LorishForrest - An Etsy Store!

After a fair amount of husbandly pestering...

I have decided to try and sell my creative projects on Etsy.  It's takes a lot of time and love to make these things a reality but lucky for me I have a figdity disposition and have a hard time sitting still!

I want to show you all what I have been making and of course gets your thoughts on anything that's needed in your collections as well!  This will be a constantly changing post with updates all the time so feel free to check back often!  And of course, if you see something you must have please visit my Etsy store by searching for LorishForrest.

 

 

    

S7PP: Viserys - sorry!! (not sorry.)

"He Was No Dragon.  Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon."

I've opened up an Etsy shop in case you don't want to do this yourself - we've kind of perfected the process so why mess with all that stupid glue!?! (IT'S HOT, YO!)  

Visit my shop to see for yourself by looking me up, 

LorishForrest

on Etsy.com

I saw this on another blog somewhere and I thought - GOSH HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!?!  So for about 4 years now I have been bouncing around ideas to make this happen.  It was always something though - the skull is too expensive or who has the time!?!?  But this year I am SO HAPPY I finally made this happen and - to my shegrins - it wasn't too expensive to pull off either.

I was able to find a pretty cheap prop skull on Amazon (same place I find everything...) for a reasonable price.  It's a resin cast and beautifully detailed skull that is not life-sized - it's smaller than a real skull but if you're looking for a life-sized skull, Amazon has plenty of options for you.  I would only suggest that you look for a resin or other material with a higher temp melting point. ____________________________________________________________ For the "crown" I had a few options - gold acrylic paint?  Maybe a gold wax?  Paint would be inconsistent as far as the thickness not to mention messy... and it gets REALLY hot here in the summer time - I could easily imagine coming home to Viserys laughing at me as his gold "crown" was melted in a puddle on my floor... Terrible, right?  So I hummed and hawed and came across gold glue sticks.   GOLD GLUE STICKS, YA'LL!  This was going to be a challenge that I happily accepted.  

The glue sticks melt at 250 degrees F and the resin skull has a melting point at 350 F.  We did a few things here.  Here are the supplies you need:

• gold glue sticks (I used 12 of the small ones)
• Viserys head
• wooden kabob skewers
• tin foil
• an aluminum can (we used a soda can cut in half)
• tongs
• a hair dryer (If you want...)
• a pot to boil water in - careful not to screw up your pot!!
• a wax paper lined cookie sheet

Preheat your oven to 275 F.

Put your glue sticks in your can and make sure they don't stick up over the top too much otherwise they'll melt into your pot and ruin your pot.  You've been warned!  

Put the can in your pot and add water to the pot (don't get any in the can!) being careful not to fill it up too much otherwise the can will float and spill your gold glue all over the inside of your pot which will ruin your pot.  Voice of experience - you've been warned!

Put the pot on your burner and cover it with tin foil - It might not be a bad idea to set your tongs over the top of the covered can to secure it and make sure it doesn't move around too much while the water is boiling.

You can check it a few times but it will take a few minutes to melt.  Make sure your skull is ready on the wax-paper lined cookie sheet.  Once it's melted (and bubbling a little) you'll want to pour it over your Viserys head.  You'll want to encourage it to evacuate the can with some scraping with your kabob sticks knowing that you'll have to toss em after you're done - get some help with this!  You'll need to hold the can with the tongs and scrape the glue carefully on top of  the skull. It's not going to pour easily and keep in mind that the second you take the glue off the heat it will begin to cool making it harder to manipulate.  

From here we set our hair dryer on high to keep it hot and maneuvered it to where we sorta wanted it to drip - it has a mind of it's own though and will do as it wants!  I tried reasoning with it but it found my clothing choices offensive and didn't feel up to working with me.  Once you have it sorta where you want it you can put it in your hot oven and let it go.  I camped outside of my oven for about 5 minutes watching it melt and when I was happy with where it was I pulled it out and blew it dry with my COLD hair dryer.  This is important because when you put the entire skull in the oven, it will get hot which will cause the glue to melt further even after its out of the oven - you have to cool it off.  BLOW MAN, BLOOOW!

It doens't take too long to cool down and the result is pretty freaking amazing.  I want to make more of them.  Maybe for the finale party?  Hmmm.....

  

Season 7, Premier party! Let the planning insanity begin! (oh boy...)

Well.... The awesome thing is that my best friends will be driving down from Washington to spend the week with us and will just happen to be with us for their first taste of allll the hooplah.

The stressful thing is that since they will be here, and since it's the second to the last time we will ever be able to host this event, my husband wants to invite freaking everybody.  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

So the planning begins.  July 16th is not that far away and we have lots of work to do if we want to host an amazing party for .... 17 people.....  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

I know, it doesn't seem like a lot... and I already have some great ideas, plus I'll have 2 extra sets of hands to help us with the preparations.  The thing that bothers me the most is the logisticals... I don't have enough plates... I don't have enough chairs... I don't have enough butt space on my couch. .. *sigh* most of these things can be solved with some shopping but we can't be going nuts like we did that one year...  Lets see how much of this we can do on a budget!  Thrift stores, here we come!  Of course, I will be sharing my findings here.

This season we have to do a few very important things:

• Come up with a theme....  
• The North Wants You!
• Create the invitations
• Done, and super awesome, I might add....
• Create house sigils for new allies to the North
• Pending.... not sure if I'll actually get around to doing this for alllll of our new bannermen....
• Create a killer (pun intended!) menu
• See the "All About Food" post!  Can't wait to start playing!
• Plan for favors and things to send home
• Ordered giant Easter eggs to paint and fill with stuff! I think I have a post on this?  I'll have to look...
• Figure out annoying logisticals (plates, chairs, butt space...)
• Already started looking at eBay - My advice, get started NOW if you have this problem!  You can find some amazing stuff and you don't want to wait until the last minute!  
• Update the Death Pool board (OOOOOO!!!!!  Hodor, nooo!)
• Work out nitty gritties so nothing gets left out
• Share my madness with all of you lucky duckies.

As always, I hope this blog can serve as a guide to help you create an amazing party too!  Feel free to snag any images you like for your own party and let me know if you have other ideas you'd like me to add.

Lets get it started!

S6FP: Death Pool Winners Basket - A Work in Progress...

Season 6 Finale Party

Death Pool Winners Basket - A Work in Progress...

I always love sending my guests home with something from the party.  For the premier party everyone took home a direwolf, the finale party before that they got vials of Himalayan salt and some fresh bread, the premier party before that Kazoos of Winter and House Clegane doggy bags.  The finale party this year won't be any different - although I'm going to kill everyone, at least they'll go home with something nice to remember our evening.  

First thing is first, lets bounce around some ideas for the winner of the Death Pool.  Currently House Courtade is in the lead and if Dave and DB don't pick up their game, she's going to win the whole thing (Come on, Hodor, you got this, buddy!) Post eps 5:  I didn't know!  I take it back!  NO NO PLEASE NO!!!! **sobbing..**

I consider myself very lucky in a number of ways - one of which is that my amazing and wonderful husband runs a Gamestop and gets a hefty discount on merchandise from ThinkGeek.com so that is where our adventure begins.  They have these wonderful dragon goblets that we will be getting in a set of two.  Lovely, aren't they?  They make me almost think of a Westerosi picnic, so this is what our basket will be themed after.  Of course, you need something to put in these puppies, and that part I am still working on but it's going to be pretty damn marvelous if I do say so myself - I'll get to that part once I actually finish it.  It's going to be delicious...

So you are sitting in a clearing on a cliff overlooking the Twins in the distance with your lover, in your hands a dragon goblet full of deliciousness but the sun is bright.  You try to gaze into the loveliness of your ladies eyes but all you can see is the sun assaulting your eye sockets.  You squint in the general direction of your lady and you see she has a lovely headpiece with which to shield her from the suns brutality while your head is bare.  You need something to shield out the sun, yes?  Well, my friends, I have you covered.  *snicker*

That's right folks!  There are numerous websites out there that can custom make hats for you and I was able to find this one for a decent price so SUCK IT, RAMSEY.  No Westerosi picnic basket is complete without one...

You take in a deep breath and fill your lungs with the crisp clean air when... What's that in the distance?  Some of the Boltons scouts have ridden upon you and take offense to your headgear!  Your lady shrieks!  (ahhhh!) You clammer to your feet and reach for - 

Not the real one, of course, but the letter opener.  Hey, it's sharp and intimidating and can be deadly to the one who wields it with skill.  John Snow would be proud.. or he might snicker a little but all the same.  It's like- 2 scouts - and they're really just kids so you make quick work of them so you can get back to your lady, who strangely doesn't seem to mind that you've just ruined her favorite gown...

You look into the basket to pull out a big hunk of salty meat when you feel something sharp in your neck - you look up to see that your beautiful lady is gone and instead your eyes fall upon a faceless man - dagger in your neck - he whispers the words as your vision fades - 

"Valar Morghulis."  

What a better way to celebrate the death pool winners victory than to kill him (or her??) George would be proud... so much death....

Aside from a few bottles of surprise I am still working on and a few other little ditties, I think that will complete our basket.  I'll get pictures of the things I am working on as soon as they're finished and of course, the completed basket once it's all put together... 

More updates to follow!  Happy hunting!

S6PP: The Hunt for Where My $&@#! Is.

SEASON 6 PREMIERE PARTY

WHERE THE HECK IS MY CRAP??

Part of the joy of moving is that even 6 months after you've moved you're still plagued by random boxes of stuff you don't use everyday.  In my case, it's boxes full of Game of Thrones party supplies that I scarcely use and now, ironically, I can't find anywhere.  I've already filled my swear words quota for the day so maybe the Lord of the house will have better luck in the box-jungle that is our garage when he gets home.  

On the plus side, I found my vials of salt, my kazoos of winter, my mustard jars and some serving ware so I'm on the right track!  Ugh.

So I've decided that I'm going to send each guest home with AN ACTUAL DIREWOLF.  See that cutie patootie there guarding what little of my gear I could find?  That is Sir Fluffy Feet.  He will accompany his fact sheet at the table and will go home with one lucky guest.  Each guest will have a plushie version of their advertised direwolf.  They'll get a kick out of it.  

The Dish Dilemma:

My regular table ware is... well... it's colorful.  I have square plates that have retro flowers on them and this will not do at all for a medieval feast.  In 2013 I had this problem and with 13 people to feed I was forced to settle for plain square black plastic plates - I HATED them.  On the plus side, it did make clean-up easy, but they were not at all in keeping with the theme.  I can legitimately say I have had a dish problem FOR YEARS.  It's not acceptable.


So this year, I did a little digging.  I turned, once again, to my friends Amazon and Ebay.  Amazon had a great option in "sizzling plates" - a search popped up lots and lots of options but these ones seemed to be the most economical at about $10/each.  These also do double duty for Fajita night too!  I was lucky enough that in my search through eBay I was able to find a better deal - and something that looked more genuine to boot.  For $36, I was able to get 6 sizzling plates with the wooden base and free shipping... sure they looked used with the knife marks in them and everything but that is EXACTLY what I was looking for. As time goes on and I expand this little tradition, I will have to find more plates, but at least now, I know what I am looking for!  This creates another nagging dilema though.... where to store this stuff.... grr...

VALAR MORGHULIS!