Category Archives: DIY

DIY Bangle Bracelet Inspired by Kate Spade Saturday

Posted on May 28, 2014 | 1 comment

When I buy scarves, I always keep the ring they come on… The process happens something like this: I get home (probably from Target) with my spoils, take the scarf off of the ring it hangs on, put the scarf on and cheese at myself in the mirror, put the ring around my wrist and think “I bet I could make a really cute bangle out of this scarf ringy-thingy”. True story. So I totally did that.

My inspiration came from Kate Spade’s Saturday line.

IMAGE SOURCE

This bracelet is the bees knees you guys. I had to put my spin on it.

I grabbed a couple of coordinating fabrics from my stash. The solid mint colored fabric is actually part of a twin sheet I bought at a local thrift store for 50 cents! I bought an absurd amount of the flowery fabric at a last chance rate of about 70c per yard. I’m not even a flowery fabric person, y’all. It just spoke to me.

I used part of the hem on the sheet to save myself a step. That step was folding and ironing, which I did with the flowery fabric.

Once I had ironed a nice crease into my flowery fabric, I sewed both pieces together, the flowers overlapping the solid mint.

In case you’re wondering, my sewing machine is older than me (by about 20 years) and works like a velvety chocolate dream. It’s a Singer 237 Fashion Mate, and along with sewing skills, its one of the best gifts my mother ever handed down to me. It doesn’t do all the fun things that newer machines do (like fancy stitches and embroidery) but it’s utilitarian value can barely be measured. I’ve made curtains, purses, shirts and several pillow cases with her in the few short years since my mother gave her to me, and I used it for countless other crafts growing up.

Moving on… Once the two strips were sewn together, I wrapped them around the ring, putting a dab of Alene’s fabric fusion on the inside of the ring with each wrap.

There isn’t really a seamless way that I can find to seal it off, so I just wrapped and trimmed the end as cleanly as I could, put a healthy dab of fabric fusion on and clipped it with binder clip to make it stay put while it dried (about two hours).

I love the way it turned out. Hashtag arm party, y’all.

I actually ordered a Kate Spade one as well, half because its so cute and half because there’s a good cause behind it. You can read more about the cause on Saturday.com. They didn’t sponsor this post, btw (calling Kate Spade, please sponsor my posts lol) they were just my inspiration and I thought the charitable aspect was worth mentioning.

Anyone else out there diying cute jewelry? Do tell…

1 Comment

Posted in Crafts, DIY, DIY Fashion, Home Decor

Tagged bangle bracelet, diy bracelet, diy jewelry, kate spade

Hablas Español? Parlez-vous Français?

Posted on May 25, 2014 | 2 comments

Baxter! You know I don’t speak Spanish!

Actually, I do speak a small amount of Spanish and an even smaller amount of French but I think we all know what si and oui mean, no?

Here’s a cute little rustic sign I made for my Wall of Wanderlust.

When I made my mid century nightstands (more on that here), I used a wood scrap to color test my Danish Oil. It sat in my scrap pile for months, until I got a wild hair to make it into a little sign. One of those use what ya got projects, ya feel me?

The process here is pretty basic. I used a sponge pouncer with white acrylic paint over a stencil to paint my letters on my scrap wood.

Here’s a fun little gif of the process.

To speed up the drying process since my stencils had to overlap, I used a hair dryer on the cool setting to dry each letter for about a minute. As you can see in the gif, I used some washi tape to hold each letter steady while I dabbed my paint.

Then I painted the sides white, since there was a bit of finish overlapping onto them. After doing the top side, I taped down the rest of the sides to make my lines more crisp. I don’t have the steadiest of hands, guys.

Since the sides were bare, dry wood, they only took a few minutes to dry. I flipped the board over and attached a sawtooth hanger (after measuring and marking the center of my board).

Then a quick tap-tap with my hammer and a nail on my wall and boom, this guy was right at home on a wall with French and Spanish postcards and maps and stuff.

I may decide to seal it at some point with polycrylic or something similar, but I kind of like the matte look it has.

Not bad for a little hour-long “I’m bored” project on a Sunday morning, oui?

Anyone else making multilingual wall art? Por favor dime…

2 Comments

Posted in Crafts, DIY, Home Decor

Tagged diy wall art, painted sign, scrap wood, wall art

This is Why You Always Clean Your Brushes… Completely

Posted on May 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

Hey internet. So… after proclaiming a couple of weeks ago in my blogiversary post that I’d like to be on here more often, I went silent. There are a host of things happening at “jhbhq” (good and not so good) that have kept me away.

Namely, the feller (my mega-handsome boyfriend, whom I’ve known for around 13 years, and have been dating for almost the last four of those) is on a little overseas visit with the US Air Force. Over the last couple of weeks, as we prepared for his impending departure, my efforts and attention were focused on enjoying our time together, not my diy and craft projects. I mean really look at this guy…

I’ve basically been vacillating between being super proud of my Airman and weeping because I can’t share life’s daily adventures with him. Luckily for me, my bestest friend won’t be gone very long. Luckily for you, I am going to do my best not to whine about it.

That being said, I now have amplified free time in the event of his absence, so you may see lots of little crafty crafts on here, along with some larger projects that are both in-progress and in the pipeline. For now I’m going to pop in really quick to show you how I royally screwed up one of my in-progress projects.

Friends, when you use oil based primer, you have to clean your brushes thoroughly with mineral spirits if you plan on ever being able to successfully use them again. I do this every time I use oil based anything. Including the last time I used this brush (a Blue Hawk brush for oil based paint).

But…

As you can see from the picture, I half-assed it. Admittedly, when I last cleaned the brush, I was having serious trouble getting all of the primer off (probably because I waited a smidge too long to clean it), and I’d been at it for what felt like a half hour, and it was late at night, and I was hungry, and I had to get up early the next morning for work.

So I said “Self, these last flecks of primer are NOT leaving this brush. They live with this brush now, and they will do so until the brush dies. They’re faithful little primer stains that won’t ever come off. Not even the next time I take out the brush and use it.”

And then yesterday, when I dipped the brush in some polyurethane and brushed it onto this carefully painted black surface, those flecks dropped from that brush like it was their job. Ahem. It WAS their job WHEN I WAS CLEANING THE THING! And now my black surface looks like some sort of janky constellation map.

Now that I’ve spent a day pouting about it, I’m able to share it with the world in hopes that you wont be as lazy as I was the last time I cleaned this thing. I’m not sure how the heck I’m going to fix my project but I’m going to spend the weekend trying. Hopefully my next post about this project will be a reveal and not another #diyfail.

Today’s takeaway: Don’t be lazy, clean your brushes properly, and in a timely manner. If you have some walking around sense, you’re buying good brushes, and replacing them after each use just isn’t practical.

Have you made a lazy mistake during a craft or diy project? How did you fix it? Anyone have any suggestions as to how I should remove white flecks from polyurethane without damaging the black surface beyond repair? Do tell…

DIY Lotion Bars

Posted on May 9, 2014 | 1 comment

Call it hippie-ism, call it The Pinterest Effect – call it whatever you want – but in recent years I’ve taken a bit of an interest in natural remedies. It started with a quest to alleviate my severe allergies, chronic sinus infections (thank you North Texas) and tinnitus (thank you rock music), but it has now spilled over to my beauty routine, too!

These lotion bars smell light and fresh, are easy to make, and are a natural way to moisturize your skin without exposing yourself to the chemicals found in many store-bought lotions.

Supplies

Beeswax
Coconut oil
Essential oils (I used Orange, Jasmine and Sweet Basil but you can choose whichever scents you like)
Glass bowl / measuring cup or double boiler
Metal spoon
Silicone mold, muffin tin or soap mold

The silicone mold I chose to use was one that was intended to make heart-shaped ice cubes. I bought it at IKEA a couple of years ago for a whopping $1. I used about 1/2 cup of beeswax and 1/2 cup of coconut oil and it filled this little 12 heart tray. If you want to make more or less, you can. Just make sure you use equal parts beeswax to coconut oil.

Start by mixing your essential oil blend in a small glass or coated ceramic container. This isn’t just to let the scents marry, but helps ensure that your fragrance is even and retains its potency. If you put the essential oils in later, you risk your mixture hardening too fast, which means you’ll have to re-melt it and potentially lose some of the scent to evaporation.

For these lotion bars, I used 72 drops of orange essential oil (“EO”), 12 drops of sweet basil and 10 drops of jasmine. The scent is so fresh and spring-y!

Once you’ve mixed your EOs, it’s time to melt your beeswax. You can do this in a double boiler or in a microwave with a glass bowl – I used the latter for convenience. Take caution when you do this, because some beeswax can spark in the microwave. I used Country Lane White Beeswax (purchased at Hobby Lobby) and it didn’t spark. It took about four and a half minutes for my 1/2 cup of beeswax to melt down.

Once the beeswax is liquefied, carefully (its super hot) remove your bowl from the heat source and add in the 1/2 cup of coconut oil. This will melt very quickly because of the heat from the beeswax.

Pour your EO mixture in and stir well for about thirty seconds to evenly distribute the scent. Don’t stir too long – once this stuff starts to cool it hardens pretty quickly!

Carefully (use your oven mitts) pour your mixture into your silicone mold. As you can see my pour was a bit messy. It would probably be easier to pour cleanly with a microwave safe glass measuring cup, so if you have one, swap it out for the glass bowl I normally use.

You can either leave them on the counter to harden, or set them in your fridge to speed the process up. These smell so fantastic that I opt to leave them out.

Here it is after about 30 minutes:

And an hour and a half after I poured them into the mold, they were solid enough for me to pop them out!

To use: rub your lotion bar between your palms for a few seconds to warm it up and melt it a bit and then smooth over arms, legs, hands; anywhere that needs moisturizing!

Big Bonuses

Easy to use: I used to use coconut oil by itself to moisturize. It was messy and took a while to soak in, and I still felt a little greasy. These lotion bars are simple to use without dripping and slipping everywhere!
Gentle: I have super sensitive skin – especially on my legs just after shaving. I have yet to experience irritation after using these little gems.
Customize-able: There are so many great EOs out there, so it’s really easy to make a scent that is uniquely you! There are also tons of different molds so you can personalize the shapes!
Easy to make: The whole process took me about two hours and an hour and a half of that was spent watching Arrested Development while I waited for them to harden.
Great for gifts: You could give these by themselves or even pair them with my sugar scrub recipe to give the gift of baby soft skin – your friends will love you!

What natural remedies do you guys use? Do you have a favorite combination of EOs? Do tell…

1 Comment

Posted in Crafts, DIY, Recipes

Tagged beauty, coconut oil, lotion bars, recipes

Pink, Painterly and Polished

Posted on April 15, 2014 | 1 comment

Pink, Painterly and Polished. The three Ps. Yes, the three Ps. Oh, that’s not a thing? Ok well look here, friend: If you have ten minutes, a vase and some nail polish you’re 100% qualified to take on this little DIY.

Look in your nail polish stash and pick a few colors that you like or that look good together, or preferably they meet both of those standards.

Grab that sad dollar store vase that’s been giving you buyer’s remorse (yes, even for a dollar) for months now and give it a wipe-down. I used rubbing alcohol on a paper towel to remove all of the fingerprints and ~~months worth~~ light dust the vase collected.

Start with your lightest nail color and throw some random swipes on your vase. Let dry for a minute or so.

Move on to the second lightest color…

And so on…

Ending with the darkest color you chose.

Let it fully dry for about an hour in a cool-ish area of your house and then fill that beauty with water and your favorite flowers! Peachy carnations are one of my preferred picks and they perfectly complimented the pinks in my polishes. Whoa how many Ps was that?