No Cash Trash Bash: Beautiful Boozy Bookend

I'm a little pleased with myself right now, so please bear with me.  It cost me $0 to make this craft.  Absolutely freeeee is my favorite craft budget!  I have been stashing all the materials to make this craft for a while, until I finally had everything together.

All you need is an empty 6-pack.  Keep the whole thing: cardboard pack and the bottles.  I say keep the bottle caps too, because you know I'm going to come up with something to do with 'em in no time.  Luckily, I live with a young man in his 20's and so these are ALWAYS stacked plentifully in the recycle bin and I can have my pick.  I highly recommend that you wash these out with dish soap and let them dry for a good long while.  I called this  a "Boozy Bookend", but let's get real; I do not want my desk or bookshelf to reek of old beer.  Gross.  To be fair, if you don't have access to beer bottles because you don't drink, you could do the same thing with Coca-Cola glass bottles in a 6-pack, but I don't live in 1954, so they're not readily available to me.  I think there are flavored sodas in glass bottle 6-packs at the grocery store, but as I said before the appeal of this craft for me was that it was FREE materials.  Deal with it.

I really don't know what came over me yesterday.  One minute I was waking up at 7a.m. to get ahead on homework (confession:  I had a post due for one of my online classes at 9a.m. and may or may not have procrastinated a touch.)  The next thing I knew, I had done a day's worth of school work in less than two hours and by 9a.m. I had three crafts going an one time!  (Look for the frame and magazine pages in upcoming posts)  I may have lost my mind for just a sec, but it worked.  I found out that my white acrylic paint is alarmingly thin, so I was able to work on other crafty projects between the million or so coats it took to achieve full-coverage. 

I use dried roses in this post.  These roses from a bouquet I received after my fall were dried for 3ish days before I placed them in these bottles.  If you don't know how to dry roses so that they keep their shape and color, comment below and I'll share that.  I've been doing it since high school, so I will just go on assuming that everyone knows how to do that.

On to the actual tutorial...

Step 1:  Wash the bottles out.  Seriously, this is non-negotiable.  Let them dry completely before painting.  Step 2: Paint the bottles with acrylic.  Thinner gloss paints will require multiple coats (the white took 5 or more for full coverage) whereas thicker flat coats were full-coverage in only a coat or two.  The purple was a flat paint, so after it dried I covered with Mod Podge to give a gloss finish and protect the paint.  Step 3: Spray paint the cardboard container.  I recommend priming with primer or acrylic paint.  ESPECIALLY on the exposed raw cardboard on the inside of the container.  It just soaks spray paint right up.

Step 4: Once everything is dry, plop them together and stick 'em on a shelf.  TaDa!!!  That wasn't so hard now, was it?

Linked up at the following parties: Crafty Soiree, Blog Stalking Thursday, Hookin' up with HOH, Show off your stuff party

Hanging Bathroom Organizer

This post is a super quicky post.  I don't have a lot of detailed description because the instructions are so simple.  Please enjoy all the pictures, though!

I bought this block of wood at Goodwill two or three months ago.  It was half off, so I paid less than a dollar for it.  I just couldn't resist the potential of something clearly crafted with a purpose, but left half-finished.  It seemed to speak to me, but I waited until it was practically shouting before I got around to doing something with it.  It became a wonderful bathroom addition.

For starters, I purchased a can of spray on primer.  I wasn't sure exactly how or what I was going to paint it, but I figured raw wood was going to drink up whatever I put on there.  I actually primed it the week I brought it home.  It proceeded to sit politely on my shelf and wait for MONTHS to be given a purpose.  I finally figured out what I could use it for, and began my attack.  I painted it all over a lovely "Tiffany Blue" color.  I used E6000 to adhere the tops of three glass jars to the underside (to hold my bobby pins and hair ties).  I replaced the too-short rope with a piece of white-ish ribbon.  I hung it all up with a "Hercules Hook" which boasts a strength of 50lbs.  I am so pleased with how this turned out!  I love perusing the shelves of Goodwill for hidden treasures.

Linked up at these parties:  Crafty Soiree, Blog Stalking Thursday, Hooking Up with HOH, Show Off Your Stuff

Quotable Canvas

I do have a giveaway going on right now.  Click HERE to get in on it!

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song." -Maya Angelou

I love quotes.  I can find an inspirational quote to go with just about any feeling I'm having or any motivation I require.  I have them posted on post-it's and index cards all over my bedroom and bathroom.  I've been fiddling around with making quotes on canvas for a little over a year.  I've tried acrylics under spray paint, paint-by-number under acrylic, and everything in between.  I finally figured out one that I love enough to share with you, so here it is, quotes on canvas.  There's just one other thing you should know.  I love bird silhouettes.  Owl, sparrow, crow, whatever... I love the way they look and I'm sort of making that a theme in my room.

NOTE: you do NOT need the spray paint.  as I said, I've done it with spray paint before so I had it on hand because I wasn't sure how the acrylic was going to come out.

The pictures of the first few steps show a different piece that I haven't even finished yet, but I didn't take pics of the first steps on the finished product for this tutorial.  To start, I bought two canvases from Michael's.  The day I went, the 2-packs were buy one get one free, so I now have 2 bonus canvases to play with next time.  I took some scrapbook paper and pasted it to the canvas with mod podge and made a pretty background.   I let this dry for a couple of hours because you're going to be putting stickers on and you don't want to peel off the mod podge with them.   So once it's dry, get some foam stickers you like the shape of.  They have these EVERYWHERE.  Michael's, Walmart, you name it... I found these at Dollar Tree, but when I went back to get more last week they were gone.  :(  So if you find some you love at a good deal, BUY THEM ALL!  haha.  I use them for a lot of projects.  At this point, lay them out and then stick them on where you want them.

So once you have all your stickers stuck you can start painting.  To clarify,  your letters are going to be in the pattern of the scrapbook paper while your background is solid.  So you paint a pretty solid layer of acrylic paint over the canvas.  My layer was pretty thick and I could still almost see through it in some spots, so let it dry completely and if you need a second layer, go for it.  I did.

I would caution you not to "overload" with paint.  I made sure and spread mine out  with the brush pretty good to avoid pools of paint.  You're going to get "walls" of paint when you peel the stickers if you make it super thick.  Let it dry.  I have timed my peel pretty good and get the best results if I peel it riiiiight before it's completely dry all the way down.  I know that's confusing, but if you can time it to where the top layer is dry, but it's still a little gooey in the middle, you're golden.  This project is pretty hard to really mess up.  You can pretty much peel stickers whenever you want.  Fair warning:  you're going to smudge it if you do it right after you paint.  How do you peel those stickers off when they're covered in paint?  Get creative!  I have used a pencil, a steak knife, a screwdriver, a pointy-nail-file-thing.  You can really use anything you can get under the sticker.  I did discover that with this project, it was nice to have the steak-knife on hand to nab any little bits of paint that went where they weren't supposed to.  They came off very nicely.

Peeling the stickers is my favorite part because you can really start to see how it's going to come out.  When they're all peeled and you've dealt with any "whoopsies" you can seal in your end result with another two good layers of mod podge.  Your paint needs to be completely, honestly, you-would-press-your-face-to-it-in-public dry before you mod podge or it's going to stay soft.  You want this to be a sealing layer. This will keep your little paint ledges from scratching or peeling off.  It also gives that flat acrylic a nice glossy look if you use glossy mod podge.  It will stay flat but look more uniform and sealed if you use the flat mod podge. 

When you're done with this step, you could be done.  I took mine a step further.  I sketched a little silhouette of a bird that could be sitting on a wire, and cut it out, I then traced that shape to make a mirror image on another contrasting color.  Stick 'em down with a thin layer of mod podge and do another layer to seal 'em in and TADA!    This step literally took less than 10 minutes and I'm not very good at cutting along the lines.  I think it added a whole new level of awesome to them.  What do you think?

I'm going away this weekend for Christmas, but I would like to do a post this weekend that shows how all these crazy things I'm making look together on my wall.  At this point, I'm thinking aloud, because my blog schedule is PACKED.  Keep your eyes peeled for my next few blogs and give me all the feedback you've got.

Want something for free?  GIVEAWAY!!!

This post was shared on the following Linky Parties:  Sunday Blog Love, Not Baad Sundays, Sundae Scoop,  Just something I whipped up,  Lovely Crafty Weekend, Calling All Crafters Monday, Inspire Me Monday, Make Something Monday, Market Yourself Monday, More the Merrier Mondays, Show It Off Mondays,  Meet Me Monday, So Creative Party Time, The Gunny Sack, T Time and Link Party

No-Cash Trash Bash: Bottle Shock

I was so in love with the idea that there were crafts waiting for me that I dove into my recycle bin this week, searching for inspiration.  One of my roommates loves to try different types of beer (especially from microbrews) so we always have a few bottles in the bin.  [I really want to emphasize that I dug these out of the recycle.  My roommates would murder me if I let you believe we lived with all these beer bottles on the counter.]  I pulled some out, determined to think of something to do.  I peeled off the labels, then they sat around in my room for a few days (which is not a good look) and I finally decided I had to do something.  I Initially liked the idea of wrapping them in yarn, then putting them on a floating shelf with maybe a simple decorative flower. 



[I was recently at my friend Bailey's apartment and she had these floating shelves which reminded me of how much I loved my bestie Shelby's bedroom decorations.  I also had some in my apartment in St. Louis which I looooooved, so yeah.  It had to happen.]

(This one is the ledge-jumper)

 While I was making my first attmept, I hit a speedbump in the shape of the bottle.  There are a few ledges that made gaps when the yarn "jumped the ledge".  I tried using hot glue gun to keep it in it's place and it got weird and clumpy and still jumped off the ledge.  So, typical me, I got super frustrated and gave up for a few more days.  Then it hit me: double-sided tape!  Problem. Solved.  You just put the tape around the bottle, half on the widest part, half on the small part right below it, then press as you wrap the yarn around it.  So here it is, super easy, super cute.  When I get home from house-sitting, I'll get these all set up and take cute pics for ya. 



Have you had any magical garbage rescues lately?  I'm going to be keeping my eyes out for anything good in the recycle bin!

Here's a final-ish product.  I added some super cheap-o flowers from the piddly flower aisle of walmart and cut of the stems.  I love the way they look, though.  Something super frilly just wouldn't go with the simple look of the piece.  My new shelf isn't cooperating, so I need to get new mounting hardware this week.  >:|  I'll post pics when my shelf decides not to be a butt-head.

No Cash Trash Bash: TP Wall Art

This no-cash trash bash is somthing that makes me immensely happy.  I am alway crafty and often broke.  The total cost of this craft is probably less than $2, but it cost me NOTHING because it was all stuff I had around the house: 1/2 a hot glue stick, maybe 1/4 can of spray paint and stuff saved from the landfill.

This idea was totally inspired by my boss. She is quite crafty and she came in last week with an idea for wall art she was thinking about doing for the living room. I was in love with the idea and decided to give it a whirl. (I did warn her that I was jacking her brilliance and she was good with it. A few of us at work swap ideas regularly.) Working with elementary school kids, we know the value of a good toilet paper / paper towel roll. How brilliant would it be to turn something that is literally garbage into beautiful wall art? Well, that's just what I did.

I should mention that I'm still house-sitting and some of my tools (like a ruler, for starters) are not here with me. To start, I took 3 paper towel rolls and measured lines the width of this pie looking tool thing I found in the drawer. I cut all these little sections out (and kept having to wrestle them away from the cat) then decided I had enough to get started. I was watching a movie ["Lost in Austen", available for instant viewing on Netflix. A really cute movie if you love Pride and Prejudice] during this whole part, it's definitely a mindless activity which is nice to have from time to time. I then began to assemble the piece. It was a very organic process, I just kind of stuck one where it looked like it needed to go. The more I added, the more I liked it. When I had all the cut pieces glued on, I considered cutting the toilet paper rolls I had collected for this craft, but decided I should stop while I was ahead.

After I had my piece all glued together, I took it out back to spray. In retrospect, spray painting it in this manner was not fun. Raw cardboard toilet paper rolls absorb so much spray paint that you have to do a zillion coats before you see full coverage. Also, you're trying to get in and around all the surfaces of waaaaaaay to many little circles. Next time, I'm going to paint the tubes with acrylic BEFORE I glue. This was really the most frustrating part of the project... other than the time my glue gun went rogue while I was trying to balance the piece I was about to glue on and catch the falling piece... Yeah... not fun. All in all, though, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this project. 

My final piece isn't exactly "final" yet, because I'm not home to hang it on the wall, but this is what I have right now.

Have you ever done something surprisingly beautiful with toilet paper rolls?

Linked on: More the Merrier Monday , Meet Me Monday , So Creative Party Time , Tutorial Tuesday , Crafty Lassie Tuesday , 

Chalk & Awe

I'm house-sitting this weekend with the best dog and cat ON THE PLANET!  I'm serious, these guys are amazing.  You'll see them in the pics later on.  Now for the craft:

I've wanted a chalkboard forever.  There are two main purposes I'm interested in.  I have a few friends who have featured them in pictures.  I love the idea that you could write something on the chalkboard and have it appear in the photo more organically than if you were to put it in with a photo editing program later.  The other reason I wanted one is that I have wanted a cute, decorative way to feature inspirational quotes in my bedroom and a chalkboard is just the thing.  Every time I look for them in craft stores or the school-supply and craft aisles of my neighborhood big-box store, I can't handle how much they cost.  I'm looking at a minimum of $10 for a plain-jane one, then I have to decorate the raw wood edge.  ...it would take all weekend.  Blah.  So, while wandering Walmart, disappointed that they hadn't magically gone down to 5 cents overnight, I had an epiphany!  It went something like this:

 

 Even better, I had a few hours to spare between Chem Lab and work, so I got a head start on it, since I knew I would need time to dry.

So here we go!

Things you need:

• $2 picture frame.  (Mine is actually a "document frame" because it was so much cheaper, just make sure it has the glass, because that becomes the chalkboard.)  Go ahead and get an ugly one, because it won't matter later.
• Spray paint
• CHALKBOARD SPRAY PAINT!!!! (How have I not realized how much I needed this before?)

What you do:

Take the frame apart.  Discard the family photo or pretend document that came in the frame but mean nothing to you.  Unless you really like it... then save it for another craft.  Make sure you save the back so that you can put it all back together at the end!

Spray the glass (one side only) with 3 smooth, even coats (not too thick) of chalkboard paint.  Let it completely dry between coats.  (Mine took about an hour to completely dry because it was really cold outside.)  Alternate spray direction between coats, so one is applied in landscape passes and the next in portrait.  Does that make sense?  I hope it does, because I can't really think of another way to describe it.  Once your 3rd coat is dry, set the glass aside in a safe place.  The paint needs to cure for 24 hours before we can chalk it up. 

While you wait for the chalk paint to set up, go ahead and spray paint that ugly frame a cute color that will accent your room well (or one that just jumps out at you)!  I went with the accent color on my comforter (which happens to be the color of my sheets).  Mine was made of some sort of cheap plastic material which STRONGLY resisted being spray painted.  With several persistent, super-thin coats I was finally able to achieve the color I was going for.  It honestly took 6-8 coats before I was getting full coverage. (this pic is before)

Side Note:  I strongly recommend getting a great cardboard box from the produce department of your local grocery.  They are great for catching all the crazy spray dust from spray paint.  Also, they have handles, so you can spray outside and move it inside to dry after the smell has dissipated some and you don't have to put fingerprints in it.  Magical.

After your 24 hours of settling is done, you have to "prime" the chalkboard by rubbing the side of a piece of chalk all over the board.  It would be more stable if you put it back in the frame first, but I like a good struggle, so I did it before I put it back together.   Once you erase the chalk, put the frame back together and get to chalkin'!  If you're house-sitting, make your new furry friends pose with your creation!    I have a feeling you'll be seeing this board again...  What would you do with your very own chalkboard?

Crayoohlala

Please hold while I continue to giggle about the title of this post.  Teehee.  Now, moving on.  There has been some wild craze in the crafting scene this year about these melty crayon things:

Go ahead, take a moment to ooh and aah at all the pretty colors.   It's exactly what I did.  I have to think that this gained such popularity for three simple reasons:

1. It requires precisely 2 supplies and 2 tools.
2. Everyone likes rainbows.  Everyone.  Especially crafty people. 
3. It's suuuuuuuuuuuuper easy!  I'm pretty sure that given a half-hour of instruction, my beta fish could pull this one off. 

So, since this is such a simple project, I happen to have loads of pictures of my first attempt, and it's the picture behind my blog title, here we go: My very first craft tutorial! 

What you need:

• box of crayons
• canvas
• hot glue gun
• blowdryer

The Nitty Gritty:

Before you start, you should just cover EVERYTHING IN THE ROOM with those throw-out ads from the newspaper.  The wax is gonna fly and the minute drops dry instantly leaving everything you own with rainbow freckles.

The box of crayons you need will be determined by the size of the canvas you're using.   I got ambitious and went all 16"x18" on my first try.  I bought a box of 96, pulled out all the black, white, gray, metallics, neons, and browns and still had quite a few leftovers.

I get asked often if you have to use Crayolas of if the off-brand crayons work.  I have to assume that any crayon would work but since the wrappers are heavily featured in the end result, I don't recommend buying one that has "Carls Crappy Crayons" or whatever written on them in an ugly package.   Also, it is theoretically possible to do this without the wrappers, but I haven't done it yet.  I think so much of the crayons melt that it would just become a colored wax painting.  You would lose the effect of the melted crayon, which is my favorite part.

I also got asked if this could be done with any type of glue.  Again, I would assume so, but then you have to wait overnight for it to dry.  I was reading the back of some glue in the store the other day (what?  that's normal.) and saw that it takes "at least 24 hours" to dry.  I'm a weekend warrior, folks.  I do not have 24 hours to wait for glue to dry.  Hot glue gun it is.

Procedure: (It makes me feel like I'm in lab)

Lay out all the crayons you intend to use.  Keep in mind, you don't have to make a rainbow, but I would advise you that when the melting begins the colors blur so if your colors are not near each other on the spectrum, you're gonna have a whole lot of brown melty blah.

Once you know where you want your crayons, start gluing them down.  Since you're probably a perfectionist like me, you want the labels all facing the same way; so only glue in sections of 5ish crayons at a time or the glue dries.

To repeat myself for your personal sanity and well being, this is your absolute last opportunity to cover all surfaces you don't want bespeckled.  On a similar note, never point the blowdrier toward yourself.  You should have seen the look on my roommate's face as she walked in my room to check on my project the instant after I took on 52,063 purple freckles.

Now, kick on that blowdrier and show those crayons what you're made of.  It takes a little while for the crayons to melt, but on a high heat setting at full blast you should see meltage within 30 seconds. 

When I tried to go straight across, the drip was drying about 2 inches down, then the crayons hardened right back up. You'll develop your own technique, but don't try to get them all to melt at one time, stick to a range of 5-8 crayons.  For best results, make several passes over each section.

Keep going 'til you have something you like, but know when to stop. Too much melting and you're going to get brown goo.  Consider yourself warned.  Now you might have something like this:

I'd love to see how yours turned out, so whip out that cam and send me a link!

Here's how mine looked when I hung it on the wall!

If you learn anything about me in the coming blogs, you'll learn that I'm a one-upper.  Here's how I tried to one-up the standard "melting crayons on canvas rainbow" shindig:

This is how I took the pic, but it's hanging "upside down" of this on my wall.  You wanna one-up me?  I'd love to see your ideas (so I can try and one-up you back)!

I think I personally love this because as I've mentioned, I was terrible at drawing in elementary school (who am I kidding?  I still am) and it's like I was going to make these crayons into art whether they cooperated or not!  When I first saw this, I wanted to do it, but never thought of it when I had a canvas.  It's hard for me to contribute this craft to any one blog, because it is on so many, but I definitely did check this one out before I got started.

So here it is, my very first tutorial.  What do you think?

Update:  HOLY COW!  LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!  Sorry for the caps lock, but I was shouting in my head.  Check out this topical blast from my past:

YOU'RE WELCOME!