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.