Quitting Amazon Gift Buying

I want to quit Amazon. Why? Because I don't like giving my money to multi multi multi billionaires who are already hoarding more wealth than they can ever use. I'd rather give it to a small local business that's trying to recover from lockdown - it does a lot more good that way. And I'm willing to put in a little more effort to make that happen. I may not be able to use small businesses for all my purchases but chains that are smaller than Amazon are a step in the right direction. 

Unfortunately, Amazon has made its way into all aspects of our life. It's not just where we shop, it's where we store our wishlists so people have ideas of what to get for us when our birthdays come along. You can note on your Amazon wishlist that you don't need this exact item and encourage people to make their actual purchases elsewhere, but the chances they'll actually do that are slim. 

We also have Amazon Prime, Amazon Music and an Echo. 

That's a lot of stuff to quit. I'm going to take this a bit at a time, starting with no longer buying gifts from Amazon's website.

A few weeks ago was my nephew, The Gamer's, ninth birthday (son of my eldest sister,  The Excited One). My neice, The Wolfling, daughter of The Excited One, turned seven shortly after. So I wanted to get them some presents the old fashioned way. I checked their Amazon wishlists for inspiration (yes, using Amazon to quit Amazon). The Gamer wanted books 10, 11 and 12 from the How To Train Your Dragon series. For The Wolfing I noted a sew-your-own-unicorn-cushion kit. They used to sell lots of things like that in various shops. I expected to find something similar in the high street fairly easily. 

So one Friday I set out to buy presents in person from actual shops.

First I went into Waterstones for How to Train Your Dragon but they only had books 1-9 in stock (I was looking for books 10-12). They offered to order them in for me, but it wouldn't have come in time (this is my fault for not going shopping until 2 days before The Gamer's birthday). 

Next I tried WH Smith. They had book 12, which I bought, but not the others. They confirmed that they do carry them all, so maybe if I happen upon another WH Smiths it might be worth checking there. They didn't have any kids' maker kits of any kind, which was disappointing. They would have a few years ago. 

I tried in The Works, where I did find a handbag for The Wolfing - one with a picture (of a unicorn in front of a castle) for her to colour in and some pens. But I couldn't find any kids' sewing kits or anything like that. And while they sell books, they didn't have How To Train Your Dragon.

Finally I tried B&M for some craft kits but while they do sell kids' art supplies, I didn't find any 'make-you-own' style kits. I was tired at this point so I went home. 

I looked online and found I could click 'n' collect the books I wanted from Waterstones at The Trafford Centre on the way to my parents' house on Sunday, which is The Gamer's birthday.

As for The Wolfing, I had another couple of weeks to go before her birthday so figured I could try a few more places and if no luck I could choose a different idea. 

So Sunday came along and, en route to my parents' house, I was just parking at my Trafford Centre detour when I realised that on Sundays the Traff doesn't open until noon (it was 10.30 - I was due to arrive at my parents' for 11am). Luckily, we weren't expected to arrive at The Excited One's house for the party until 3pm so I was able to go to my parents and drive out to collect the books at noon. Another thing that wouldn't have been a problem if I'd planned better. The books I wanted were in stock in that branch when I ordered so they'd been able to get my parcel ready within 2 hours (which is why I ordered from that particular branch) and I was in the shop for 2 minutes to collect it. 

On the Monday I ventured to The Range. It's a 20 minute walk from my house, but not really designed for people to arrive on foot (which I did anyway without too much trouble). There I found a pretty big selection of kids' maker kits; I struggled to decide what to get. I settled on an animal sewing kit - 6 different little stuffed animals to make. I thought about getting an animals cross stitch kit as well (because none of these things are very expensive) but decided instead I'd look for a book about how awesome girls are when next in town. 

I ventured back into Waterstones looking for a non-fiction book about inspirational women, or something similar, but I couldn't see one I liked. Instead I bought a fiction book, Evie and the Animals, which is about a girl named Evie who can talk to animals (and has to be strong and proud of who she is to win the story, according to the blurb). I figured this was more along the theme of her other presents anyways.

I'd love to write about how this shopping experience was way better than buying everything online from a single conglomerate but honestly, it took days to get everything together. I had to go into a lot of shops, only to find they didn't have what I was looking for. It was hard work. With a bit more practice shopping this way I think I could find things more easily and I could easily have click 'n' collected from my local store, to collect on a day I'd be in the vicinity of the shop anyway, if I'd started my efforts a few days earlier. It wasn't easy but it was doable. So I'm going to keep doing it because the effort it takes to support smaller businesses over Amazon is a sacrifice worth making to make the world a better place.

The Mask of Aku Aku

It's The Physio's birthday. It's a big birthday so The Artivist wanted to get her lots of nostalgia. He's made her a mixed tape (on a memory stick) and compiled lots of photos of them together as children. 

And he wanted to make this:

For those of you who don't know, this is the mask of Aku Aku, which is featured in 90's PS1 game, Crash Bandocoot.

I have a handheld mini grinder what that my parents bought me for Christmas, so I was really excited to find a project that'd let me try it out. 

We found a log to cut up for our mask base, and some other pieces of wood for the facial features, and we dried out all of our wood by leaving it on a rack above an electric heater for a day or two. 

I trimmed two discs off the end of this stick for the eyes and The Artivist painted them with this yellow-orange gradient effect. 

We trimmed another disc and stripped the bark off it, which we cut into two pieces and painted green for the green bags under Aku Aku's eyes. I don't seem to have a picture of them, but you'll see them on the end product. 

We cut two pieces for the eyebrows and painted them red. 

For the mouth, I trimmed a piece of wood to size and cut a hole in the middle. I used a little sander attachment to tidy up the shape in the middle of the top lip. The Artivist mixed a brownish shade of red for lips and painted them. Once the red was dry, I drew shine cracks on the lips with black paint and a skewer. 

I'm not really sure how I made the nose. I started cutting a triangular prism, then I cut the base to a more triangular shape. And I basically hacked away at it until it looked vaguely noise shaped, then I used the little sanding cylinder to tidy it up. I dug a couple of holes for nostrils and painted it the same colour as the eyebrows. 

We wanted the base of the mask to be a piece of bark, so we took this log and hacked a piece off with a saw. It was not an easy job. The Artivist did it. We also cut the bottom two corners of the bark off because the mask doesn't look square in the games. 

At the top, I sanded down the wood that had no bark over it, so the bark itself is more defined as the actual mask. Had I had more time I'd have liked to have removed the under wood from the top altogether, but I think it looks good like this. 

We did cut away the under wood where we trimmed the bottom corners, but don't seem to have any photos of that step. 

We used the little sanding cylinder attachment on my mini grinder to flatten the mask face in the spots where the facial features sit, to make it easier to glue them down.

I used this tool to mark the teeth onto the space that will show between the lips. We painted the teeth white and used a light yellow to define the grooves between teeth.

The Artivist selected which feathers he wanted for Aku Aku's head, then I drilled holes into the top of the wood for the feathers to fit in, with glue to encourage them to stay put. Then we used a generous amount of PVA glue to fix the facial features in place. 

 

We let the mask dry overnight, then sprayed it with clear lacquer to preserve it. 

We're really pleased with the end

 result and, judging from the photo she sent us, so is The Physio. 

Baby proofing

The Youngling keeps getting bigger and more curious. He's always trying to get at things he can't quite reach. Lately he's been trying to pull down these books, and succeeding in a rather uncontrolled manner that leaves him at risk of big heavy objects landing on his feet, possibly hitting his head on the way down. So I need to stop him getting at it.

I've got this bit of card that's big enough to cover the space on two shelves. I paper mache it with one layer of kitchen towel, then squirt some poster paints on it. I want to make a green / blue spray from a white centre. 

I spread the coloured paints towards the edge, then towards the white centre.

I didn't really have enough blue poster paint, but luckily I still have a few blue and green shades left over from the paint by numbers that The Artivist bought me for our anniversary.

I paint lines spreading outwards using all the blues and greens I have left, trying to keep the darker shades nearer to the perimeter and the lighter shades nearer to the middle.

I want more white in the middle but there's a lot of paint on the card now. It needs time to dry before I do anything else to it. I leave it overnight then paint a new white centre. 

Next I look online for silhouettes of faeries. I save a few pictures that I like, then use photoshop to copy elements of each. I like the wings of one, the skirt from another. I take the parts that I like and stick them together to make my own design. 

Once I've created a silhouette I'm happy with I print it and cut it out. I put the template on my painted card (which is dry by now) and draw around it with a pencil. The wings and hair are a bit fiddly to cut out so I'll paint those free hand.  

Then I paint over my pencil lines and fill in the silhouette. Finally, I copy the wing detail and the female's hair by eye.

Last thing to do is fix the picture to the front of the bookcase. The bottom shelf is for The Youngling's books and toys. I fix two angle brackets to the bottom of the next shelf up, pointing upwards, and two onto the top of the middle shelf, pointing down. I leave enough space for the cardboard to fit between the bracket and the shelf. Then I slide my picture in sideways.

I'm sure if The Youngling wanted to get at the items behind the picture he'd be able to destroy it in 30 seconds flat, but he's so far made no attempt to do so, or even appeared curious about it. So I feel my mission is accomplished.