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.