gift

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Mass Production

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Do you remember that post I did for a secret Santa, where I made an earring display hangar. I’ll link here it if you don’t. 

You should check that blog out first because this is me refining that process. Mr. Smith’s Aunt makes jewelry and owns a shop where all the goods are hand made. You can find out more about it on their Facebook page here. 


I thought it would be fun to get involved by making some fun ear ring cards. I’ve got a few different styles I’m working on, but the most involved ones are a variation on the one I did for my secret Santa. 

I started off by doing a color wash on the laser cut frames in green and purple; they are the primary colors of the store.


I then cut out appropriately sized sections of lace for each frame.


Then my favorite part…experimentation. I used some diluted paint to dye the lace. 


I soaked the lace in a paint and water mixture and then just gave it time to “cook”. By that I mean I zapped it for about 1 minute in the microwave and then just let it sit.


After 10 minutes or so I pulled the lace out of the paint mixture, doused it with lots of salt,  and gave it a good toss. Yup just plain old salt. It acts as a fix for most dyeing projects.


After a very good rinse in cold water I  lay the pieces out to dry. 


In my original hangar I used a second, identical frame to sandwich the lace between. This time around,to cut costs, and because the double frame was a bit hard to situate, I chose to use long slender craft sticks. 


I simply cut them in half and sanded the raw edge round to match its opposite. 


After a coat of paint on the sticks I used wood glue to sandwich the lace between the frame and the craft sticks, and clamped them with clothes pins


After a good drying period and an exact-o knife to clean up any overhanging lace on the back, the finished product is ready for the shop. 

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Secret Santa-ed

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‘What did you get for Christmas?’ ‘A house’ ‘Well merry Christmas to you indeed’ am I right?

It’s a little scattered here 

  
How did we get so many chairs, all the furniture we own consists of chairs  

 luckily I planned ahead a little bit so I’ve got a few posts I can share with you 

So lots of people are likely doing their secret this coming week and I thought I would show you what I did for my secret Santa. 

My secret Santa wanted gift cards (boring) or ear rings (I can work with that) 
Most secret Santa gifts are limited to around $10 to $20. You can’t get much for that anymore. And to me small presents are all about the presentation so along with some $8 earnings from H&M I got $2 worth of craft supplies to make a little ear ring holder/ornament. 

You’ll need two laser cut frames like I used in one of my very first posts found here. 

  
Some paint, lace and some ribbon or twine for hanging.

  
First I painted my frames using a stippling technique to give them some texture. 

  
Then I just used hot glue to glue lace to the back side of one of the frames. I also layered some tulle in there simply because my lace had very large holes and the tulle would secure ear rings better.

  
Then I spot glued a small length of ribbon onto the back of the frame to serve as a hangar. 

  
Finally I coated the back of both frames with wood glue and sandwiched the lace and ribbon in between the two by gluing the frames back to back and carefully lining them up.

  
I clamped the layers together with clothes pins while it dried 

  
After about one hour I had a lovely way to gift ear rings and money left over in my Santa budget for other goodies. 

  
  

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Broken Glass

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I got an early Christmas present. It’s called a kinkajou, and no I’m not referring to the furry forest dwelling creature. It’s a handy little mechanism for cutting glass bottles. 

  
It’s a pretty simple thing when you get down to it. It’s just two sets of rollers that clamp together around the bottle with a small scoring blade attached to one. 

  
The rollers then allow you to turn the bottle scoring it all the way around. The tricky part is getting the start and end points to line up. 

  
You then attach the included bands around the bottle and alternate hot and cold water along the score line to expand and crack the bottle along the score. 

  
It took my first bottle a long time to finally break all the way through. That’s partly because my score lines ended about 1/4 inch away from one another. Partly because it turns out the glass was incredibly thick.

  
Luckily even if your score lines are a little off (like mine were) they include a tool to snap off any jagged pieces. Unfortunately my glass was so thick this little tool wouldn’t even fit over it so I had to improvise a bit. 

  
They also include sand paper to get rid of any sharp areas. 

  
It was surprisingly easy even having picked the seemingly thickest bottle ever, I have a feeling Mr. Smith has created a monster with this one.

  

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Clothes Pin-terest 

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As you saw in my last blog I’ve been scouring Pinterest for DIY Christmas ornament ideas so Mr. Smith and I can have some memories for our first Christmas as husband and wife (maybe even in our first house if everything goes to plan) 

I came across a few involving clothes pins the other day that looked pretty easy so I thought I would give them a go.

  
Start by taking apart some (by some I mean 8) wooden clothes pins.

    
Then glue the flat sides together like so

  
I followed that up by staining them  along with a lot of other Christmas ornament supplies by using diluted paint. That’s completely optional though

  
This is also completely optional. I wrapped the edges of the pins with washi tape. 

  
Next lay out your pins in a star/snowflake pattern. It’s easiest to first do four at 90* angles from each other and four in between those

  
  
Then find a bauble to glue to the middle on each side.

   
I chose to use a small fabric flower topped by a wooden snowflake

   
Just string some twine or ribbon through one of the small holes in the pins or glue one on and you’re all set

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Like Tiny Snowflakes 

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Mr. Smith and I are getting ready to buy a house and we get to move our hodge podge of stuff into it. Unfortunately that hodge podge does not include any Christmas decorations. 

  
So we are going to make some of our own this year. Here is a quick one I did over the weekend.

  
I started with one of these laser cut wooden snow flakes. Similar to my laser cut frames I painted a while ago and just as cheap.

  
Then I actually used washi tape to decorate something instead of as makeshift painters tape like I usually do. 

  
After covering the whole thing I just used an exacto knife to cut out the holes. 

  
So when I said quick that was a relative statement.

  
 It was something interesting to do while Mr. Smith played Fallout 4 in the background though. 

  
When it was all done I used some of the guilding wax that made an appearance last week to jazz it up a bit. 

  
Repeat on the other side, seal with clear acrylic, tie a ribbon to hang and you’re all set. 

  

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Free!

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I am going to attempt the impossible. I set out to make a completely free diy project.

  
And by free I mean by using leftover “junk” around the house.

  
Let’s start with some bottle caps, 10 to be exact. Grab my trustee nail polish and pick out a couple of contrasting colors. Paint 5 bottle caps one color 5 another.

  
A couple more colors and some Xs and Os, you can probably see where this is headed.

  
Next grab a little linen sack or something similar. This one came from some novelty gum Mr. Smith just had to have. Use a fabric pen or paint or just a sharpie to put on the grid.

  
Once everything is dry you can toss it all in the bag and voila you have an on the go conflict resolution implement for the kiddos, or frustration for the adults when they figure out how to always end up in a draw. 

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Lemon aid 

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When life gives me lemons…. I remind myself how much I love lemonade, seriously it’s an addiction. Know what else I love 

Put it this way, when life gives me scraps, I make bows.

  
When we were visiting Mr. Smith’s Aunt she kindly gave me a ton of amazing (adorable, wonderful, darling, “OMG I need this in my life!”) scrap material 

One stipulation… I had to make bow ties for her new yorkie… 

  
Oh what a hassle that would be (can I just inform anyone unfamiliar with tinybows that statement was dripping with sarcasm) 

I got started right away

  
Just use the same template found on this blog post for my felt hair bows and cut two pieces of the bow loop part of the template. 

  
Cut them at the same time with right sides facing towards one another and take into account seam allowance

   
Sew the two pieces together (still with outsides facing towards one another)

  
Then turn the piece right side out and flatten your seams. If needed (or wanted) you can iron it to get the seams to cooperate, I didn’t because the bows tend to be a little fluffier if you don’t flatten the seams with an iron.

  
Then cut a small rectangle of fabric about 1 inch by 2 inches and sew the long sides together with right sides facing together and again turn right side out

As a tip I had to use a pencil or sometimes a crochet hook to turn the pieces.

  
Then sew the two ends of the bow loop together.

  
Sew the center piece to the side of the back seam of the bow loop.

(Optional if you plan on attaching it to a collar) Sew a small strip of elastic on top of the  center piece

  
Wrap the center piece around the bow loop and sew it on the same seam as it started

  
Here comes the hard part, you have to stretch the elastic and sew it to the remaining centerpiece so that it rouches the fabric and allows the elastic to stretch

  
Trim any excess fabric and elastic and sew the end to the opposite side of the back of the bow 

  
You can of course adjust the size of the pattern based on how big you want the bow for your fur baby but the elastic allows it to easily stretch over the latch of a collar.

  

  

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Bulls and Bears

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No, I’m not in Chicago (Alas, I’m sure it’s much cooler there) But amidst all the things in my life I completely forgot to blog about a project I did a couple of months back for the office I work at.

This isn’t the first decorating project I’ve had the chance to do for the office and I’m sure it won’t be the last; if you want to see the others you can click here or here. 

  
I work at a financial planning office. It’s pretty awesome but it is lacking a little… Style. Luckily I’ve been given the go ahead to jazz it up a bit. We had a bunch of coasters from various places but no matching sets so I took the liberty of buying a little pack of blanks from the craft store and sanding them nice and smooth.

   
 Then I just doodled a little geometric design. I chose a bull and a bear since we work in stock portfolios (among a myriad of other things), used my scanner to enlarg it to the right size for the coaster then numbered each section to correspond with a paint color. In other words I made myself a paint by numbers, that way I wouldn’t end up with two like colors touching each other due to lack of planning. 

  
Then I taped the photocopied image onto the coaster and traced over the lines with the blunt edge of an exact-o knife

  
This left an etching of the image in the soft pine wood of the coaster. 

  
After that it was just a matter of painting each section like I had planned out. 

  
I had four coasters in total so to make each one different i flipped the images so the animals were facing opposite directions and also shuffled which numbers corresponded to which colors. 

  
After the paint was dried I then used a walnut stain over top. Stain over paint may sound kind of silly but on a thin coat of paint  it still pulls out the grain of the wood and gives the paint a distressed/vintage look.

   
 The final touch is just a quick clear coat to seal everything and protect it from sweating water glasses. 

  

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Joyful, Joyful

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What a week!? First I got all my hair cut off (finally), there is just a 12″ ponytail hanging nonchalantly on my refrigerator waiting to be sent to wigs for kids. Then I spent a couple of days in the city to attend a conference hosted by Philosophy to check out their new product line up. And what a line up it is! So I thought I would impart some of the low down on what they have coming up with you.

I am a bit of a fragrance junkie… only a bit, I’ve seen it much worse than me. I’ve also always loved Philosophy’s fragrances. So when I found out they were going to have a new fragrance launch I was excited. If you are familiar with Philosophy you have likely heard of Amazing Grace or maybe even one of the other scents in the “Grace” line of fragrances they have. They also have a line of “Love” fragrances, now headlined by the lovely (haha) citrus and soft floral scent of Loveswept. Now they are getting ready to launch a “Live” line of fragrances. First on the roster is Live Joyously coming this February. I got a sneak peak and sniff of it this week and though I’m taking my time falling in love with the scent I am wild about the concept.

Philosophy’s fragrances have always been a whisper, this is a shout. First off, it is an Eau de perfume as opposed to an Eau de toilette. EDP’s have a higher concentration of fragrance oils in them as well as (usually) having higher quality source ingredients. For example in an EDT you may have ylang-ylang which comes from a farm in the Philippines but in the EDP you will still have ylang-ylang but, it will come from the wilds of Indonesia. The different environment gives the flowers and therefore the fragrance a different scent profile. Just like oranges from California taste different than oranges from Florida. Same species, different environment.

Philosophy has also upped the ante when it comes to the feel and look of their EDP. The box is made out of a stiff matte cardstock with a Philosophy style message just for the recipient on the inside flap of the packaging. Gone is the plain silver cap that adorned the top of all of their fragrances (making it hard to distinguish one from the other) to be replaced with a classic surlyn cap. Also gone is the stick on label, instead replaced with screen printed graphics on a beautiful ombre from pink to purple colored glass bottle.

This shift to a higher quality feel is going to start with the new Live Joyously EDP but continue as Loveswept will get the EDP treatment as well. It currently only comes in EDT but look out for it in EDP soon.

Ok, enough about the packaging… I know, I’m a visual girl so I was enamored by it.

A special message under the lid

The fragrance itself… Is… actually growing on me… I’m one of those people that can’t immediately fall in love with a fragrance, despite loving all things that smell good (lush is the bane of my existence). After giving this one three days I’m actually starting to really like it. Three days is actually doing pretty good, it took me a month to like Romance and now it’s one of my go to. It helps that my first experience with Live Joyously was at a wonderful conference meeting amazing and interesting new people. Our olfactory sense is closely linked to memory so the smell of it brings me back to this week’s excitement, not to mention the most wonderful hotel bed I have ever had the pleasure of sleeping in.

They will also have a special travel set coming out with Live Joyously, Amazing Grace, and LoveSwept. Definitely going on my wish list… But that may have more to do with the bow than anything else.

I’ll be honest I’m not that fond of its initial top notes. They are a bit too bold for me, I happen to like the whisper of philosophy’s usual fragrances. After giving it a good half hour of dry down the soft (almost powdery) peony heart notes and the warm (but not overly musky) patchouli of the base come forward and settle it into a very sophisticated yet carefree scent that (though it lasts all day) is not at all overpowering. Though it feels very feminine to me it’s classified as a chypre and after turning over a good bit of research (I mean google) it turns out that is the most alluring fragrance classification to men. Soooo… this is where the hint, hint, wink, wink is supposed to go.

I feel I am falling laughably flat in describing this scent but it will definitely go in my winter rotation, and I think you will love it if you like: Ms. Dior EDT, CoCo Mademoiselle EDP, or Chanel Chance (original or Eau Tendre).

Keep an eye out for their summer scent as well, this time in their “Love” tier of fragrances. Great if you like Light Blue or Aquatic fragrances.

This obviously isn’t the only thing I got a hands on with at the conference but like I said I do love things that smell good, and you’ll have a chance to try it out very soon if it hasn’t already hit your local Philosophy counter. One of the other things we did spend a lot of time on is Philosophy’s amazing Hope&Grace Initiative.

You can find out more about it here, but just so you get an overview; 1% of all Philosophy product sales (online, in store, on qvc, etc. etc. any point of sale!) go towards community based mental health organizations for women. If you’re active in the blogosphere than your have likely come across the 31 days of BPD that many brave bloggers are doing out there, if you haven’t go check it out. I’m very proud to support a company who is helping to provide community based assistance to the 1 in 8 women who will develop clinical depression during their lifetime.

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No Sleep Til New Years

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Thank you Beastie Boys for allowing that song to mock me through this holiday season. First it was no sleep til Christmas then it was on to New Year’s. Hopefully normal programing will resume after this and Brooklyn can go on being the star of the show. I’m sure anyone who works in retail can relate.

As an indication of how sleep deprived and scatter brained I’ve been I documented this entire project and then failed to document the end result. I’ve done that with multiple projects lately, but oh well, at least you get an idea of where I was going with it.

So I’ve done a few homemade gifts this year. This one is certainly not Christmas centric. In fact it makes an excellent get well soon gift as it’s great for aching muscles and a stuffy head.

Bath Salts by the way, is what I’m talking about. I’m not trying to be cryptic it’s just the lack of sleep catching up with me again.

They are pretty easy to make and there isn’t really a rhyme or reason to them. You simply need magnesium sulfate crystals (aka Epsom salt) and some essential oils. You can add whatever you like from here. A little baking soda ( a little goes a long way), some sea salt, dried herbs or flowers, the possibilities are endless.

For my crushed mint bath salt, which is my favorite for the hectic and illness prone holiday time of year I stick with these ingredients.

Epsom salts, Baking soda, Peppermint essential oil, Clove essential oil, Eucalyptus essential oil, and Dried crushed mint leaves

First I measure the amount of salts I will need. I just do this by filling the container I will be storing or giving them away in. I then add around a table spoon of baking soda per 2 cups of salts. Then, as per my usual very precise measuring methods, I add a decent amount of peppermint, a dash of eucalyptus and a smattering of clove oil. Then just a sprinkle of crushed mint just to give the stark white salt a little interest. After that it’s just a matter of stirring the whole thing up thoroughly and attempting to carefully get it back into its container.

I use quite a bit of oil in my salts only because that way you don’t need very much of the salt per bath but it’s entirely up to you how strong or weak you make them.

After placing the salts back in their allotted container (usually a mason jar I have lying around) I like to spruce it up with a bit of washi tape or ribbon tape around the lid. I’ll also put a bow and tag with information on how much should be used in a bath.

This is where my photographic evidence fails me.

I also did a jar this year where I placed a bracelet around the jar to spruce it up. It made a nice way to present both the salts and the bracelet.

And thank goodness its all done with. Don’t get me wrong I love the holidays and look forward to them every year. Especially the part where I get to make goodies for people. But now I am simply ready for a good night’s rest.