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

Stunning Salad Spinner Art

Do you remember those Spin Art things that everyone used to have when they were little? Hopefully you do because they were so much fun! Seriously, all you had to do was drop paint from little bottles onto a spinning piece of paper and WA LA, you have a cool piece of art!

You actually don't even need to buy the kit to make these. You can use things that you may have around the house already (I did!). Cool huh? Of course, I found this idea on Brit+Co. It seems like a TON of my posts are inspired by this blog.

These past few days have gone by SO SLOW. I've gone to soccer everyday except Tuesday (surprise!), helped coach a volleyball camp, ran for a Sophomore Rep for a club for next year, prepared a speech for Leadership, taken the SAGE test in English, gathered all of my community service hours..... the list just keeps going. UGH! I feel like I'm going to explode! How much stuff can you pile on a fifteen-year-old? After such a pooey week, I really needed a simple, fast, fun craft to do. This was perfect! Plus, it brought back some memories. How can you beat that?

Salad Spinner Art

You will need:

a salad spinner

acrylic paint in various colors

paper

something to keep your workspace clean

(I thought a paintbrush might be useful, but I didn't need it.)

First, cover your workspace and prepare a spot to put your finished pieces while they dry.

Next, take your paper and place it in the salad spinner. I would recommend using thicker paper, like poster board or card stock, to prevent them from wrinkling when they're dry. I used extra envelopes we had from old Christmas cards. It can be whatever shape  or color you want!

Squirt or paint different colors of paint onto the paper. Make sure it is pretty thick, or it won't really work. I found that squirting it in circles made the paint cover better, which looked cooler.

Put the lid of the salad spinner on and spin. I probably waited ten seconds or so before stopping it (by pressing the button) and opening the lid. 

If you like the result, you're done. However, if you don't like it, there is a way to change it. You can always put more paint on, or put white and almost start over again. I wouldn't keep trying after two or three times, though, because there will be a lot of paint, which will take long to dry and it might wrinkle more.

I was really happy with this craft! It was super fun and only took me about twenty minutes, tops. I would say my favorites are the purple one and the blue, orange and pink one. My least favorites are the pink and black one and the pink and green one. My mom told me to do pink and green, so it's her fault that it turned out ugly. :)

I hope you have fun with it too!

Here are some pictures of the ones I made: 

This one was pretty good for my first one.

I added a lot of white on this one, but i like it!

Water stuff came out of one of these bottles.
That's why the middle was so weird.

I really like this one!

This one is my favorite out of all of them!

Good camerawork Claire... 

Eh...

This is my other favorite!

Blurry and ugly... oh well.

It left a pretty colorful mess inside the spinner!

Making More Out of Magazines

This week has been another stressful week, let me tell you. There are tests after tests after tests, and they are big ones! On top of that, we have friends coming in town this week, so we have to get everything ready for them. I also have longer soccer practices this week, so I don't have much time to do anything. Because of this limited amount of time, I wanted to find a quick, easy craft to make, and I did! I was browsing the crafts on Brit+Co. and found Magazine Wall Art, which had a cute picture and sounded interesting. I also found lots of food ideas, so look forward to those!

It turns out that this craft was super easy, but it took a little bit longer than I expected. This could have been because I was bad at it, though. :)

Here's how to make it if you want to try it out!

Magazine Wall Art

You will need:

Board/Canvas

Old Magazines

Pattern

Hot Glue Gun

Tape

Scissors

The first step is to find or make a pattern of the shape you want to do. I went online and found a image of a cat and made a "C" on Powerpoint for my patterns. I wanted to make a bear for the bigger board I had, but our printer wasn't working. Darn! So I decided to make one for myself and one for the girls who are coming for the weekend, Evelyn and Georgia. Cut out the pattern so it is in the shape you want.

This next step is optional, but I did it. Mod podge your board to give it a crafty, yet finished, look! I did a few coats. 

While you are waiting for that to dry (if you did it), go find some old magazines and rip pages out of them. I chose magazines with colorful pages, so the end result would be bright and fun! We had a lot of Better Homes and Gardens magazines, which had a lot of bright colors and flowers, which worked perfectly! Cut the pages you tore out into small rectangles. Make sure your rectangles are as tall, or taller, than your pattern.

Take those rectangles and roll them into little tubes and tape them so they stay. I would recommend getting clear tape so you can't see it. I didn't have completely clear tape,  so I had to use several tiny (and I mean TINY) pieces of tape to hold them all together. Make sure you make enough to cover your pattern and maybe a few extras, so you can pick your favorite colors!

Once you've organized everything so it's just the way you want it, heat up that glue gun and glue all of your rolls in place on your pattern. Make sure everything will stay, then cut around your pattern so the magazine rolls fit the shape exactly. Sometimes the rolls will unroll when you cut them, but don't worry! Just take a little bit more glue to hold it where you want it. 

Once everything is trimmed, glued, and perfected, glue the shape, pattern and all, to the board. 

All done! Happy crafting!

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.