sanitizer with you or ask someone at the store for some. Every place I have worked with jewelry has had hand sanitizer for those dirty hands. Please don't put the sales associate in an awkward position when he/she has to ask you to clean your hands first. - We're not your parents, nor do we want to be!

Thrift Store Before & After: Spice Rack

BEFORE (but after staining)

I love thrift store shopping and there just happens to be a few on my way home from work every day. So, I tend to shop around at least once a week for interesting finds that I can totally make over. I recently came across this beat up spice rack with 12 glass jars and plastic stoppers for a grand total of $2.98. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm all about the herb garden that I have going on in my kitchen window. I love drying the herbs and creating my own spice blends, to the point where I have more spices than I can even begin to cook with. So containers become an issue and, aside from the basics, I rarely keep the same spices around.

The first project was to sand/stain the wood, which I have only done once before. I purchased some corks from Michael's and chalkboard paint from Home Depot. The idea of chalkboard labels was pretty new to me, so I set out to experiment. I tried using contact paper to create a stencil, but the contact paper wouldn't stick to the glass very well. Eventually, I figured out that it took less time (and looked way better) for me to freehand the shape of the label with a paintbrush.

So, yeah, this was a lot of fun. And here are some After pictures:


AFTER



Wire Wrapping!

  

Procrastinate Now and Panic later



Procrastinate now and panic later. Okay, so, this is what I'm trying NOT to do! My classes are starting to get ahead of me and I'm trying to catch up completely by this Saturday, but panic is starting to set in. With the new job and being sick for over a week from a bad reaction to a vaccine, by the time I get home I'm totally exhausted. I'm also resisting the urge to put off working on my class assignments to go thrift store shopping tonight. 

I have a pretty bad habit of having too many projects going on at once, but I always have a to-do list on hand.  That's one thing I think I could never live without.  I'm considering taking someone's suggestion to compile a journal or scrapbook of all of my to-do lists to analyze later.  Who knows, maybe it will help curb my dependency on lists.

Reupholstering Project: Channel Back Chair

A few years ago a friend and I were eyeing an awesomely pink channel back chair that someone abandoned in the hallway of her apartment building in the French Quarter.  She waited to see if anyone claimed it and then moved it into her living room, only to find out how uncomfortable it was!  So it went back out into the hallway.  Months later, I brought it back to my own apartment, vowing to one day make it beautiful and comfortable and, more importantly, mine.  So it sat in my living room, moved to my bedroom, my workroom, back out to the living room, and as of about two months ago it has been living back in my workroom. 

I did a bit of research on what all is involved in reupholstering a channel back chair and then practiced by reupholstering the seats on these kitchen chairs:

So, I recently tried removing the current fabric on the channel back chair.  It's much more difficult than I thought.  Since the chair is so old, the tacks are rusty and were breaking off instead of coming out with ease, so I had to use pliers to pull each one out.  I took a break while in the middle of removing the fabric on the back of the chair, so the fabric was flopped over with all of the tacks and nails and staples facing out.  That evening, I was getting ready for a date, ran into my workroom to grab something from the closet and carelessly brushed my arm against the chair's metal "teeth."  My date was obviously relieved to see that I survived an attack from a vicious tiger cub and managed to get away with just a bloody arm.

Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll get another chance to tackle this project, but seek comfort in knowing you will be among the first to know.

Mustache vs. Moustache

I've had a slight obsession with moustaches lately. Relax, it's nothing to worry about. But it did inspire me to create a sterling silver mustache necklace and now I'm planning a moustache themed birthday extravaganza for my 24th birthday next month! The plan is to get together with my friend, John, who's birthday is just a few days after mine and have a duo birthday celebration at a friend's hookah bar in the French Quarter with bellydancing and the works. Of course, it will be B.Y.O.M. (Bring Your Own Moustache) and I'm planning on handing out cheap felt stick on moustaches to complete strangers. It's New Orleans. Weirder things have happened. I also feel the need for some sort of moustache game involving pictures with random moustachioed strangers/moustache bingo/guess that moustache/et cetera. There will definitely be chocolate moustaches on sticks and a giant moustache shaped cake. What else am I forgetting??

So, my question, "mustache" or "moustache?" Which spelling do you prefer? I'm working on creating invitations for this classy event and I'm torn between the two. As my friend, Doug, just pointed out to me, "but moustachioed is such a better word than mustached."

Everything Old is New Again

With so many much needed changes happening in my life, I'm feeling the need to start blogging again, revamping this super old blog with a new purpose, name, and template. I think the reason why I gave up so quickly on this blog two years ago is because I created it with the sole purpose of having a blog revolve entirely around creating jewelry, when I had to fight to find the time to make jewelry, let alone blog about it. The new name I came up with (literally five minutes ago), The Frazzled Crafter, is because, well, if you know me at all, you know that I'm in a constant state of frazzled.

As far as updates go (and the reasons for being so frazzled) I have a new website (http://www.angelafalcone.com/) with a functioning online store and everything - fancy! I just landed a new job three months ago (thanks to my bestie, Alex - http://accusima.blogspot.com/, for getting me the interview) at an insurance company as an account manager. This is the first time EVER that I have a job that is neither in the retail or service industry. It's definitely refreshing. Overall, I think it was a wise career change as it leaves my evenings and weekends open for class, jewelry making and crafting, and spending time with awesome people. Speaking of class, I have roughly 4 semesters left (if everything goes as planned and I don't take summer classes) until I graduate with two degrees. I'm finally seeing that light at the end of the tunnel!

As for jewelry making, I've stopped creating so much of the simple jewelry just because it's easy to sell. I know I need to make a profit, but if I'm not enjoying it, what's the point? The whole reason why I started selling my jewelry was to fund something that I was passionate about. So I'm packing up and moving on. I recently started sawing sterling silver sheet metal and, wow, so much fun! You can see from the picture I posted here one of the first pieces I created with sawing. It's a bff puzzle heart necklace duo made for my bestie and myself. I know, cheesy, right? I still haven't learned how to solder, but I have done some PMC and am super excited about this since I learned that I can fire it over a gas stove instead of having to buy a kiln.

So, expect more posts with not just jewelry, but other fun projects I'm working on in between work and classes, like reupholstering an awesome channel back chair and playing around with a new gouache set that my godmother gave me recently.