DIY Journal (super super easy too!)

At Paper Source, we sell THESE little journals. I love them because they are so simple. I was examining their construction yesterday while at work and decided to give them a try.  Minus drying time, this project took me all of 15 minutes. I did most of it while waiting for Mark to get ready to leave the house this morning...

Remember when I made my own heart shaped pad?  If not, please visit THIS LINK so that I don't have to repeat myself...Sorry, that was short. I'm tired. 

Anyway, I used text weight 8.5x11 paper cut in half (15 sheets cut in half, so 30 sheets for the journal) and then card stock for the front and back covers.  I had this particular pattern in a pad from Michael's. It's really pretty and has glitter on it.  I also used PVA glue, binder clips and THIS book cloth tape. 

Waiting to dry. I actually did this step twice. 

All done. I really like it. Now we'll see if it holds up to normal journal wear and tear...

DIY: Mini Clutch

I wear glasses. I have since I was like six years old. There is no way in this world that I am able to NOT wear glasses. Once, this guy that I worked with actually thought that I took my glasses off when I got home...Uh NO.  All I have to say is THANK GOD they have technology that shrinks really thick lenses. Without this, I'd be a coke bottle glasses wearing nerd.

Anyway, I have lots of glasses cases around. Of course, for this project, I didn't use one of them...I went to Ross Dress For Less and found three really cool ones for really cheap.  In my blog stalking, I've seen several bloggers do this DIY...HERE ARE EXAMPLES. I love this project. It's fun, easy and I actually might use this one (to note, I've worn the glitter shoes twice so far...).

What I used

• E6000 Multi-Purpose Adhesive-3.7 Ounce
• Sunglass cases
• Beads from Michael's
• Rings from the findings section at Michael's.
• This birdcage bead thing from Michael's. 

Stuffs...

I glued the rings onto the cases. 

I glued the birdcage thing onto the pink case.
This one is done. It's my favorite because it's kind of weird.

Then I glued these beads to the top of the three  rings on this case.
Those beads were attached with fishing line already and I didn't see ANY need to change that, so I just used a lot of glue to make sure they stuck. They did, but it took a few tries...

DIY Wedding: Aisle Runners (oh and a fire too...)

When my sister was planning her wedding, I was browsing some wedding forum somewhere and came upon a picture of this super spectacular personalized aisle runner (sorry, I can't find the picture-I tried. I really really did). I BEGGED her to let me make one for her because it was just awesome. She agreed and I was so excited!!!!

This one wedding item made the largest (and most firey) impact (in my opinion) and it looked great in pictures (see at the end of the post...).  It was also VERY easy to make, so easy that I almost cried when I looked on Etsy and saw how much people charge...Again, I'm in the wrong business. I really just need to do this for a living and give the bar thing a rest...but I digress-as usual. 

I bought a 100 ft runner (I think I got it at Hobby Lobby) which was waaaaay too long. I cut 25 feet off the end of the runner, measured out 50 feet from the new end and placed the monogram there. I was slightly apprehensive about this, probably because I can't measure to save my life.  It all worked out in the end though... 

I really wanted to personalize it, but I needed the monogram to be 3' by 3'.  I had one heck of a time trying to figure out how to print the it that big,  my printer wasn't having it, so I finally just called a copy place and they did it for me. Very easy. 

Here is the monogram printed on big paper behind the runner so that we could trace it:

Originally, I had the "H" behind the other text and we were going to make it glittery, but that would have looked weird with the black paint being non-glittery, so I put the H on top.  After some consideration,  I decided to NOT make the "H" glittery, because I didn't want it to get all over her dress when she walked over it.  I'm glad that I kept them separate in the end, the paint bleeds a little when you use it on that kind of material and the two colors wouldn't have looked very good bleeding into one another. 

Mom and I traced the monogram onto the runner (I had help on this craft...there's my mom!  HI MOM!!!).

There she is, hard at work. Good Job MOM!

Then I started painting.  Mom was bored at this point, so I took over.  Before I started, I put wax paper behind the runner. That paint is nice and all, but it would NOT have been nice all over my dining room table...

It looked really good. Like, REALLY good. I was actually quite proud of myself.  When I rolled it up to ship to Florida (where the wedding took place) I put wax paper on both the front and back of the design.  The aisle runner material is very porous and I didn't want the paint bleeding through onto the non painted parts.  In the package, I also put a huge roll of very wide, very sticky double sided tape. I wanted the florist to use that (and not stick pins) to secure it to the carpet. They did NOT take my advice and panic ensued...more on that later. 

Here is how it looked on the big day...

Now onto the most disappointing moment in my crafting career...Notice on the sides of the runner that there are candles in water vases on the floor. Yes, that's right. There was FIRE on the FLOOR when there was a very very VERY flammable aisle runner mere inches away. After the wedding party marched out of the chapel to take pictures, someone knocked over the fire ONTO the aisle runner and it proceeded to go up in flames.  I did not know this, nor did I hear anything about it until the cocktail hour (thank God for wine) when my husband told me. I thought he was kidding, but soon confirmed the story with my father in law (who would NOT lie to me) and so it was true.  One of the wedding guests  actually put out said fire with his hand and sported burn blisters for the rest of the evening. 

The moral to this story? If you're going to have an aisle runner, DON'T PUT FIRE ON THE FLOOR!  DUH!  I tried to tell her...she wouldn't listen and my masterpiece went up in flames. 

It's Time For the Perforator

Remember that percolator song from the 90's?  Every time I say perforator I think of that song...






Enough silliness...I had a very fun weekend of crafting.  I took a lovely handmade album class at Paper Source Houston. It was super fun and I made this lovely addition to my crafted items.






While in this class, Sheila suggested that I blog about the PERFORATOR.  We love this thing at our store. It can be used for SO many things (rip off cards for invitations for one) and I decided to perforate the pages in THESE little notebooks. It's so handy to have a little tear away notepad available. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to buy them because they're super cute...

The notepads and the perforator. 

I use a straight edge to run the perforator along.  It doesn't always work because generally, rulers and I don't get along, but whatever.
Notice the crazy nail polish?  It's really those Sally Hansen strips that are now my greatest love. 

You can see how I tore the page up top along its perforation.

I think that every house should have a perforator. It's really quite handy and goes along with my dad's old saying, "the right tool for the right job."

DIY Wedding: A Homemade Veil

Right after I got married, my sister Lindsay got engaged. Since weddings were fresh on my mind, I took the opportunity to put all of my DIY skills to use. I did a lot for her wedding (programs, menu's place cards, aisle runner, her veil, a video slideshow, the invitation suite etc...).  She wanted a really long cathedral veil. Have you priced cathedral veils lately?  Ridiculously expensive. 

Since Lindsay has an obsession with Princess Di, the veil had to be really really long. I think it was five yards of glimmer tulle. It cost me all of $20 to make. 

Here I am cutting the end. We wanted it to be rounded. What this picture does not show is that I used a huge salad bowl as a template to round the corners.

I sewed on a big comb...This is the extent of my sewing skills. If I could have glued it, I would have. I hate sewing.

Before it was steamed, but the comb is on, it's cut and rounded, so we're almost set. 

I thought it was a little boring, so I bought these scrapbooking sticker crystal things at Hobby Lobby.  When I stuck them to the tulle, they kept coming off, so I put them where I wanted them and then I used Gem-Tac glue and a paint brush and painted the glue onto each of the swirls.  It took forever, but that stuff worked, let me tell you! On the day of the wedding, the veil kept catching on everything and those babies stayed on, but the tulle around some of them ripped that glue was so good. 

See how long that thing was?????

You can see the rhinestones here...

DIY Wedding: A Pink Crinoline!

I wasn't a bridezilla, I really wasn't, but when I was engaged (four years ago), I found myself more and more outraged with the price of wedding stuff.  Slap the word "bridal" on something and expect a 70% increase. It boiled me. So for my wedding, I DIY'ed a lot...

While browsing Etsy this evening, I revisited my bridal rage for a moment when I discovered that sellers are charging upwards of $100 for dyed crinolines. OMG. I almost had a heart attack. I dyed my own crinoline (and a few others) for my wedding. I wore a pink one that my sister wore a year later when she got married...It cost me less than $2 to dye it.  I think that I even bought the actual crinnie on ebay for like $10. So, you can understand my outrage. It also took me all of 45 minutes. I'm in the wrong business. I need to start selling this stuff...

How to Dye a Crinoline (or anything really...)

An important site for dyeing info is the RIT DYE SITE...there is a color chart that will help you make custom colors, should you want them...

To start, I filled my washer with hot hot water, then I put on gloves (you don't want pink hands do you?).  BEFORE I put the dye in the wash bin, I dunked the crinoline into the water. Since I didn't have anywhere else for the wet crinoline to go, I put a towel under a laundry basket so that water wouldn't get all over and I put the wet crinoline in the basket.

Here is my set up...

I then added the dye (RIT liquid dye, Rose Pink) to the wash bin and set it to agitate, then I added the crinoline to the dye and dunked it in as much as I could (this is where wearing gloves comes in really handy, because that water was HOT).

Here's the crinoline right before I shut the washer lid to let it agitate.

I kept setting the washer to agitate, I let it go for about 15 minutes, then I took it out, unraveled it the best that I could (it was heavy...) then I put it back in for another 15 minutes. This step is really important because if you don't unravel it, your crinnie will end up tye-dyed.

A mid-cycle pic...

After it was done agitating I let it rinse twice, the 2nd time, I added just a bit of detergent, rinsed it again, let the water drain and I took it out.

Here it is right before I took it out of the washer...

I hung it up in my bathroom the best that I could...it was REALLY tangled within itself and I had to have the husband (then the fiance) help me...

It turned out pretty well. I think the color on the bottle very accurately describes the color that the crinoline turned out to be. I was surprised by that actually.

Here are pictures of my former crinnie and hoop skirt that I had also dyed. I was trying to match the color "truffle," which was the color of my bridesmaid dresses...it took a lot of work, four things of rit dye, but it was successful.  I freaked out at first because it was REALLY purple.  I looked on the rit site and saw that you could make burgundy out of 1/2 cup dark brown and 1 cup of wine, I switched that up and it ended up really purple, so I used two more packs of dark brown and voila! Perfection!

Up close color of crinnie #1

Here's the hoop skirt and crinnie together...

The crinoline looks tie dyed in this picture, which to be honest, it sort of was up top, the fabric for this crinnie was different from the one that I actually wore. 

Out of thousands of wedding pictures, this is the only one that I can find with a good view under my dress...Which is a good thing I think?

It's my fake Chanel Ice Cube Clutch!

So there I was again, stalking my favorite DIY blogs and all of a sudden I came upon THIS. Hello my friend! I NEED this...Will I ever use it? Probably not, well, maybe I will, but it seemed like a fun little DIY so I set to it.  Without thinking, I blindly followed the soccer mom's instructions. I should have taken a little bit more time and put some more thought into this so that I could have made it look exactly like the real Chanel product pictured above. But, alas in my haste, I ended up with my own version. The only complaint that I have (other than the one above) is that it's sort of heavy. Coming from the girl with the 10 pound wedding bouquet, that's saying something...OK, 10 pounds might be a slight exaggeration, though maybe not. The stupid thing had five dozen roses in it...but I digress-as I usually do...

I got these fake ice cube looking things from Hobby Lobby. They came eight to a pack and I needed four packs to get this done. The clutch came from either Marshall's or TJ Maxx, it was $6.99 and I actually really like it...I used E6000 Glue to adhere the cubes to the clutch. I haven't used this glue in forever and I now remember why...it's great, but it STINKS. I stunk up my whole house for an entire day and I thought my husband was going to kill me...oops.

And It's done. I like it. Kind of. I might do a new version using a clear acrylic box, which means that someone might be receiving this one sometime soon. Only time will tell. Happy Crafting!

A Very Dirty Bracelet and A Naughty Little Rose...

Remember that time when I tore up a TRN (trashy romance novel) to make a heart wreath? I felt so inspired by that craft that I decided to rip up another book to create more goodness out of literary badness.  Since I have boxes of TRN's lying around my house (any takers on those?), this undertaking was quite easy.  I figure if no one wants them (slight hint there people) I shall cut them up and make stuff out of them. Just watch, one day you'll find me walking down the road in a dress made out of TRN pages...

The book that I used for these two crafts was Getting Lucky, by Joanne Rock. Like my last TRN project, I didn't feel particularly bad about destroying this book because well, it just wasn't any good. It was quite contrived and utterly unrealistic and as I was reading it months ago I was already planning on tearing it up. 

Anyway, I gathered my supplies, Mod Podge (seems to be my go to glue this week), an evil glue gun (not pictured because it and I are not friends after my finger got burned) and a blank bracelet that I found at Michaels. 

Supplies, look closely at the background and see a future craft in action...

This was my inspiration for the bracelet. I love how it looked. You can find this fine creation and many others like it HERE on Etsy. 

I tore out a page and glued it to the bracelet. I could have used PVA, but the Mod Podge was so readily available that I got lazy and used that instead. It worked though...

When it was dry, I cut the page closer to the edge and wrapped it around and glued the edges to the back. Then I Mod Podged the entire thing. I got a little excited to MP something again and I TOTALLY forgot to stamp something on top of the writing. Sigh. Guess I have to make another one...

I thought it was a little boring by itself so I glued these tiny little metal roses on top of it.

OK, that's not the entire story...I got a little too excited about completing my project and didn't look at the words on the page that I used...Let's just say that they aren't exactly G-rated...So I needed an accoutrement to sensor some of the very naughty language that Joanne used while writing her story...

The finished product. I like it. I might wear it. Or I might just give it to someone. If I give it to you, just know that it's coming accompanied by a box of books. 

Here we go with TRN craft #3. This is my inspiration. I found this pic on Etsy, but forgot to copy the link. So I'm not taking credit for this little bit of fabulousness at all...

This is not my pic. I stole it off Etsy.

 I really really really wanted to make this rose. It's been on my Crafting List of Things To Do for freaking ever. I tried it once before, but it got messed up because TRN pages are really small. For this reason, I pasted a bunch of pages together using PVA because it dries so fast.  

Then I folded it a bunch of times lengthwise and rolled it in a circle, securing it along the way with evil hot glue, being careful not to let it crease too much. I wanted my rose to have "body," so I made sure that the paper was puffy in some places.  Once all of the paper was rolled, I secured the end with evil hot glue. I turned it over and popped it out, so the rose wouldn't be flat. To help it keep shape, I used a ton of hot glue on the back of it and that seemed to work.  I'm sure that there is a better way to do this, but at the time, this is what I came up with. 

I experimented with Mod Podge Clear Sealer Gloss in the spray can. I figured it would be just like a spray polyurethane for paper, but it wasn't.  It wasn't nearly as thick, even after several coats. In the end, I used a paint brush and painted on some more MP.

I think I'm happy with the final result. It's a little smaller than I wanted, in the future, I'll use many more TRN pages.  I DO think that I'm going to put this on a head band. It will be perfect to wear to work at the paper store. 

I glittered my shoes and they are AWESOME...

It was high school when I discovered my OBSESSION with all things sparkley. I suspect this happened because I was a dancer at the time (ballet, not the "other" kind) and we always had some bling on our costumes...I used spray glitter for the first time on one of my tutu's.  Ah happy memories!  Anyway, one day when I was 16, I got myself a bottle of glittery puff paint and much to my fathers chagrin, I glitterized my Nike's. I wore them until they literally fell apart, I feel like that special pair can still be found in my parents basement. I shall check when I visit them in July...but I digress...

Last weekend I was trolling my favorite DIY blogs and came across THIS blog and THIS one showing how to glitterize a pair of pumps. Why, hello and welcome to my life! I was feeling a bit down and well, there is nothing better than a good pair of glittered shoes to make one feel better.  I just knew that I must have a suitable pair in the "give away" pile, so I went downstairs and stalked the boxes that totally should have gone to Goodwill 3 months ago and VOILA, I found the most perfect pair EVER...

I bought these babies for $10 online at Victorias Secret a few years ago. They ended up in the GW pile because I never wore them. They're boring. This is the perfect project to make them un-boring. Notice the Martha Stewart Glitter just waiting to create fabulousness...

I stuffed them with plastic bags.  While glitter is fun, I have a feeling that it would NOT be fun stuck in between my toes every time I wear these in the future...

I mixed the Martha glitter with Mod Podge to make a glitter glue. I could have used PVA instead, but Mod Podge is what the other blogger used (the one with the oxford shoes) and it looked really good. PVA also dries really fast and I didn't want to have to deal with that...I used a lot of glitter (too much actually, I had enough to glitterize the top of a box that will appear on this blog soon) and mixed it really well.

I totally forgot to photograph myself applying the glitter, but I did, with a paint brush. The shoes were suede-ish, so the glitter stuck really well to them. If they had been patent leather, I think it would have chipped off and not stuck very well.

This is how they looked (well, not they, it) when I was done glitterizing...

I wanted to make sure that the glitter didn't flake off. I could just imagine myself leaving a trail of glitter everywhere I went. Since I value my privacy, I applied another layer of plain Mod Podge and let it dry overnight. 

There is no picture that can do these justice. They are FABULOUS. I love that this cost me no money. I had all of this stuff already. Re-using is so cool!