I define success as reaching your goal. Whether it is big or small. Successes does not mean being perfect, it means feeling happy and content with your results. In life I have felt successful with my grades. I have worked hard for almost 12 years in order to make it to my choice college and be content with my future. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

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"Success consists of going from  failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" Winston Churchill 

I define failure as giving up. If you try your best and still don't reach your goal, that is not failure. If you don't try your best and give up, you have failed.  In my life I fee like I have failed when I took the ACT for the first time.  I had major test anxiety and half way through the test I got so anxious that i just gave up and started guessing. 

"There is no failure except in no longer trying." Elbert Hubbard 
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If you feel like you have failed then it is much harder to motivate yourself to keep going. However, if you tell yourself that you have not failed, it is easier to pick yourself back up and keep going.  If you feel like you have been successful, it is easier to keep going because you feel good about yourself. I am motivated more by my failures because then I strive to make myself better. 

For genius hour, I have been successful with most of the projects I have done. Even if it doesn't turn out exactly like the pintrest picture, if I am happy with the results, I have been successful. Sometimes I have tried to do a project and it looks nothing like the picture and it is just plain ugly. Then I have failed. I don't think i need to change anything to reach my goals. Because with DIY you cant exactly be sure of the results and sometimes the projects just don't work. At the end of this project I know I will have succeeded if I have done all the projects I wanted to do. 

So far most of these projects have gone pretty well. We have learned allot about how to be resourceful with our supplies and how to make things from scratch.  We are proud of all our creative creations and look forward to making more. Let us know if you have any questions. :)

This next craft is kind of confusing, so I hope I can do a good enough job of explaining it for people to understand. For this one, you're going to need string(preferably embroidery thread), scissors, and a safety pin. 

First things first, you need to select three threads that you think look good together. For this I'm gonna be using pink, mint green, and white. 

Now you want to take the strings, line the tips of them up evenly, and cut them at about 2 ft.

Next, you want to grab the ends of the strings and bring them up to meet with the other ends

After doing this it should leave you with a loop that you want to now grab, making sure that the strings all stay at an even length. 

You then want to take the loop as it is in the picture about, and tie a knot in it so that it looks like the below picture, and with the strings all individually separable coming from the knot. 

You then want to take the safety pin and put it through the knot. I like to usually pin it to my knee, but you can also use pillows and other surfaces as well.

Now this is where I'll probably do a horrible job of explaining and a pretty thorough job of confusing you. Anyways, next you want to separate the strings so that they align with their same color string on the opposite side. For this one I decided to put the greens on the outsides, the white in the middles, and the pinks on the inside. 

Now you want to take the left outside string (in this case the green on the left) and make it into the shape on a four over the left middle string ( the left side white).

You then want to pull the end of the green behind the white and up through the four you created. Creating a tiny, barely visible knot over the white, and then repeat. You then want to do that twice on the left side white and pink. By this point the green should have replaced the pink as this inside string.

Now you want to take the right outside string (the right green) and do the same thing except this time making a backwards four.

 Until the two greens are now the middle strings and the two whites are now the outside strings.

You then want to take the left side green, creating a normal four over the right side green, and make two small knots using those strings.

Then all you have to do is repeat the process with the new outside strings until your bracelet is the length you need it to be.This is one I'm working on right now with four colors. You can use as many as you want. The more you have the thicker the bracelet. Oh, and this is called the chevron pattern by the way. Hope that was somewhat understandable(:

For this you're going to want to start off with four things: Glue, 2 paint brushes(you can use a normal one, but the sponge kind tend to work better), a notebook (again, you can use whatever kind you want, but the composition ones usually look better), mod podge aka the greatest thing ever made. and a variety of magazines, stickers, scrap booking paper, etc.

First, you're going to decide if you want to put paper as a background for your new notebook, or if you're just going to go with the collage method. After that you want to cut out anything within the magazines that you really like. Then you're going to place them on your notebook and move them around until you find a design that you really like. Next, you're going to place glue on the back of your cutouts using one of the paintbrushes and place them on your notebook. Make sure you smooth them out nicely, but not with too much force because they will rip. Then as soon as you're done gluing them on you want to take your other paintbrush and go over the cutouts with the mod podge. Try not to use an excessive amount, but don't worry when it's white at first, it will dry clear. Then you just allow your notebook to dry and repeat with the mod podge if you feel like you need to.

I apologize for Francesca's excessive use of exclamation marks....

We went to good will and bought mom pants. Then we cut them into shorts. Next, we took a cheese grater and frayed the ends of the jeans and made wholes in the shorts. For the top shots, we stopped there and added studs. The other shorts we dipped the ends in bleach.  Viola!!!! high waisted studded and dip dyed shorts.!!!!

We took cupcakes and covered them in white frosting. Then, we covered them in clear sparkly sprinkles. Then we strategically placed the the brown m&m's to make a snowman face and then we put an orange on in the middle to make a nose. And we made a snowman cupcake.

Materials: canvas, black paint, crayons, hot glue gun, masking tape, hair dryer.

We unwrapped all of the blue and purple shades of crayons. Then, we hot glued them to the top of the canvas. Next, we painted a little man and covered him in masking tape so the crayons would not cover the man. Then we toojk a hair dryer and began blowing it over the crayons. We continued until the wax melted and spalttered all over the canvas. And it looked like RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!

We bought a tie dye kit and tie dyed t shirts. First we soaked the shirts in an unknown solution that was in the kit, then we twirled the shirts and rubber banded them into 7 different sections..  Lastly, we applied different dye colors in each section.  We let them dry over night and then put them in the dryer to seal the colors. After the colors were sealed we unwrapped.   VOILA!!! you now have a tie dyed shirt !!!!!!