Quick Crafts #4: Smart Mousepad

Working on a laptop can be a pain if you don't have a separate mouse to work with. But sometimes, you just won't have a table available to put your mouse on. Operating the mouse on your lap won't really work either, you might drop it or it just doesn't respond that well.
So what else can you do? Well, there usually is a bit of space on your laptop right beside the touchpad. You could use that space for your mouse if it's a small one. And as we all don't want to scratch our laptops, why don't you simply make a little mousepad to fit that space? So, here's my newest invention.

You will need:

* Fabric (preferably non-fraying, like fleece or craft foam)
* Hot glue
* Pressing iron
* Baking paper

How it's done:

Cut your fabric to size so it fits into that corner of your laptop. You can use an old mousepad as well or craft foam. If so, you won't have to make it non-slip as it already is. Round off the edges and shake it well so all the leftover fuzz will fall off (and not into your laptop).
To stop it from slipping, there are several methods to do this. You can either fuse your fabric to craft foam or an anti-slip mat and cut it to size, but this might add more height to your mousepad. I didn't want the pad to be thicker because I want to leave it on that edge when storing my laptop away.
The method I used isn't particularly safe for children, but it's quick, easy and most people probably have it handy like I did.
Grab your hot glue gun and make dots of glue on the bottom side of your mousepad. I made lots of little rows of dots all over the pad. Then, take your pressing iron, heat it up and spread baking paper over the glue dots. Press it until you can see the molten dots through the paper. Let everything cool down a bit and take the baking paper off. Let it cool a few more minutes and you're good to go.

Depending on the speed settings of your mouse, that very little space can be more than enough to get your cursor all the way from one side to the other and all across the screen. It's pretty much the best solution if you don't have a table. And that is one reason why laptops were invented, right?

How to make a Bedside Caddy

Getting organised is an ongoing task in many people's lives. Some might have less trouble with it than others, but in the end we all need some place to put everything back to in order to keep a room, appartment or house tidy. 
This being said, just putting everything onto a table or night stand probably isn't a good approach to tidying up. It'll just look very crowded and not exactly pleasant. And that's where this tutorial kicks in. 
Just imagine creating a spot for all that clutter on (and maybe even around) your night stand. One that will not take up any precious floor space and comes in extremely handy if you have to reach something directly from your bed. 
This by the way also makes a great gift for people of any age and it's actually a pretty fast and easy to make - you won't even need a measuring tool!

So here's how it's done:

1. Gather everything you want to store inside your caddy and lay it out on your bed. Make two or three rows if you have items of varying sizes. Put the small items into the first row, bigger ones into the middle and the biggest in the back. 

2. Organize the items in an order that is useful. Bring the items you'll need during sleep somewhere near the head end of the bed, those you probably won't need closer to the foot end. 
3. Group your small items, you don't want to sew a pocket exclusively for your ear buds, so you could group them with your glasses or charger. 

Step 1-5

4. Put bigger items behind the smaller items in a way that you always have one or more pockets of the front items aligning with the middle pockets. This makes sewing a lot easier. Take a look at the picture to see what I mean, one pocket is always a group of items without any space between.
5. Space your items out. You can use the whole length (or width) or your bed if necessary, so don't be afraid of using more space than necessary. 

6. Now choose your fabric. Stiff cotton fabrics work great for this project while stretchy fabrics might be a little more tricky to sew. I chose to use some fabric from old tablecloths which I don't really like. This project can be an extreme fabric waster depending on how many things you want to store, so I would recommend using inexpensive fabric. The back piece of fabric will have to hold the whole caddy in place by shoving the excess under the mattress, so the length has to be as long as possible and at least twice the height of your caddy (or once if you don't want a huge pocket in the back) plus a few inches to tuck it under the mattress.
7. Cut your fabric to the width of your caddy (which is a bit more than the width of the items spread out, just imagine you would put another pocket on either side, leave enough space at the edges). 
8. If necessary, hem the top edge of your fabric. As I used old tablecloths, the edges were already neat. 

Step 6-10

9. Lay your front fabric on top of the middle fabric and mark the pockets for the small items. If you don't know how wide your pocket needs to be, take the item you want to put inside, push down the right edge of the pocket, slide the item inside and push down the other corner. Mark about an inch wider than the second corner so that you can slide your items inside more easily. Mark the seams that will only be needed for the front row differently than the ones that will go through two layers. I used an air erasable pen to mark my edges, but pins will also do.
10. Decide on the height of your front and middle pockets. I eyeballed it out and added about three inches because the pockets won't lay flat when they are filled. One inch more would have been sufficient though, but I didn't want to risk that my items might not fit in. Cut the fabric to size.

11. Sew the bottom edge of your front and middle pockets together with both good sides facing up, so you basically sew a good side to a wrong side. Sew it just the way it's pictured in the image for step 6-10. If you only have two layers of pockets, skip this step and the next and go straight to step 13.
12. Sew a straight line from the bottom edge to the mark of each pocket that only exists in the front and doesn't form a pocket in the middle row. In my case, this was for example between the key on the bottom left and the hand lotion.

Step 13

13. Decide on a height for the last row of pockets and sew the bottom of your two existing rows onto the third piece of fabric right side to right side, upside down, as far away from the top as you want the height of the last row to be. If you have enough fabric, I'd recommend making at least one large pocket in the back, you never know what items you'll find that don't have a space of their own yet. 

Step 14

14. Flip the first two rows up again and sew the lines that go through both layers onto the third layer. 

After step 14

15. Fold all the rows down so that the pockets are on the inside and sew along the two side edges. Turn it right side out and hem the side edges of the back piece if necessary. If your caddy isn't as wide as mine is, you might decide to be done now with one large pocket in the back. For mine, I needed to divide the back pocket at least once near the middle because the huge back pocket would have dropped all the way to the floor and I wouldn't be able to grab my items easily that way. To do this, choose a long seam that goes through the front and middle pocket layer and sew along this line through the back layer as well, making the new seam all the way to the upper corner of the back pocket as well.
16. Cut all the thread ends. At this point, I eyeballed how much excess fabric I want to be tucked under the mattress. I wanted it to "cover" about half of my mattress's width because I'd be filling lots of heavy objects inside (like my laptop and my 3DS consoles). That is about 20 inches (50 cm). If your caddy won't hold too many heavy objects you can shorten this part of course. I'd say that the excess should be about as long as your caddy's height. I made sure that my backing fabric would be more than sufficiently long before I started. As I'm a bit lazy, I didn't hem the raw edge at the very top after cutting the excess at the top of the caddy because that edge will never be seen anyway since it's hidden under the mattress (for a gift, I would hem that edge though).
17. Speaking about it, now is the perfect time to install your caddy. If your mattress is heavy, get someone to help you hold it up while you spread the excess of the caddy under the mattress. Lighter mattresses can often be flipped up against the wall so you could do this on your own. Lay your mattress down again, making sure your caddy doesn't slip too much while doing so. And that's it. Now you can put your pillow and blanket back onto the bed and fill your caddy.

My finished caddy

Quick Crafts #3: Lazy Susan

Do you ever have trouble reaching certain spices or dips on the table? Or grabbing the scissors at the far end of your desk? Good news for you: here comes the lazy Susan and you might already have everything at home to make it! 

All you need are two wooden plates with a ridge along the edge and a few marbles. Lay your first plate down with the ridge facing up, place some marbles on the ridge and sandwich them with the second plate with the ridge facing down. And that's it. 

Now you can put a few dips or art supplies on top and rotate the top plate to reach your desired item. Simple, eh?

Three Ingredient Chocolate & Banana Popsicles

The days are getting warmer and longer again on the Northern Hemisphere and we all know what that means: Summer is approaching! To celebrate this, I decided to make up a simple recipe for you to enjoy. This very simple recipe can be adjusted to all kinds of tastes and allergies and makes a healthy and child-friendly snack to cool down on a hot day.

So without further ado, let's get started!

You will need:

* Cocoa powder (any kind will do; if you use unsweetened cocoa powder, I'd suggest sweetening the mixture, e.g. with honey)
* a ripe banana
* approximately 300g yoghurt
* a popsicle mold

How it's done:

Put half of your yoghurt into a mixing bowl or cup.
Add a few teaspoons of cocoa powder and mix it, then taste it. I took about four teaspoons for 150g of yoghurt. You can sweeten it if you want.
Scoop the chocolate mix into the molds to fill them about halfway.
Now put the rest of the yoghurt and the banana into a blender and mix it (you can also use a hand-held blender). The consistency will be pretty liquid, so you can actually pour it into the molds. Since the chocolate mixture is thicker than the banana, they will not mix up, so you won't have to wait for the first layer to freeze.
Now close your mold and put it in the freezer for about 4 hours or overnight.

Enjoy!