Too Many Bottlecaps...

Ok, something fun to do with all those bottle caps that you keep in a jar or a tin somewhere for no apparent reason other than to record all the cola or beer you drank in the past year???

I made this a while back. It's a simple framed canvas that I bought at A.C. Moore and covered with burlap fabric (I did grow up on what was a farm and it shows on occasion...). Of course these caps are from my high school days so lots of wine coolers are present!  Again I used hot glue (I will argue that hot glue is applicable in more situations than duct tape is) to attach the caps to the burlap, or whatever fabric you want. Just make sure that the fabric is securely attached to the canvas, otherwise the caps will appear to hang off the board. You could just paint the canvas, or even incorporate the caps into a scene. Some of the caps I used I flattened by cutting slits in the rims with wire cutters then spreading them out flat on a hard surface. This works well if you are going for a "sun" shaped cap. I've seen people make earrings, necklaces or key chains out of these flattened caps, but they will CUT you. They are METAL. :)  So use some sandpaper first if you plan to put these things anywhere near your body.

Tip: I found it easier to stick with a geometrical design with this project, especially since the color combinations are easy to put into patterns. 

College Cork Board

Easy way to make an inexpensive gift....
Found the cork board at Walmart for around $6.00. It's canvas style and already has holes for hanging on the back of the frame.
Just use hot glue to put ribbon on the cork (make sure you secure it well on the back of the frame). Then add some buttons for cuteness. :)  Every college student needs cork boards!  If you are like me, you need them if you are a student or not....

Hot Glue Extravaganza

As I have mentioned before, I am a big fan of hot glue, and not just for the purpose of "gluing".  How boring!  It is much more fun to DRAW with hot glue.  

Ok, if you are anything like me then you enjoy a glass (or a bottle) of wine from time to time....so here's what I did when I got bored one night and kept staring at empty glass wine bottles....

I took my big hot glue gun and drew designs on the surface of the bottle. On one (which was already a blue glass bottle and all the more fun for its hue) I drew little suns and random squigley designs. Hot glue is a good medium to work with because you can easily create depth on a surface by adding separate layers of glue. You can also fix mess ups rather easily due to the fact that you can MELT away your mistakes. It's the perfect drawing tool, you just have to get used to the stringiness. I then painted over the glue designs with bright yellow for the suns and some teal for the squigley background. These two colors mix together well and made a pretty green as well.  I used inexpensive acrylic paint for this project. You can buy almost any color you can think of at an AC Moore or Michaels craft store.  

For the second bottle I painted FIRST, simply because it was a green glass bottle and I wanted a different background color. I painted the background a bright pink and after it dried I used the hot glue to "draw" a tree design. (Hot glue makes for amazing tree bark, as you will see below on my other glue project.)   I then used a bright lime green paint to highlight the tree design and add some cute swirls and strokes at the neck of the bottle. You could remove the labels if you like, but I like the character it gives the bottles. If you are not exactly the painting and drawing type this idea can be easily simplified to a bottle covered with geometric shapes, or simple bubbles/circles, or really any design you can think of! You certainly don't have to paint a scene from the Sistene. You could even add marbles or pretty beads and jewels now that I think of it. 

And wa-la! You have two cute bottles to adorn your bookshelves or your kitchen counter tops and you have successfully recycled in the process.  Now go have another bottle of wine. :) 

Now...for the extra brave hot gluers....a 4 foot tall foam tree...covered in it! 

I actually made this tree as a work project, for us to display our "standards of excellence".  It would make a very pretty tree simply for decoration, but it also makes for a good matching game (which was our idea) since the snowflakes are strung on ribbon that hangs on push pins. Eventually we put words on the snowflakes and matching definitions on the branches. 

I made this tree by cutting inexpensive foam board (like you would buy for a school project) into the shape of a tree. It took about 3 standard size foam boards to make the entire tree, and you can't tell from the picture above but it is pieced together in the center.  The branches I did separately to avoid this "pieced" look. This is easy to see in the picture below.  The foam board was originally white/tan, so after I cut all the pieces and assembled them with hot glue, and then added (my favorite) hot glue tree bark design, I took the tree home and spray painted it black. The result is a rough surface reminiscent of tree bark!  

This took some time, as you can imagine, but it would have saved an enormous amount of time and effort if I would have had an exact-o knife nearby...but I work in a hospital so you can't just come walking in with  blades and such.  It was bad enough that I had a couple hundred degrees worth of glue burning in my office. So a good pair of scissors was basically sacrificed over a two day period....

I did add some foam board braces to the back of the tree just to help with the support of the branches. No one wants a floppy tree! And in case you were wondering, the snowflakes are foam and I bought them at Wal-mart...30 or so for around $5, and we used gift ribbon to make the curly ties for them. I am hoping to re-use this tree again....it would make a very neat Halloween decoration with the help of some creepy bones and pumpkins.

Cardboard Box Turned Wedding Keepsake

So....being it is that time of year for extraordinary gifts and also insane amounts of money, I decided to get a little creative (which is a fancy word for doing cute things cheaply).  I managed to grab your average old cardboard box with a fitted lid from the pile of trash at work, before my soon to be memory box would be squished to nothing.  Since my very good friend just got married this past October, I had the idea to make her some memory related item for Christmas. My original idea was to just do a scrapbook. I'm an avid scrapbooker and certainly enjoy it...but I do not enjoy the price! Stickers alone can make you go bankrupt! So I opted for a very inexpensive replacement.  If you have memory items for a box like this...you can literally make it for under $20.  I of course have an extensive stash of crafty items like ribbon, paint, paper, beads, marbles (you name it)...a lifetime collection really....so this project was literally free for me to do!  A little hint for you future crafters:  tell people you like crafts, they will give you their crafting leftovers, and soon you will be saying "NO MORE, PLEASE!"  


Ok...so step 1.  Find your box, find an old tarp or tablecloth and a spot AWAY from any sort of vehicle...and use your spray paint of choice to paint it. I put on at least 2 coats on my box since it had bold red colors on it and I used a neutral colored spray paint.   

Take your box (when it's dry of course) to a table or an area where you have lots of space to work. A word to the wise...have a covered surface here as well! It turns out decoupage and tissue paper can really make a huge mess.  I bought a large bottle of decoupage at Wal-mart for around $6 or $7 and used maybe half of it for this project.  I wanted pink tissue paper for my friend (since she's loved that color since we were kids) and also white as a contrast. I tore large pieces of tissue paper and carefully decoupaged them all over the lid, sides, and yes, the bottom of the box.  My father's words will forever echo in my head "If you are going to do something do it right!". (At times I am haunted!)  

There is no real technique to this application of tissue paper with decoupage.  If you want a linear design then cut the paper with scissors so the lines will be straight, but I prefer something a bit more random (plus I like to rip things) so my box has a very collage style design. I also let some of the spray paint show through in small sections.  

When you finish the first coat, let it dry completely, then add at least two more coats.  Remember, if this is to be a memory box it will be opened many times in the future, and we don't want our box falling apart now do we???   


After I got several coats on there and had the paper in all the places I wanted it I added ribbon to the top of the box in a gift style "+" design.  I added wide white satin, again using the decoupage in several layers.  I then hot glued (and I am a HUGE fan of hot glue) to attach a less wide pink shimmery ribbon on top of it.  On the bottom half of the box I simply did the white satin ribbon, again in the "+" design.  (IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure your ribbons line up when closing the box before you decoupage or glue them down!)  

I ran the ribbon all the way inside the box and down the inside so that the inside would have a finished look as well.  

Lastly I decoupaged some more white ribbon along the inside "rims" of the box (to cover up the unfinished ends of ribbon that was tucked inside and to give the inside of the box some uniform color.  

I then began placing some of my friend's wedding keepsakes in the box.  I glued her reserved signs to the side and stuck her "bridal party" pin on one wall.   I rolled up a bit of our bridesmaid's dresses fabric in a pretty riboon and put remnants from her bachelorette party in. I also put all of the pre-wedding pictures I took onto a CD so that she can pull them out and look at them anytime. I also threw in some leaves from her decorations (it was a Fall wedding) and placed some of her marbles from the centerpieces in a cute little mason jar with a bow and then I was done! 

This was such a simple, fun and very affordable way to make a gift that I really hope my friend will enjoy!  You can add your own ideas too. I actually started out this idea with the request of her bridal magazines because I planned on decoupaging pages of them onto the box...but I am very happy with the tissue paper technique I used instead.