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!

The Great Gingerbread Farm

A month later this post is finally here! Oh wait, is that because there's an exam in two days.... ;)

This year my mom told me she wanted to do a gingerbread replica of our house during my winter break. This seemed like a great idea until we realized how much flour we needed to accomplish this task. Let alone how many pieces we would have to cut to even make the task feasible (we live in a cape). Instead, we settled on a gingerbread farm! Here is the finished product below:

 

This isn't really going to be a tutorial since there are so many different ways to decorate, but I wanted to blog about it just to share how fun the project was!

Design
I used printer paper and traced out pieces that we could put on our dough for templates. I'm sorry I don't have a printable template... I am definitely not technically advanced enough to get that thing on the computer... haha. There are a few gingerbread farm blog posts out there though and a few do have printable templates!

Dough and Icing
The recipe for the dough we used can be found here. I know it's not true gingerbread since there's no ginger in it but we needed something that would harden so we can keep this thing for a few years. The recipe calls for dark or light corn syrup but we were short on both so we combined dark and light. We made the dough three days ago and it is like a freaking brick. You could probably break somebody's face with it haha. 

The frosting is similarly stiff; the recipe for that can be found here. The recipe calls for meringue powder which you can find in the cake decorating section of the Wal-Mart, but if you can't find it you can substitute egg whites (because that's really what it is anyway). 

Supposedly you're supposed to use gel food coloring so it doesn't dilute out the icing but we kinda missed that memo and used the liquid drops you can find in the spice aisle of your grocery store. 

To make the barn red we added a ton of red food coloring to a small bowl of white icing until it was as dark as we wanted. Then we took a paint brush - yes, a paint brush - and painted it onto the front, back, and sides of the barn as well as the pieces for the cupola and the chicken coop. It actually dried a lot darker than we expected which was nice.

Note - Most of the stuff on this house we intended to be non-edible so we could store it and take it out for years to come!

Photos and Decorations! 

Our template:

Assembly!

The finished roof! Made out of frosted mini-wheats.

Making Decorations while the roof sets.. The wreathes were made with circular pieces of cardboard and a leaf cake decorating tip. The pearls are edible sugar. The trees were made on sugar cones that we cut down to different sizes and then used a star tip on! The belted Galloway was made with a cookie cutter and colored frosting.

After addition of the snow and all the decorations!

Hope you enjoyed this as much as we did!

The Great Pinecone Wreath

So Many Pinecones!!!

I've wanted to make a pinecone wreath for literally the last three years but I kept getting deterred because I didn't want to buy the pinecones. Finally over Columbus day I went hiking with my parents and dog and found a patch of red pine trees! They give off the cute little squat pinecones... jackpot!! 

What You're Going to Need:
- A twig wreath
- Pinecones!
- White acrylic craft paint
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
- Newspaper
- Cardinals or something else red

Step #1 - Collect Pinecones  

Just go out in the woods and pick them up! You can probably use any pinecone but I love the little squat red pine ones. I've seen some posts on pinterest where it says to bake your haul to get bugs (especially ticks) out but I didn't really care about the bugs so I just used them as they were. 

Jackpot!

I also collected some of the longer white pine cones to experiment.

Step #2 - "Frost" Your Pinecones

For this I started out putting a strip of white paint on a paper plate and rolling the pinecones through it. Eventually I figured out it was just easier to "finger paint" them by dipping my finger in the white paint and sticking it on the ends. There are many ways to do it, you'll just have to find what's easiest for you! 

I tried a couple with glitter, too, but ended up liking the white paint on them the most!

It's a little pinecone forest! The longer white pine ones really didn't come out the way I was hoping so I abandoned them. I might go back later and try dipping them to see if I can salvage them for ornaments!

Step #3 - Glue 'Em on Your Twig Wreath!

You may think there's a rhyme or reason to my gluing - there's not. I'm a big fan of "winging" it.. so I just glued and glued until they looked good. My twig wreath was a little lopsided to begin with but I just ignored it and added a few more pinecones to one side to even it out. 

The lopsided wreath prior to evening it out

Step #4 - Embellish 

Originally I got these little glitter pointsettia things from Michaels for $0.99 (pictured below). I had three on and thought that I needed more so back so Michaels I went. Then I found these little fake cardinals, and thought hey, I'll add those too. After arranging and rearranging, I couldn't get the flowers and cardinals to go in a way that I liked to I decided to abandon the flowers and just stick with the cardinals; though I'm sure it would have looked nice with just the flowers as well!

 The original glitter pointsettias. 

The ugly little cardinals I found at Michael's! But you can't tell how ugly they are from far away ;)

The Finished Project!!!

This did take me quite a long time - painting the pinecones took the longest but it was still a very fun project to do! I put a couple of those felt stick-on furniture protectors on the back to lessen scratching on my storm door. 

Hope you liked this project!!

Sharpie Mugs that ACTUALLY Work!!

These things are literally ALL over pinterest right now, and I thought it's time to give them a shot!! I looked at what seemed like hundreds of tutorials and blogs and this is what worked for me!

Sharpie Mugs!

First, the tips I have collected from some blogs/videos and my own experience:

1. Use an oil-based sharpie!! I saw a ton of blogs recommend these and I wanted to do it right the first time!
2. Use a cheaper mug - cheaper mugs are supposed to have thinner glaze so it's easier to get your marker to stick - I used better homes and gardens mugs from the Wal-Mart (they were like $2.34 a piece) which had pretty thick glaze but it worked nonetheless
3. You need to bake them hotter than you think - most blogs say 350 degrees for 30 mins. Well I tried that and the results were disastrous. After baking them at 425 degrees for an additional 30 mins things looked much better.
4. FORGET the acrylic glaze - I tried three different products and ALL of them made the paint bleed. 

UPDATE: After almost a year, it seems that these still hold up fairly well with hand washing. The drawings inside of the mug have totally worn away, but the outside is doing alright! I'm not sure how often my girlfriends use them, though. 

What you'll need:

- Oil-based sharpies

- White (or any color) mugs

- Paper towels

- Rubbing Alcohol

- Access to an oven

Here are what the sharpies look like: I found them at Michael's in a pack of 5 for less than $20 - I'd say they were worth it. 

Step #1: The Design

I made these mugs for my veterinary school girlfriends. We're entering finals in 2 weeks and let's be real, life just kinda sucks right now. We all love the profession but we've had 78 exams too many at this point. But come March, we'll be in clinics and life will be good again!! So I thought I would try to make the mugs a little uplifting or just truthful. 

Step #2: Writing your Message

Some blogs show that they traced their designs on with charcoal.. I didn't have charcoal so I tried pencils and pens but nothing would write on the glaze. So I just did everything freehand. Have your rubbing alcohol and a paper towel close by - if you screw up you can quickly wipe off your mess with an alcohol-laden paper towel. 

In addition to the messages, I also added hearts on the inside, names on the handles, and a date on the back!

Step #3: Baking - Method One

Here's where things go haywire. I had decided from reading several blogs that I would bake at 350 degrees for 30 mins, let the mugs cool and use a clear glaze. Well.. here we go.

I put my mugs on a layer of tinfoil in the oven cool. Then closed the oven, allowed it to reach 350 degrees and then started my timer for 30 mins. You want the mugs to heat and cool with the oven - if you stick them straight into a hot oven they could crack. I let them cool with the oven door open for about an hr. 

Here's what things looked like after 30 mins:

not too different. 

I let them dry overnight. I used my test mug to see if I could scrape marker off and I could, so then I went to use my clear glaze......

I have three of them. Well, I had two of them and convinced myself I wasn't using the right kind and went out and got another. *grumble grumble*

All three of them caused my marker to do this:

So I would not recommend ANY clear glaze..

Step #3: Baking - Method TWO

Then while wallowing in my disappointment, I found a video about them on youtube (here) that said to bake them hotter! So I did! This time I put them in at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Success! The red turned a little darker, but I can't scrape any of the marker off, so I am now quite pleased. And this method completely avoids the need for clear glaze!

I hope this tutorial was somewhat helpful to some of you!