Thursday, December 18, 2014

Finals Week Polly Pocket Ornament

     Finals week.  For the past seven years it has been just as much a part of my holiday season as decorating the tree.  In fact, I took my grad physics exam this afternoon, so it's just now finally over.  When I was a kid, I always wanted a Polly Pocket ornament and this ornament gave me the chance to combine that desire with my background in mathematics and physics (notice that Polly's textbooks are on nuclear physics and differential geometry).

Polly's "House"

Materials:
*Wide jewelry box
*Scrapbooking paper
*Felt
*Pencil
*Marker
*Scissors
*Needle
*Thread
*All purpose adhesive

Directions:
*Trace the back, two short sides, and one of the long sides of the jewelry box onto the piece of patterned paper.  Trim as necessary to get them to fit inside the box and then glue into place.
*Trace the lid of the box onto the sheet of felt and cut out.
*Glue one of the long sides of the box inside the lid as pictured.  Set aside to dry.
*Once dry, cut the felt to fit inside the lid to make "carpeting" for the "house."

Blanket
Materials:
*Fabric square
*Needle and thread

Directions:
*Cut out a fabric square the size you would like Polly's blanket to be.
*Sew a blanket stitch around the edges of the fabric square to complete the blanket.

Owl Pillow
Materials:
*Felt in color of choice for owl body
*Orange felt
*White felt
*Black felt
*Needle and thread
*Stuffing
*Miniaturized owl template (can be found here)
*Scissors
*Permanent marker

Directions:
*Print out a miniature version of the owl template given in my Felt Owl Pal post.
*Trace two large circles onto the white felt for eyes, two small circles onto black felt for pupils, a triangle onto orange felt for a beak, and two of the body template onto the desired colored felt for the owls body.  Ignoring the wings and belly pieces, which I did not include because the details were too fine for the scale I was working on, follow the directions for sewing a felt owl pal.

Books
Materials:
*Images to use for book covers
*Plain paper
*Scissors
*All purpose adhesive

Directions:
*Using Paint or a similar program, design textbook covers and print out.  Print one copy of the front cover and two copies of the back cover.
*Cut out 20 or so sheets of plain paper to the same size as the covers.  Add front cover and one back cover to the book.
*Cut the remaining back cover so that it is slightly wider than the thickness of the stack of papers making up the book.  Add adhesive to the back of the strip and then place to form the spine of the book.  The strip of paper should overlap the front and back covers slightly.

Notes/papers
Materials:
*Computer and printer
*Plain paper

Directions:
*Take screenshots of papers you have written (I used pages from my Master's Thesis), shrink to small sizes, and print.

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