Glass Candle Jars

For our wedding we wanted to have candles everywhere. That magic, flickering, golden atmosphere out in the African Bush is just what we were wanting.  With the wind factor we needed a cheap way of putting candles out and about on the grass. Thanks to Pintrest, I saw some people painting jars and I came up with these...

Items I Used

™ Cleaned Glass Jars

™ Pen

™ Masking Tape

™ Craft Knife

™ Spray Paint

™ Stick on Rhinestones

™ Craft Twine

™ Steel wool

™ Tea Candles

Process

1.       Wash labels off Glass Jars by soaking them in dish wash and using steel wool to clean. Place 2 or 3 layers of thick masking tape where you want your design to be and draw your design onto the masking tape with the pen.

2.       Using your craft knife follow the outline of your design that you drew and peel off the excess tape.

3.       Placing the jar upside down, out in a very well ventilated area, hold the spray paint can about 20cm from the jar and spray all sides. Depending on the transparency you want, do a couple of layers of paint.

4.       Once dry, carefully peel off the masking tape and now you have a window through the paint into the centre of the jar. I stuck rhinestones on next and then tied the craft Twine around the top of the jar in a bow. Place a lit candle inside the jar and enjoy your unique candle holder.

 

Mistakes I made & Learned From

v  I did not read the spray paint directions and held it too close for the first spray creating a blob of excess paint. Not a big problem but read directions first.

v  Let the paint dry between layers... I really need to learn to be patient.

v  Cover the whole jar and try get it even.

These looked wonderful and created a golden evening for us and our guests. It’s really easy and fantastically cheap. Get creative, I started with easy designs like a heart and star and then when I was more confident I created an elephant... just perfect for a wedding in the wilderness.

Mistle-Toes

 

My daughter was born in November and I wanted to get foot-prints done with paint as soon as possible to have as a momento of how itsy-bitsy she was in the beginning.  Looking up which paint to use, I got a bit nervous as people did not recommend doing it with paint on such a newborn.

So... then I decided I would do moulds instead and I saw some fun pictures of people making mistle-toe pictures for Christmas. 

How about Mistle-Toe Christmas tree ornaments to hang on the tree every year!

The Items I Used

™ Clay Putty from your Local Arty Crafty Store

™ Ribbon

™ Paintbrush

™ Red & Green Poster Paint

™ Craft Knife or Swiss-army Knife

™ Cardboard

™ Sticky-stuff

™ Your gorgeous Baby

Process

1.       Purchase all your materials and put newspaper down, this could get messy with the clay

2.       Put card as a base for your putty.

3.       Follow the instructions of the putty and place it on the card, flatten the putty out so that you can fit both feet or hands but make sure it is quite thick so you get a good deep print.

4.       Get helper to hold your baby over the clay and take his/her foot and press it firmly into the clay. Release and repeat with the other foot. Now your baby needs a bath... thanks helper!

 

5.       Before the clay dries, cut out around the print leaving a small edge, smooth the edge with some water.

6.       Place the two feet together at an angle with the heels on top of each other and press slightly so that they fit into each other but not so hard that they stick together. Then take the back end of your paint brush and push it through a point on the heels. Leaving the hole where your ribbon will go through.

7.       Take the feet apart and leave to dry. Tick tock

8.       Whilst they are drying draw three circles on some card and paint red and cut out, these will be the little berries.

9.       When the feet are dry paint them green, and when the paint is green stick them together with sticky stuff and loop the ribbon through them and tie into a bow.

10.   Stick the card berries onto the feet, you can embellish these with red diamante stickers for more Christmas Bling.

Mistakes I made & Learned From

v  Get a friend or partner to help you, trying to manoeuvre a small baby and push their feet into clay is not easy and leads to tears from you and your little sweetheart. It doesn’t pay to be impatient for someone to come home from work.

v  Make more than one, in case you break one.

I’m super stoked with how these turned out! They will go up on our tree every year and will remind us that once she was a tiny little lady. Watch this space for what I do with the unpainted hand and foot moulds... I am still playing with ideas for displaying these and protecting them.  

 

The Alphabet of Our Love

 

Looking for something to make my husband for Valentines Day I came across the idea of an Alphabet of Love. I took this idea and ran with it creating a page for each letter, with personalised pictures and write-ups.

The Items I Used

·         Internet for different letters e.g. Google Image the ‘Letter A Block’

·         Photoshop (other picture or paint programs would work)

·         Basic Point & shoot Camera

·         Scrap Booking things

·         Select your favourite photos of yourselves and your children or pets.

·         Photograph Paper

·         Laminating (I do not have a machine so went to the local printing store)

·         Binding (As above)

Process

1.       I wrote down the alphabet and came up with short write ups for each letter

™ A – A is for Always

™ J – Jis for our Journey of Joy Together

™ X – an eXtra-ordinary life. That is what we are lucky enough to share.

2.       I then googled different images for letter to use and saved the pictures to my computer.

 

3.       I got my scrapbooking kit out and found different letters and took photographs of them and saved them to my computer.

 

4.       For the Page C, - I wrote the message C is for Me (our daughters name is Chloe) on a piece of paper and got our baby to hold it and I took the photo and saved this to my computer.

 

5.    I opened them in photoshop and arranged the different elements of pictures and writing together in a way I liked. (NB! Make a bar on the top of the page, your book needs to be bound and you don’t want to lose part of your page to this!)

 

 

       6.       Once all your pages are made save them as JPEGS and you can print them onto Photopaper. (If you don’t have a fancy printer like me – I took the pictures and printed them all from an express picture printer at my local camera store.)

 

       7.       I then Laminated each page, so that the pictures do not get damaged my fingers.

 

       8.       MAKE SURE THEY WERE IN ORDER A – Z and Bind them.

 

       9.       Voila you have a book, You can add ribbons or items onto the book to give it a bit of texture – careful not to make it too girl for your man. Gentlemen if you are making this for your sweetheart... go wild.

 

In the End

I got a bit worried once I had done all this... do men enjoy these girly sentimental gifts. I decided to be safe - I would buy him a fancy Parker Pen as well (every crafty pen I buy he decides he needs to take to work and I never see it again, maybe this will help.) When my husband opened and went through the book I had created he loved it. All the time I had put in meant more to him that the Parker Pen I brought him! I wonder how many cheap handmade things I can make for him till he starts to get sick of themJ haha

 

 

The Begining

Setting up this blog and learning as I go so forgive me if you see a random post here and there!