DIY: Stele from The Mortal Instruments

So I just finished reading the first five books of The Mortal Instruments series (WHY did I not know book 6 wasn't out yet?) (WHY is book 6 not out yet??) I will be reviewing them on here presently, but first I was asked to make a DIY of the Stele that I made for Halloween birthday party reasons. So here it is: for your own Halloween reasons, perhaps.

WHAT YOU NEED:

Pencil (or something else that will be used for support)

Polymer clay

crystal 

STEP 1: 

Wrap the pencil in Polymer clay. I used an old pencil because it was shorter. You want to keep your pencil about the size of your palm so that when everything is together it's not too long. Because it was old and short, it was also sharpened. I broke off the tip and tried to get it as flat as possible. The pencil tip was having none of that. I eventually wrapped extra around the tip and rolled it out on the table, removing extra clay as I went, to make it all even and straight. 

STEP 2: 

Wrap clay around the end of the crystal using the same method as the pencil tip. My crystal was narrower at the bottom so I had to fill that in and roll it too. Make sure the clay on the end of your crystal is the same width as your pencil/handle. 

STEP 3: 

Bake them in the oven. I pre-heated my oven to 250 degrees and left the handle and crystal in for

15 minutes because they were only about a centimeter or 2 thick. 

STEP 4: 

This is the hard part. You use some industrial glue to glue the crystal and the handle together. And then you WAIT. For 24 hours. It's really, really hard to wait that long. Trust me. But if you don't wait 24 hours (even if it looks dry) the handle will break off. I learned that the hard way. WAIT. 

STEP 5: 

Now that you've got your Stele together (and it's dry) it's time for decorations. Each Stele is as unique as the person that owns it. They also reflect the personality of the owner. For example, Jace's Stele was clear, silver, triangular, and fairly simple. Isabelle's was red and had an antiqued silver snake wrapped around it. I can't remember what Clary's Stele looked like but for some reason I'm thinking it had some purple in it.

Mine is Opalite and silver with swirls and little jewels. 

Have fun and be creative with this process!

STEP 6: 

Now that you've got your decorations on the Stele (hopefully covering up the crevice, otherwise just take more clay and roll it out VERY thinly and cover the crevice, smoothing it down before applying your design) it's time to bake it for the last time. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees again and leave your Stele in for

20 minutes. My decorations were about a quarter inch thick so they needed 20 minutes vs the 15 from the first time. 

It is perfectly safe to heat the clay again once it's already been heated. Just make sure your oven doesn't get to 300. As long as it's between 210 and 270 then you are fine. At 300 degrees the heat reacts badly with the clay, resulting in toxic fumes. So that's kind of an important thing to know. 

WARNING: 

As you can see here, my clay cracked during heating. Here is a good article to read to avoid cracking. If it DOES crack, well, there's not much you can do to fix it. What I did was take tiny pieces of clay, rolled them until they were so thin I could barely see them, smash it into the cracks (smoothed it out) and then heated it for one minute. ONE MINUTE and no more. It seems to have worked. 

VOILA

The finished product.

Enjoy!


UPDATE 10.29.13:
Oh, look. Another Stele.
Just call me an Iron Sister.

Book Review: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, book 4 & 5 by Rick Riordan

 

Wow, that's an insanely long title.
BASICALLY, I'm doing them both together because I read them back to back.
Like, I literally didn't get any sleep, I just kept reading forever.

This is going to be the most unprofessional book review ever, but I've never really been all that pro to begin with.

So here's what I think:

THESE BOOKS ARE SO AMAZING AND YOU HAVE TO GO READ THEM ALL RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I DEMAND YOU DO AND I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN IF YOU DONT AND RICK RIORDAN NEEDS TO WRITE MORE IN THIS SERIES RATHER THAN FOCUS ON SOME OTHER RANDOM KIDS BECAUSE I LOVE PERCY AND GROVER AND ANNABETH SO MUCH

I love this series so much I forgot how to use punctuation.
See?
Now don't you want to go read them?
Yeah, you do.

5/5 for both.

Book Review: The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped.

Now it's up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess? They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans. Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared -- a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever.

So I read The Titan's Curse last night. I mean, literally. I read the book last night. The whole book. Last night.
Yeah. It was intense.

And hilarious. Is it possible for this series to just get progressively funnier? Because I think they do.
I laughed every other line just about. I can't wait for the next book. I have high expectations for that one.
I expect to be laughing after every line, Rick Riordan.

I say that like it's a threat. Like these books have ever let me down before.


WHO: The main character is still Percy Jackson, it would probably be weird having a series called Percy Jackson if the main character were someone else. But this time, *SPOILER ALERT* Thalia is back. Annabeth is there too, but doesn't play much of a role except she's way more awesome in this book. Grover, as usual, is along for the quest. We've also been introduced to some new characters, Bianca and Nico Di Angelo. I have to say, I was right about their Greek parentage for about half the book. The other character we follow through The Titan's Curse is Zoe. She's pretty fantastic too. And then of course you've got your original cast, but they don't play such a big role.


WHAT: So the goddess Artemis goes missing, and it's up to her hunters and some of the kids from camp Half-Blood to find her. So Zoe, Grover, Bianca, and Thalia go on this quest to find her. Percy's got his own agenda. He leaves camp to save Annabeth, whom he's OBVIOUSLY developing quite the crush on. By some weird circumstances, (AKA: he wanted in so he broke the rules to make it happen,) he gets to join the quest. So they all travel across the U.S. kicking butt and taking names. They eventually find the Titan that Kronos has sent on some mission to do something. I'm generalizing here so I don't ruin anything for you. Basically everyone is saved, stuff happens, people die. It's epic.


WHEN: I'm not 100% certain of the time stamp on this thing, but it's sometime rather recently and it's in December. Cause there's snow and it's like, a week from Christmas. Cool how I deduced that, right?


WHERE: They end up in a ton of places in this book. Long Island, Washington D.C., some random place in Arizona, San Francisco, the mountain of despair, Olympus... that's just to name a few. And now my personal favorite - Cloudcroft, New Mexico. I basically went nuts when I read that. I used to live in Alamogordo, see? (also mentioned in the book). Alamogordo is at the base of the mountain they were on in Cloudcroft. I've been there several times and knew exactly where they were at all times. I geeked out.

P.S. the grocery store really does sell rubber rats, I almost bought one once. Also, it doesn't actually cost several hundred dollars for a taxi from Alamo. Maybe if it was on the far side of town, but it's only 45 ish minutes away. So, yeah. Book fixer for you.


WHY: The whole point of this quest was to save the goddess Artemis. Percy had his own personal motivation and was mainly only going to save Annabeth. Grover went to help Artemis because appanretly he's in love with her? I didn't get that either, Greek mythology, eh. He also went to find Pan.


HOW: They get around. Subways, cars, trains, pegasi... you know. Your usual modes of transportation.


5/5 for this book.

Next up:
What Happened to Goodbye
by Sarah Dessen