Saving Money... Part 4

Ok, I am a bit out of sequence here. I promised a blog on "Laundry: The Biggest Money Leach of All"...

You don't have to pay a ton of money on doing laundry...well, if you don't have a washer and dryer at home, you will have to shell out quite a few quarters to make something happen...but the soap component, that you can trim down to pennies a load by making your own laundry detergent.


Yeah, I know how it sounds. But for how expensive this stuff is... people are stealing it, just to have the luxury of clean clothes.

Check out this article from the NY Times

I am not kidding...

So what does it take for you to make your own? You can follow this simple soap recipe:

Powdered Detergent

2 cups grated laundry soap (look for Sunlight soap in Canada, or Fels Naptha in the States, you can also use hand washing soap like Dove if you like)
1 cup washing soda (this is NOT BAKING SODA) you can find it in the stainremoval area of your market)
1 cup borax (The stuff your grandmother can tell you about... she might call it  "20 mule team")
1. Mix store in an airtight plastic container.
2. Use 2 tablespoons per full load.


That is all...

Don't like the powdered stuff?

Make liquid detergent instead. I bought a cheap large spaghetti pot to make this in ( I did not spend more than $8 for it). It may be just soap, but I don't want to have soapy tasting spaghetti if I don't wash it the pot out well enough.
Also do Save a few of your detergent bottles before you make this, or forage in the local laundromat in the waste bin for bottles to store it in.

Liquid Detergent

3 pints of water
1/2 cup Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax
1/3 bar Soap (grated)
Large Pot to mix
Large Bucket to cut soap in
Containers to store in

Bring the three pints of water to a boil, turn off the heat. Add the grated soap, mix until soap is melted. Turn on heat back on to low, and then add borax and soda. Mix until you notice the liquid thicken some, then turn off the heat. Now you need to cut this with water... Here comes a choice for you... I used to fill a 5 gallon bucket and mix then try to fill it up and try to pour into bottles...this only spells disaster.
I now fill about 5 bottles up with 1 gallon of water each, then divide the remaining mix evenly into those 5 bottles... it is far easier to pour a small amount of liquid then a heavy bucket.

Once the mix hits the water it will congeal slightly. You will have to shake the bottle to pour it out. I use the cap to measure how much for each load. This does not "suds up" much, and is ideal for both HE washers and regular ones too.

Wedding Kittehs!

I know I have been promising (and promising and promising)  my facebook friends the photos of the Kitteh Favors I made for my sister in law, Anna's wedding this Summer!
Here is the finished product:

And here is how I got there:
I have an art degree, but I am always on the look out for new ideas and new sculpture concepts. I surf the internet, attend classes and even watch TV to get new ideas about things. I am not a "paper" art kinda person...more of a sculpture, living art sort really.

So a few years back that I saw a TV segment on "Crafter's Coast To Coast", or what is now called "That's Clever."

  In the middle of fast forwarding through what I thougth was a "paper junk" segment (am not the biggest fan of scrapbooking), I stopped cold. The paper segment was about how to make a paper mache butterfly seed ornament, with art teacher Steve Hess.

 This was not the "elementary school" strip up the newspaper, flour and water, paper mache project. This was how to make "paper" from making pulp, but not to make flat sheets of paper... it was to make paper in sculpted form with seeds imbedded. To put more clearly, it was an elegant sculptured art form. One that was decidedly rustic but uniquely elegant.



Watch the HGTVnetwork video here:

seed ornament video

When my sister in law (the ultimate kitty mom) got engaged, I told her of the seed ornament concept ( I was just dying to try this as it was something new), and instead of a butterfly it could be a kitty! Why not? Right?

As she is a environmental chem person from Caltech, I knew we had a shared hatred of eco-waste and  wedding favors that get left behind after the reception are the epitome of waste for me. Any kittehs left over, could be crumbled into her Mom's garden and the paper could compost on its own as the flowers grew from the seeds. Low footprint friendly favors and flowers to boot! What is not to love!



So with her go ahead with the favor concept, the kitteh production began. The HGTV video had a very flat ornament as its featured project, and it kinda looked like a cookie cutter punch out. That would be the easy way for this project to run, but oh no... I had to go and get fancy! I wanted some detail, and honestly it would be a whole heck of alot easier to paint 200 smiling kitteh favors if I had some detail on the face in the mold so I could just follow the lines.  And of course detail led to it having to have depth, and the scope of the project shifted.

 There was a bit of a trial and error process and as this is turning into a long blog I will give you the highlights of what I learned:

1)Make MORE than 1 positive from clay. An errant cat walking on your design table on the kitteh being designed is a bit disasterous.

2) Make your mold out of something FLEXIBLE. Do NOT use plaster of paris to make the mache end product IT WILL NOT DRY in the 24 hour window in which the video states.

3)DO NOT USE YOUR BLENDER as he says to in the video. You WILL be either sharpening your blender blades (even if it is a dedicated craft blender) or buying a whole new one...ask me how I know. :)

4) Boil your paper for a few hours after soaking it over night. This will loosen the fibers and your blender with love you for it!

5) Remember to calibrate color... as color when wet is ALWAYS darker, and do test out how much paper to paint to ensure a consistent color as my kitteh's were a bright red raspberry after adding too much to the sealant... I ended up giving up on sealing them altogether as I ran out of time. I fixed it by doing a "white wash" over the existing color.

6) Although kitteh's may not be sealed, don't think you will go as fast as you did when painting faces with the sealed ones. It takes way longer as the paint gets more absorbed into the paper.

I had a LOT of fun making these.  And when the wedding was all done, we only had 2 kittehs left behind on tables.

Awesome!

I have more photos to post with these, but I did want to finally get these up on the web for folks to see!