Happy New Years Eve!

Just wishing everyone a happy and safe new years eve!

Just a hint of sparkle

Part of being a girl and applying makeup is having all kinds of brushes. Whether they be for powder, bronzer blush or whatever for some unknown reason I find that storing these in a drawer to be gross. This is probably in part to them being dirty with makeup and I hate the idea of the drawer getting dirty and the brush just sitting in the filth, but I'm a weirdo.

So I decorated a small glass to hold all of brushes. It was super easy. I painted the outside a coral color. The best tip I could give is to allow time for each layer to dry before applying another because if you start painting while its still wet it will clump and look bad. After you get the look you like, I wanted a solid color so it took quite a bit of paint and time, I put it into a cold oven and set temp to 350 and started it with the glass inside. I let it bake for 30 min and then turned the oven off and waited several hours for everything to cool. Just to be extra save I applied two very light layers of modge podge as once everything was cool

My last step was to spray some aerosol glitter and let it dry. Than I filled it and it now looks gorgeous in my bathroom.

Finished product

Christmas Gifts for the Co-workers

Since Christmas is coming this means that I can use gifts as an excuse to craft. Unfortunately this means that most of my posts must wait until after Christmas to be posted but as far as I know my coworkers don't know or follow my blog meaning posting their gift should be safe enough and I don't need to worry about being discovered.

This year I had some difficulty coming up with gift ideas because I wanted something that was personalized but not too cheesy. Last year I got everyone a cute coffee mug (that I found at dollar store) and I filled them with little goodies. I bought pocket Kleenex packs, some hand sanitizer, candy (because everyone likes something sweet) and a packet of hot cocoa. I thought about doing something similar this year but I did not want to be redundant, plus with all the great gift websites I was sure that I could come up with something.

I began to think and one thing that my work is missing is cute little name tags for our desks. Not that they are truly needed since we are a pretty small business office, however it was something that we have joked about needing in the past. So I decided a cute, quick and cheap gift would be name tags or desk plates. My first stop, as with most of my craft projects, was Pinterest however I quickly found that most of the pins were for desk plates that are sold on etsy and although they are adorable, I was looking for something cheaper. Inspiration struck while I was perusing my local dollar tree and I came across some small picture frames. I figured that these would make the perfect name plates because I could decorate them the way I wanted and the people could change out the picture on the inside if they truly did not like what I came up with. Plus it helps that they could be used to sit on their desk or hang it up on a wall or board to avoid taking up desk space. I am not sure about anyone else but I hate having things just sitting on my desk, maybe that's my OCD/organizational side coming out but at work if I can hang it I do.

The frames I used from Dollar Tree

Now that I had the basic structure of my name plate down it was time to make it pretty. I started with the frame. I decided to leave that alone since I wanted to go crazy on the inside, plus again, if people wanted to reuse the frame for something else that is easier if it is just a plain normal frame. Since the frame was so bare I needed to spice up the inside of it. I found some cool and different fonts online and used those to spell out everyone's name. I really wanted to make this a more personalized gift so taking the time to make them all slightly different I think accomplished this. I than traced the person's name on a piece of cute and funky scrapbook paper, put them in the frame and voila an instant name plate.
See pictures for more complete details.

Cut the Paper to the correct size of the frame

Using tissue paper trace the name from the screen onto the paper

Place tissue paper over scrapbook paper

Trace image using a sharpie to transfer from tissue paper to scrapbook paper

What it looks like after transferring. I used a sharpie to darken the image

Finished project.

I also baked some cookies to place on top of the picture and wrapped them with a pretty bow to make it a complete gift, and of course add to the adorableness because I wanted the outside to look as adorable as the inside.

Storage made adorable

Keeping with my bathroom theme, my next project was the drawers that I use to store makeup. I had bought a black plastic set of 5 drawers. I love storing my makeup this way because I could divide the different aspects and layers of makeup. For example, foundation, powder, blush, face primer and things of that nature are in the top drawer. The second drawer contains my eye shadows, the third the mascara and curler, fourth odds and ends like mirrors and fifth has hair ties and bobby pins.

I bought a black one to make it look a lot cleaner and nice than the plain white ones. It also had the added bonus of being very hard to stain or look dirty because it's black! However, I still wanted to spruce it up and help it to fit better with my bathroom colors and design. I figured the easiest way to add a little color to my storage would be the paint the drawers. Originally they were just the clear plastic. Although they were thick enough that you couldn't see what's inside them, unless you were really looking, they could still use a little color to spruce them up.

It was a simple fix as well. I just took the drawers our and wiped them down to make sure there wasn't any dust or makeup or anything else that would make the paint appear bumpy or not stick as well to the actual plastic. I than used plain acrylic paint to color my drawers in similar colors to both my shower curtain and the canvases I had recently completed (see previous posts). After several coats of color I applied a few coats of modge podge. Since these were functional pieces as well as decorative I didn't want to worry about the paint chipping or smearing or anything as I used them. I also only painted the sides of the drawers and didn't worry about the bottom since the bottom wouldn't be seen unless the drawer was in use and pulled out.

After everything had dried I replaced the drawers into their proper places. I love the look and the impact that they had on making the plain plastic storage look a lot nicer, however the plain black top of the container now looked too plain for my taste.. Using a stencil and some white paint I applied a cute little design to the top and also sealed that with modge podge.

My drawer was now complete and ready to look cute on my bathroom counter.

After everything is painted.

Sitting in my bathroom with my brush holder (tutorial to come)

Get Naked

As you can probably figure out by now Pinterest is one of my favorite websites. In fact, if I could only choose one type of social media to use for the rest of my life it would be Pinterest. Considering my crafting addiction it's pretty easy to see why. One day during a perusal of Pinterest I found this adorable chevron print sign that had Get Naked written rather largely on it. I immediately fell in love and knew that I needed to make one to go in my bathroom. Cause lets face it what could possibly be classier and cuter with my inspirational beauty quotes than a sign telling you to remove your clothing?

Original Pinterest link: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/75646468714621560/

Off to hobby lobby I went for supplies. Luckily I had plenty of bright colored paint, from my earlier bathroom art creation, so all I really needed was a canvas. I decided to stick with the rectangular one that was in the picture I found, partly because I thought that the spacing on the rectangle was adorable and it would look awkward in a more square pattern, but also because above my toilet I had a rectangle shaped piece of wall that the sign would fit perfectly in.

I abandoned the chevron print, partly because I could not get the spacing right where it did not look awkward and weird, and partly because once I had the print drawn I realized that it looked too busy and clashed with my paisley shower curtain. I decided to go with a much simpler and cleaner diagonal stripes. The plus to this was also that the execution of such would be easier. All I did was use painters tape to mark my stripes. I wanted to incorporate more of the colors in this wall hanging than in the previous one and the stripes helped to do that as well. I picked out four colors (the coral and yellow that was previously used) as well as a teal and gray. The teal matched a color that was also present in my shower curtain and the gray not only matched as well but had the added bonus of adding a color contrast to the other brighter colors. I don't know about everyone else but I always like when a light gray or brown or white is included with multicolored patters to balance them all out.

With my striped pattern laid out in tape, I simply alternated painting the open areas. The was the easy part since every other stripe was covered with tape I didn't have to worry about making my lines super neat, the tape helped do that for me. My only concentration was in making sure that I alternated my first two colors. This may sound easy but I assure you if you are like me sometimes you get a little distracted and can end up using the same color rather than switching. Thankfully I did this step in light yellow and teal thinking that the coral and the gray would be able to easily cover any mistakes made. After applying several coats of the first two colors and letting them dry, I removed the tape creating new white stripes. Since I did not want these to remain white, I painted the white areas with the two remaining colors. I now had a multicolored stripe pattern on my rectangle canvas.

Now it was time to apply the lettering. I made a copy of the wording on my computer with the font that I liked. I than placed a piece of tissue paper onto the screen and traced the image using a pencil onto the tissue paper. That traced image was than placed onto the canvas where I retraced the pencil marks with sharpie which bled through the tissue paper onto the canvas. I than used a paint pen to color in the image. After everything has dried it is time to hang it and enjoy!!!!

Bathroom art

One of my favorite things in life is to decorate, so when I realized that my bathroom was sadly missing some artwork I decided to remedy that situation. Off I went to Hobby Lobby to buys some canvases because who can beat the two pack for $8! I than bought some paint in bright colors (at least bright colors that I didn't have) and a couple of paint pens. At this point I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to make only that I wanted it to be on canvas and it needed to be bright colors to match my bright paisleyish shower curtain. 

I knew that I did not want to do anything with pictures of people. Not that pictures aren't great but I had so many put up in my actual room already that I was worried that it might look slightly narcissistic if I also had my face plastered all over my bathroom as well. After a little deliberation I decided that I wanted to do some inspirational quotes, so that whenever I am getting ready I feel a little more inspired. I also figured that since it was located in my bathroom I wanted them geared towards makeup and making oneself look pretty.

After a quick Google/Pinterest search I settled on two quotes:

Happy Girls are the Prettiest - Audrey Hepburn

Make is not a tool meant to make an ugly thing beautiful, it is meant only to magnify the beauty that already exists.

With my quotes decided I now needed to really narrow down my design idea. I quickly decided to stick with my makeup theme and wanted black and white outlines of specific makeup pieces (a lipstick and a compact) with a bright color surrounding them with the quote written overlapping the image. Originally I wanted the lettering in a bright color as well, however after doing a rough draft of the design with color on my computer I realized that the lettering did not stand out as much when done in a color and it looked a little cluttered for my taste. I really wanted these to be simple so that when I inevitable moved I could easily transfer these to another space. I also decided to forgo sealing the canvas after it was painted because if for some reason after I moved I no longer like the paintings I could easily paint over them reusing the canvas instead of throwing these away and purchasing more.

I planned it out on my computer first, making sure all the spacing was correct. I then measured the canvas and adjusted the zoom on my document so I could trace the image. This sounds complicated but really all I did was cut a piece of tissue paper slightly smaller than my canvas, since I did not want the design to go all the way to the border and did a rough estimate of how much I needed to zoom in by placing the tissue paper on the screen and making small marks to show where the lettering would match up at. Once I had it to the size that I wanted, I simply traced the image directly from the screen onto my tissue paper using a pencil. I found this method the easiest because I could adjust the zoom to change the size of everything rather than worrying about printing and spacing and margins and of course wasting paper.

Once I had traced the image from the screen, onto my tissue paper I placed it onto the canvas. I only traced the background image (so the lipstick on one and the compact on the other) first since I wanted to do different colors. I used a black sharpie to trace the image onto the canvas. 

Just the background images traced on using tissue paper and a sharpie.

Once that was done I painted the surrounding areas a solid color. I choose coral and yellow due to them matching the colors on my shower curtain as well as thinking them to be really pretty. After a few layers of paint I used a black paint pen to trace the outline of the makeup image. With that complete I than placed my tissue paper back on the canvas and traced the lettering using a black sharpie. The thinner lines I just slightly darkened with a thin sharpie. The thicker letters I used a combination of paint pen and sharpie to get the desired effect.

I used a thin paintbrush to clean up my edges and after everything was dry I hung them up in my bathroom. The bright colors help the small space to look more cheery and bright I like not looking at blank, white walls while in there. If you are making these as more permanent fixtures I would recommend applying a few layers of Modge Podge or other sealant on top of the paint and sharpie to help make the image last. Since mine may not stay permanently this way I skipped this step.

Ugly Christmas sweaters

With Christmas upon us the most popular theme party of this time seems to be the ugly Christmas sweater party. Now It used to be that you would go to your local thrift shop and find the ugliest sweater that you could and that would be the end of it, unfortunately due to the popularity of this theme sometimes ugly sweaters are actually hard to come by. In face a recent search online, and a visit to my local Wal-Mart has shown that companies are actually starting to create ugly Christmas sweaters on purpose. I guess some people just don't like to get things second hand.

This Christmas season my roommate and I decided to make our own ugly Christmas sweaters rather than buy them. Now this seems like an easy task but as we soon found out there are a lot of variations that we could go with. After some research we decided to go with a puking Rudolph. Part of the reason, at least for me, was that we were going to wear said sweaters to a Christmas party weekend celebration thrown by an organization of boys so I figured they would find the puking Rudolph completely acceptable and possibly even hilarious.

First step was deciding what kind of sweater we actually wanted to use and procuring one. We decided to do a light brown/off white color as our base or sweater color. This would make it neutral so that when we attached other things to it they would stand out more and wouldn't clash with the color of the sweater. We also decided to forgo the traditional sweater/sweatshirt and to use a long sleeve shirt instead. This was a comfort decision because the place where the party was happening would be very hot and neither of us felt like sweating the whole time and being uncomfortable.

Now to gather supplies. While searching for shirts we could not find one in the color we liked for the price that we were willing to pay. Neither of us wanted to spend a lot of money on this project so instead of buyings a shirt in the color we wanted we opted to buy a white long sleeve mens shirt and dye it. The dying process actually turned out to be pretty fun and easy. Instead of buying a brownish colored dye we decided to use tea bags, it also happened that we had a lot of cheap tea bags lying around the apartment so this option turned out to be the cheaper one as well. I remembered when I was little using tea bags to dye paper to make it look older but had never thought to use them to dye fabric. My roommate found a how to online and after boiling about 8 tea bags in a couple cups of water we let the shirts soak in this tea water. Now the longer you let the shirts soak the darker the color you get so ours only soaked for about 45 minutes to an hour. You than dry the shirts on high heat to set in the tea stain, which is effectively how this is colored. Some parts of it were a little uneven since we were dying two shirts in one bucket but it didn't look bad. 

The next part is the fun one, gathering all the parts that you want to glue onto the shirt. We started at dollar tree and then went to hobby lobby. Our main source was the ornaments that are made for the mini desk and table trees. These seemed to be the perfect size to put on a shirt. We bought an assortment of items including pom poms, Santa hats, candy canes, bows, bells, ornaments and glitter stickers. We used brown felt to make the shape of Rudolph and a red pom pom for his nose. Than it was a simple matter of gluing the items in a haphazard pattern. I started with Rudolph at the top and used a V shaped pattern that started narrow at the top and got wider as it went down. You simply place everything randomly on the shirt until you get that look you desire. The last step is to glue everything down and let the glue dry. I used a hot glue gun and my roommate used tack/craft glue. They both worked the only main difference was the glue gun took maybe a minute or less to dry while the craft glue had to be dried overnight.

Now you are ready to have the ugliest Christmas sweater at the party! Because really what could top Rudolph puking Christmas?

After applying Rudolph. We tried it on and placed him while wearing it so that we could ensure it was placed where he could be seen.

The finished product.

Kitchen wall art

At my former residence I had this huge wall in the kitchen that was completely blank and bothered me so I set out to fill it. I found these unfinished wall plaques at hobby lobby that were all different shapes. To spruce them up I glued some fun scrapbook paper on the front, painted the edges and attached a piece of fabric to the back and I had the perfect ornamentation.

Than I moved and I decided that I still wanted to use them in my kitchen however I wanted to spruce them up a bit. I found these adorable wall arts on pinterest and they had the cutest sayings so I decided to adapt them to my own use. Using Word I inserted silhouette pictures of kitchen utensils and used the quotes "whip it, whip it good," "just roll with it," and "you spin me right round."

Using tissue paper I traced the design from word to the tissue paper using a pencil. I then placed the design on the plaque and used a sharpie to trace over the pencil drawings. The design has now been transferred from my computer to the plaque. Once the design has been transferred I then took the sharpie and darkened the lines and words to make them stand out better.

Lastly, you place, or in my case replace, the hanging device aka ribbon and hang it on your wall. You now have witty and cute wall art for your kitchen.

Bubba jug

So if you know me, or as any of my friends will tell you, I kinda have a cup addiction. I don't know why but I am constantly buying new cups and tumblers and water bottles. I think most of it is because I am addicted to Crystal Light (wild strawberry with energy to be exact) and after a couple of months of use no amount of scrubbing or dishwashing will get a layer of not exactly scum but some sort of sugary residue. Now I am not a dirty person. I regularly wash my cups and change them out but it happens so to combat this I buy new cups to use. This is not as easy as it sounds since I drink a lot of water each day so I need to have cups that are at least 32 oz, otherwise I just find myself filling the cup way to much and the crystal light flavoring is too strong and sweet.

  This lead me to my newest cup addition, a bubba jug. I have become obsessed with them because they are easy to transport, with a convenient handle and have this handy metal portion that is super easy to paint and customize and that is exactly what I decided to do.

I approached it like I would a cooler although I did not think sanding it was a very good option. So I skipped that step and went to priming. After a light layer or two of that I painted two coats of white paint to give me a neutral background to start with. 

I decided to do the background as stripes since I think it is cute a simple so using tape as a guide I taped off a part and painted the non taped parts yellow.

After some primer and white paint

Taped portion and yellow stripes.

I then removed the tape and painted the now white portions blue, completing my striped background. I then went for the designs. I kind of love anchors right now and a monogram is always a good choice, so that's what I went with. I used a picture from google and adjusted it to the necessary size. Once it was correct I used tissue paper and traced the design using a pencil. I placed the stenciled anchor on the jug and traced it again using a sharpie. I did the same thing with the mongram. Then it was just a matter of painting and sealing using a couple layers of modge podge and waterproof minwax sealant. Now I have a great new cup and it's personalized.

Who says good hygiene can't be cute!

While going though some of my craft supplies I realized that I had quite a few mason jars just sitting around doing nothing. I decided to put one of them to work by making a mason jar soap pump. This is something that I have wanted to do but just haven't sat down and did it, so the other night I finally committed. 

I started by looking on pinterest to see how other people did it and quickly decided that most of those tutorials were quite a bit of work so I decided to wing it. 

All you need is a mason jar (I used a small one), a soap pump (I bought a dispenser from dollar tree, although apparently you can use one of the plastic ones and spray paint it whatever color you want but I eliminated a bunch of steps by simply buying one that was already silver plus it was only a dollar!), than I used a hammer and a nail. Some tutorials called for a drill and pliers but I found all you need is something to poke and enlarge a hole and I found that a hammer and nail worked perfectly for me.

Now to actually making it! The first step was the hammer the nail into the middle of the lid of the mason jar. I made several small holes all around the middle and then used the claw side of the hammer to combine them into one large hole. 

Once your hole is made insert your soap pump into the hole, fill the mason jar with soap (or whatever else you are using, I think it would be super cute as a hand sanitizer dispenser too) and attach your lid.

Voila you now have a super cute way to help wash your hands!

M-I-Z.....

So found this great article floating around facebook and I just had to share it with everyone because I am so proud to be a Tiger!!!!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danoshinsky/m-i-z



Here's hoping the boys do us proud this weekend during homecoming.
Just remember

M I Z!

I Just Love Giving Presents

   So my boys birthday was this past weekend and one of my favorite things is to give people presents because that just gives me an excuse to shop and/or craft some really great things. In this case I did a little of both.

  Now the boy is great on so many levels however he is kind of lacking when it comes to the fashion side of life. Not that I am complaining because he doesn't ever look bad but he is very much an old tshirt and jeans kind of guy. And by old t shirt I mean most of his shirts are from when he was in high school, complete with holes and slightly too small for him. So I quickly decided that new t shirts were going to be one of his gifts. 

  I shopped around on the internet because I know his style tends to favor the funny or band type of shirt. Now since his taste in music is not at all similar to mine I did not want to risk buying a shirt for a band he hates or does not favor, so funny it was.

  I couldn't really find a site that I liked that was reasonably priced, because although I wanted to make sure that I bought quality shirts I also did not want to spend a fortune, especially since we have only been dating a few months. This lead me to Etsy where I found this great shop called Ice Cream Tee's. Not only were the shirts reasonable priced but there were many funny/witty shirt designs to choose from as well as colors to choose from.

 I choose the following four and the great thing was she has a promotion where if you buy 3 you get a 4th free. Shipping was quick and efficient so all in all I was more than pleased with my purchase and highly recommend her shop for any t shirt needs.

Here is the link for anyone who is interested.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/IceCreamTees

And no I am not affiliated with this shop nor do I even know who owns it however I just had a great experience and I thought I would share.

For Those Times When A Picture Frame Just Won't Work

When my mom redecorated her living room one of the items that I just fell in love with was a wrapped canvas of me and my cousins walking down the beach. Now the picture itself was a little cheesy but I loved the idea of a wrapped canvas to break up the picture frame monotony.

While I loved this idea I quickly realized $20 a piece was not gonna work for my post-grad slightly better than Ramen noodles budget. So crafting became my option! After a search on pinterest I found that it was full of ways that this can be accomplished. After combing through several posts I found one that was both simple and I thought would turn out great, not to mention looked simple!
http://www.literallyinspired.com/2012/02/picture-perfect.html

The necessary supplies are 8X10 canvases, 8X10 pictures, modge podge, xacto knife (or scissors although scissors are slightly harder to work with) and paint (if you want to paint the edges and not leave them a blank color).

I started by painting the edges black. Once those were dry I placed some modge podge on the back of the pictures and placed the pictures to the canvas. I then modge podged a layer over top. Once that first layer was dry I used the xacto knife to cut the edges so that they matched up with the canvas. You could also do this prior to modge podgeing however I choose after to make absolutely sure they matched up.

The last step is to apply several more layers of modge podge until they pictures are secure and you are done! Now you have some great pictures to hang up!

A Little Reminder Never Hurt Anyone

So living with roommates, well roommates you like, can be an awesome experience. It gives you someone to come home to and do things with as well as someone to cook with, cause lets be honest cooking for one sucks!

One small problem with living with roommates can be communication. Now hopefully this does not apply to big issues like missing food or broken items but small things like say are the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty can be a common problem. Now if you have a great dishwasher that there is no need to pre-wash and is spotless whenever it is done running this might not be a huge issue. You might get an occasional "oops I thought that was dirty" but for the most part you need a subtle reminder of when they are clean or dirty.

My creative and crafty way to accomplish involved a cute wooden plaque, paint, stencils and magnets. I picked colors that were bright and eye catching and matched well with our color theme. Next was to paint the background colors and stencil the words clean and dirty on opposing sides. I then hot glued the magnets to the back.

Now when we empty the dishwasher we can switch it to say dirty and when we run it we can switch it to clean, so no more oopsies for the dishwasher!

Monogram everything!

Upon moving I realized that I wanted to completely reorganize and decorate my bedroom. One of the things I knew I wanted to incorporate were monograms because I just think they are the cutest! Originally I was thinking I wanted a large vinyl monogram above my bed but I wanted to add more color to it so I decided that I was going to use a canvas. So off my favorite store, Hobby Lobby, where I bought a canvas and wooden letters because originally I was going to wrap the canvas in fabric and glue these cute curly letters to it, but upon looking at it I realized the colors of the fabric where not what I wanted and the monogram looked weird with all the letters the same size.

Rethinking my current project I looked through my craft closet, yes I have a whole closet dedicated to crafting supplies, and decided to just use a stencil and some paint. 

Step one was painting the entire canvas a solid color. You can choose to do some shading or ombre or make it unique but since I was going to use a pretty busy stencil I decided to go simple.

Next was the stenciling. I am not a fan of the whole painting over the stencil so I decided to move it and traced the design and then painted it following the pattern. 

While that was drying I painted the two outer wooden letters a coral color and found a font that I liked and traced the middle initial onto some tissue paper. Once all the coats of my stencil were dry I placed the tissue paper in the middle of the canvas and using a sharpie, traced over the letter leaving a faint marking on the canvas. Using this outline I painted in the letter using the same color coral that was on the wooden letters. The final step was hot gluing the wooden letters on either side of the middle letter and Voila I have a pretty monogrammed canvas to hang over my bed.

Sometimes You Just Need A Little Help Up

Last Christmas I acquired a yorkie puppy named Simba. I say acquired rather than adopted because he was unwanted by a family member of mine and since at the time I was thinking about adopting a dog of some sort I was asked if I would take him. Of course one look at the precious little baby and I just fell in love.

How can you not love that face!

As great as the love and attention is I quickly became annoyed when after a few nights I realized that my bed was simply too high for him to easily jump into bed with me (yes I am one of those annoying people who sleep cuddled with their animal). So my next step was to acquire some sort of step or steps to allow my little king to jump into bed by himself saving me from constantly bending down to pick him up. 

I quickly discovered that most steps are quite expensive and really not that cute. So I used a plastic crate that was no longer serving a purpose and a blanket to cover the holes and make it look slightly cuter.

Now that worked great in my last place but since I have moved I am trying to make my room look more cohesive and grown up so the blanket over the crate look was not going to work. This lead me to come up with a more permanent solution and while searching through the fabric at hobby lobby one day I found this adorable multi colored chevron that I felt would go well in my room.

After purchasing the fabric and a little extra foam to give it some padding and stability it was time to assemble my step

I bought two yards of the fabric and used a majority of it. The crate you can get at walmart. The foam was bought at hobby lobby and the pillow was just an extra one I had lying around.

This was the easy part since I just measured out the amount of fabric it would take to cover the crate with the padding and pillow on top and stapled the fabric to the inside, bottom of the crate.

The end result is an adorable step that looks awesome and so much better that the blanket or those generic store bought one, but then again I may be a little biased.

Excuse the things in the background it was a crafting kind of day.

Thrift Store Find Turned Fabulous!

Sorry about the long break between posts but I recently moved and was actually semi homeless for over two weeks since my old lease ended on July 31st but my new lease did not start until August 14, so I relied on the kindness of friends but now I am finally moved in which means more crafting opportunities!

My first project was a shelf/hutch like piece of furniture that I bought at a thrift shop for $30. It was a little banged up but the extra storage has been a big help in our kitchen. We set it up as a mini bar since we quickly realized that we each had a ton of super cute shot glasses, cups and koozies that we did not want to hide away in a cupboard. So I decided to paint it and make it more eye catching and not quite an eye sore.

The cabinet before anything is done to it minus the doors since those fell off while moving.

My first stop was the internet to read up on some tips for furniture painting. Since it is that particle board almost cardboard material I was really concerned that if I sanded it I would ruin that piece. So after reading tons of blogs and tips I went to the best source I know for crafting, my mother. She suggested I just buy a really good primer and paint and do several layers and it should be good.

Off to Lowe's I went and bought a primer and paint. I decided to just do the edges and outside black and used a light coral on the inside to just provide a pop of color.
After I had my supplies it was time to get started. I moved the furniture to the middle of the room and using some clorox wipes I cleaned the whole thing, removing all dirt and debris. After letting it dry i put on the first layer of primer. I mostly used a small paint roller because it provided a more even color and since most of my area is flat it was also the fastest.

Layer one of primer

After one layer of primer it wasn't quite as white as I wanted. I know I was going to be painting it a darker color on most of it however since I didn't sand the piece first I was concerned that one layer wouldn't be enough. So on went layer two.

Layer two of primer. Now a solid white layer

Once it was primed and completely dry I began to paint. At first I thought I was going to do the entire inside with the coral but decided to use more black because I only wanted a small pop of color and I had bought a small sample size of the coral and a quart of the black and since I knew I was going to need several layers to get the most out of the color I decided less was more.

Layer one of the black

After Several layers of the black I then added the coral and voila a great new cabinet which looks adorable in the kitchen. This was a great project but definitely time consuming. It took most of the day to get looking great and needed quite a few touch ups after reattaching the doors and removable shelves but overall I am completely pleased with how it turned out.

Finally finished painting!

Cabinet all set up and looking beautiful!

No More Bugs

My boyfriend (yes cooler boy is now my boyfriend) and two friends recently moved to a new house with an amazing and large backyard and the most perfect back porch for just sitting and enjoying all the marvelous Missouri weather that we have been having. The only negative to this is the bugs. After sitting outside for ten minutes my legs where a mess of itchy bug bites that ruined my next week considering the itching never ended.

Now normal people just decide to go out and buy a few citronella candles and let that be the end of it, however me being the crafty girl that I am decided that I was going to dive into the world of candle making head first. Not to mention it would be the perfect housewarming gift.

So to Pinterest I went to find a tutorial on candle making and not only did I find one but I found one for Citronella candles to make things so much better!
Here is the link to the original post for candle making. She does a really great job of spelling out exactly what needs to be done to get a good result.
https://brightnest.com/posts/repel-with-a-cause-diy-citronella-candle

My first thought is I wanted to put these in mason jars because face it mason jars are awesome! But they just look so plain and since I just bought white candle wax I really wanted to spice up the jars. Now he lives with a couple so I knew that the mason jars would work well with the girl because she is obsessed with Pinterest, like me, but I really wanted to make them just manly enough that the boys would not feel weird having them around. Since both boys are obsessed with the St. Louis Blues hockey team I decided to use that as a theme. My original idea was to paint the jar blue and then paint the Blues note on the jar. So I bought glass paint but after applying several coats to the jar I just couldn't get the look I wanted out of it so after a little research I found another Pinterest link to tint jars. I was super easy and turned out amazing!
http://www.itallstartedwithpaint.com/blue-mason-jars-vintage/

With my jars perfectly tinted and a lovely shade of blue I decided to paint on the symbol. Unfortunately I didn't really do my research and I could never quite get it the way I wanted so I ended up getting rid of the design idea and just leaving them a tinted blue.

The end result after all this is two lovely citronella candles in mason jars!

Using a double boiler to melt the soy wax

The jars all ready to be filled with wax! They have been tinted using modge podge and I used chopsticks to hold the wick in place where I wanted it.

I hope this helped to spark some ideas and let you know if I can make candles anyone can.

Cooler painting part one

So a couple of months ago I met this really great guy. At first we were just friends, but not quite just friends you know that awkward pre-dating stage. But anyways after knowing each other about a month he asked me if I would be his date for his Senior Year fraternity formal, what they call the Red Carnation Ball, and I was thrilled because to me that was a sign to be more than friends. But enough about my love life the whole reason for this post is the crafts! As a sorority girl it's only polite that if a boy is kind enough to pay for you to go to his formal, basically a drunken weekend in which you spend one night dressed up and stay in a hotel room, you should paint him a cooler for the occasion. Thus began my project. 

The first step is to do some research about the person and figure out their favorite things. The great thing about cooler painting is that you can personalize it to that specific person making it a really memorable and useful gift. Personally I love the cooler connection group on facebook. It's a great resource where girls post pictures of cooler that they have done as well as useful tips and a great document that details how to get started (just in case you need some more info)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/5377024169/

Personally I choose to do a Makers mark side, STL blues, some of his favorite beers and a side representing his fraternity.

Once you have your cooler planned it is time to gather your supplies you will need:

a cooler (you can pick any size you want)

sander or sand paper (if you are going to make several you can buy a cheap sander on amazon, it really is                worth it to save yourself the hassle of hand sanding)

Plastic primer (I prefer it in white because it helps the paint to pop more with less coats)

Acrylic paint and paintbrushes

Paint pens

Tissue Paper and Sharpies

Modge Podge (I prefer the outdoor kind), and a water-based sealant (I like minwax in the bright blue can)

Now you paint! I used the tissue paper and sharpies to transfer things like images and the lettering and I modge podged printed images of the beer bottles because I am not that good at small detailed painting.

Once your paint is dry and you like what you have done let the paint completely dry and do several coats of the outdoor modge podge making sure to let the coats dry in-between. 

Once the modge podge is completely dry put a coat or two of the min wax and then you should be good to go!

I don't have any of the process at this time but I am sure I will paint another one soon. In the meantime here is the finished product.

Not my best work but I did it all in a week so I'm still proud of it.

The pictures where taken while the modgepodge was wet which is why they aren't completely clear. Normally there are not white patches or streaks over the paint.