Jewelry Corkboard

I am making my very own jewelry holder. I saw on Pinterest that some lady made a cork board for her jewelry - using a picture frame, cork board, glass knobs and a small tin to hang earrings from. Here is what hers looks like:

 

Mine is not so graceful looking but it looks similar. I don't have enough necklaces to hang from it yet and I still need to "fancy it up" a little. I bought a black picture frame from Walmart for $8.49 and took the glass/plastic cover out and glued cork board to the cardboard backing of the picture frame. I will load a picture of mine once it is done. I will show a picture once it is put together and then another that shows how I made it look presentable.

Beer cap centerpiece

I have been working on a beer cap centerpiece. If you don't have all the beer caps at once, it might take some time. I bought a centerpiece tray from Hobby Lobby for $20 and I have collected beer caps throughout the past semester. I also bought cream and burgundy spray paint for the bottle caps. The spray paint takes about 20 minutes to dry and then I super glued them to the bottom of the centerpiece. Once I have all the caps, I will cover the entire thing in a shellac to fill in the spaces between each cap. I will post progress as I get close to finishing.....

9/1 - I currently have one more line to do an then I will add the shalack over the top and hope that it stays. I'm thinking either a candle centerpiece covered in sticks around the outside or a tall glass container with pinecones or a candle for the middle. This project is taking much longer than I thought because the collection of the bottle caps is something that I did not think about.

Pinteresting Craft - Candlestick poof ball

I went to a craft store here in town and bought an 89 cent styrofoam ball, 200 cupcake wrappers, 200 sewing pins, hot glue and a candlestick holder. This one took me much longer than I anticipated and was quite frustrating. I wish I had known how particular I was going to be about how it looked before I started. The hard part about this was that the pins had to go in at an angle, hopefully not interfering with the other pins already in the styrofoam. Once the cupcake wrappers were in, it was difficult to get the pin all the way down so that the wrapper stayed nicely in line with the others.

Hot glue is a much better way to get the styrofoam to stay than sticky glue. Since the candlestick was glass, it needed to be securely on there. I highly suggest hot glue, lots of patience and lots of pins and cupcake wrappers.

Baked Ceramic

I went to the dollar store, bought 4 plain ceramic mugs and 6 plain ceramic plates. I saw on Pinterest that if you take a permanent marker and draw whatever design you would like on ceramic, and bake it at 350 degrees, it will become permanent. As far as the blog post I read, it is permanent enough to with stand microwaving and dishwashing. I just gave one as a present to a co-worker so hopefully it stands up. Here are some of the ones I did.....

Baby shower gifts

So I just found out the other day that a friend of mine is having a boy! I thought for sure I was right when I said she was having a girl, but I was wrong. We have been calling her baby, Baby Pickle, since we didn't know what the gender was just yet. Her baby shower isn't for a month or two still but I am slowly starting to put things together for her. I, Aunt B, am going to spoil this little kid rotten and she might hate me by the end of it, but that's ok!

Of course I have turned to Pinterest to come up with a few ideas. Here is what I have found so far: 


Baby Boy Shower Cake

If I had decorative skills, I would try something like this...but I don't

I don't have the patience or the creativity but I would be willing to try it someday!

So far the only thing that I haven't liked about Pinterest is that when you search for baby shower gifts, it all comes up with baby shower IDEAS - which I am not planning her shower so I don't need those ideas, I need gift ideas. You have to treat it much like you do Google ~ try several different search keywords to get what you want.

I am thinking about making a tie fleece blanket for her  - a mom/son one - maybe matching? But in different color fabrics? Of course I will be adding more things to this gift but I want to have a personal touch to it since she is one of my best friends. Any suggestions are welcome!!!!

Painted Glasses

All of my materials are from Hobby Lobby:
2 glasses
paint
25 piece brush set

I placed dots at the curve all the way around the glass in order to smoothly create a straight line. When it comes to a curved glass, painting in straight lines with even placement of the paint is difficult.

After completely covering the section of glass for I let the paint dry before I added any other paint. Since you are able to see through the glass when held in the light, make sure that it is evenly covered otherwise you will be able to see all the places that you missed with paint. You might have to do several coats in order to completely cover all the surfaces.

finished glass # 1

I did the same process for the second glass but with a different design. This time I covered the entire top of the glass. Again, check in the light to be sure that all the spots on the glass are covered with paint. Depending on what you use these glasses for you might be able to see the spots that you have missed.

Final glass #2

Self-made Glitter Ornaments

Awhile back, in December, I made ornaments for all my cousins on my dad's side. I bought 8 glass ornaments, six different colors of glitter (gold, silver, pink, green, blue and white), acrylic paint (3 different colors) and ribbon. I am 1 of 9 grandchildren on my Dad's side and one cousin isn't around very often so I made 6 of them, and included my brother in ornament decoration. I used the paint to write their names on the outside and chose the glitter color according to their favorite colors.

This photo below is similar to what I did, but I did not use the dye color that she used. I kept the glass ornaments the way they were, poured 1/2 a teaspoon of the glitter glue into the ornament, dumped the glitter inside and rotated the ornament slowly until it was completely covered with glitter. The issue I came across is that if you put too much glue inside, the glitter will slide too much even though it looks like it is drying - it isn't. Once they are back in their plastic holders (like in the picture) make sure to rotate them every 15 minutes. You don't want the glitter to pool in one spot and then not be able to fix it later.

Since I cannot find my photo from it, I found someone who did a very similar project to me, here is her image and blog page to check out.
http://www.lifewithkatie.com/2008_12_01_archive.html

Pinterest Craft #1

I have decided that every week/weekend I am going to make a DIY or craft from Pinterest. This is my very first one. My grandmother’s birthday is this easter weekend and she has a love for birds and birdhouses. I saw a craft on Pinterest that would be a great present for her. This blog http://www.u-createcrafts.com/search?updated-max=2012-03-06T02:00:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=28&by-date=false has some really cool crafts that are super easy. The birdhouse key holder in this blog is much cooler than mine because they used designed tape and it made them look nicer. I just used Martha Stewart paint for all surfaces.
I went to Michael’s craft store and bought a base for the birdhouses to sit out (I figured it would be easier for my Grandpa to be able to mount it to the wall). In the other blog the birdhpouses were mounted straight to the wall so I took my own twist on this craft. I added fake grass and a lot of hot glue that I repeatedly got stuck on my fingers. Since the poles on the front of the birdhouses are too short for keys to hang on I will be adding hooks to the front edge of the base to hold keys.

The next craft is still undecided but I am sure I will figure it out soon