Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.

Until now, this charming technique has been a well-kept secret, passed down through the ages to only the most devoted crafters and dark magicians. Use the knowledge contained herein to fabricate your very own WoW Trinkets.

Here is what you will need:

• Shrinky Dink paper
• Ink-Jet Color Printer
• Image Editing Software
  
• Scissors (tiny manicure scissors work best for me)
• Clear Acrylic Spray
  
• Jump Ring
  
• Jewelry Pliers
• Brown Paper Bag
• Foil

Click on the images below to view a gallery of step-by-step instructions.

There are two things that every WoW character has: a hearthstone, and a backpack. Well, some bank alts might have destroyed their hearthstone, actually, but absolutely everybody has that 16-slot backpack occupying their first bag slot. 16 slots made some sense back when that was also the biggest size bag that wasn't crazy expensive, back in classic WoW (Traveler's Backpack/Mooncloth Bg). But now that 16-slot bags are dirt-cheap, 18-slotters are reasonable, and 20- and even 22-slotters are obtainable, and especially moving forward into Wrath with the basic tailored bag being 20 slots, the backpack's 16 is starting to look a bit puny by comparison.

This leads one to ask: when are we going to be able to upgrade the darned thing? I'd love to be able to grab a few extra slots by trading it in for an 18- or 20-slot bag. And it really doesn't make sense for our backpack to be the smallest holding container on our body. I mean, I like that everybody starts out with a free decent-sized bag, but it really should just act like any other bag slot after that. Someone asked the same question in the WoW forums recently, and Zarhym responded in a non-committal fashion, saying they were thinking about it but didn't have anything to report just yet. Personally, I don't see the downside of transforming the backpack slot into a regular bag slot, but there may be something going on behind the scenes that I'm not aware of. It is also worth noting that we will be freeing up a few bag slots already in Wrath with our non-combat pets, mounts, and tokens leaving the inventory, not to mention bigger bags being available. Still, it seems like one can never get enough space.

Just the other day, Adam suggested that more bag space was always a good thing, but now Drysc tells us that's not exactly true-- even though 20-slotters are more common than ever, Blizzard has no plans to let us replace the normal 16-slot backpack anytime soon. And the reason he cites is interesting: it has nothing to do necessarily with ingame limits, but more to do with out-of-game limits. WoW has 10 million players, and if each one of those players has easily 10 alts average and each alt has a bunch of 20-slot bags and even more items in the bank, then pretty soon you're starting to talk real amounts of physical computer memory.

We don't know what that limit is (and of course it depends on how Blizzard stores their information), but Drysc tells us that it's there. And that also gives you a little hint into just how huge their operation is-- nobody else has even come close to dealing with the problem of handling inventory and stats information for ten million players and countless numbers of characters. But Drysc says Blizzard is working on it as always-- despite the technical headaches, we may see bigger backpacks soon.

When I first looked at this thread in the forums, my reaction was "QQ." But the more I think about it, the more reasonable it seems. The poster asks for an upgradable backpack, since bags larger than 14 slots are becoming the norm. I've definitely had trouble selling Netherweave Bags, since almost everybody seems to already have 16-slotters. In a world like that, the backpack becomes your smallest bag, and that doesn't make a lot of sense. Furthermore, anything that increases the amount I can carry, without me having to spend 90g each on Imbued Netherweave Bags, would certainly be welcome. Between a full set of extra gear (for healing), various consumables, quest items, rep pickups, herbs, etc., I don't usually have very much free space -- and that's even with having an AH alt that I mail everything off to once it's ready to be sold. Vendors have been pretty easy to come by, but still, I'd really appreciate an extra 4 slots, like the poster proposes.

In WoW, as with real life, I'm a bit of a hoarder. Give me space and I will fill it with things that might be useful, or perhaps were useful (you never know when you'll need them again). After one or two ill-advised disenchantments, I've started keeping non-replaceable gear around in my bank, and as a druid I have multiple sets of equipment anyway.

Of course, I'm also an enchanter and engineer, so I have to store materials and equipment for those professions -- not to mention a vast number of quest items that are collecting dust waiting for me to finish the quest. Non-combat pets, items useful in certain instances, items useful for PvP, Darkmoon Faire tickets... my bank just isn't big enough to hold it all.

There are a couple of solutions. Firstly, I can try culling the trash and actually getting rid of some of my quest items, disenchanting equipment I haven't used in weeks, and choosing which of my non-combat pets is my favourite.

Secondly, as I have multiple characters (including a bank-only character), I can send the majority of my non-soulbound items to an alt, who can hold on to them or return them in the mail for easier access. I always lose track of who has which items; I used to use the BankItems mod, but I haven't found one that tracks mailboxes yet.

The final option is, of course, to get more bagspace. Not easy when all your bags are 16-slotters already; I've recently finished the grind for an Argent Dawn Supply Bag, and I'm also hoping I'll come across an Onyxia Hide Backpack or Panther Hide Sack at some point. The materials for Bottomless Bag are offputting, though -- twelve mooncloth for two bag slots? I think I'll have to manage.