Collage a la Claire

As many of you already know, the school year is coming to a close, which means this blog will probably be slowing down.... a lot. I want to try to keep posting whenever I try new recipes and crafts, but I'm not making any promises!

Ninth grade has been full of some pretty great memories. A few weeks ago, Clara, Julia, Cali, Dani, Evie, and I had this little "photo shoot" thing at Cali's house. We ended up taking around four hundred pictures that were all either super cute or really funny, which pretty much sums up our friendship. I've loved looking back at these pictures and it hasn't even been that long since we took them. I can only imagine how awesome it will be to have them to look at in a few years!

On another note (kind of.... there's as reason I'm telling you this), I just got a new bed and decided that I wanted to redo my room. There isn't really much in there right now, though. It's pretty much just my bed and my nightstand and the walls are orange. My room seems to always be last on the list of "to-do's" as far as decorating the house goes. Seriously, we've lived in this house for almost three years now. You'd think we would have gotten everything together by now. The good thing about having an empty room is that there's not that much to change! My bed spread doesn't match my new bed very well and I'm tired of the orange, so it's time for a room makeover.

Because I'm redoing my room, I wanted to make something that would spice up the blank walls a little bit after I paint them. My bed is a really dark gray color and a bunch of the pictures we took at Cali's were in black and white, so it will match perfectly! That's how I decided to make this little collage of pictures to hang on my wall somewhere to remind me of how much fun my friends and I had that day.


Below is how I made it.

Materials:
wooden board
pictures
Mod Podge
foam brush
scissors
buttons
hot glue gun

First, I took a wooden board that I already had from when I made the magazine wall art. I painted it with a few coats of white paint in order to make it match better and let it dry while I printed pictures.

When I printed the pictures, I used photo paper for a more clean look. However, while I was printing, our stupid printer spazzed out and just stopped. Man, I hate that thing. I tried it again the next day and it still didn't work. We ended up emailing the pictures to Staples, where they printed them for us. Phew!

After the paint on the board was dry (mine definitely was because it sat for like two whole days), I traced a piece of fabric that I had left over from my pocket sweatshirt so it would fit and I slathered some Mod Podge on the board so it would stay on. At first I didn't like it because you couldn't see the pattern, but once it dried, it looked a lot better.

Then, I cut my pictures out, arranged them, cut them again because they didn't fit, arranged them again, cut them again, arranged them, and so on. I think you get the point. When you have a smaller board and a lot of pictures, it takes some time to get everything to fit.

Once I found an arrangement I liked, I put a little bit of Mod Podge on the back of each picture and then put a coat over the entire collage to hold everything down in place.

While waiting for that to dry, I fired up the hot glue gun and played around with some buttons. Without the buttons, it was pretty plain and I thought they added a cute touch! So, after the Mod Podge dried, I glued some buttons on.

I still had an extra picture that I didn't use on the front because it looked funny with the others, so I decided to glue it on the back and write our names. It gave it a more personal touch and will help me remember the girls' names if I look back at it in twenty years or something. I have a feeling I will lose it or forget it by then, but I'll be prepared if I ever do. :)

To finish things off, I added a final coat of Mod Podge on both the front and the back!

Thank you all for a great year of blogging! I've had a blast trying new recipes and crafts to share on here. I hoped you stay tuned just in case I happen to keep posting!

XOXO,

Claire

Personalizing a Present

I know this week's post is supposed to be a recipe, but honestly, I've been really busy, stressed out, tired and just a mess this week, so I decided to continue my last post, in a way. There is always SOMETHING that needs to be done for school and I have soccer and volleyball that I need to go to, too. My schedule is not any different form any other week, but it feels worse. I have a feeling next week will be too, but I will make myself find a yummy recipe for next week!

My last post was on wrapping presents and I mentioned that two of my friends, Bailey and Cali, had birthdays that week. When it comes to giving birthday presents, I almost always give them late. I guess it doesn't really register in my mind that I need to get a present until about two days before. However, I actually got the presents about a week earlier this time, but I ordered them off of Amazon, so I had to wait for it to get here before I could get it ready to give to Cali and Bailey. They ended up reaching my house the day of Bailey's birthday, so a little bit late. Oops! Of course, I had stuff to get done over the weekend... okay not that much. We had a volleyball tournament on Saturday and Evie and I slept and watched T.V. and movies like ALL of Sunday. I still ended up forgetting about the presents, though. I decided that I wanted to wear my "Jesus" sandals this week along with Evie and Dani, which finally pushed me to give Bailey and Cali their gifts so they could wear the sandals I got them with us!

I wrapped this present in a pretty boring way, but made a card that I spent a lot of time on, which turned out super cute.

It's always nice to get a homemade card because it really feels like the person put some thought into your gift. Sometimes, if I know my gift is pretty amazing without a card or I just don't have time, I won't include one, but if I can, I will make my own card. I like to see what I can come up with and see the person's reaction to something that's more personal. This is what I came up with.

I have a lot of scrapbook paper just sitting in my cabinet, waiting to be used. I picked out two that I thought "fit" Cali and Bailey and went to work. When you put a lot of work into something, you don't just want the person to throw it away or crinkle it up, so I wanted to make mine out of something that is stronger than paper. I settled for cardboard.

First, I cut a piece of cardboard off of a box we had in the office. I hope we weren't planning on using it!

I still didn't have much of an idea, but I knew that I wanted to cut their names out of the scrapbook paper, so I practiced the letters I was going to do. Sometimes I have bad bubble letter days where I just can't get them right, so I wanted to make sure I didn't waste good scrapbook paper by erasing a lot. I would recommend this if you are not the best at bubble letters. It was nice that their names had some of the same letters so I only had to practice once!

Once I felt like I was drawing good letters, I drew them on the pieces of scrapbook paper. If you make two or more cards like I did, draw any similar letters on one piece and leave the other one behind it. That way, you only have to cut and draw once! Draw the rest of the letters and cut them all out. I didn't cut the holes out of the middle of letters because I wanted to get creative with it. Also, I pretty bad at cutting them. :)

Make sure you erase pencil marks, so your letters are nice and pretty!

After the letters were all figured out, I mod podged the pieces of cardboard. This makes it look finished. Of course, I had to let that dry, which didn't take long, but long enough for me to get some ideas. I tried to mod podge regular white paper over the cardboard because I was too lazy to paint it white, but that didn't work at all, so I just left the cardboard the color that it normally is.

Once that dried, I glued the letters on. Mod podge in the spot you want your letter to be. Spread it out so the letters don't wrinkle. It'll look kind of messy at first, but it dries clear. Then mod podge another thin layer over the top of the letters to hold them in place and finish them off. Let it all dry before decorating.

Again, I had to think of more ideas. I ended up using the white paper to mod podge for some shape decorations and hot glueing on buttons for the letter holes. It was simple, but cute, which is always the best way to go!

I wanted to work my wrapping around the card. Since it was around the same size as the gift, I just wrapped it like you would wrap a box, but I used "tissue paper." That was in quotations because it wasn't really tissue paper, but it came in a tissue paper package and it definitely wasn't wrapping paper. I don't really know what it it, but I like it! And I didn't have to cut anything, just tape! It turned out kind of ugly because of the tape, but it was all okay because the card covered it up. I tied some ribbon in a cross around the gift to hold everything together, and then curled it. For the cross, get a long piece of ribbon and find the middle. Lay that across the top, flip the entire gift over, cross the ribbons and twist them once so they run sideways. Pull these ends up to the top again and tie it off in a knot. It helps to have someone's finger hold it in place while you tie the knot. It will be tighter and hold everything together better. If your ribbon ends are too long, cut them in half and tie them around the center on your knot. Now, instead of two pieces to curl, you have eight.

If you ask me, they were pretty good gifts and the cards made them even better. If you really want to know, though, you can ask Cali or Bailey.

Thanks for putting up with another birthday craft post! This will be the last... I hope.

Wrap It Up!

This last week of February is full of birthdays. Honestly, I can not tell you how many Instagram birthday pictures I have seen over the past few days. It's going on too many, if you ask me. The good news is, I actually get to celebrate some of these birthdays with my own friends. I think that's what getting me through this.

When it comes to my best friends' birthdays, I get almost as excited as I do for my own. I love the feeling of getting a present for someone that you know they will love! Cali had her birthday today and Bailey has her birthday tomorrow. That's two best friends in one week. Man! On another note, tomorrow would also have been my grandpa's 90th birthday who recently passed away, so I'm sending some birthday wishes up to him as well.

I have been very busy lately and needed an idea for a blog post. I guess everyone's feeling the birthday rush this week because Bailey suggested that I do a post on wrapping presents. Thank you for the idea! I actually found more things than I thought I would that I could post about. It's not like my usual crafty posts, but is still a way of being crafty. 

It's always fun to give and receive gifts, but it's even more fun if they look cute! In this post, I'll show a few ways of wrapping different things along with some tips for gift giving. 

I'm sure you received a gift in a box or a cute little bucket before. If you're like me, you have tons just lying around the house! Even if I don't think I will use a gift "holder",  I keep it so I can use it for other gifts later on. 

Don't fret if you don't have any cute containers to give. You can make your own! Making food containers is especially easy because food can look pretty on it's own. Find something around the house that can fit your gift. Get creative with it! I found this breadcrumbs container that could hold cookies, for example. There are endless possibilities. You could even reuse an empty wrapping paper tube to hold a poster or something! Nifty, huh?

Of course, you don't just want to give someone a gift in a breadcrumbs container. That's a little weird. All you have to do to make it better is take some wrapping paper and wrap it all up! Cut a piece of wrapping paper that can fit right around the container. You can even use the same lid if you want! I probably wouldn't use this one because it doesn't match my paper, though. Tape the wrapping paper on the container and make sure you tape the bottom so it doesn't slip off. If you want your cute container to be used again, you could mod podge it too! That would be really cute!

If you only have a little bit of food or a lot of little pieces, like candy, or just a gift that you want to see while it's still wrapped, like a gift basket, then wrap it in cellophane! If you don't know what that is, it's like tissue paper that's clear. Again, don't worry if you don't have it because you can make something similar. Take a Ziploc bag and cut the ugly part off. This would be the zipper part and anywhere that it says "Ziploc". Make sure it's all clear. Put the food in the bag and bunch the top. Tie it of with a ribbon either curled or in a bow and you're done. This one was made with a gallon freezer bag and a good amount, but not a lot, of yogurt-covered raisins. If you are debating on what size bag to use, always go bigger because you can always cut some of the top off at the end. 

The same goes for wrapping buckets and such in tissue paper or cellophane as well. Pull the paper around the sides, bunch it all at the top, and tie it off. Unfortunately, the bag trick probably wouldn't work with this. You would need a really big bag. 

If you don't known how to curl ribbon, it's easy! Most scissors have a skinnier blade and a fatter one. Open the scissors and place your thumb on the inside (or the sharp part) of the skinny blade. Take the end of the ribbon closest to your knot and put it in between the blade and your thumb. Press down hard enough for it to stay in place, but not too hard, or you will rip it. Pull the ribbon through until you reach the end and don't go too fast. It takes some practice, but you will get the hang of it in no time at all. 

Hopefully, you known how to wrap a box. It's one of the simplest things you'll ever do. Follow the pictures below if you don't know how. If you ask me, they're pretty straight-forward. I always like to wrap presents in boxes if I can because they look much neater and are much easier. Save old clothing store boxes and all of those boxes from Christmas and birthdays, so you don't have to go buy some every time you wrap. 

Some things, though, are boring if you put them in a box, like clothes. It seems like every time you get clothes, they are in a box, unless you get it from me! I'm not saying that I never have wrapped clothes in a box, because I have many times, but I invented my own way of wrapping clothes, or anything tubular for that matter, that I like to call the "giant candy" method. Actually, I just made that up on the spot, but I kind of like it! In order to do this, you have to roll your clothes. Place your clothes or tubular object on your wrapping paper and measure it so there are about 4-6 inches on each end. With the wrong side of the paper facing towards you, roll your object in the wrapping paper and tape it to hold it all together. Bunch both ends and tie it off with raffia (it's like stringy straw) or ribbon. It should look like a candy shape, hence the name. :)

If you don't have a gift and are relying on the gift card route, don't just give your friend a gift card in an envelope. I have one word for that... lame. I found these gift card boxes at the store (Walmart?) and they are just as easy and not near as lame. They are magnetic, so they can be reused over and over again and come with a cute bow that you can make on your own by just pulling some strings. Easy enough, right?

I hope you'll get creative when wrapping and giving your next gift. I always like finding new ways to wrap. I know this was pretty long and there were a lot of pictures, so congratulations to those of you who made it all the way to here. Have fun and happy birthday to my buddies!