Puzzle Journal

I love putting puzzles together, but then when I'm done, I don't want to destroy it and put in back in the box, I want to look at it! So I decided to use it as a journal cover!

Materials and Tools
Puzzle (on hand or a $1 at the dollar tree)
Puzzle Glue and applicator ($3.90 with 40% coupon)
Paper ($1 or on hand)
Craft Glue (on hand)
Clothespins
Xacto Knife

Instructions:
1) Put your puzzle together!
2) Follow the instruction on your bottle of puzzle glue to glue the puzzle pieces together. Let dry. I glued on both sides of the puzzle.

3) Once the puzzle has dried, cut out the size you want your journal to be using an Xacto knife. If you have precut paper, then measure to the size of that. You'll want to cut out three pieces total, the front, back and spine. You might be able to cut out one big piece and then score the lines for the spine, I did not think of that until just now. If you decide to try to score, you would just score on the picture side of the puzzle and bend it closed.

4) Next, glue a piece of paper to the board so that it mostly covers all of it when it's laid flat open with maybe 1/4 inch left around the edges.

5) Now it's time to glue the paper together. I used some left over packaging paper and some old newspaper puzzles that I never got around to doing. Take your stack of paper and line up the edges. Depending on the size of your stack, you can either glue it all at once or separate into different stacks. Take your clothespins and clamp them on the sides and on the edge. Take your craft glue and glue down your spine, spreading with the tip as you go. Let dry.

6) Once all of your stacks are dried, it's time to glue them to the cover! Take your craft glue and squiggle a line of glue down the spine of the cover. Then place your stacks with the edges lined up onto the spine of the journal. Keep the cover opened and place two large objects on either side of the filler paper to keep it upright while it dries. I let mine dry overnight.

And here you have your finished product!

Tiered Vase

Vases are used for many decorating purposes. They are used in home decor to hold flowers and other pretty objects, and at events as centerpieces to add color, light, and elegance.  Vases come in many shapes, colors, and sizes to add the perfect touch to any party or event. The best thing about vases is that you can decorate them in many different ways to fit your personal style. Since vases are so popular and versatile, I was surprised that I couldn't find tiered vases anywhere, so I decided to make my own! I used vases and bowls from DollarTree to make mine. The materials aren't even exact, because you can customize it to how you want. I made two different vases, one was $4 and the other was $3, not counting on hand items.

Here's what you need:

- 7in bowl or larger for bottom tier ($1)

-1 or 2 thin vases, for middle and top if wanted ($1-2)

-1 small vase for middle layer ($1)

-Glue that can be used on glass (on hand)

-paint and other decorative items of your choice (on hand)

Below: Materials used, and the way they should be put together. The bowl goes on the bottom, then a thin vase, then a vase that is thinner than the bowl, and lastly the other thin vase. 

Decide how you want the vase to look, and decorate each piece individually. 

For my first one, I glued rope around the middle vase, left the rest undecorated, and filled the vases with seashells and dried flowers. On my second one, I spray painted the vases green with white on the top (see below).

Once you've decorated your tiered vase, it's time to glue them together. Follow the instructions on your glue. For the middle thin vase, it's best to glue it upside down to the bowl so that the glue doesn't drip and look ugly. 

This project has so many options that I want to keep making more, but alas, I have no where to put them! I think I like the way the first one turned out better because the green one seems a bit disproportional. Switching out the vase for a candlestick might make it a bit more eye pleasing, and maybe using a bigger bottom or smaller top, or even using a wine glass and glue the bottom to the bowl. That would make a total of $2 for a unique vase.  

This is such a simple project and I hope you find the time to try it! I'd love to hear if you have any suggestions or if you try this project! Please comment!

Green Wedding DIYs

Hey! This is my third (and last, I promise) post for the wedding craft contest, hosted by dollarstorecrafts.com and sponsored by Dollar Tree! I've never felt so inspired as I have the past week or two when I first found out about this contest! This post's theme is green! Green weddings have been very popular lately, so I'm sticking with that theme! I have two crafts that are very similar, both inexpensive and both use moss!

Flower Girl Basket

Materials:

• moss, found at the dollar tree or your backyard
• a basket, I got mine at the dollar tree
• fabric (for the handle)
• tissue paper blossoms or other flowers or decorations
• hot glue

Instructions:

1) Glue moss to the outside of a basket. Very simple, but kind of tedious. Once the moss is all glued on, you can start gluing other decorations. I used tissue paper blossoms, but you can use whatever you think goes well with your wedding decor.

2) Next, cut three strips of fabric. The length depends on how long you want the handle, and the width depends on how thick you want the braid. After you determine your size, tie the end of each piece to the basket handle if it has one, or you can probably glue it to the inside of the basket. Begin braiding the pieces together, and when you reach the end, tie or glue it off. If you tied them, trim the edges so it looks nice. And voila, you have a flower girl basket!

Mossy Wall Art

Materials:

• moss
• styrofoam sheet, any size you want
• ribbon to cover the edge of foam
• tissue paper blossoms or other decorations
• hot glue

*Make sure the glue gun is set to a low temp so it doesn't melt they foam

Instruction:

1. As you did with the basket, begin gluing moss to they styrofoam, making sure it look really full. You don't really want the styrofoam to show through. Once done, glue on your other decorations if desired.
2. Next, glue the ribbon around the edge of the styrofoam to hide the foam. Glue the edges of the ribbon down to the back. This art is very light, so you can use the wall gummy stuff to hang on the wall.

There you have it! Two more crafts to help plan a wedding! I hope you enjoyed! 

DIY Bridesmaid Gift Basket Ideas

Hey! This is another blog post for the wedding craft contest hosted by dollarstorecrafts.com and sponsored by Dollar Tree. I have three crafts that would be great gifts to include in a bridesmaid gift basket (or any gift basket for that matter).
The three crafts are:

• Strappy flip flops
• Flower hair clips
• Flower-like bath scrubby

Flip Flops


This flip flop idea is my absolute favorite! You take a regular pair of flip flops that I found at the dollar tree for, yep, $1, and turn them into an awesome pair of strappy sandals that can be converted into many different styles!

Materials:

• flip flops from the dollar tree. You can probably use other ones as long as they are very similar. Read the instruction before you purchase a pair to make sure you'll be able to use them. You could also probably adapt the instruction to work with any pair of flip flops.
• shoe glue (I used hot glue because that's what I had on hand, but it definitely wont' be very durable)
• old tshirt turned into yarn (google the tutorial) or any other kind of fabric strap that you'd like to use.
• Xacto knife.

Instructions:

1) Separate the bottom part of the flip flop from the top. Be very careful with this part so as to not rip either part. Start by prying on the edges and gently move your way toward the center.

2) Once they are completely separated, pull out the straps. Next we cut a piece of of the strap to fit into the hole left at the toes. Fold it in half and stick it through the hole making sure that there are enough ends to glue down. Make sure the piece is big enough to go in between your toes and still be able to thread it with fabric, but not too big because we need to use the strap sparingly if we want extra loops. On my shoe, I had 5 loops, 3 in the original locations of the straps, and then I made 2 extra cuts using an exacto knife, one right by the toe on the inside, and another one just slightly above the original hole on the outside. See picture.

 Continue adding loops in the remaining holes and any extra holes you want to make. The original strap only gave enough to make the toe loop plus 4 on the sides. If you find another type of material to use, you can definitely make more than 4 loops and that way you can also make them bigger. Mine are fairly small in order to get as many as I wanted, so I can't have fabric that is too thick.

3) Once you've glued all of the loops into the holes, it's time to glue the sole back on! I used hot glue, but I would not recommend it unless you have no other option. I've never used shoe glue, but I'm assuming it will work, seeing as how these are shoes and all. You could probably find another glue that would work well too, I think you just want to make sure it can bend once it's dry.

4) Now that all of the gluing is done, it's time to get creative! Take whatever you've chosen as your strap, and remember, you will always be able to change it whenever you want! I chose t-shirt yarn because it's what I had on hand. I didn't even measure them because I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted them designed, so I just made sure that each piece was long and equal. Too long is better than too short!

Here are some examples of things I tried with them:

You should definitely let your imagination run wild! The possibilities here are endless! So many fabrics and so many styles! If your fabric is thin enough, you could probably even use beads on them as well.

Flower Hair Clips

These hair clips look so cute and any girl would love to have them. Not only are they cheap, but they are super easy and quick to make! I made mine all one color, but you can mix up the colors if you'd like. Go with what you like!

Materials:

• Hawaiian Lei, they sell a few at the dollar tree, but the one I used is from Party City for $3.99. Dollar Tree is cheaper, but Party City as a lot more to choose from. 
• Hot glue (is this my go to item now??)
• Bobby pins, clips, combs or anything else you can think of. I used bobby pins.
• Little bits of felt.
• Scissors

Instructions:

1)  Once you've chosen the lei or leis you want, cut the string and take the flowers off. Take one petal and pinch it at the center, bringing the petals up to meet above. Now twist the part that you are pinching. See pic.

2) Next, stick the end of the petal into the hole of the second flower petal, just enough that you can glue it and have it stay put, but where you are able to twist the "stem" of the second flower around the "stem" of the first flower. 

3) Now add another flower by sticking the stem into the hole of the next flower petal. This time, just glue, but don't twist. If you want it to stick up more, you can glue some of the petals together. Add more petals this way until you have your desired fullness. I only used four!

4)Once you have your desired flower, it's time to add the clip! First, cut off the extra stem so that the clip can be glued. I used a bobby pin for the clip, so that's what I'll be showing. You can adapt this step to fit with what you're using. Take a tiny rectangular piece of felt and stick it into your bobby pin. Next, put dabs of hot glue onto both ends of the felt and stick it on the flower! Let dry and ta da, cute hair clip!

Towel Bath Scrubby

Now, this is not my idea, nor did I even do a very good job with my trial of it! But I still think it's a great idea and if you can pull it off, it would make a great addition to a gift basket! I used an old towel we had lying around that wasn't too bad but was fraying at the ends. If you're having an eco/green wedding, these would be perfect bridesmaids gifts, keeping with your theme. If not, and if you don't really care, you could probably go buy a normal size bath towel and make multiple scrubbies out of it.

Materials:

• New or old towel, any color
• Sewing machine (unless you're very brave, you could probably adapt the instructions so that you can just hand sew it)
• thread
• scissors

Instructions:

http://www.rufflesandstuff.com/2010/02/bath-pouf-that-um-looks-like-rose.html

This is the website I found the tutorial on! I did not create this tutorial, all credit goes to the owner of the above website. She does a great job of explaining every step, unfortunately I haven't mastered the sewing machine yet, so mine didn't turn out as good.

And that's the end of my post! I hope you found it interesting and inspiring! Thanks for sticking with me!

Wedding Craft Challenge

Lighted Table Decoration

Thank you to dollarstorecrafts.com and the Dollar Tree for letting me participate in this contest! This is a super inexpensive way to decorate the tables at any wedding, and it could easily be modified to create a variety of pieces on each table.

Materials and where to get them:

-tissue paper of any color (I used white) - $1 at the dollar tree 

-cylinder glass vase- $1 at the dollar tree

-water - from your faucet

-translucent gems scatter things, I don't really know what they're called- $1 at the dollar tree or a craft store (see pic)

-push/puck light- $1 at the dollar tree. My dollar tree only had two left, so I'm not sure if it's an       everyday item or not. If not, I found mine a long time ago at Home Depot. (see pic)

-glue that sticks to glass- craft store

Instructions:

1) Stack two pieces of tissue paper on top of each other. They can be the same color or two different colors, whatever you like is what's important. I used both white because I have a ton of it at home. 

2) Cut out either squares or circles with a diameter of 1-2 inches. I used circles because I like the rounded tips better.

3) Next, try to pinch the center of a cutout and push the side up together and twist to create a blossom/flower. See images below.

4) Continue to do that will all of your circles/squares. The amount you need will depend on the size of your vase.

5) Next, take your glue and begin to glue your tissue paper flowers onto your vase in a spiral fashion. Note: Do not use hot glue! Lol, I am a newbie to crafting and I tried using hot glue. I did actually get them to sick, but they are not very secure. They could easily come off.

6)Once you have the spiral pattern you like, put colored but translucent gems on the bottom and fill the glass with water! Be careful not to get the tissue paper flowers wet! My pebbles are an amber color because that's what I had on hand. My local dollar tree had blue and green. I also added a flower for more substance. Another thing could be to glue down some artificial flowers to the bottom before you add the pebble and water, that way they just stay floating in the water.

7) Okay, this next step might need to be adjusted for some people. I had some puck lights on hand, and one of them just so happened to be the same size as my vase, so I was able to just sit the vase on top of the light. If this doesn't work for you, gluing a bowl upside to the bottom of the vase could work, and then just set to whole thing over the light, as long as the bowl is big enough to cover the light. It also might be a good idea to spray paint the bowl in a matching wedding color (except the very bottom where the light needs to go through).

Variations:

I like the look of the water with the light underneath, but if you can't find a way to incorporate the puck light underneath the vase, you could skip the water and place the light inside the vase and cover it with the gems scatters.

Another variation to add height is to get two cylindrical vases and glue them bottom to bottom. One the bottom side of a bowl, glue some kind of wedding figurine (like a bride and groom one I found at the dollar tree). Then glue the bowl to one side of the vase so that the figurine is inside of it. Then add tissue paper flowers all the way up so that it spirals like the picture. Then put the gems in the top vase and add the water like before. Place to whole display over the light and it should had some dim lighting for a great table decoration!

Another way to use tissue paper flowers is by gluing them onto a branch to create another nice wedding piece. The branch can be spray painted as well to match the wedding. And you can use hot glue for this project! Hehe. I used an old wine bottle to display these in, but you can find a great narrow vase at the dollar store!

Thank you everyone for taking the time to check out my tutorial! I hope you learned something (like don't use hot glue on glass), and I hope that you can use this for any upcoming weddings or events that you may have!