In The Works

In lieu of a tutorial today, I thought I'd share a little project I'm working on.

 

 

Hoping to finish up tonight. More Christmas decor tomorrow and next week!

DIY Christmas Decor: Snow Globes

I've seen these DIY snow globes made from old mason or food jars all over Pinterest and I remember seeing similar ones at Anthropologie last year. These globes were one of the first decorations I wanted to make when I decided to DIY a lot of our Christmas decor. 

Supplies Used:

- mason or food jars (i used artichoke and salsa)

- distilled water

- glitter

- liquid glycerin

- ornaments for inside globes

- sand paper, crazy glue

The first thing I did was spray paint all of the lids, even the gold mason ones to keep them all the same shade. I also decided to spray paint the deer figurines, but keep the trees green.

You'll want to sand the underside of the lids to make them easier to stick and use the permanent glue to attach the figurines to the inside of the lid. 

Next, use glitter to fill the bottom of the jar with enough to cover the entire bottom and make a nice layer of 'snow'. After that, fill the jar to the top with distilled water and add a few drops of liquid glycerin. I've read that the glycerin helps the glitter not to stick together.

I wanted to make sure my jars would be sealed tightly with no risk of leaking so I put a small layer of super glue on the rim of the lid before attaching it to the jar. 

Last step is to turn over, shake up your snow globes and enjoy!

A few notes:

- I didn't put enough water in the first two jars (the ones on the right). I left some room for the trees, but evidently left too much. I learned my lesson for the last jar (far left). Since I sealed the jars with super glue I couldn't reopen to add more water.

- I forgot to add the glycerin to the first two jars so I'm honestly not sure how crucial that ingredient is. Although I read that it's used to help the glitter spread when shaken, I haven't noticed a big difference.

- After a few days I've noticed that the water is starting to turn a bluish-green color, I'm assuming from the plastic trees. 

I decided to try one with the gold glitter. I love the look except the fact that you can see the layer of gold glitter floating at the top.  I think I might prefer the look of the gold over the white glitter. 

DIY Christmas Decor: Decorated Paper Mache Tree

 

My next DIY Christmas decor project was inspired by decorative trees I found at Target a few weeks ago. I really liked the look of them, but didn't want to spend $10-15 a piece for such a simple item. I instantly knew that I could remake these for much less.

 

The three looks I liked best were the feather tree, the knit tree and the berry tree. I lucked out that I already owned all of the supplies needed to decorate and just needed to purchase the trees.

You can buy these paper mache cones at pretty much any craft store for just a few bucks each. I chose to use a variety of sizes since I wanted to have a small group of trees to display.

 

 

To decorate the trees, I already owned Christmas sheet music that I purchased from the thrift store last year, a red beaded garland (hand-me-down from my mom), yarn, and a ton of white feathers left over from an ornament project my mom and I did a number of years back.

 

 

I broke the beaded garland apart and used the glue gun to start lining them around the bottom of the cone, working my way up to the top. I lucked out that there were minimal gaps and the beads fit almost perfectly to cover the paper mache. I glued on bead on the top point to finish.

 

The yarn tree was my alternative to the knit tree, from Target, since I have no knitting skills whatsoever. My compromise was to use a nice sweater-like looking yarn and simply wrap it around the cone for a few layers, stopping every couple of spins to add a dab of hot glue to hold. The was the easiest and fasted tree to make.

 

For the feather tree, I chose the largest, thickest feathers and hot glued them 'facing' down starting along the bottom of the cone, I filled in the gaps underneath with shorter pieces to cover any showing paper. I simply worked my way up, using shorter pieces as I went up with each layer. Looking back I think I should have painted the cone white to start with, but I'm still really happy with the end result.

 

The last tree was made with Christmas sheet music that I punched into the shape of a heart. I originally wanted to replicate the sheet music trees that I saw at Anthropologie last year, but wanted to keep the consistency of the cone shaped trees. This was my alternative. Starting at the bottom, I simply put a dab of glue just on the bottom tip of the heart, leaving the top of the hearts loose. I tried to alternate the layers a bit to keep them from looking too 'perfect'.

 

 

The trees are now the centerpiece for our dining room Christmas table setting. You can see a peek at the table above. Most of the items for our table were purchased at Target, Michaels or AC Moore. I wanted to keep things pretty clean, but festive looking.

 

This project probably cost me around $8-10 total to create since I already owned all of the supplies excluding the trees. A much more cost effective version than the Target trees!

DIY Christmas Decor: Decorating with Mason Jars

I spent this past weekend working on some homemade holiday decorations for our home. You might remember me telling you how I really don't decorate for the holidays. I never have. I think part of it has to do with the fact that my parents go all out for holidays like Christmas. My childhood home growing up was (and still is) a Winter Wonderland. We had a minimum of 3 Christmas trees each year, sometimes more. There was always lit garland around the steps, a giant lit wreath in the foyer window, every frame on the wall and glass table top was wrapped in festive gift wrap. Daily hand towels and rugs in the powder room were replaced with ones feature Santa. The list goes on.

 

I put a tree up the first two years in our house, but even that sort of dropped off over the past few years. Now that we have Lucy, I feel it's important for us to start really celebrating and enjoying holidays so she can enjoy them, too. I did a little Valentine's Day decorating last winter, skipped over Easter (I can't get down with pastels), the summer holidays and Thanksgiving. Now Christmas is here and it's time to decorate.

 

One of the easiest projects I took on wasn't even a planned one. My in-laws are in the process of moving and in doing so gave me a box filled with mason jars, knowing I could get some good use out of them. I initially started to use them to store the scraps and leftover supplies from other projects I was working on, but quickly realized I could also use this storage idea as a decorate piece for the holidays. Not only was this one of the easiest projects, but it was pretty cost effective, too.

The jars are filled with corks, paper straws, pinecones, beads and feathers. The corks were the only DIY I did for this project, dipping the ends in alternating gold, red and green paint to give them more of a festive look. I purchased the paper straws a few weeks back because I loved the look and knew I'd find a use for them. The pinecones were left over from our dining room table setting (to be shared later) and the beads and feathers were leftover from another project I was working on (that I'll share with you later this week, too).

Not only was this easy to make, but it's also pretty easy and clean looking to display. I chose to put our mason jars on top of the cabinets on our breakfast bar in the kitchen. I catch myself looking at them a lot from our living room as the jars actually make the cabinets appear taller. I might need to store mason jars up there year round.

I have more projects to share with you this week!

Bridal Shower DIY

My best friend's sister is getting married at the end of December. You might remember the BBQ themed baby shower that Ashley's sister threw for her this past summer. I helped Tina with a number of DIY and decor for the baby shower and we worked so well together that I offered her anything she might need for her upcoming wedding. I was thrilled when Tina contacted me a few weeks ago to do some print work for her bridal shower. The shower was this past weekend and I wanted to share with you all a few of the items I made.

All items DIYed by me. Gold frames thrifted.

Monogram silhouette courtesy of Wedding Chicks. 

Tina explained to me the tea party theme and black and white color scheme along with a few ideas she wanted for decor. I had such a fun time putting the menus together and making the 'Bride To Be' banner. She's a lover of all things Anthropologie like myself and even used their monogrammed mugs as a favor for the bridal shower. 

One of the things Tina mentioned was some sort of bride to be sign for her chair. She didn't request anything specific, so I took the idea and ran with it. I didn't tell her what I was doing until the finished product. 

She loved her 'Future Mrs. Walker' chair sign and I have to say I am pretty pleased with how it turned out myself. This was the first time doing something like this and I had so much fun that I hope it won't be the last. Seriously, anyone have an upcoming bridal shower?

The shower was yesterday and everything was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but I did snap one quick photo on my phone. 

Adorable, right? 

I was also incredibly flattered and quite a bit awestruck that Wedding Chicks gave some love on their Instagram page for the DIY I did using their silhouette printable. 

Next up, planning a baby shower for my other best friend. :)

Pinned It, Did It: DIY Custom Mason Jar Tops

Another toddler related DIY project to share with you all. I guess that's what happens when a hurricane keeps you locked up in the house with a 15 month old for two straight days. Technically I didn't actually pin this one. This is a DIY project that I've seen a few times around Pinterest, but a friend of mine recently pinned it and brought it back onto my radar. I had seen a few of these mason jars used as toy storage with animals glued to the tops and spray painted. Such a creative and cute storage idea. I love using mason jars and already use them around the house to store Lucy's crayons, my makeup brushes or paint brushes, etc. You all may know my affinity for spray painting things gold (here and here just to name a few), and apparently my sudden interest in painting small plastic animals. This little project seemed right up my alley.

all images via Pinterest

I wasn't even planning on tackling this project anytime soon, but this past weekend while waiting for a prescription to refill, I found myself perusing the local Dollar Tree. I came across some mason jars. For $1.00 a piece I was tempted to stock up on several even if I didn't have an immediate plan for them. After walking the aisles a bit trying to find some easy toys to keep Lucy distracted during the storm, I found a few plastic Disney Princesses. Jackpot. My DIY was decided at that moment. You all know I already have a hefty supply of gold spray paint.

The steps for this DIY are pretty easy and self explanatory. 

1. Glue the toys to the top of the mason jars (I used super glue and a lot of it). 

2. Next spray paint your lids whichever color you desire.

3.  Fill the jars with toys or goodies and display.

What a great and easy addition to Lucy's 'big girl room'. I liked the idea of using the princesses over the dinosaurs and animals to give them more of a 'young girl' touch.

What are you pinning and doing?

Homemade Fingerpaint = Best DIY Art I Own

I'm not even sure why, but long before I was even had Lucy, one thing I've always wanted as a mom was to have frames all over my walls proudly displaying my child's artwork. That has been a dream of mine for a while.  The idea of it just seems so sentimental and sweet and I love the idea of such one of a kind, personal art. Plus I not so secretly hope my children enjoy doing arts and crafts as much as I do. 

I also want Lucy to look back and remember me as a fun mom. I hope that when she grows up she can say her childhood was never boring. Of course I'm dying for her to have a creative artsy side, but I would never force it on her. Lucy is now at the age when I can really start to introduce little activities to her and take her to Children's Museums and other interactive places and I want to take full advantage of that. 

I can honestly say I had a fun mom. My mom is very creative and has an artsy side. After all, her father was an artist. I remember she used to buy these huge rolls of paper and every year or so she would trace the outline of each of us on the paper. We would finish the  drawing of ourselves by drawing and filling in the clothes, hair, etc. It was fun to pull out the old ones and see how we had grown. One year for Dr. Seuss' birthday, my mom made us green eggs and ham. I'm pretty sure we all looked at her like she was crazy and no one ate any, but still the idea was fun and genuine. My mom also used to make us homemade 'happy meals' with her own chicken nuggets, fries, and brown paper bags. Some days she would give us a newspaper article and assign everyone a letter. Our task was to find that letter and circle it every time it appeared throughout the article. Looking back now I'm sure that last one was just my mom trying to give herself 15 minutes to get dinner started. Nonetheless I still remember it and we found fun in the activity. 

I came across the idea of making homemade edible finger paint on Meggan's website, The Birth of a Mother. It looked like such a fun idea and a great way to spend an afternoon with Lucy. The recipe I used was from this website I found by searching on Pinterest. Love Pinterest. How many times have I praised that website?

I followed the recipe on the website, but needed to adapt it a bit when I found my mixture to be super watery and too runny to stick to paper. I tossed almost another full cup of flour into the mixture until it was the texture I wanted. Looking back I would cut the entire recipe in half because I had a lot of leftover paint in the end.

The food coloring I purchased was just a generic Target brand box I grabbed while stocking up for the hurricane. What I didn't realize until I got home was that the box had little recipes on the back to make your own custom colors. I knew from the beginning that I didn't really want the traditional red, blue, yellow, green color scheme and planned to attempt creating my own colors anyway. I thought this was a great idea. 

I opted for coral, lime green, purple and aztec blue.

One of the smartest things I did for this project was covering Lucy's highchair tray with parchment paper. As she painted, pools of paint built up all over the tray and it was so easy to just grab all the paper at once and toss it when she was finished. I didn't have to clean an inch of the trays. Now the seat straps were another story. I'm still scraping dried up paint out of them. Next time I'll wrap them in parchment paper, too.

I made the paint while Lucy was napping and decided to transfer smaller portions into mini cups for her to use. Knowing Lucy and her tendency to try to 'dump' things on her highchair, I wanted to lose a little paint as possible if she started the craft with a good spill. I took some plastic cups we already had at home and simply cut them down to size.

Once Lucy woke up and had a little power snack of cheese and strawberries, we were ready to paint! I was actually surprised that she dove right into the paint and got to work.

Lucy had a few different techniques. One was dabbing the paper with the tip of her finger, another was smearing the paint with her entire hand. I pretty much let her play and do what she wanted with the paint, even tasting it a little it as she went along. 

One of her favorite techniques (although it wasn't necessarily a painting technique) was to squeeze the paint in the palms of her hands. I think she enjoyed the texture since it was a little thicker than traditional paint.

In the end Lucy made 8 pieces of art. I just kept swapping out paper as each filled up until she became bored with it (aka was only interested in eating the paint.)  Because of the texture of the paint, I set towels out and put the art on the towels to dry overnight. The pages were a little heavy while they were wet, but once dry were much lighter and easier to work with. 

I love every single one of them. 

And in case you were wondering how Lucy fared..

Honestly even cleaning her up wasn't that bad. The good thing about the ingredients of the paint is that when it started to dry, it formed sort of a paste and wasn't drippy. I didn't have to worry about smearing the paint on myself and simply carried her right up to the bathroom and stuck her in the tub.

I already purchased frames for three of my favorite pieces. Still debating where to hang them, but thinking in the dining room.

I think I would say this first project was a success. I knew it could go either way when I planned it. If it was a failure we would move on and wait until she was a little older and try again. Since it was a success, well... everyone might be getting finger paint art for Christmas this year.