Plastic Spool Toy Beads

I have an abundance of plastic spools and while doing some rearranging I found a huge container of them (head over to the Facebook page to see a photo) and decided that I needed to come up with some ways to use them or *gasp* get rid of them.  So here is the first project of what I hope will be many using plastic spools: 
You will need:

empty spools

scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, or fabric

Mod Podge (I used glossy, oooh shiny)

crochet yarn chain, shoe string, or cording

brushes, scissors/paper cutter, pencil, and ruler

Start by cleaning the labels off of the ends of the spools, most of my labels peeled right off, but you may need to soak them and use some goo gone to get rid of the sticky. Measure the height of the spool, just the flat area where the thread was, in this example 1 1/2” is the height.  Spool sizing is not standard, mine ended up being three different heights (this is the point where I sorted all my spools out by type).  Cut your paper into strips the proper height for your spools. I wrapped my papers around my spools and marked where they met.  Some of my spools were 4 1/8” around, I made all my strips 4” long so I could get three covers from a strip of 12” scrapbook paper.
After cutting all my papers I used the Mod Podge to glue them onto the spools.  Don’t be stingy, you want to put a nice coat of Mod Podge on the spools and then carefully smooth the paper down, pay special attention to the ends and make sure they are stuck down good.  Once all the bubbles are out coat the top of the paper with Mod Podge too, I went over the edges onto the spools to really seal it in.
I made a crochet chain for the string part, dip the ends of the yarn in Mod Podge while you have it out, it will seal them and keep them from fraying. Little Miss loves these beads, she wears them as a necklace, makes them into a snake, stacks them up and knocks them down, uses them as little dolly stools, and has a lot of great fun with them!
*Notes*
Obviously the string could be a choking hazard, if it were wrapped around the neck by itself.  If you are concerned about this the spools could be permanently attached to the string instead of leaving it loose for stringing.
I used black spools, but you could also paint them any color you want with the new plastic paint (I want to make some lime green ones next) before Mod Podging the paper on.
You can use fabric instead of paper.
A shoelace would also work great for stringing the beads.
Since is used leftover paper from my Holiday Photo Ornaments, I’m thinking about making this into some sort of garland to hang them on.  I know that sounds kind of lame, but really, it’s cool in my head (I’ll keep you posted if I decide to give it a try).
Have a super crafty weekend!

Pattern Weights: Adapting What's on Hand

Now that I am a more experienced seamstress I have decided that I need some pattern weights. What really happened is I saw this pattern weight tutorial and decided that they were cute and I needed some. But hold on a minute, I don’t have any hex-nuts (I DO have some washers) and I think I would rather use paper, so here’s my take on pattern weights:

Your will need large washers, I used a variety of similar sizes, they are very inexpensive and you can buy them individually at Ace Hardware stores, some fun scrapbooking papers (these papers are left over from my holiday photo ornaments), glossy Mod Podge, scissors, an exacto knife, and a pencil. Trace around the washers on the back of the scrapbook paper and carefully cut out each circle. Make sure to cut inside the lines. I used an exacto knife to cut out the centers for a smoother look. Coat one side of you washer with Mod Podge and apply your paper circle. Smooth the circle down with your fingers, getting out all the lumps, bump, and bubbles. Brush a coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper and allow it to dry. Use the exacto knife to trim any excess paper from the edges and inside circle of the washer. Apply paper to the back of the washer in the same way and trim when dry. Once I had everything all trimmed up I added another coat of Mod Podge to completely seal the edges. Once everything is dry your spiffy new pattern weights are finished!I need to make a holder, a wooden base with a dowel? I’ll have to think on it a bit. I’m off to get out some fabric and a pattern and start cutting, have a super crafty weekend!

Reminiscing and Eraser Stamps

Once upon a time I used to draw a tarot card every day and journal about it. The card was always a good prompt, even if I only wrote to say that the card had nothing to do with what was going on with me that day (which wasn’t normally the case). It started because I wanted to learn how to read tarot cards, I did the lessons on learningtarot.com to learn the basics and started drawing a card a day and journaling to help me learn what all the cards meant. I enjoyed it so much that I made a special box to store my cards, reference book, journal, and pens (yes, pens, I like to color code my entries). I also decoupaged my favorite card onto my journal cover and got an awesome handmade orange tarot card bag from a swap on Craftster. And then we started our family, I still managed to draw a few cards here and there, but I completely fell out of the habit when we moved back to Nebraska (last entry 3 1/2 years ago). Here in our new house I see my special box every day and I always think ~ I should get that out and start drawing a card a day again and then I get busy and forget. Well yesterday I finally got that box out and dusted it off. Whew, that was a long story. Here is the box and all the stuff from inside, including the new stamps and calendar I made to encourage myself to get back in the habit. I think it is really interesting to see the patterns that the cards make on such a graphic level. I also really love having everything lined up like this, I think I might be some sort of organizational nerd. I finished the box with a thick coat of super shiny sealer which makes it really hard to take a good photo of it.Here, at an angle, you can see it better. I used a plastic bag and black and blue spray paint to make the background and I printed out all the images on cardstock and decoupaged them on. The cardstock really gives a 3-D look that I love! I carved an eraser stamp for each suite (wands, swords, pentacles, and cups) and a sun for the major arcana cards (and cupcakes too). I’ll stamp the appropriate symbol on my calendar and write the card name in the proper color below it and I’ll have a nice orderly record! I also journal about the drawn card in the proper color, just thinking about it makes me happy :)

If you’re wondering, my card for the day (Tuesday, I draw at the end of the day) was The Hermit.

Summer Colds and Quiet Time

Ugh!,the dreaded summer cold struck us this week.  My husband, Little Miss, and Little Man have been sick.  There has been a lot of sneezing, coughing, whining, snot, and cuddling, not so much crafting.  I did get today’s project started.

Sometimes I really need my kids to nicely (quietly) play with their toys.  I have a special selection of toys that I use for this.  Toys that aren’t everyday toys and are only played with when I need quiet time.  I found this example which lead me to this tutorial for a cute little memory game and I knew it would be perfect for my quiet game collection. I chose wooden nickels for my base, so I could use the 1” and 1 1/2” circle punches I already had.  Paper Studio’s Spooky Icons paper was just perfect for my matching images and I used some candy corn printed paper for the backs.  I’m going to store my games in a bag like Jennifer from das Sushi and I had the perfect fabric in my stash to go with my Halloween themed set.  I also bought some cute bug and kitty stickers to make non-Halloween sets, but those will have to wait. 

All I need to do is make the storage bag and add another coat of Mod Podge to the back of the nickels and I’ll have this set finished.  The good news is that Little Miss and Little Man seem to be back to normal today.

Have a super crafty weekend!

Super Girlie, Extra Frilly, Deluxe Tea Party Table

As you know I have been working on Little Miss’s room, the walls have been painted, crates have been covered and the curtains have been made, but we needed a table. A special table for having tea parties and playing with all our little toys.

I have had this table for several years, it was rescued from the curb during city wide clean up. Sadly I forgot to take a before picture, but basically it was a stained wood table that was all banged up with several scuffs and stains. I started by cleaning it and scraping the gum, yes chewing gum, off the bottom. I set the nails back in, patched a few small holes with wood filler and lightly sanded the whole thing. Then I painted it brown using a latex “paint pod” (a little jar of paint used to sample colors from Ace Hardware). I thought it was kind of funny that I painted a brown table brown, but it is a special shade of brown.

I took some of the fabric leftover from the curtains to Office Max and had them make color copies of it for me. (BTW, the copies are awesome, you can see the grain of the fabric.) I knew I wanted to decoupage the individual flower motifs onto the table top and I didn’t want to deal with little strings from fraying fabric edges. I cut out a generous amount of flowers. I cut fairly close to the edges, but what made this turn out so well was that my base paint so closely matched the fabric background color. Using Mod Podge I applied all the flowers to the top of the table randomly. It looked great, but why stop there? it needed more. I thought about adding rhinestones around the edge or some puff paint “pearls” to the top, but decided that I wanted it to be smooth for drawing and writing. I decided it needed a tutu, a pink sparkly one! I bought a roll of sparkle tulle (25 yards) and, using my super special cording foot, zigzagged over yarn onto the tulle. If you make a lot of gathers a foot like this is the way to go, I won’t ever make gathers with two rows of basting again!!! Plus the yarn feeds through a hole in the foot and straight under the needle. I only have to worry about keeping the fabric straight. It took a while to gather it all up, but it came out perfectly puffy. I have it pinned into place because I want to finish the table with super glossy top coat and I have to have a non-humid day to apply that correctly. Yeah, a non-humid day in August, ha!

Now we’re going to need some chairs.

How to Make a Spooky Halloween Spice Rack

Here’s another Halloween decoration to add to your dusty cobweb covered display.

Here’s what you’ll need:

A vintage wooden spice rack with jars, I keep and eye out for these year round, ones from the 1970’s are everywhere here, there are also some available on ebay, but the shipping gets pricey.

Black craft paint and brush

Matte Mod Podge

Hot glue gun

Coffee filters

Twine

If you want to make your own labels you’ll also need:

water colors, paper, coarse salt and brushes

Ink and Ink pen/quill

Halloween stamps and ink pad

Or print my labels (for personal use only) This is my first try for making a PDF to share with everyone, the sizing may be a bit off, leave a comment or email me if you have any problems with these files:




To start, dust/clean off spice rack. I bought three different ones this season and they were all covered in dust. Remove labels from jars if there are any. Some of my jars were stained from various spices, I left them dirty because it went with the look. I also chose to mix and match my spice bottles for a more eclectic look. Hobby Lobby is a good source for interesting glass jars if you would like to add in something different.

Paint the spice rack black and allow to dry.

Now lets talk about jar labels. I wanted something old and moldy looking, I also wanted the labels to be hand written. I used water colors to make the backgrounds. I brushed water over the entire page I was working on and then added black in random spots. The damp paper makes the colors leach. I also used coarse salt to get the molded effect. I also randomly splattered paint all over the finished piece. Crumpling the damp paper also gives an aged effect.

I allowed the paper to dry and then I lasered copied the originals, adjusting the contrast to get a darker finish. I cut the copies into label sized pieces and started stamping different images on to them. When I was finished stamping, using my ink and quill I hand wrote all the label names.Once the labels were dry I used Matte Mod Podge to glue them to the surface, try to only cover the glass where the label fits. The Mod Podge makes the jars appear cloudy, which is actually an interesting look.

I used the hot glue gun to affix coffee filters over the plastic lids, tearing them to size. I used new one, but you could also use tea, ink pads, or watercolors to distress the filter first. Then I applied twine around the edges to finish the look. Don’t forget to add spooky ingredients to your jars!

This spice rack is for my swap partner, so I didn’t finish decorating it. I would cover it with cobwebs and use spanish moss to fill the drawers and some of the shelves. I would also add some spiders and bugs and display this with the drawers open an full of other ghoulish stuff.

I’d love to see pictures of what you guys come up with and Happy Halloween!!!

The Letter of the Day is K

You may remember a while back when I made decoupaged storage jars like Alexa from The Swell Life.  The first time I followed her instructions using random letters and numbers I cut from various magazines.  When I finished I wondered how it would look if I only used one color.  For my second try I used only red numbers and letters.  After finishing the red jar I wondered how using just one letter would look, can you see where I’m going with this?

I have to confess that I cheated and printed out all my letters.  K is a difficult letter to find and I wanted to use some of the fancy fonts I got from dafont.com (Thanks Lisa).  I picked a large variety of fonts and sizes.  I cut everything out and sorted them out by size. I start by applying the large letters and filling in with the smaller ones.  Once I used up most of these I cut out my smaller letters, some of them were tiny.  I used them to fill in any tiny gaps or to break up space. I really like how it turned out.  This is definitely a great project with many options and uses, I’m sure I’ll be making more of these…oooooh how about a theme like Halloween or roses or eyes, just when I thought I was done exploring the options of this project I get another idea!

Red is the Color of the Day

So after finishing my decoupage jar yesterday I started thinking about making an all red one and I just couldn’t stop (instructions here). Last night at one in the morning I had amassed a good collection of red letters, numbers and symbols.

Red letters are pretty easy to find in almost any magazine. I like the ones that are red with white or black, I tried not to use the ones on the right with the yellow and blue, but a few made it on to the jar.

I like the look of just the red and that has now got me thinking about how using the same letter or number would be really interesting. I think that I would have to cheat and print out my own letters (‘cause I would have to use a K) or get one of those clip art CDs, but it would still be neat, especially as a vase. I’m going to have to work on this idea for a while, but I think I’m going to have to give it a shot. Anyone know a good source for a variety of font letters?

I Love Mod Podge

Is there anything that can’t be made better with mod podge?  I found these decoupage storage jars on The Swell Life and just had to make my own! I like how hers turned out, she had better letters.  I also think that I’m going to have to “take one for the team” and force myself to eat some marshmallow fluff, I like that shape of that jar!  I have a giant stack of magazines so I think I should just start saving random letters and then in a couple of months I’ll be able to cover a vase, I have a spare that I found for a dollar at a yard sale.  I was also thinking that using just one color of letters might be cool too!, all red would be awesome. 

Instant Cemetery - Finished

I finished my first instant cemetery set, complete with four new tombstones. It seemed like it took forever to get everything cut out, but everything else went pretty fast.

This is one of the new drawings and my favorite, I am really excited how this one turned out, super creepy.

Photographing the cemetery was a little difficult because I wanted to show it lit by candles. I think they turned out good.

I always make a matching tin to store everything in. I just shrink everything down and decoupage it on to the tin and then finish it with a satin finish sealer. I tried something new this time, decoupaging is supposed to be done with laser copies because ink jet copies run when you put the modge podge on. Here in the sticks where I live there really isn't anywhere to get a laser copy, so I used the satin sealer to seal the copies, it worked great there wasn't any smudging!!!

I think I'm going to keep working on new drawings for these, maybe I can make enough to have several different sets.

Project: Decoupaged Pattern Storage Box

I am a commercial pattern hoarder, I don't know why, most of them have never been cut, anyway I am always buying new ones and storage is getting to be a bit of a problem. I guess in twenty years I'll have a great vintage pattern collection. I bought some pattern storage boxes, but they were plain and uninteresting.

I'm not really the blue flower type, so I painted them white, I can't have any of that pattern showing through. It took two coats of cheap acrylic craft paint, spray paint would also work, but it was a bit too cold for that.

I they started applying old pattern tissue with modge podge. I just randomly tore off pieces and slapped them on. I was careful to not add too many layers on the edges of the box.

After several layers of tissue I varnished the box and this is the finished box. Much better and it only took a few old patterns, I think this really improved them. It also made the boxes sturdier. I love modge podge.