Category Archives: DIY

Rolling Pin Re-do

Rolling Pin

I’ve caught the spring cleaning bug early this year and I couldn’t be happier about it. This weekend I deep cleaned the carpets and sorted through closets to determine what we can sell or donate.

As I was sorting through our kitchen gadgets, I was looking at my sad, plain rolling pin and wishing it was a cute, vintage pin with colorful handles. But instead of throwing my perfectly useful pin away for a new (or old) one, I decided to paint the handles.

Rolling Pin Spray PaintRolling Pin & Spray Paint

This project couldn’t be easier. Grab a spare can of spray paint and paint away! The best tip I have from this project is to cover the parts of the pin that you don’t want to spray in tin foil. Tin foil easily wraps around hard-to-cover-areas without the struggle of paper and tape.

spraying rolling pinI (ok, George) sprayed the handles twice, but the brand of spray paint will determine the amount of times you’ll need to spray to ensure there is no wood showing through the paint.

How do you “upcyle” your old junk?

love,
melanie

Male Teacher Appreciation Gifts

This collage shows different male teacher appreciation gift ideas like pens, supplies and gift cards.

Being married to a male-identifying teacher and being around male instructors all day as a librarian made me think: Male teachers kinda get left out when it comes to gifting. There are tons of ideas on Pinterest, but most of them are geared towards female teachers. So, I thought to myself, “Self! We need a good reference for male teacher appreciation gifts!” Here are a few teacher appreciation gifts that folks of any gender will love.

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Easy Wedding Favors: Printed Brown Bags

Wedding favors on paper lunch bags

During the wedding planning process, DIY projects were not high on my list. I did manage to carve out some time to do a few easy and inexpensive crafts though. And I plan on sharing a few of them with you! I was super pleased with the way my wedding favors turned out. So, I’m sharing the how-to on those first!

For this project all you need is a little photoshop know-how, paper bags and a printer. (I would recommend a top-loading printer. Although it is possible to do with a bottom-loading printer. I have just found the top loading printers work better with the bags.)

wedding favorFirst, we designed our logo in Photoshop. We used the image of George and myself on our wedding invites too. Your design doesn’t have to be anything as elaborate as ours, a monogram would look nice too. If you don’t have Photoshop skills, you could even create your design in Word and then change your printer settings to the size of the bag.

Next, we changed the dimensions of the image in Photoshop to the dimensions of the paper bag and did a couple of test prints. After printing each bag, we added a can of RC Cola and a Moon Pie. In the South, an RC Cola and a Moon Pie is known as a working man’s lunch and both George and I have fond memories of eating Moon Pies and drinking RC Colas as kids.

Finally, we punched two holes in the top of the bag, looped a ribbon through and tied a bow. Quick, easy and cheap! Done!

**A helpful hint is to buy more bags than you need and be patient! If the bag has any kind of small tear or inconsistency, the printer may eat it. Just keep calm and carry on!**

Questions? Leave ’em in the comments!
love,
melanie

How to Make Giant Tissue Paper Flowers

field of flowers

I have very little patience for craft projects. If a craft project takes more than 15 minutes, I have no interest in it. So, when I decided I wanted a little decoration to spice up our Spring brunch table, I knew just the project. Seriously you guys, my elementary Spanish teacher taught us uncoordinated elementary schoolers to make these. You can make these too. DIY your face off.

Supplies

  • Tissue paper (6 sheets per flower)
  • Floral wire
  • Tape (floral tape looks best, but I used regular ‘ol masking tape)
  • Scissors (optional)
  • Watercolor paint & a brush (optional)

folded tissue paper

Step 1: Lay out 6 pieces of tissue paper on top of one another and face the short end of the paper towards you.

Step 2: Fold tissue paper accordion style, back and forth, as if you were folding a paper fan. Folds should be about 2-3 inches wide.

Step 3: Optional: Round the edges of the tissue paper with scissors. I didn’t round my edges because I’m a rebel.

tissue paper flower wire detail

Step 4: Gather tissue paper together in the middle with one hand.

Step 5: Take wire and wrap around middle tightly, but not too tight. It will make it difficult to pull the petals out if it is too tight.paper flower petals

Step 6: The hardest part! GENTLY pull the pieces of tissue paper apart to form the flower petals. Do not man-handle the tissue paper! It will tear. I know from experience 😉

Step 7: Wrap tape around the bottom base of your petals to ensure the wire is tightly secured to the flowers.

Step 7: Blammo! You’re done. Continue to Step 8 if you want to color your flowers. If you’re not a fancy man, stop here.

painting flowers

Step 8: If you want a bit more detail to your flowers, you can paint the edges with watercolor paint. This technique is really hard to mess up. Just grab a brush, dip it into some watercolor paint and lightly brush the paint onto the petal edges and in between the petals. Optional: Feel like you are under the Queen of Heart’s orders to paint the roses red!

Step 9: Let dry.

tissue paper flowersStep 10: Not optional: Frolic in a field of flowers.

Got any questions? Leave ’em in the comments.
love,
melanie

Happy Spring!

Last night George and I painted eggs. We didn’t feel like spending money on dye, so we painted them with some cheap, non-toxic watercolors we had around the house. George did an amazing job, of course. He painted our faces on the eggs!

Supplies:

  • Paintbrushes
  • Watercolor paints
  • Water
  • Hard-boiled eggs

I kept my eggs more abstract since realism isn’t my talent.

I don’t condone eating the eggs after painting, since the watercolors aren’t technically edible, but it was nice to do something other than just sticking the eggs in some dye.

Hope you all have a relaxing holiday,
love,
melanie