Wrapped Wine Bottles

I had some hemp twine that I wanted to use for a crafty item. After seeing some other bloggers wrap twine around a wine bottle I decided to give it a try. Since I had the hemp twine, hot glue and wine bottle this turned out to be a super cheap (free!) craft. :-)

Supplies:
-Wine bottle
-Hot glue gun and glue
-Rope, twine, hemp, etc.


First I soaked the wine bottle in warm water and removed the label.

To glue on the twin I started at the bottom of the bottle and worked my way up.  I put down some glue, put the twine over it, put down more glue, etc. etc.

When I got to the top of the bottle I coiled the twin in a circle as I glued it down. I left a hole in the middle and cut the twine and put the end in the circle (held by a small amount of glue).

The thick hemp twin was super quick and I think I finished the bottle in one episode of Arrested Development.

I found some thin twine at home too so decided to make another bottle. I didn't take any photos during the process since it was done the same way as the first one. The only difference was that it took longer (about two episodes of Arrested Development :-).

Here are the finished bottles side by side. I could have made the twine tighter but I liked that you can see the bottle through the cracks. The bottle on the right is green and it looks neat with a little green peeking through.

 Here they are sitting in our wet bar area. I love my new globe cork holder and I think the bottles look nice next to it. I think I might make a third one with a smaller bottle and maybe a different type of twine.

Working On: T-Shirt Rug

I decided to try my hand at a latch hook rug made out of t-shirts. I have spent many many evenings watching cutting up white t-shirts - about 30 t-shirts....and I still need more. :-\

A few of the t-shirts were purchased at a garage sale or thrift store for fifty to seventy-five cents a shirt but luckily most of them have been free. I had a few white shirts that I never wear (think ugly promotional shirts - white with a huge logo) and I got a bag of free shirts from a lady off of craigslist (thank you random lady and craigslist!). Most of these seemed to be shirts from soccer camp or various other soccer events. Apparently that family likes soccer. :-)

Here is a picture of the cut up shirts so far - hopefully I'll get more shirts soon and can continue onto part two of my rug - dying the material.

The t-shirts are being cut into one by four inch strips.

Can you guess how many strips I have? About 5,700! I'm not sure how many more I'll need since I haven't decided how big the rug will be.

I'll post an update after I get further along....right now it's just a slow process of obtaining and cutting up shirts.

Dala Horse Napkins

As a birthday gift I made dala horse napkins to go along with the dala horse cake pan that I bought for my mother-in-law.


Supplies:

• Cloth napkins
• Freezer Paper
• Fabric paint
• Paint brush

It took a few stops to find freezer paper but finally found it at Rainbow. I bought Tulip brand fabric paint (matte) at Michael's. You can buy a small container for under two dollars. The napkins are from Target.

First, find a shape. You can draw something or find an image online. I found a general outline of a dala horse and added simple details in paint. You can either print on the freezer paper or print on regular paper and trace it onto the freezer paper. Make sure to print or trace onto the dull side. I taped a piece of freezer paper to a regular sheet of paper and it went through my printer just fine.

Now you need to cut out the image. Once it is cut out you can lay it on the material and iron it on. Be sure to iron all of the edges really well or the paint might seep under the freezer paper - you can see this in the first napkin we made. :-\

I let it cool and then started painting. Since I was painting white on red it took three to four layers.

After the paint is dry, peel off the freezer paper.

Once you're all done and the paint is completely dry, lay a cloth over the image and iron over the paint (you can look at your paint bottle for directions on this).


This is my first time doing this and I think it turned out pretty well. There is only one napkin that is mildly embarrassing - the paint seeped under the freezer paper in a few spots. Hopefully my mother-in-law won't mind. :-)

Andy Warhol inspired photo

Our anniversary is coming up and I wanted to make N something to hang on the wall and decided to make an Andy Warhol inspired picture.

I'm not very familiar with photoshop so it took a lot of work and a lot of tweaking. I worked on it for a big portion of two days. Figuring out the colours was taking a long time and finally I just decided to stop fiddling with it and leave it as is and am content with how the colours turned out.

This turned out soooo much better than I thought it would. I was so excited that I gave it to N today...over a week early for our anniversary. :-) He loved it!

Here is a close-up and a picture of it hanging on the wall in our basement.

It is 16 inches by 20 inches and I put it in a "frameless" frame (basically just glass and a back with little clasps to hold the glass in place). I debated between this and a black frame and am so glad I chose this one.

Swiffer Cover

I found a tutorial to make a swiffer cover on Berlin's Whimsy and really wanted to make one. Using a reusable cover is much better for the earth (no more throwing away a swiffer pad after each time) and much cheaper. I bought the towel for about $2 at a thrift store and only used half of the towel to make it.

I don't have a swiffer so I offered to make one for my sister. I offered to make it a long long time ago and just now got around to doing so since I'm going to see her this weekend. I haven't added the velcro yet (in the tutorial I linked she used buttons but I decided velcro would be much easier) and am going to add it once the cover it on the swiffer so I make sure to put it in the right place.

Since I don't have a swiffer I just used my imagination and pretended it looked really nice on a swiffer. :-)

I'm going to give it to my sister this weekend and add the velcro. I'll be sure to post pictures!

New shelves = organized office supplies

Near our office area in the basement we have this cabinet.

We've never really understood the point of it so it's been empty since we moved it. When we toured the house and opened it in just had a telephone book in it - so apparently the previous owners didn't put it to good use either. It's just an empty cupboard with a plug in and a phone jack.

Our desks were getting out of control with office supplies everywhere so I decided we were going to make use of the random cabinet space.

We measure the inside and went to Home Depot. We bought a piece of wood and metal brackets.

 

N did all of the cutting (and painting.....so he did most all of the work).

N put the brackets in - two on each side.

We made sure that the shelves fit before we painted them white.

Then N painted the shelves white (we had a random can of white paint) and painted on a clear glossy coat and then put the shelves in!

I was super impressed with what a good job N did.  And now instead of an empty cabinet we have something useful. :-)

Then I filled it with office supplies!

We placed the shelves so that we that the battery charger would fit plugged in.

We had a few random boxes that I used (the clear and blue containers are from Ikea) and I also made a bunch of origami boxes out of thick card stock. They worked perfect and are filled with rubber bands, binder clips, thumb tacks and paper clips. I think I might make labels for the boxes.

This is a blurry picture but you can see two boxes in the corner. The stacks of paper are scraps of paper with "Notes" and "To Do" for notes. I keep a stack of each on my desk and use them constantly - I just printed on the backs of used paper and cut the pages into fourths.

Easter Eggs!

We always try new things when dying Easter eggs so this year we cut out shapes with electrical tape and used some vinyl stickers.

N made these Mario themed eggs - he used electrical tape for the mushrooms and the star.

He also made this "3-D" egg - I took a photo of each side.

I made two polka dot eggs with q-tips dipped in colour.

I used electrical tape on this one.

I used a vinyl J sticker - it worked the same as the electrical tape. 

N made this face - apparently it's a Behelit

Some more eggs that my in-laws dyed.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!

The weather is getting nice and it's starting to feel like Spring is finally here! We moved into our house at the end of the summer last year so we weren't sure what kinds of plants were planted outside.

We say some green leaves start to come up in the back and were excited to see a daffodil start to bloom.

When I went to check the mail yesterday I even noticed some flowers coming up in the front yard - around the base of a tree. I'm not sure what type of flower this is but i love the purple colour.

I'm excited to see what other types of plants and flowers start to grow.

Last year we hung out on our deck a lot (ate dinner on the deck, read books, relaxed, etc.) but we didn't have any patio furniture. We usually just brought out blankets or our card table/chairs. We decided we needed to buy something right away this year.

I love just laying out on the deck so joked that I just wanted a bed for the patio. We were at the store and found a comfortable swing. N was looking at it and realized it folded down into a bed! We bought it and N is working on putting it together.

We've had quite a few bees flying around so I bought a bee trap to hang by the flowers and hopefully keep the bees away from the deck. We'll see how well it works.

 Well I'm off to dye Easter eggs (I'll post pictures soon!). I hope you all have a great Easter.