Instagram Coasters

I made a couple of sets of these back in May for mother's day. They were an easy and fun project, though its taken me months to get this up!

Instagram Coasters

What You'll Need:

-  Instagram photo printouts

-  White (or any color) 4x4" tiles - I got 16 at Lowe's for less than $4

-  Mod Podge

-  A paint brush

-  A clear acrylic spray paint

-  Thin cork board or felt

-  Hot glue gun

Step #1: Print your photos. I'm sure there's an easy way to do this that I am just too technically challenged to do. I sent my instagram photos to walmart to get printed as 4x6's; I then cut them down to 4x4's. As you can imagine, some photos didn't turn out so well as 4x6's, but I have no idea what settings would have been better for printing! 

Step #2: Lay down a thin coat of mod-podge over your tile and place a photo on top. 

Step #3: Mod-podge over the top of the photo. To get a good seal, you will want to do 3-4 coats of mod podge over the photo. Make sure to let each layer dry in between! 

Don't worry, those streaks will disappear once the mod-podge dries!

All of the coasters drying!

Step #4: After you are happy with your mod-podging, get ready to spray paint! I used a clear acrylic glaze that I bought at Lowe's. Again I did 3-4 coats per coaster, as I wanted them to be as waterproof as possible!

Step #5: Once all of the coasters have dried, its time to give them a backing. I used a thin cork-board that I found at Michael's for <$10. This was only enough for about 10 coasters, so I backed the remaining ones with felt I had leftover from other projects. 

All you need to do is place several lines of hot glue on the back of the coaster and firmly press the cork-board on until it cools!

And that's all there is to it!! Below are two of my favorite photos from the project! Hope you enjoyed this easy project! 

My bovine procedures cow, Gloria, in the back on a -4 degree morning

Oban, my parents' 3 year old Sheltie <3 

Yarn Wreath: Spring Edition

I've been seeing these all over the place lately, and just had to give it a try! This was a fun and easy project that was actually pretty cheap, too! (<$20!)

What You'll Need:

• A foam wreath
• A skein of your favorite yarn
• Felt - any color, as much as you like
• A glue gun and glue sticks
• A piece of ribbon

Step 1: Wrap, wrap, and wrap more!

This is by far the step that takes the absolute longest. All you have to do is keep wrapping the wreath with yarn. Use your entire skein! If you arm isn't tired by the end of this, you ain't doin' it right!! I made the first wrap pretty tight so it would cover the foam wreath completely. All subsequent layers were looser to show off the twisted yarn I chose. 

After one layer

After 5 layers!

Step #2: Make your flowers

I found all of these flower styles on Pinterest, so I'm sure there are much better tutorials out there. I tried to put the steps together in picture format, hopefully that helps a bit! For the two pink flowers, I used a CD to cut out circles from my felt. For the purple ones I just cut a 2" strip off the end of the felt. When wrapping, just stick a bit of hot glue every now and then so they stay together. These were the most fun out of the whole project!

Pink flowers

Purple flowers

Cream flowers!

Step #3: Glue the flowers on!

Arrange them however you like! Just add a generous amount of hot glue and go to town!

Step #4: Hanging! And an extra tip....

To hang the wreath I used a piece of white ribbon I had laying around and one of those plastic hook things upside down on the back of the door (like this). BE VERY CAREFUL when hanging... DO NOT DROP your wreath or it will end up looking like the one below. That was my first attempt at this project :(. I guess they say practice makes perfect so I had to give it another go! 

Hope you enjoyed this quick project!! Thanks for viewing!!

Bearded Dragon Hammock

Last spring I made one of these for Fezz using a cheezits box and a towel, hoping it would supply him with some kind of enrichment. He loved it! The old one was looking a little grody, so I thought its a good time for a new one!

Here it is! I know he's not in it, he's too busy giving me the stink eye. Apparently he wanted more than 15 crickets yesterday and is giving me the silent treatment.... 

What You'll Need:

- A cardboard box - cereal, cracker, cheezit, it doesn't matter

- An old towel

- Yarn

- Four beads that will not slip through a standard hole punch hole

- Packing tape

- Scissors

- 2 Suction cups

Step #1: Cut your Box

Cut out one of the panels of your box. If you're using a cereal box you may need to make it shorter depending on the size of your tank. Punch a hole in each corner of the box. 

Step #2: Add Some String

Put a bead on each of four pieces of yarn. I cut mine ~2' but you'll end up shortening them later when you make a knot. I found that a bobby pin helped get the yarn through my beads easier. Once beaded, put a string through each hole so that the bead is on the underside and both ends of the string are coming out toward the top. 

Step #3: Add the Towel

Place your towel over your box on the side without the beads. I just eyed it and snipped a small hole in the towel over the locations of the strings and pulled the yarn through. Do this on all four sides. 

Step #4: Get Taping!

Tape the sides of your towel onto the underside of the hammock with your packing tape. I had to then cut down the top and bottom of my towel so that it didn't get all bulky. Tape the top and bottom onto the back as well. Once you have those taped, put two more strips of packing tape along the ends of the hammock for more support. 

Step #5: Adding Suction

The hammock is going to hang sideways, so gather the two pieces of string on either end and knot them together as shown. How long they are depends on the size of your tank and how high you want the hammock to hang. Fezz is uncoordinated so I wanted it to hang a little lower. Once those knots are complete, lie the suction cup in front of them and place a double knot over the other side of the suction cup. This completes your mounting mechanism. 

Step #6: Hang and Enjoy!

Hope you liked this project! I know Fezz did!

DIY Button Thumbtacks

There's an exam on friday, looks like a good time to do crafts! 

These button thumbtacks were very fun and easy to do!

 

What you Need:

- Buttons!

- Cheap thumbtacks

- Glue gun and glue

Get Gluing!

This is easy! Just put a blob of glue on the thumbtack and stick a button to it! I tried doing them upside down but the glue oozes out the button holes and it doesn't look as good... so just let them dry on an angle to preserve the button hole glue blebs!

I got the buttons and the tacks for <$4 at the Wal-Mart! 

 Hope you enjoyed this quick and easy project!

52 Things...

It's almost Valentine's day again! I was completely lost on gift ideas this year, and I wanted to do something a little more meaningful anyway. I stumbled across this "52 things I love about you" book on Pinterest a few years ago and decided to finally give it a shot! Turns out it's not too tough to come up with 52 things that I love about Greg!

Here is the finished project!

This deck is WICKED thick, too - probably three times the size of a normal deck of cards after the addition of all of the cardstock pages! 

What You'll Need:

- Scissors

- A hole punch (not pictured)

- A deck of cards

- Red cardstock - I chose a shades of red variety pack

- Sharpie markers

- Packing tape

- Double sided tape 

- Ribbon

Step #1 - Punching 54 cards...

I used a single hole punch but I'm sure you could get away with the three-hole punch, it would probably just take longer. I didn't measure - I just eyeballed it. I tried to punch out the mermaid tails on the cards on one edge so that each card was more or less the same. I punched the standard 52 card deck on the left side and also punched the 2 jokers to be the front and back covers of the deck. 

Punches located over "mermaid tails" of the corner guys. I actually don't know if these are mermaids, but it doesn't really matter anyway... haha

Step #2 - Cutting Out your Paper

No picture of this.. but I took different shades of the cardstock and cut them down into ~1.5x2.5" rectangles so that they would cover most of the inner rectangle of the card. This will make more sense when you see the pictures in step 4. This was pretty time consuming but went faster with tunes and wine handy ;). 

Step #3 - Writing out 52 Things...

The cover title I chose was "52 things that I love about you" - then over three days I came up with a list of 52 things I love about my boyfriend Greg. Some of them are serious, some are funny, and some are things about him that I find attractive/admirable. I threw in a couple of vet school ones, too, since that is my entire life right now! Then I wrote all of these out onto the little rectangles of paper I cut out!

Here are some examples...

Yes... I ACTUALLY am using this one! Loving someone who has been rectaling cows all day is the truest test of love, right?!?! 

Step #4 - Attaching Your 52 Things to Cards..

I used a piece of double-sided tape to get the pieces of paper pretty much stuck and then went over the card with a piece of packing tape. I like the glossy appearance that's left over by the packing tape, and it makes it stick better; the cards are so slippery even double sided tape has a tough time sticking. You could probably use glue to get them to stick as well, but I thought this would be easiest. 

Only 51 more to go!!!

Step #5 - Put your Deck together!

One piece of ribbon, flat at the back and thru both holes - double knot and then a bow! All done! The deck is a lot thicker than it looks here - probably three times the size of a normal deck of cards! 

And that's it! I hope Greg likes it! I sure am excited to give it to him :). Hope you enjoyed this post, too!