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.

Two Old Shirts = Two New Headbands

I'm sure a lot of you have a BUNCH of old t-shirts sitting in the depths of your closet. I know I have a ton from soccer tournaments, summer camps (these are really old), volunteering, and all of that good stuff. Recently, I made a basket of clothes from my closet that have been sitting there for a while and there were a few of these t-shirts in there. I was trying to think of a DIY idea for this post because I haven't had very many ideas lately and had to find something that I could make from things at home. Speaking of which, sorry to those of you who wanted to see the Sharpie mug process. I was did some research and found that sometimes these do not work. I also found some tips that would help them turn out right, but again, I wanted to make this without going to get things and the tips required me to do so.

If you want to try making a Sharpie mug on your own, a blog called Brit + Co. has a very easy tutorial. They have the simple version without the special tips, but it might work. Maybe I will actually end up trying it sometime. If I do, I will be sure to write about it.

Anyways, I remembered seeing ways to make headbands out of old t-shirts on Pinterest and it was the perfect time to make them- I was stuck at home, it was cold and snowy outside (It still is!), and I already had t-shirts to use!

I found an easy no sew headband tutorial online and decided to try it out, along with another one of my own. You need the same things for both- a t-shirt, a hot glue gun, and sharp scissors. Sounds easy, huh? Right! There are a lot of pictures, by the way. Personally, I think they make a tutorial easier to follow.



HEADBAND #1: The Celtic Knot

Take your shirt and cut the hem at the bottom off. Now, cut a loop off from the bottom of the shirt. Mine were about an inch and a half wide, if I remember right.

Pull the loop to stretch it out. This makes it thinner (KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN CUTTING THE LOOP!) and much longer.

If your shirt has a hem along the side, cut that off of each end. You should have two clean strips when you are done.

Take your first string and make a loop.

Take your second string and make a "U" over the looped one. Right now, the "U" should be over both strings of the loop, if that makes sense.

Now take the right strand of the looped string and put it over top of the right side of the "U" string.

Take the left end of your "U" strand and put it behind the loop.

Now, take the right end of your "U" string and put it over the first part of the loop, under the other end of your "U" and over the other side fo the loop.

Tighten the knot you made and turn the good side of each of the strands so they all face the same way. It will look much better when finished.

Put the headband around your head and mark where it fits comfortably with a marker. Cut the strands in half up to your marks.

Tie each of the corresponding strands into knots.

Now, take a square that you cut from the shirt and glue it over the knot to give the headband a clean, finished look. I don't have a picture of this step for this headband, but there is one on the next one if you are stumped.

 And you're all done!

HEADBAND #2: The Four-Strand Braid

Cut two loops from the bottom of your t-shirt this time. I used a new t-shirt to make sure that it would fit around my head, but I ended up cutting a little extra off anyways, so you will probably be fine if your use the same t-shirt as the first headband (if you made it already). Stretch them out, just like the other headband.

Cut the loops into four strands. Glue the ends together with your glue gun.

Now it's time to braid! Separate all four of your strands. If you've never done a four-strand braid before, don't fret! It's super easy once you get the hang of it. Let's say we numbered them 1-4 from left to right.

Take string 1 and 3 and cross them over strings 2 and 4. You should have two separate crosses.

Now, take string 3 and cross it over string 2 (these are the two middle ones).

Repeat the above steps to finish your braid. Make sure you tighten it, or it will look pretty bad. Also, it's much easier to keep the good side facing up while braiding, instead of after. Once you finish the braid, glue the ends together. I put a dot on each strand and did one more step of the braid to finish it off. Also, the very beginning of the braid was super loose, so I cut it off and did the same thing.

Just like on the last headband, measure around your head and mark if you need to. Mine was actually a little bit too short, so I didn't mark it. Now take a square from the t-shirt and glue it on the ends of the braid to finish the headband.

You're done! Now you have two snazzy headbands that are super comfy and cute!

I hope the pictures helped you in the process, even if they are kind of funky because of my phone's camera. I wasn't lying when I said there would be a lot! Sorry about the length of this post. I figured you wouldn't bother to read it all unless you wanted to make the headbands, in which case, you need the instructions. Have fun gettin' crafty!