Cute little pots for Queso's aide..

Well, my son being special needs, has his own personal aide. His aide this year is WONDERFUL and spoils him so much he finally likes going to school again. So, of course I needed to do something extra special for her for the last day of school. She told me her favorite color is pink and I know she loves growing things so...when I came across these little greenware pots at goodwill, I grabbed several as my mind was churning out ideas.

Now, when I bought them I thought green meant like, organic or something like that, then I found out that it means ceramic that hasn't been fired. Well, not one to be discouraged, I just coated the whole thing with white acrylic paint, let it dry then did it again. I filled one of these up with soil and watered it down really well to see if it would destroy the pot and left it overnight. YAY! It didn't affect it at all so, I emptied it and set to painting them.

Now I got 4 of these little pots for about $1.25 and when I was at the $1 I found little clear plastic trays that would work perfect. I only sprayed the bottom of this so that it wouldn't get scratched up from the bottom of the pots.

After I got them all coated well, I went over them again with a triple thick clear coat (spray paint style) and prepared to embellish them.

I had some sparkly ribbon I had got at the $1 store around the holidays for wrapping gifts and found this horrid pink gemstone necklace I had picked up from a free posting on Craigslist in Oregon. I took some wire cutters and cut the gems into separate pieces and got at it with my hot glue gun.

I am not in love with the placement or really even the pink "bling" but she at least pretended to love it so, it was fun and in the end, I think I spent @ $3.50 to make this since I paid about $1.50 for the little tray of flowers.

I would do this again but I would just buy terra cotta pots and maybe more little jewels to kind of cover them in gems since she told me she loves the bling. But there it is, an end of the year gift that is nothing like any other she is bound to ever get :)

Crayon Wreath for Queso's Teacher

WOW! It's been a long few days. I had all these ideas for end of year gifts in my head for months now. As per usual these days, I looked up and it was the end of the year and I didn't have a single one even started.

So, I poured through Pinterest as I had pinned several ideas I had in mind. This wreath was a MUST do for me, it is just so stinkin' cute. The problem was, no one pinned properly and it took FOREVER to find any tutorials. When I finally found some, several said they used 2 embroidery loops to make the frame. I didn't have the correct sizes and on an extreme budget, I found this fabulous tutorial at PerpetualBlinddates blogspot and I loved not only that she used cardboard but that she covered it in glitter for a little extra bling behind the crayons.

Since she didn't really give any measurements, I laid out crayons the way I wanted them spaced and found a hat box that was exactly the right size for the inside of my cardboard circle.I only laid out 1/4 of the wreath for this) The I held my crayon up to it and decided about 2 inches was what I needed for workable space.

I also figured the crayons would be heavy, so I doubled up my cardboard rings and hot glued them together.for more support. I wish I had the foresight to hot glue my hanging ribbon in between those but, next time.

Moving on, I then covered it in a pretty turquoise craft paint and sprinkled that with glitter.

Then, when it was dry, I hot glued some ribbon around the outside edge in case it ended up being visible, which it wasn't, but, oh well.

Now every one I saw said to lay them all out first to make sure of you spacing and they all used hot glue. I am doing about 5 projects this evening and didn't want to lay them all out then worry again when gluing them down getting the labels all facing the right way, so I didn't use hot glue, I used this adhesive I found at the dollar store called Amazing GOOP Household. It was AWESOME, dried slow enough to let me move the crayons around if I needed to as I worked around but quick enough that I was able to finish my project this evening.

I found this adorable little "flip letter" toy at Goodwill for under $2 and this cute little apple that was more country colors so I just covered it in more vibrant red & green.

Now I cut little pieces of cardboard, put hot glue where I wanted my ribbon connected, placed the ribbon, added more hot glue, then put the cardboard on top of that and put 2 staples over it before it dried. Probably over kill but I didn't want it to fall and be destroyed.

Now I took apart the letters and spelled out his teachers name, I am lucky, there were no repeat letters. I have wooden craft letters from Michael's so my plan had been to paint those and spell it out..So, I placed everything and when happy, hot glued those bad boys down and there you have it, an ADORABLE wreath for her classroom door! (Had to save the apple for another craft) 

There it is, adorable as it could be and aside from not really being happy with the ribbon hanger placement, I am madly in love with this wreath! :)

Stay tuned only about 5 or six more coming, hopefully tonight...

Finally got around to making this wreath I've been obsessed with...

So, I loved this wreath from the moment I saw it on Pinterest. Now, I had to chase many pins to find this tutorial, and decided that one of my bestest friends would LOVE this so I should make it for her birthday.

So a while back, I ordered the umbrellas online and despite the company not sending exactly what I ordered (I ordered a couple of different sizes) I decided I could make it work with what I had. I picked up a grapevine wreath and also some super fun ribbon to hang it from. Note worthy here, I have shopped at Michael's and Joanne Fabrics for all my crafting needs for years but alas, there aren't any anywhere near here. I made my first trip to Hobby Lobby and while I didn't have time to properly peruse the store, I find it on the pricey side. ALL the yard was $3.99 a skeen and that just doesn't work for me! lol

Anyway, I decided to pull the umbrellas out the other night to open them up, I figured that would make things easier when I went to put it together and I was right. I LOVE when that happens! :) I grabbed the wreath and started just getting a feel for what it would be like to put them on and decided that as faint as the paper colors are open, I should paint the wreath white to try to make the colors POP a bit more.

Now, I am enough of a geek to actually have a spot in my basement for painting crafts so here it is just coated well with white spray paint.

I had also tied my bow the other night, nothing fancy, just a regular ol bow since I wasn't sure if it would be too much or not. I went ahead and got the "loop" of the ribbon placed where it should go so that when I started sticking the umbrellas in the part holding the wreath would be hidden.

This darn camera phone really does not do the colors justice but I still haven't tracked down where my good camera is so, this will have to do :)








I started at the bottom, sticking the umbrellas in randomly to see how it was going to work, then I added a dab of hot glue and inserted them where I like them placed. I did this for most of the bottom but found as I went higher that I preferred the look of the umbrellas less fully opened so I stopped using the glue in case I decided to re-do some.

As usual, I am too impatient to see the end result so I didn't re-do any of them but decided my friend is enough of a control freak that if she decides to tweak them some, not gluing them down is better. A few more in there and VIOLA! Fun Summer wreath mission accomplished. I did not perfect the bow because I feel certain that is something else she may want to change to suit her style....

Again, my camera phone really isn't what I should be using because this wreath is much more adorable and vibrant than it looks. I am just considering putting a LIGHT coat of clear spray paint over it to seal it a little for protecting the fragile tissue paper....and it may brighten it a bit as well with the glossy finish. I am not sure yet, would be a shame to ruin it. (which I am VERY likely to do)

Anyway, that's it kids for this crafting session. Wait until you see what we are doing around here for Mother's Day gifts....stay tuned!

WHAT? 2 Blogs in one night?!

Yea, well, it was time for an epic fail. :( I found this little gem on Pinterest. It looked SO easy and fast. This late in the holiday game, I love fast....

Let me first say, if you want to try this project, go check out Ellen's blog, Hers are adorable. I think my biggest mistake was the egg shape used on the last wreath (which by the way, is now outstanding in my book) Using a regular circle cardboard on this would have made all the difference in the world. Those eggs are not forgiving during placement so...her way is absolutely the best way.

But here is the documentation of my mess.....first up, the egg shaped cardboard mistake.









Then we have the hot glue sticking the plastic egg "butts" together....

Then, once I had all the first layer of eggs on the cardboard, I used the trick from the previous blog entry about spreading the Tacky glue with a cheap paint brush and then used Ellen's tip for using a pencil to get the grass pushed into the small spaces...

By the time I was adding the second layer of single plastic eggs on here, I didn't even take photos. I could smell the failure, and so I just hurried up, put it together as best as it would go and tied a piece of ribbon. I might have crammed more eggs in the big empty spaces but, I ran out of them so, I am going to run to Big Lots or somewhere in the morning and see if I can find a "Happy Easter" sign of some sort that is small enough to work in this to cover up what a mess it is....it was supposed to be a gift for my son's classroom. I overestimated my ability I think. lol
Here she is, my last mess of the evening. Funny, when I went to go post this photo, it doesn't look nearly as bad as it does in person! HA!

OMG! It's Easter ALREADY?!

OK, so I thought Easter came at the end of April. That's what I get for thinking. So when I realized last night that I need to get my butt in gear for Mason's basket THIS WEEKEND, I spent some time in Pinterest looking for some holiday crafts I may be able to throw together since I was headed to the $1 Store anyway.

I saw this on someone's page...I went back to see it when I sat down to make this, but I couldn't find it again. It was a pin of an Etsy page so I apologize but to be fair, mine is vastly different than the one I originally saw.

So as I grabbed everything in sight at the $1 store, both for his basket, Easter crafts and some ingredients to make his class some treats, I picked up this fairly large egg shaped platter to take them in on.

The wreaths I saw were all circles. As I sat down to try and make mine, I realized I had that huge egg shaped platter that would be a perfect pattern to cut out my cardboard.

So I got them all cut out (I still have another one to make) and sat down with my wire edged ribbon to make my "hanger" and bow. Now once upon a time, I was great with wire edged ribbon but my fingers don't hold as well as they used to so I had to do a little and go do something else, repeat.

After I had that done, I sat with my wreath egg and started taking apart the little Easter ornaments and trying to figure out how to best arrange them. I had toyed with the idea of painting the cardboard first but the one I had seen didn't need it, of course they had regular, old fashioned green plastic grass and I only had the paper kind from the $1 store so....next time I would definitely paint the cardboard first.

Now first I used my hot glue gun and placed a few eggs down. Then I started trying to place this pretty grass around the eggs with my hot glue gun and that was a NIGHTMARE! Finally I got the idea to break out my tacky glue and just use that to coat the background better. Putting a dot here and a dot there was also not a winning solution, so I dug out an old paintbrush and smeared the glue all around the eggs evenly and MUCH easier! 

Once I got this little trick down, the assembly went really quickly and the grass was finally holding down and around all my ornaments quite well. I had these bigger eggs I grabbed and shouldn't have added them since I had the big pink bow but, I wasn't getting rid of that darn bow that cramped my fingers so bad and I wanted to use up my Easter inventory because there is NO WAY I will find any of it next year when I need it so....I am going with tacky for now, but hey, it's a trial run eh?

 Once I looked at it, I decided I could go ahead and add more of the little eggs I still had left, I mean, we are already tacky right? lol
Anyway, this is how it ended up and I don't think it's all that bad for maybe? $7 and less than an hour all told? Hopefully I can get the other one made this evening so I can concentrate on edible Easter goodies tomorrow night....

Painting Glass....

Well, I wanted a pretty glass dish soap dispenser with the pour spout like they use in bars to regulate the flow. Of course, looking at these on stores and online, it was just an expense I couldn't justify right now.HOWEVER, I did see vinegar and oil dispensers at WalMart for $3. They were clear and plain but I got the idea to make my own.

I got home and Googled DIY painted glass and  got to work. I didn't take photos but the first step was to clean the glass really good to get it ready for paint. I used glass cleaner, then went over it really well with rubbing alcohol.

Than I got my little paint stations set up with my colors. I had read several "how to's" and one said she uses crafting enamel but another said the acrylic works so I went with the acrylic since I had plenty of it on hand.

Now, I am creative, but I am no artist so I decided to just go with multi colored polka dots. Q-tips gave me a nice tool and I could loosen the cotton on the ends easy enough to vary the size of the dots.

I started with yellow...and since I was pretty much winging it, just placed a few here and there to get started. I think I would add more when I do it again, but I didn't want to over run it with a single color since I had several in mind to add.

Then I just went at it, color by color until I had used all that I had pulled out to use. You can see, I could have done MUCH more but didn't want to fool with having to take off a bunch, I was too eager too see how it turned out.

OK, so I have added all I am going to for now and it is time to set the paint. The people who posted how to were making painted wine glasses so I didn't bother trying to treat it with any kind of clear coat seal so I will update after I have used it a while to see if the paint chips or fades without it. I figure if glasses you use and drink don't require one, then this soap dispenser shouldn't either.

I put this bottle in a cold oven, set my timer for 30 minutes and turned it on to 350. Leave the glass in the over until it is cooled and voila! You have painted glass, ready to use. They did say if you choose not to cure it in the oven, the paint will fully set in 21 days. (No way was I waiting! lol)

Here it is with a white cutting board behind it to try and show the colors, I had clear dish soap already but I think a colored one would look fabulous too!

And this is my finished product, filled and ready on the sink shelf :)

Just a quickie...

So, I am still getting moved in the new house so crafting has been at a stand still. However, Ikeep everything out to taunt me and last night I decided I HAD to make something before I went to bed.

I have been saving bottle caps. Once upon a time it was going to be for making a dangling curtain kind of thing, but I have never gotten that far so I decided to break open my new lil glue gun and make some magnets since my favorite brewery out West isn't accessible to me here in Ohio.

SUPER easy, I jsut heated up my glue gun, laid out my bottle caps and some magnets and in minutes I had handfuls of these cute little reminders of my favorite beer...inside the cap, Deschutes Brewery prints their motto "bravely done" so I made a couple backwards to show this as well..

I did put a good bit of glue in the cap. I was hoping to raise it up a little bit so that I wouldn't have to worry about the caps scratching or the magnets not holding well enough...

And there you have it, a 10 minute craft fix for me and some super cute new magnets for my fridge :)