Bottle craft

Ever have sparkling cider for New Years or Valentines and have an extra bottle lying around? Turn it into a cute vase!

These are the supplies you will need for this simple craft. Make sure the sticker letters are 3-D or puffy, not flat.

Put the stickers on the bottle. Use any saying you want. I used "Une Fleur" on one side and "des fleurs" on the other. You don't have to do both sides.
Spray paint the bottle in your choice of color. I wanted flat-white.
It will take a couple of coats. Let it dry thoroughly or it will have a bubble, like in this picture. One side...

Other side! Put in a flower or two and enjoy!

Egg Carton Decor

I saw this brilliant idea months (maybe even longer) ago and I have been wanting to make it ever since, especially since I have a knack for saving/hording silly things (like egg cartons, cearal boxes, toilet paper rolls, etc. ..), I just can't help it, I see great potential in these little things, and usually something comes together for the projects (while many other times they just finally end up in the garbage, I don't hold on to them FOREVER now, that would just be unhealthy, and then I'd be the next feature on that crazy hoarder show where their house is insanely over run by crap, I could never let my house get that bad...don't worry :)

To see the original idea from "Simpsonized Crafts and Then Some", you can go HERE. But to see how I put mine together, read on, because mine is a little be different.

If you are the kind of person that doesn't like to scroll all the way to the bottom, here is a finished product look, right at the beginning. Now to see how it came together, keep reading on.

 I gathered my egg cartons ( I think it took me two 18 count egg cartons for this whole project), then ripped the parts off, yes ripped. I tried cutting at first, and it made me really hate this project and I even stopped for a little while because I hated how it tore up my hand to manoeuvre the scissors around all that awkwardness. So yes, I ripped them, and it was so much easier, so much faster.

 Then I flattened them like so. .. .

 And then cut the excess off. If you do it like the original post, I don't think she cut off as much.

 Then, before I started gluing, I mapped out how the pieces would best fit. If you start from the middle and go out, it worked best. I also did half circles for the edges and sides of the circle.

Sorry I don't have more pictures for the rest of the process. But after I glued I painted the color I wanted. I did two coats of the red and went in all the cracks and such, I don't think the original post did, and it gave it a sort of vintage sort of look. So either works. Then I had this handy pearl necklace that broke a long while ago and I still hadn't fixed it, so I used these pearls and glued in the empty holes.

 Then you may also noticed that the middle one isn't actually a circle but a square diamond look. I didn't realize till my finalizing stage that the shapes were different for the cartons I was collecting, so I made it work this way, and the ones that circle the outside part are also the square shape. So either way works, just use what you got!

Then for a final backed-up look. Surprise! I actually made two of them. Then I put some flowers in the middle that my husband gave me for Valentines day last year. And then for an early sneak peek, my music note blocks I made that I've been meaning to post on for a while but haven't yet.

There you have it for this lovely week. Hope you have a super day! Thanks for all your support and attention, it is greatly appreciate!

Until next time!

Painted Rug!

Yep, you read that right, this post is about our rug, that I painted! Much thanks again to Pintrest I saw this cute rug paint job from the Idea Room, you can check it out here.

I don't know that I am as brave to go with such bold designs and colors as the Idea Room went with on her rug. I just love my matchy matchy, and if I were to do one thing in an intense new look, I'd want to revamp the whole environment to make it match. So for the time being, I just painted our rug much more simply and to match how the environment currently is set up. Plus, I am not always the best with using stencils and I would be really nervous about messing something like this one up, since once it's ruined, there's no turning back. Another plus in my wanting to paint this rug, is that it's an older one and has some stains on it, so me painting it gave it a nice new "make-over" sort of look!

Okay, so enough jabbering and on to showing. Here are some before, during and finished pictures of my newly painted rug!

I didn't have time to do minor touch up editing on the pictures, so just enjoy as is! :)

 See the first rug that has the brown on the sides? Well this was the look I was going for, so that we could have matching rugs. The rug under our table in the distant is the one I painted.

 So I took the table and chairs off (for obvious reasons), put newspapers underneath to help keep paint from going everywhere. See how not so pretty those stains are? I wanted to hide most of them!

 But to make it still match the other rug I couldn't hide all of the stains, oh well. I put tape down to make sure I wouldn't end up going too crazy in my painting! :)

 I should have took a picture after each coat, but this is after my second coat of paint. And just a side note if you try this at home: The first coat I just painted right on, but it was getting a little of a stiff kind of feel ( go figure, since it's paint after all). And I still wanted the rug to feel somewhat soft-ish. So the second coat I watered it down a lot, so it more like stained the rug with the brown, and it gave it this look. Also another side note if you try this at home, it became very wet (from watering it down), so I put plastic bags underneath the painted part to keep it from bleeding to the regular carpet!

 Since it was so wet and was taking forever to dry, I hung it on our chairs, it took about a total of 24 hours to completely dry before I could lay it back down.

 Now its all down, and lovely modeled and accompanied by my little princess.

And even better, it is matchy matchy!!


Now as a wonderful new little side note, I am getting another new helper with this blog. One of my sisters, April, will be joining in as an author for this blog. I have shared some of her goodness before, but now she'll be a more official post-er on here too. She has a much more busier life than me with her family of 4 kids, college, and now just got a job, so her appearances will not be as frequent as mine, but it will still be great to have her appearance once in a while with her fun great ideas! And I will let her introduce herself a little more when she'll be able to squeeze in a post!

Well that's all for this week! Thanks again for stopping by! And come join me next week for some new decor I made and some super yummy banana treats (these are probably by far a new favorite treat and I can't help but make them at least once a week now!!).

Until next time!!

New Makeover! (for our desk)

Isn't paint a lovely thing. I love the new look a good paint job can bring. I am a fan of whoever decided to make paint.

This project was finished a few months ago, but haven't been able to share until now. This project has been a great one, simple yet wonderful. You see, I have a hard time coming up with stuff that my husband and I can do together. Yes we like to do some of the basics like eating, cooking, watching movies, etc together, but we like to add a little more to our norm. But that isn't always easy since he doesn't entirely have the passion for crafty stuff like I do, and I don't exactly have the passion for computer stuff like he does...so this "computer" desk + "new paint job" = perfect project for our different interests.

Okay... long story short, here's how it went. . .

Remember the lovely storeage boxes I made? Well they were set in this lovely poopy green desk. I love this desk. But not so much the color. So it was time for a change. . .

My lovely husband working so faithfully on the sanding down, he did most of this work, because i HATE sanding, the sound is like scratchy nails on a chalkboard, gives me the chills like NO other!

All ready to be painted!

And wall-ah! The newly, freshly painted desk. (I know it still kinda has a greenish look in the picture, but it is actually very brown in real life!) And the fun part about it aswell is that because the paint we bought is very flat like, I think this desk could also be used in a "Chalkboard" like way (who needs to buy chalkboard paint, when you can have really flat paint?). So when my little girl gets older and more hankering to color everything. . . I can have her color the desk (with chalk) instead, and it will wipe right off. I am stocked.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and seeing our random ventures. I hope you have a wonderful day! And don't forget to come back tomorrow for Sun-Up Saturday!

Halloween Costume Part I

It is the lovely month of October which means we get to be a little extra creative and dress up and indulged into mounds of candy. Aside from all the weird creepy side to Halloween that some portray, I have always loved Halloween and dressing up and seeing others creative dress up ideas as well.
I especially love to make our costumes (go figure, since I like to make a lot of everything else :), so in my brain storming of what the lovely winner dress up idea will be for the year I also had to keep in close range of my creative skills, in that as much I'd like to be really great at making something from nothing, I am still really lacking.
OK, long story short, the lovely winner this year is "The Flintstone Family"! My little girl was actually the main inspiration for this idea because of her weird hair, she has really short hair everywhere except this really long chunk on top, which I put up in a little pony tail sometimes so she can still see, and well, you guessed, she looks like the little pebbles girl :)

How could this cuteness not be inspiration? I just love her!

So far I have finished her little outfit, and my husband's outfit, now I just need to get cracking on my costume and I am also daring to venture in making wigs for us too, yikes! We'll see how this one will turn out, I have never made a wig before, but I thought it would be fun to try since my husband's hair is dirty blond and mine is brown, which is defiantly not the hair colors of the Flintstones (and we didn't feel like dying or spraying our hair, which I guess could still be a last resort option if this doesn't work). Don't worry, I will be sure to post at how this one turns out.

Since I want to do a more grand-uous post of us fully in costume for the big day, I won't be sharing too much of costumes, so they will look more amazing in the end picture, but for the sake of showing you how I got it all together, I will show them to you and how I made them, but I won't show you with us all in full uniform, so it will look more lovely as we approach this lovely holiday. I know, I am silly, and weird, I don't need to be reminded of this.

OK, first things first, my little girl's outfit:

 I went to the local thrift store and found this bath robe that was in this lovely leopard print (don't worry, I washed it very well!), and I cut it to her size, made straps, and then made a jagged look the bottom, here she is making sure she'll fit it (and I will share the full affect pictures closer to Halloween, don't worry! :)

Since we practically live in the Arctic, we have to plan around REALLY cold weather, so I thought it would be fun to make her some little slippers to go with it, here is the cut outs before I sewed it all together.. . .

 Having it wrong side out, I have it pinned and ready to sew.. . .

 After sewing the sole of the slipper to the rest, I wanted to put elastic around the leg area, so i used a safety pin to loop it around, and then I sewed it up the back of the heel

 Trying it on to make sure it'll fit, it'll work like a charm!

 The finished booties. . . .

 My little girl is all set to go!

 Here is my husband's outfit. I also got his supplies at the local thrift store, I got two orange shirts that looked very similar in shade. Then I cut the arms and neck area off one and sewed it to the bottom of the other. Then I painted the black triangles on and then made jagged cuts on the sleeves and bottom (best part of this costume idea is there is no need for hemming!! Yeah! Which is one of my LEAST favorite things in sewing!)

Since this post is in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I would also share some more recent decorations I have made this week. I got this idea from my sister, Keri, on her creative blog HERE. I made some fun candle glowing jars, see how they turned out. . . .

 Before. . .

 After. . . I think I like how my sister's turned out better, she is a much better artist than I am, but I think they'll work, and here is the back of them. .. .

 I used apple sauce jars, since I have a bazillion just hanging around, we love our applesauce! I also liked the roundish look with these jars :)

 Remember the cute little pumpkins I made? Well we finally painted them with cute little faces, and believe it or not, but my hubby actually WANTED to help me with this one :) It was a fun date night!


Now that I have you looking this way, I want to also mention my brother-in-law's blog, The Forsaken Petal. He gives great insight for those of you who are into writing (and for someone like me, it is nice to get a refresher on different physcology sort of things, I think this blog is more for than just writers). He has a masters in Physcology, so he uses this wisdom as a twist to help you understand your characters as you write about them, pretty cool, huh? (or for me, it's nice to learn more about myself!) Well you should check it out, because it's pretty amazing, and to top it all off even more he is doing a giveaway, HERE, where if you win you could win some mula towards My Memories Suite, which looks like a really great online/printing scrap booking, and who doesn't love capturing memories in cute little books with WAY less work? So you should check it out and join the giveaway, and enjoy his blog while you are at it (and don't forget to mention me :D

Okay, now that I have jumbled ALL over the place with fall and Halloween and crafty sort of stuff, I will end here. Remember how I said I am gonna try to make wigs for our costumes? Well here is my start. From my lookings around online it suggests to use a beanie hat as the base, so I made some hats. . . now that I got your curiosity stirring there will be more update to how this will turn out so be sure to come back!

Thanks again for stopping by this way, and sorry for all the jumbled sharings, I guess jumbling is what I do best!

Until next time. . .

Paintings of my Past Part I

I used to be an art work junkie, as in I loved to paint, draw, sculpt, write, anything and everything. I loved it all, it was a fun and good therapeutic thing for me now that I look back on it. In many ways this part of me has faded off, maybe out of insecurity, maybe out of busy life, I am not really sure why- but I should get back into it a little more, just maybe I will, and then you will probably hear about here- if I end up squeezing it into my life again.

Let me tell you, it was quite the adventure going through our storage in the basement to find these ancient jewels, awe...such memories. I forgot how much I made, how much I used to paint. On that note, on this "We-Flecting Wednesday" I will share with you some paintings (or drawings) I have made in the past years. Most of the following I did while I was in high school and very few were ones I did in college. I hope you'll enjoy them as much as me (although I am sure they will mean more to me :) And a heads up apology- I found a lot, so be prepared for a lot of pictures (actually I found so much, I am gonna break this up into two posts and will share more next week), enjoy the show!

I believe this one is from grade school- yeah for happy giraffes :)

In the good old high school art class. This one was a fun one- if I remember right, I made a stencil out of wax paper and then painted the different colors through the stencil

Yeah for more butterflies, I believe this one is colored pencil

HS again, I think this one was water color (I really learned to love water color), the waves I got by marking with white crayon before painting on

Hello Moose! This was chalk, or pastel I think

This was probably one of my favs, we had some kind of soft board type thing and we scraped out this design so that it could be a form of a stamp, I know there is a name for this, but it has totally slipped my mind.

This was one of many of how the stamped thing turned out, it looks cooler in person :)

Another fav from the stamp moon guy, again in HS

A happy little turtle, this was one of those cool scratch boards that has all silver underneath with black painted on top and then you scratch away to create a picture- I should make one of these again :)

Again, another one of my favorites, sorry it is so blurry, this painting now belongs to my sister so I couldn't capture the whole piece, but the caption above the elephants is "Take a Happy Break" and don't forget the last elephant is on roller skates :)

Yeah for feet, I think this was acrylic

This one didn't exactly turn out how I wanted, but this is also water color- yeah for kayaking!

Again a continuation of HS, this i believe was a form of pastel, but a more oily like one, but I can't remember the name of it, hmmm...I'll get back to you on this one if I remember

This one we were supposed draw a copy of a picture, and the originals name and artist now escapes my mind (I am having a brain farty night). This was done is charcoal 

Some random happy shapes, yeah for shapes!

If I remember right, the teacher hung a sheet on the wall and we had to "capture" it- how did I do?

Another one of my favorite assignments- we were to pick a picture out of a magazine and then cut out random areas and paint them in- can you tell where I painted and what was the original painting? (I know, the glare kinda gives it away)

Same idea as the picture above- can tell what was me and what was the original drawing?

My art teacher put these random items on the table and we had to draw them. Before that we ripped random scrap papers and glued them on- wherever there was scrap paper we had to make it in color- besides the creepy skull I liked doing this one alot! :)

This was probably my all time favorite project. We got random scraps and things and glued them on a paper in whatever shapes and design we wanted. Then we covered it with tin foil. We used this as a stamp sort of thing like the moon from earlier. I love how it looks after all the stamping I did with it!

This is a product of the stamping- so much fun!

This is probably one of my most "proud" pieces, I really like how it turned out :)

I think I painted this at a church activity, it is based off of Greg Olsen's painting

This one I painted for my husband, but we weren't married or even dating at the time I painted it for him. I sent it to him while he was on his mission preaching the gospel to others for two years.

This one was a college art class drawing, my self portrait, kinda :)

Our teacher challenged us to be more abstract with the self portrait

And a little crazy with the self portrait!

Another pencil drawing- some random things in the room- I rather like the purse in front :)

Charcoal, I am not sure what this one was about

Thumbs up!

"Come unto Christ" Another I painted in HS (sorry it got placed down below) Another one of my "proud" paintings, I really liked how it turned out!

And last but not least- this is actually not a painting, but I thought it would be fun to share- it is a "sculpture" I made, can you tell what the person is doing?

So that's all for now, I will have more fun art work for you next week. I hope you had a fun gander at my art work, it was a fun trip down memory lane for me :)

Anyway, until next time- hope you had a fun "we flecting Wednesday"!