Like, the coolest nails, like ever!

We were invited to an 80s themed birthday party... who would turn down an invitation to resurrect the most over the top style era of all time?!   

These rad splatter nails complimented my neon mini skirt, off the shoulder neon top, ripped tights and jelly bracelets perfectly!  I found a tutorial for this nail technique online but I I couldn't find any pictures of it on black nails and figured out a couple of tricks I thought I'd share with you.

You'll need: black nail polish, neon opaque nail polish in at least two colors, a straw cut into 2" lengths, scotch tape, a paper plate, and paper towel.

Start by painting your nails black.  I top coated mine after the black polish but you probably wouldn't have to do that step.

Using scotch tape, tape off the sides and along the cuticle of each nail on one hand.  I used one of those pre-cut pop-up tape dispensers which made operating with tape on my nails a little more feasible.

Line your work surface with several paper towels... it's gonna get messy.

Pour a little puddle of your neon polish onto your paper plate.  Pounce the end of your straw into the polish.  Now here's the trick - hold your nail about 10" away from you and blow through the straw with a short sharp burst (Like you're saying "two").  If you're too close to your nail, the air spreads the polish out too much and you don't get that drip/splatter look.  And if you don't blow sharply, you may not get any polish to come off the end of the straw at all.

Re-dip your straw into the polish between each blow.

When you're done with one color do the second, remove the tape, and then repeat the process for your other hand.

Top coat & get ready for all the compliments on your totally tubular nails!

Tea Time

We had a fun and somewhat busy summer. Elle has been in various camps and we've done several "family fun" activities on the weekends.  However, I think this summer will go down in history... well at least in my mind... as the summer of the gym and the tea.  Two major new developements have occured over the course of the last couple months 1) I started going to the gym every week day and methodically tracking the number of calories I consume and 2) my nanny introduced me to her addiction... tea.

#1 is not much fun at all, in fact, I wouldn't have even mentioned it if it weren't related to #2.  I have a pretty serious sweet tooth and it doesn't play nice with counting calories!  Enter, the nanny, her love for tea, and a really interesting site to buy tea from, adagio.  On adagio, users can buy tea but they can also make their own custom blends (some of them get pretty creative and make blends inspired by movie characters... like the Harry Potter ones you see above), design their own artwork for their blends label, and make their creation available to be purchased by other users.  With teas like chocolate mint cream, I feel like I'm cheating the system somehow by getting my sweets fix in tea every afternoon for virtually no calories.

I didn't post about this just to tell you how much I love the site and my new found sweet fix though... I wanted to share this fun project for "stained glass" jars that my nanny did with my girls. 

You'll need:

mason jars - one for each type of tea you have

Tissue paper in various colors

white glue

foam brush

First, they came up with a color scheme for each flavor of tea (like peach and white for a peaches and cream tea) then they tore bits of tissue paper in those colors, dipped them in water, applied them to the outside of the mason jar, and smoothed them down.  Repeat, overlapping the tissue paper just a little until the entire surface of the jar is covered.  Then paint white glue over the whole thing and let dry.  Lastly, once the tea you tracked online through the entire shipping process and waited for with bated breathe (that's what happens when these things get to addiction level) arrives, pour it into the jar, peel the artisan's label off the bag of tea, and adhere it to the outside of the jar.  Store your jars in a cool dry place.

Sidewalk Chalkboard Tutorial

For the Shoffice's grand opening, I needed a way to direct guests to the backyard and thought a sidewalk chalkboard would fit the Happy Hour theme perfectly.  I saw one at Home Goods for $80 but knew I could make one for much cheaper. 

Supplies:
Large framed chalkboard - since you'll be drilling into it, the frame needs to be wood
1"x2" board in a 12' length
2 one foot lengths of small link chain
a set of small hinges
4 screws
black paint
drill & drill bit
screwdriver

Cut the 1"x2" into three lengths - 2 pieces that are the same height as your chalkboard, and 1 piece the width of your chalkboard

Paint the boards black

Nail the stand/legs together - Lay the short board on the ground, place the long boards perpendicular to and at either end of the short board. Nail in place.

Attach the stand/legs to the chalkboard frame with the hinges - Pre-drill pilot holes for your screws (if you don't use a large enough bit for your pilot holes you'll strip the screws to your hinges and have to get your husband to muscle the last screw in for you)

Attach the chains - stand the chalkboard up leaning against the legs.  Mark the chalkboard frame at the point where the chalkboard and the legs are approximately 10" apart. Measure the distance from the mark to the bottom of the chalkboard and mark the legs & the other side of the chalkboard frame at the same point.  Pre-drill pilot holes then screw the chains into place.

I have a feeling this chalkboard is going to make an appearance at more of my parties in the future!


 

Cuckoo Clock

My office is one easy breezy weekend away from finished and I couldn't be happier! Check out this super fun idea I had for the wall...

Mellow Yellow Decor made this vinyl wall decal for me in just the right size to fit the $1.99 Rusch clock I picked up at Ikea. I used a level to mark the wall, carefully applied the decal, and hung the clock. Waaalaaa could it be any cuter!?

Date Nights!

My Doug is really difficult to buy for. He’s very particular about… well really everything… so I have more success with “abstract” ideas, like this Love Notes Jar I made for him 2 Valentine’s ago, and a glass blowing class I got for him for his last birthday. So I was really excited that he LOVED the idea I came up with for him this Christmas… date nights!

It isn’t a difficult gift to put together, but it does take some time and patience; I started working on it 6 months ago. The idea is to plan for a date night every month of the upcoming year (or maybe for a Valentine's gift you could do every weekend of the coming month?). I have something of a little “addiction” to those discount sites like Groupon and Living Social. I love that you can get a great deal and discover something new and fun going on in your town! I started watching for deals on things to do that would make a great date night and didn’t expire until into the future year (a hazard of planning too far in advance). I kept a calendar of when the deals I bought expired and made sure to plan around those and still end up with one date per month.

When it was time to put together the gift, I made a calendar template for each month that fits on the front of a 5x9 manilla envelope, printed out one for each month and adhered it to the front of 12 envelopes. I printed off the vouchers, put them in the envelope for the month that we’ll be going on that date, and made a decorative band to slip around all the envelopes to keep them together.

I wasn’t able to get vouchers for every month of the year yet, since some of the deals expire within months that we already have a date for, but I was able to get quite a few; things like a wine tasting, dinner and a movie, paddleboard lessons, comedy club, and swimming with the manatees.

I love this gift, for so many reasons! Committing to a date night every month will be a great way to make sure we’re spending quality alone time together (unfortunately, it’s easy to just pass that up when you have 2 little ones), we’ll get to do lots of new things we haven’t tried before, putting photos and memorabilia from our dates in the envelopes will be a convenient way to keep track of some of the fun stuff we did throughout the year, but I think my most favorite thing about it is that I can just keep it going every year and completely eliminate the painful task of gift giving for my picky (albeit wonderful) husband!

Chore Chart

I wanted to make a chore/allowance/behavior chart for my 6 year old. I decided a magnetic dry erase board would be perfect for the job but the boards at the office supply stores were so expensive that I figured I could make one for much less. A million ideas involving various iterations of a DIY magnetic dry erase board and purchases including dry erase paint, metal flashing, magnetic paint, plexiglass, and oil drip pans later, I found a magnetic dry erase board at Target for $20…. go figure! I exchanged all those supplies for the $20 board, pinstriping tape (from the automotive store), 2 bags of flat edge glass marbles (Elle prefers to call them “gems”), & some magnets. Here’s how this fun project came together.

 

 

I started by planning out what I wanted to chart with this chart and decided on 3 sections:

• Choices – Elle starts every day with 4 choices “gems”. She can loose a gem for making a bad choice. If she finishes the week with a pre-determined number of choices gems she gets to choose something fun to do like picking where we eat breakfast on the weekend, playing a board game with Mom & Dad, staying up late to watch a movie on Friday night etc.

• Chores – These are the things she is expected to do every day, they contribute to being a productive part of keeping the house clean and taking care of herself. She places a check mark in each of the items as they’re completed every day.

• Allowance – Elle places a green “gem” in the row for each of these items she completes. The green gems are assigned a value… it can be whatever you think is reasonable, a nickel, a dime, a quarter etc. As long as she completes all her chores for the day as well, at the end of the week she cashes in her green gems for her earned allowance.

 

Once I devised the method for each of the sections & had an idea of how many rows we would need, I used pin striping to make a grid on the board. I also had vinyl decals made for each of the sections and days of the week. Lastly I hot glued magnets to the back of the flat sided marbles (you can buy them by the bag at Michaels). We’re on week 3 of the chart, and it’s been a complete success thus far! My child’s room has never been cleaner, I don’t have to hunt for her lunch box every morning, figuring out how much allowance she’s earned every week has been a good math lesson, and she loves seeing her bank grow!

 

Mason Jar Pin Cushion Tutorial

 

This was one of those projects that I started out thinking I would whip it right up in no time flat, easy peasy. I thought I would post a picture of the finished pin cushion and link to any of the many tutorials there are for mason jar pin cushions (they’re all pretty much the same). Alas after 2 attempts, I kept ending up with too much bulk in the lid so it was too difficult to screw on (although I probably could’ve lived with it if it weren’t a Christmas gift for a friend). So I figured out my own way of doing this little project and now you get a tutorial of your own!

You’ll need:

A mason jar

A scrap of fabric

Hot glue

Batting

Fun stuff to fill the jar with

Just so I don’t loose you below, there are two parts to the mason jar lid… I’m going to refer the  piece in the first picture below as the “disc” and the piece in the second picture as the “screw top”.

Step 1 – Using the disc as a template, cut a circle of fabric from your scrap piece that is half an inch bigger all the way around.

Step 2 – Fold the fabric circle in half and then in half again and make little marks at the 4 points of the folds along the outside edge. Mark the same four “sections” with a sharpie on the underside of the top lip of the screw top. When you unfold the fabric, they’ll look like this:

Step 3 – Match up one of the marks on your fabric with one of the marks on your screw top and start there hot gluing the right side of the fabric to the underside of the top lip of the screw top, pleating the fabric as you go so that the 4 marks in the fabric match up with the 4 marks on the lid.

Step 4 – shape the batting into a ball and stuff the fabric until it’s full and puffy

Step 5 – Press the disc part of the lid into the screw top and make sure the fabric is as full and puffy as possible but the disc still lays flat inside the screw top. Once you’re satisfied with the amount of fluffiness, hot glue the disc into the screw top.

Step 6 – Fill the jar with something fun! I picked some fun notions from my stash – bits of ribbon, lace, a jingle bell, a big pom-pom, but if the person you're making it for doesn't already have them, you could include some sewing basics like needles, pins, a seam ripper etc.

If this isn’t 1 of 4,000 handmade Christmas gifts you’re trying to finish up the week of Christmas, and have a little more time, you should definitely make some really adorable decorative pin toppers to go with your pin cushion! Check out this great tutorial a friend of mine did for those on her blog- A girl in Paradise. http://agirlinparadise.blogspot.com/2011/05/decorative-pin-toppers.html

Artwork Mug

Ok this isn’t exactly “handmade” but it is a creative idea and one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year so I wanted to share. We make a concerted effort to focus more on giving at Christmas than getting, and part of that was to make sure our 6 year old thought of gifts she wanted to get for each of us. We talked about the things Daddy likes; among others, she listed coffee & her art work. She finally decided on a coffee mug for him and was beyond excited when I told her I was pretty sure we would be able to have some of her art work printed on a mug.

I started with the sites I was familiar with, and found some good deals for printing photos on mugs, but since I wanted to use a line drawing she made, was worried that the white of the paper she drew on wouldn’t be the same as the white of the coffee mug and you would see the outline of the “photograph”. So I poked around a little more looking for sites that you can upload graphics to customize your item with, not just photos. There were a few sites, but I settled on Zazzle.com because they have a great little “set whites as transparent” feature where all the white parts of your design will be transparent so the item you’re having it printed on just shows through. It was so easy, I just picked the coffee mug I wanted, scanned Elle’s art work, uploaded it to Zazzle, and set the white as transparent. A few days later, the mug arrived and was perfect in every way! Elle was so excited to give Daddy her gift… maybe even a little more excited than she was about the gifts she received… maybe. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ikea Doll Bed Re-do

$105.95 vs. $20 + a few supplies * insert hands acting as an imaginary scale weighing the difference *

I considered… for about 1 minute… whether to buy the American Girl doll bed for Elle’s “My American Girl” ($105.95 not including the bedding) for Christmas or re-doing the Ikea doll bed ($20) that the doll fits in. Me and my pocket book are very happy with the outcome!

Before

After

Here’s what you’ll need:

The Ikea doll bed

Sand paper

Primer

spray paint

piece of MDF

Optional “stuff”:

12”x19” piece of 1” thick foam

Half yard soft cuddly fabric

Stuffing/batting/pollyfill (i.e. whatever you want to stuff the pillow with)

Vinyl decal of the dolls name

Scrap fabric for the sheet and quilt

• First things first… my 2 year old stepped through the flimsy piece of wood bottom that comes with the bed the first 2 minutes she played with it. So not in the “optional stuff” category for us, was a more substantial piece of wood to replace the bottom of the bed. I brought the broken piece into Home Depot and the helpful staff cut a piece of MDF the exact same size for me.

• Next, I sanded all sides of the bed frame. You don’t have to get too crazy on this step, but it does need to be sanded to rough it up a bit so the primer and paint will stick

• Paint a thin even coat of primer (I used an oil based primer in a spray can) on all sides of the frame and let dry

• Lightly sand any rough or “globby” spots

• Spray another thin even coat of primer if you got a little carried away with the step above. Let dry.

• Spray paint the entire frame with a thin even coat of the color of your choice and let dry

• Repeat the step above if you’re not in love with the results yet

You could call it a day there if you’d like, but I was pretty sure Elle would think Kathryn (the doll) required much more comfortable bed linens than come standard issue with the Ikea bed. So I made a mattress, pillow, sheet, and the beginnings of a quilt Elle and I will sew as her first official sewing project. So here’s where all that “optional stuff” comes in:

• I picked up the piece of foam at Jo-Anns and just cut it to 12” x 19” with a pair of scissors.

• From your cuddly fabric, sew a simple case for the foam mattress (I just left one short end open… like a pillowcase… and tucked it under the mattress)

• Sew a matching pillow and stuff with your choice of filling

• I hemmed a rectangle scrap of fabric and called it a sheet

• I cut a bunch of 4” squares to make a matching quilt. Elle is very much looking forward to working on this project with me! I had hoped we would get to it over her Christmas break but didn’t… so that’ll be a post for another day!

• For the finishing touch, I applied a vinyl decal Gifted Express made of the doll’s name to the headboard.

We had one happy 6 year old on Christmas morning!

 

Charging Station

Between the laptops, iPhones, iPods, and headsets that require charging in our house, this little end table next to our couch was completely engulfed in a crazy tangled wire mess!  I really wish I had taken a before picture for you... it would be easy enough to stage... but the thought of going back there even for just a moment makes me shutter! I'm so loving this really useful and super cheap craft project my Doug and I tackled this weekend, a charging station!

Here's the how to if you want to give it a try.  I started with a box we already had on hand:

Next I measured the plug for a little power cord we also already had on hand and drew a square on the bottom back side of the box big enough to fit the plug through.

Then I cut it out using a box knife & cleaned up the rough edges with some black electrical tape

Next I measured the top of the box and marked it for three evenly spaced 1" holes.  Then we drilled the holes in the top of the box with a 1" hole saw (that's the drill bit thingie on the counter next to the box).

The holes were pretty rough looking, but these 1" grommets made for curtains finished the top and bottom sides of the lid off nicely.  We just hot glued them into the holes.

The best part was loading it full of all those cords and closing the lid!

Since I had the box, the power strip, and the hole cutting bit, the project only cost me .67 for the electrical tape and $5.50 for the grommets (I had a 50% off a regular priced item Jo-Anns coupon).  Not bad for less than $7!


  

DIY Pretty Insoles

So I have a confession... I don't like to wear shoes.  I even kick them off at my desk at work.  The price I pay for comfort is grungy insoles.  I'm gonna spare you the before pictures and get straight to the pretty after shots:

 

This was so simple, you're gonna want to do it to all your shoes!  You just need some craft foam, (they sell sheets of it with a sticky side in packs of 18 at JoAnns and Michaels), a pair of pinking shears, some fabric scraps, and an insole.  I smoothed out my fabric scraps onto the sticky side of the craft foam, pulled an insole out of an old pair of tennis shoes & used it as a template to cut the fabric covered craft foam with pinking shears.

 

No Sew Kitchen Stool Covers

I'm not waisting any time on my 2011 to do list!  I've already got a big ol' check mark next to cover my kitchen stools. 

I'm showing you all my dirty little secrets lately... first my messy bento cabinet and now my grungy kitchen stools (promise not to like me less!):

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the good stuff. I flipped the stools over and unscrewed the 4 screws that attached the cushions to the stool frame.  I found a fabric scrap (that was just barely big enough) in my stash that matches our kitchen decor and cut two pieces several inches bigger than the stool cushions.

I was prepared to tell you all that depending on the materials your cushion is made from, you'll likely need a heavy duty staple gun.  However, half way through stapling one of the covers, this happened:

Okay, my Doug didn't really take the staple gun apart half way through the project... it jammed.  Since I'm married to a man who adores me and does everything in his power to make/keep me happy, he set out on a mission to disassemble and reassemble my broken staple gun.  Oh how I love this man, lucky for him it's for so many reasons other than his ability to fix broken things! He wrestled with it for almost an hour before he admitted defeat. 

So I moved on to plan B, a plain old office stapler.  I couldn't believe it worked!  I did have to take out a few not so perfect staples, but more times than not, it did just fine. 

Drum roll please... introducing, my first ever vlog!  That's right, I took a video for you of how to staple the cover on and make a neat corner.  Disclaimer: I took this on my precious (a.k.a. iPhone) by myself so I'm holding my phone in one hand and trying to fold the corner with my other... just sayin'!

We're all just gonna ignore the fact that it's upside down... K??

So after you staple the fabric on and make neat folds at the corners, just screw the cushion back onto the frame and waaalaaa:

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