On the 18th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

An easy, inexpensive Christmas centerpiece!

Here is my Pinterest Inspiration...

{Picture courtesy of boards.weddingbee.com via Pinterest}

Today was my husbands family's Christmas, which we held at our house.  One of the things that I love about hosting a party is the decor, so when I saw bags of cranberries at Walmart for $1 a bag, I knew that I was going to use them!

I grabbed 4 bags for 3 vases and 2 star glass dishes.  Here's what I did...

I poured about 3/4 of the cranberries into a $1 glass vase.  I then added water to cover the berries and added white flowers that I'd gotten from Trader Joe's.  I also put my DIY Mercury Glass votives around the centerpiece with fake votives and fake snow in them.

So simple, the most expensive part of the centerpiece was the battery operated votives!

And here's a recap of the mercury glass that I told you about yesterday...

I took my 4 $1 votive's and tried the DIY Mercury Glass tutorial again.  I used A LOT less water and A LOT more mirror paint... they turned out better but I think I should've done 2 coats...

Not too bad though, huh?  I definitely like them more than the large vase from the other day.

We'll see you tomorrow! 
Andrea

On the 17th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

A mercury glass tutorial!

Here was my Pinterest Inspiration...

{Photo courtesy of deliciouslyorganized.blogspot.com via Pinterest}

Now, I guess this tutorial originated from Martha Stewart (of course, duh!) but I followed the steps illustrated from the blog mentioned above.
 
Here's how mine came out...

Not quite as impressive.  I think I know what to do differently when I try it tonight... yes, I'm trying it again because this is the first craft that I'd deem "failure" since starting my 25 Days of Pinterest!

Here's what I did...

Grab a glass vase and cover the outside.  I just wrapped mine in tape, I wasn't going to wrap it in paper and tape when tape did just fine!  I bought Looking Glass Mirrored Paint from Walmart (I didn't find it at Home Depot or Lowes and it was only around $4 at Walmart!  Score!) and grabbed my spray bottle of water.

First, I sprayed the inside of the vase with water.  I think this is where I went wrong.  Next time I'll use way less water, like only 1 mist of water.

Then spray the inside of your vase with the mirror paint. 

Turn it upside down and let it dry overnight.

When I checked on it the next day I didn't like how it looked at all - it barely looked mercury glass-ish so I sprayed another layer of Mirrors paint and turned it over and let it dry over night again.

This is my end result...

Like I said, use way less water and way more mirror glass paint!  I'm going to try again tonight and let you know tomorrow!
Andrea

On the 16th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

A super sparkly and magical wand to make!

Here's my Pinterest wand inspiration...

I saw these wands a while ago while looking for Birthday inspiration for Adam's 4th birthday and filed them away in the back of my head as something fun to do IF I had a girl... or my niece was visiting.

But then I saw some cool paper mache wands at Collective Journey's and thought about decorating them for Christmas! 

I made a Tree Wand and Star Wand that you twirl in your hand and the little doo-hickey's on the end beat them as a drum... I also made regular star wands that are more your garden variety wand.

First, I painted them each a solid color and then used Modge Podge and added extra fine glitter in the matching color.  I set them aside and let them dry overnight.  I tried really hard to get all of the excess glitter off but glitter is kinda like ants, once it's in your house, it's ALL OVER your house!

I then went to town decorating them!  I added tulle and ribbon...

stamped sentiments that I detail cut...

Fake flowers and berries...

Buttons and clear dew drops...

And jingle bells!  Oh, and did I mention RIBBON?!

I made 3 of each kind of wand and I'm planning on mailing one up to my niece and putting the rest on Christmas packages so every little girl I know can have a little magic in her for Christmas!  Who doesn't like sparkly magic?

See you back here tomorrow!  Go ahead, glitter it up!
Andrea

On the 15th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

Some Baker's Twine Packaging ideas!

Here's my Pinterest Inspiration...

{Picture courtesy of Etsy via Pinterest}

If you know me even a little, you know that I have an obsession with Bakers Twine... and I've developed a deep love of doilies so this was an immediate winner in my book!

Since today was Adam's last day of school, we took his teacher's gifts and I knew that I wanted to create my own version of this idea.  Take a look...

I wrapped a Family Rules Subway Art in kraft paper and cut 8 strands total of bakers twine - each piece of twine was 1 yard long.

I then took a few of my paper doilies and glued them in a straight line under the twine.  We wrote our message on the doily - so easy and cute!

We added the last part of their gift, one of our handmade ornaments to the front of the package and called it good! 

Such an easy and inexpensive way to wrap gifts!  Another idea that I saw was to use black and white pictures of the recipients - this way you know who your present is for while making it cute!

I'll see you tomorrow!
Andrea

On the 14th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

Felt-tastic Pocket Hand Warmers!

Here's my Pinterest inspiration...

{Picture courtesy of etsy.com via Pinterest}

These are rice filled fleece hearts that have been sewn up, you just pop them into the microwave for 25-30 seconds and then put them in your jacket pockets - they'll even stay warm for up to an hour!

Here's my heart warmers!

I went to Collective Journey's (amazing Scrapbook store in Redlands) and use their AccuCut to die cut these hearts in felt.  I cut all different colors; pink, purple, red, green, orange, cream... I also die cut mittens from the AccuCut and made the same type of warmers.

I put 2 rice filled hearts or mittens in cello bags with a little big of shred on the bottom and sealed them up with an instructional tag.

I gave a set of these to Adam's 2 teachers and I'll mail a few sets up to my Sister and Neice because they're in seriously cold weather!  These are great stocking stuffers and so simple to make - I think that I made 14 sets of 2 in under an hour! 

I'll see you tomorrow!
Andrea

On the 13th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

A 10 minute wall decoration!

Here's my inspiration from Pinterest!

{pic courtesy of re-nest.com via Pinterest}

So, I love this deer... it's made from Japanese Wasabi Tape, which is a sheer-est tape that had fun patterns and it super easy to use.

I didn't have any Wasabi tape - some of you may be shocked (sister) since I seem to have random supplies, but I did have Martha Steward Fabric Tape!  The fabric tape is awesome!  It's a sticky-backed fabric that comes on a roll and it very easy to you.  You can pull it off the wall without any residual stickiness on the wall and you can reposition it!

Here's my spin...

 

I put this reindeer up in under 10 minutes - he resides over our fireplace!

The fabric tape is a fun brown and cream gingham - so cute!  And, of course, our deer is a reindeer with a very shiny nose!  I used a button and some foam tape for Rudolph's infamous nose!

That's it for today... I might add some more antlers, but we'll see!

See you back here tomorrow!
Andrea

On the 12th Day of Pinterest...

My crafty love gave to me...

A fun, yarn and felt flower wreath!

Here's my Pinterest inspiration...

I made some of these yarn wreaths for Halloween.  They're super easy, but very very VERY time consuming!  It takes forever to wrap the wreath in yarn, but you can get 4-5 wreaths out of a spool of yarn.

Here's my cream and red wreath...

I cut a few felt flowers from my LifeStyle Crafts flower dies and glued them to the wreath with hot glue.  I also added a few 7Gypsies velvet leaves next to my flowers to give it a little more pop. 

To hang the wreath, I cut a 2" wide strip of fabric in a corresponding color and tied it around the top of my wreath.

Here's my green yarn wreath.  I used a varied green yarn, I like the why it looks!  I also cut and rolled a lot more felt flowers - I cut and rolled 16 felt flowers in an hour.  Not too shabby, huh?

Again, I added some 7Gypsies velvet leaves and a hanger.

I LOVE these, they're warm and inviting... I think that I"ll add some pearls to the center of the flowers, now that I'm looking at them...

See you tomorrow!
Andrea