Let's Wage War!

The month of August was a powerful month at the Function. Our series "Waging War" was all about the battles we face on this Earth. The Bible states that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against sin, temptation and everything the devil tries to bind us with. We used the most practical action against this: prayer! We spent the month deep in prayer, because through prayer we are CONQUERORS over any opposition we face.
 






Our inspiration for design was this verse: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." Ephesians 6:11. We wanted a literal picture of this, so we decided to put together a scene of soldiers prepared to fight. They have put on their armor and have all their equipment so that when anything comes their way - they are ready.





The Tank:

First I'd like to say that I am not a tank expert, nor am I an experienced painter. No more tanks in my future, this was enough to last me a while haha :)





So this is the tank that I attempted to paint..

I sorta wish I chose something simpler now, maybe like a cartoon version.

So first thing I did was draw an outline of the entire thing.











Then I pretty much just painted it all in. The plan was to make the silhouette and then go back in with other colors and paint over all the details. The board had a lot of dry dirt on it and instead of washing it off I thought it would give a cool 3D effect to my tank: BAD IDEA!! haha it made it so difficult to paint, no joke.

Well this is what my finished cheesy tank looked like. Oh and I forgot to mention: the reason I didn't paint the whatcha ma call it tube thingie that you shoot from was to make it 3D. I thought it'd give it some fun dimension. Well I found these old vacuum parts in my garage and I just thought it was so convenient that it attached at such a perfect angle, so we went for it. Very off from what it should have been, but I think it turned out well.







I only had mannequins of torsos, so to get the soldiers ready we put in garbage bags and just blew in air. It made them look pretty realistic, besides the fact that they had no heads.



Well, the finished product:

Instagram!

Book Crafts

For our Church Anniversary we decided to do something big! We were turning 13 haha, finally becoming a teenager! We saw a picture of a simple book chandelier on Pinterest and we were inspired. The entire decor of the church was made of books. It was hard work, but the result was great(:

So I know this doesn't look great, and being a book lover it broke my heart to rip the pages out of all these old books, but it had to be done. So we ripped out each book page one by one and hot glued them along the edges to create a teardrop shape. We were careful not to fold the pages or it would become flat. Then we started hot gluing them together into long strands. When one strand got really long we started another strand out of that strand. We were attempting to create a tree effect. Each strand being a branch.

So there were two of us, I was doing the first step of gluing each individual page together and my sister was gluing them into strands.

The second part of the project was making the chandeliers. One book makes one chandelier. It's pretty simple actually, the first step is to remove the book cover. Next, one page at a time, fold each page towards the binding of the book. No glue necessary. The book then naturally becomes a cylinder like in the picture. When finished folding in the pages you can glue the length of the binding together (you can also do this before folding in the pages, your preference).

Making them into chandeliers was the harder and more time-consuming part. We used twine to connect them to metal rings (easier to buy than make yourself). The excess twine was used to wrap around the metal rings. Then we used needles with the little ball on top (I don't really know what it's called) to secure the neighboring books together. When we ran out of old books that were naturally yellowed we had to use newer ones. You can use this link: antique-ize a book in minutes to see how we fixed that problem(:

The chandeliers where on the stage..

Antique-ize Book in Minutes!

Okay, so first and foremost I'd like to apologize for the dorky photos. I tend to make weird faces when people take a picture of me while I'm sleep deprived, makeup-less, and unprepared :) and yes I'm in my pj's.

Great, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about this book.

We made about a hundred of these by the way. They are pretty simple to make actual, but it really does test your patience. First you remove the cover and backing of the book. Then you simply start from one side of the book and tuck each page in (one at a time) toward the binding of the book. No glue needed, it's going to be very compact since the amount of pages by the backing doubles. Also make sure not to fold the pages, because the book really loses volume that way. If it's a really thick book it''ll do it on it's own.

Anyways, since we were making many of these we wanted them all to be about the same shade. So after we ran out of old books that were naturally yellow we started using newer books. Then brew a strong pot of coffee, and using a sponge pat it along the sides of the book until you get the color you desire! That's it (: easier than making pie (I know because i tried). Have fun crafting :)

Foothill Night Out - Jan 31, 2014

Our first Foothill Night Out Event, great success. Bigger Success next time(:
Just a glimpse into our church projects(: The reason behind it all. Make Disciples!
I love my Church, it's my passion.
I made it into the video 4 times! And you know what that means? Video editor thinks im hot stuff. Just kidding(: This was an awesome event, if you missed it don't cry (too much), because we're having another one (same location!) on Feb 28. See if you can find me all four times!
Melchizedek! mcg12.org Check it out.

The "P" Challenge

Perseverance.
Over a month's period of time, teens persevere to achieve a goal they've always wanted to accomplish.
Overcome laziness. Overcome struggles. Strive. Achieve. Accomplish.
So everyone at The Function got to pick a challenge for themselves. We had some pretty crazy and diverse ones including the raw food challenge, the love letter challenge, and the splits challenge.
We stayed accountable by posting pictures and statuses to our facebook page, The "P" Challenge, and you can feel free to check it out (: https://www.facebook.com/groups/634636056547640/
We had a lot of fun, but it had to come to an end. So we decided to make medals for those who persevered and made it through to the end. We called our celebration Who "P"ed the Longest! Yes, we know it's pretty cheesy(:

If we bought them a boring ol' medal it would just lay there in their house until they would throw it away one day. So we decided to make them edible! And this is how they turned out looking. We used all edible ingredients. Well except the ribbon, that's legit fabric :)

So the base was a cookie. You can use whatever kind you like, just as long as it's round. We chose chocolate chip, because who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies?! Then we bought fondant in 5 different colors. Red, blue, green, yellow, and white. Michael's has them in all sorts of colors. And we got edible glue!! I honestly didn't know this existed before this project. Then there was this spray-on sparkly gold food coloring. And lastly a regular black food coloring.
So first we cut the ribbons to a good size. Then rolled out the white fondant and cut it into circles. Next covered them with the glue, and then sandwiched the ribbon between the cookie and the sticky fondant. We made the fondant circle a bit bigger than the cookie so that it would wrap behind it. You were able to see the cookie from the back side. Then we sprayed it with the gold spray to make them look like beautiful gold medals (Would be easier just to get gold fondant, but we didn't find any). Then you gotta leave those guys alone for a LONG while to dry. Good time for us to make the little Olympic rings. Since we didn't have black we just made blue ones and colored them in with the black food coloring. This part took WAY longer than expected! Who ever thought making little rings could be so hard!

We sprayed the rings with the glue to attach them to the cookie, then wrote "perseverance/2013" with the black food coloring. And Tada :)