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Flavored Vodka

30 Jul

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Well, I think it’s about time the blogging break ended. I lost the urge to write these posts a few months back and I didn’t want to put forth blog posts that lacked enthusiasm or fun topics…both I feared if I was blogging just to blog. But the last month I’ve been getting that creative bug back and tonight I decided enough was enough. I’m back! How often I’ll post after this, who knows. But I’ll put a few out there whenever I can because creating this little blog has actually been loads of fun. And that’s what it’s about after all, right?

So, this idea came to me as I was thinking of creative gifts at Christmas time. (Yes, this is a post I meant to write months ago. Sincere apologies.) I thought it would be fun to create something that was part food, part craft and my Real Simple magazine inspired the mash-up of the two – flavored vodkas.

Truly, I thought flavoring your own vodka must be a cumbersome task. Would take lots of time, blood, sweat and tears (though read on and some of that happened by mistake.)

Boy was I wrong.

This is amazingly simple and I think you’ll want to give it a try once you see just how easy it is. These also DO make great gifts and show that yes, you can come up with a creative, out-of-the-box gift and impress your family and friends. Or, dang it, you can make these for your own enjoyment! Everyone loves a good libation now and then.

I decided to make three different varieties and followed Real Simples’ suggestions for amounts. I’ve added in my own notes below for those who’d like to give these a go.

Side note – there is an entertaining story buried below which includes a forewarning. If you read on I can assure you a slight giggle, chuckle, chortle, or whatever sort of laugh sounds you make. 

Ingredients/Supplies:

  • For each flavored vodka you decide to make, you’ll need a large, clear vessel with a stopper. I found some fun shaped ones at good ole’ Target and they worked perfectly and they were very affordable.
  • Wooden tags, so you can let your recipients know what flavor their wonderful booze contains. Although I found mine at a little boutique, you could likely find these at any craft store.
  • Twine to tie on your tags
  • Felt pen or permanent marker to label your tags with
  • 1 liter of plain, unflavored Vodka. I split this 3 ways to make the three vodkas below. You can make 1 liter of all one flavor or use 1/3 of a liter for each, whatever floats your boat

Pineapple Vodka:

  • 1.5 cups of fresh pineapple chunks

Vanilla Vodka:

  • 4-5 vanilla beans, sliced open

Jalapeño Vodka:

  • 3 halved and seeded jalapeños** (I would go towards the milder jalapeño vs. a spicier pepper)

How to Make:

First things first – wash our your clear vessels with hot, soapy water and dry them. After you decide how many flavored vodkas you’re hankering to make, split the plain vodka up amongst your clear vessels. Here are the three I chose to use:

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Next you’ll need to prepare the flavor mix-ins of your choosing.

For the vanilla vodka, I wanted a fairly sweet and intense flavor so I sliced open the vanilla beans a bit to enhance the saturation level. If you’d rather go for subtle flavor, I’d throw in just the plain vanilla beans. Recommend 4-5 beans.

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For the pineapple vodka, chop up the pineapple into nicely sized chunks. Think large, edible chunks (size wise). I highly recommend using fresh pineapple if you can.

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And for the jalapeño vodka, just slice the jalapeños in half, de-seed them with a sharp knife and drop them into the vodka.

**However…please read the below cautionary tale. Wash your hands once you’ve finished chopping!

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Once all of your mix-ins have been added, put your vessel stoppers and ensure they’re snug. As Real Simple noted, you’ll want tight seals. If you’re putting this into a gift basket or anything, I can also add some cling wrap to ensure your stoppers stay in place.

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You can either refrigerate these right away or you can give to your gift recipients right away and let them know that THEY will want to refrigerate these. You need time for the flavors to infuse! The recommended time is 3 days to 1 week in the fridge. Once it’s been a week, you’ll want to remove, or instruct your recipient to remove the flavoring mix-ins.

Wrap your twine around the neck of the bottles, add your flavor label to the gift tags and instructions for infuse time and a reminder to remove your mix-ins.

Supposedly, these will be not so good once you reach the 2 month mark but hopefully, they’re so tasty that they are consumed LONG before that 2 month mark arrives. However, to be safe, I would recommend noting the 2 month expiration date for anyone you give this to.

Tie the tags on, wrap up your vodkas or stick them in a basket and voila! A neat, homemade gift that will be a delicious addition to any fun libation.

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Enjoy!

** So the story I must share with you for both humor and warning is this…I made the pineapple and vanilla vodkas and had turned to my jalapeño vodka to finish up with. I sliced those babies up and placed them in the bottle of vodka, closed up the stopper and thought I was done, as I reached up and gave my cheek a little scratch and rubbed my nose. Can’t explain why, my face must have itched. Well…within about 10 seconds, my face started to really itch. Then burn. I wiped my face with the side of hand, wondering what the heck was happening. My nostrils started to burn, as in, REALLY BURN. I started to sneeze. Then it hit me…I had rubbed jalapeño juice ALL OVER the bottom portion of my face.

Ran over to the sink to flush my face with ice-cold water. Let me tell you, that does NOT work.

At this point I was becoming quite vocal about my extreme discomfort to my family who was sitting in the vicinity and was initially completely perplexed at my commentary until I shared the idiocy of the jalapeño –> jalapeño juice –> face situation. All of which was explained while taking breaths between submerging my face in water. While trying to not laugh (not all were successful at this), they started to quickly Google solutions.

At this point I was starting to whine, laugh, cry, sniffle, sneeze all at the same time. While continuing with my face-dunking in the cold water. My face now felt like it had the worst sunburn on the planet and someone had then taken a hot iron to my skin. I was not in a happy place my friends. An absurd, uncomfortable place but it wasn’t too happy.

Google informed us of a few solutions…milk was the first one that we tried. I was leaning over the sink with a milk soaked rag pressed to my face. Temporary relief was felt. But it wasn’t making the burning stop. On to solution #2!

Google then informed us to try rubbing alcohol. Apparently there is oil in the hot pepper juice which is why water doesn’t help nor milk. (I honestly didn’t know this until this whole incident.) Milk helps to balance the sting but it’s not helping to remove the actual oil from your face to make the pain go AWAY.

Rubbing alcohol went all over my face. I smelled quite amazing at this point, let me tell you.

But it WORKED. Hallelujah.

My brain had started to go to the thought of…am I ending up in the ER with one of THOSE stories?

Moral of the story as I stood in the kitchen with a beet red face, tears coming out of my eyes still from both laughter at the absurdity of the situation and the true pain my skin had just been in. God bless rubbing alcohol.

*Therefore – do NOT do as i did. Wash those hands as soon as you finishing slicing the jalapeños! I knew this cardinal rule yet spaced it out. Never again folks. Never. Again. 

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Stained Mason Jars

17 Dec

So I have been harassed by multiple people in the last week about my lack of blogging. The hiatus was not on purpose, was not planned and is officially ending. To those few who really missed the blog posts, I’m back!

I actually have a plethora of items to share with you and now that life is a wee less crazy and there’s this lovely amount of vacation looming on the horizon, I think I can honestly say you’ll be seeing quite a few blog posts come up by the end of the month. And perhaps one will be a giveaway since I was intending on doing one a few weeks ago and we all know what happened there.

Fail.

However, let’s move forward and not dwell on the past 5 weeks of no blogging. I thought it would be ideal to bring you a relevant Holiday season post, this one being in the craft genre.

Are you into decorating for the holidays? Or are you into crafting things that you could, in theory, buy at the store for a high price and instead you’ll be making for CHEAP? Or perhaps you’re that guy still trying to figure out what the heck to give/make for a female in your life? Any of these things and many others leads us to this…stained mason jars.

Now, if you’re anything like me (though your intelligence may far exceed mine), you may not have known mason jars could be easily stained different colors. I had no clue and was extremely curious when I saw a pin on pinterest describing this particular craft. And as usually happens when I’m extremely curious about a craft, I decide to do it.

The Six Sisters blog is where I found this version (there are many versions out there on pinterest and on different blogs):

Six Sisters Blog

And my attempts did end up turning out very cool. I’m excited to share just how simple this craft is with you. With the current festive Holiday season upon us, these could be great in shades of red and green and could be perfect decor for your house, used to hold a Christmas gift (non-edible as we’re dyeing the inside of the jar) or even lined up out in the snow with candles inside to assist in your Christmas light display. The finished jars look neat and vintage, something a pricey store could persuade customers to buy when in reality, you could craft up a batch yourself.

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If that doesn’t persuade you to give this a try then I’m just plain out of arguments.

So just decide to do this one. Agreed? Excellent.

Materials:

  • Mason jar/s in any size you want
  • Mod Podge
  • Food coloring
  • Paper plate (square shaped if you have it)
  • Spoon
  • Wax paper or parchment paper
  • Baking sheet
  • H2O

How to Make:

First things first, you will need to preheat your oven to a cool 200 degrees. You can’t do this craft without heat, so don’t forget this step!

Next, highly recommend you mix up your dye concoction on a paper plate. The Mod Podge is messy and I just didn’t want to taint my dishes. If you are comfortable with the risk, then game on. Go for it.

I chose paper over a ceramic plate and had a snazzy zebra printed plate option thanks to a bachelorette party that took place earlier this year. Thought it added a little extra something special to this post. Don’t you think?

On to your plate of choice goes  2 Tbsp of H20.

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 Then, drop on 4 Tbsp of Mod Podge…

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…thoroughly mix the two liquids together. Use a spoon or whatever other utensil you feel will accomplish this task. Mix together until it’s one lovely shade of white and there’s no obvious separation between the white Mod Podge and the H2O.

Now is the time to add color! If you want the pale shade that just tints the jar (my preferred method), you’ll want to only do a few drops. Obviously, the more saturated and dark you’d like your color, the more food coloring. Truly, a little goes a long way!

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I wanted a really light green so only used four drops. Using your mixing utensil once more, mix the color all the way in until the entire liquid is the same shade. You can see below I copped out and didn’t FULLY mix, there’s some green and white swirls still visible but ah well. 97% mixed worked for me.

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Now this lovely mixture is going to go into your jar. All of it.

I lucked out with a  square plate and thus an excellent pouring mechanism using the corner. If your plate is round you will need to be creative and find a funnel of some sort or roll the plate a bit (if you can). Rolling up an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper is my go-to for things like this and would have been my plan b if I didn’t have a square plate. Highly recommend that particular method.

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Now, while slowly turning the jar, pour the liquid back out on to the plate. Your goal is to coat the entire inside of the jar while pouring out the liquid, so take your time. You may need to repeat this process a few times until the entire jar is fully coated.

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Once you’ve completed the coating process, turn the jar upside down on a cookie sheet that has been covered with a length of parchment paper or wax paper. I did three jars in my first batch, as you can see below. Make as many as you’d like at a time but do note the longer you let the jars sit upside down, the higher likelihood that the liquid inside the jar may start to drip down the jar. You will want to get these into the oven as quickly as possible to avoid that. You can also use slightly less water to make it a little less liquidy (though this may make the coating step take a little bit longer…pros…cons…you get the idea).

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Now bake these babies for 3 minutes in their upside down pose. That’s enough time to put on a song and bop around your kitchen while you wait. Ok, maybe that’s just me that does that but I do highly recommend. Apparently I recommend a lot of things in this post.

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When your 3 minutes is up, remove the jars from the oven. You’ll likely need to wipe the rims with the excess liquid that’s accumulated. You can see in the above picture the rim marks these jars made. Once the excess liquid is removed from the rims, keep the jars right side up and pop them back into the oven for another 30-40 minutes. You’ll essentially be baking them until the opaque liquid becomes transparent with a hint of your chosen color.

Like…

This:

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You can see the hint of green in all the lines of the jar and it’s even prettier in the sunlight. However, I failed to take a picture with these in the sunlight as I made them at night (well, when they came out of the oven and the sun was down) and then plain forgot to photograph them the next day. But as SOON as I get home on Thursday (or ok, as soon as I remember when I’m home on Thursday) I will update this post with a sunlight/mason jar photo.

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I know it’s subtle in my version, but that’s what I really liked. These look great lit up with a candle inside too, that’s what I really made them for. They’re simple but pretty to have throughout the apartment/house/condo etc. I also plan on experimenting with a red version in the coming weeks, and I promise to update this post with a photo of that version too. If you don’t see an update, please harass me via the comments below.

Happy crafting, all!

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Photo Transfer to Wood

16 Oct

This is a craft post. Not into crafts? You may still want to read this one as I can promise, it’s pretty cool with a capital C.

For anyone who’s a frequenter on pinterest, you’ve most likely seen this craft in a variety of pins. This is the pin I saw many months ago and always wanted to try, showing a photo transferred on to a canvas:

Pin from A Beautiful Mess blog (one of my many favorites to read, check ’em out!)

Now this craft came to be thanks to my good friend Andrea, who’s been featured in a variety of posts thus far related to her September, 2012 nuptials (Mr & Mrs letters featured on the place card table at her wedding reception and spicy, turkey meatballs that were served at her bachelorette party). She had the idea to use this craft method of transferring a photo onto a different surface for the table numbers at her wedding reception. Neat right?

The plan was to transfer different photos of her and her now-spouse on to one side of a wood block. The other side of the wood block had the table number. The block itself would stand upright through use of a dowel and simple wood base. If you’re going to do this at home (I sure hope you are as intrigued as we were and try this out) this is what you’ll need…

Materials:

  • Wood block/s (you can cut down a larger board from a Home Depot/Lowe’s type store or find these in small, manageable sizes at most craft/hobby stores)
  • Black and white photo/s printed on white printer paper from a Laser Jet printer (the end result will be reversed from whatever image you print…so if necessary print off the original photo already reversed so it prints on the wood in the original photo format)
  • Gel medium (we used this one from Liquitex in the Ultra Matte Gel variety)
  • Mod Podge
  • Multiple foam brushes (one for each the gel medium and the Mod Podge as well as enough for all the people crafting)
  • Newspaper or paper bags to cover your work surface
  • Old rag (you’ll want to throw it away when you’re finished)
  • Small bowl filled with water
  • Scissors

How to Make:

If you’d like to make a version similar to Andrea’s that stands upright, you’ll want to create your base supports first. Use a power drill to create a hole in the wood block/s that’s an appropriate size for your support (dowel or otherwise). Drill a similar hole into your base support.

Next, sand the wood block/s down, both sides. The sanding will help the gel medium adhere better to the surface of the wood.

Thankfully, Andrea has handy men in her family who cut and sanded the wood blocks for us and they also drilled the dowel holes and base supports (not to say us females can’t be handy and tackle this process). But for those who’d like to give this craft a try, it’s pretty simple to do those ‘pre-work’ steps to cut and prep the wood, no worries.

Print off the picture/s you’d like to use in black and white, being sure to reverse the image prior to printing if you want the image to appear as the original photo does. (We used black and white photos so I can’t vouch for how well color printed photos transfer. I do highly encourage you to experiment though – let me know if it’s a success!)

Two important points about the photos – use normal, white printer paper and use a Laser Jet printer. These notes are particularly important as this project actually was completed twice. The first time (the version you’ll see in most of the photos) we used photos that weren’t printed on a Laser Jet printer and the ink didn’t transfer as well as we had hoped. Andrea re-did them prior to the wedding reception with Laser Jet printed photos and they looked worlds better. (You can see the difference in the photos below.) However, if you’re looking for a light, vintage look the non-Laser Jet printed photos may be what you actually want. Just helpful hints for you to keep in mind based on our experience.

Now here’s where Andrea and I started – with already-sanded wood blocks and photos already printed on white paper. (You’ll want to cover your work surface with newspapers before you begin.)

First, cut the photo/s down to the size of the wood block/s.

Generously coat one side of the wood block with the gel medium. Be very liberal with the amount you use as it will only help to more effectively transfer the photo to the wood.

Press the photo face-down on top of the gel medium-coated wood block, smoothing out any air bubbles and ensuring you have it nice and centered.

You’re going to repeat this with as many photo/wood block pairings as you have. Once all the photos are firmly attached to the wood blocks, you’ll want to go entertain yourself for several hours while everything dries. I’d recommend overnight, personally. Then the next morning you have something to look forward to as soon as you wake up.

This is when the small bowl of water and old rag are needed. Dip the rag in the water and start to gently rub the paper off of the wood block. You’ll need to scrub for a while and the photo will go through a few different phases before all the paper residue comes off. You can see in the pictures below that at one point it may even look green (and will most likely stain your rag in the process). Just be patient, have faith and keep going. There shouldn’t be a smidge of paper left on the wood when you’re done. (This paper removal process is a bit messy so be sure you still have your newspaper or paper bag underneath all of the wood blocks.)

When the wood block/s have dried from the damp rag/paper removal, use the foam brush to coat the entire photo side of the wood block/s with Mod Podge. This works as a sealant. Let the finished product dry for about an hour to ensure the surface is completely dry (it may appear dry but in fact be a bit tacky if you don’t wait long enough).

Now as I mentioned above, we did this project twice. Here is what the resulting wood blocks looked like when we used the photos printed without a Laser Jet printer (still a cool, vintage-y look in my opinion)…

…and here it is with the Laser Jet printed photos…

 

The key about this entire project is that the imperfections are what make the finished product look neat. If you have a few air bubbles or creases where the photo didn’t fully transfer to the wood, that’s alright. It gives the photo a little character. (Perfect is boring anyway.)

This would look great up on the wall or standing upright on display – like the table numbers at Andrea’s wedding. Or, you may have something else entirely in mind. Be creative and give this a go!

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Scrapbooked Letters

5 Aug

This post is bringing in more of the ‘buttons’ part of the blog, a piece I fully admit I’ve been slightly neglecting. I do more cooking than crafting in a normal week so perhaps that’s why the ratio of cooking to crafting isn’t very even.

Regardless, this post is for all you out there that have the crafty urge every now and then and perhaps don’t know what to make. This would be great to do with your initials or even just the first letter of your first or last name.

Maybe it’s the curse of being in a sorority, but we crafted letters all the time. Most every room in the house had a girl’s name on the wall or maybe just a big A X O on a shelf (I was in Alpha Chi Omega for those who aren’t as familiar with the Greek alphabet.) At one point a had a big B E T S Y going down one wall decorated with, what else, buttons. Like I said, perhaps it was a silly sorority girl thing, but I think we had more fun making the letters than really seeing them up on the wall.

(And no, I don’t still have my name spelled out my wall.)

SO, my friend Andrea, whom we recently celebrated at her bachelorette party (where we ate these tasty meatballs), was the one who came up with the idea for this craft. She wanted to make a “MR & MRS” to have up at the head table during her wedding this coming September. I’m not sure yet if she plans to hang these from the table or have them standing upright. Either way, they’ll look great!

You don’t need a whole lot to craft these and you may already have some of the materials.

Materials:

  • Wooden letters
  • Scrapbook paper or any other type of paper you’d like to use (it should be thick though!)
  • Sharp scissors
  • Double-sided adhesive tape (this is the kind we used – really worked!)
  • Modge Podge
  • Pencil
  • Acrylic paint in the colors you’d like to use
  • Foam paintbrush

How to Make:

First decide what paper you’d like to use for which letters. Andrea’s plan was to use one type of paper for the M and R of the MR, a different paper for the M, R and S for the MRS and a different paper for the ampersand in between.

For us, we had a one of the scrapbooks papers that was clear. Thus we needed to paint the letters first, before putting the paper on. She also wanted the edges of all the letters painted. If you’re in the same boat, you’ll want to do any of your painting first.

Here’s the S for the MRS drying:

After the letters have dried enough for you to pick them and touch them (make sure they’re not too tacky) you need to trace the letters onto the appropriate paper. Andrea wanted both sides of the letters to have paper on them, so we traced paper for both sides of all of the letters. You could also chose to paint the backs or perhaps leave them bare. The latter would be if you’re planning on putting them up on a shelf or a wall where no ones sees the back.

If you squint, you’ll see a large ampersand traced in the photo below.

After you’ve traced all the letters, carefully cut them all out. Try to cut inside the lines so you don’t have any pen/pencil marks on the paper. I’d recommend using a pencil so you can easily erase any marks still visible on the paper.

Now time to put the paper on the letters…

Now, this step depends on which type of paper you’re using. If the paper is clear at all, you’ll want to use the double-sided adhesive to adhere the paper to the wooden letters. Or, if your paper is completely opaque, you can use Modge Podge underneath and then again as a top coat on top of the paper. We used both methods with the MRS letters having the clear paper and the ampersand and the MR letters having opaque paper.

That’s all there is to it! And depending on your smoothing-out abilities, the paper should look great on the letters with very few air bubbles. We were amateurs in this skill, so there were a few air bubbles here and there. However, from far away, you can’t see them one bit.

Don’t they look great?!? And the bride-to-be looks pretty great herself!

With a little paint, scrapbook paper, patience and some good company – you too can make some fun letters! I’m considering making a large wooden ‘V’ for our front hallway as my roommate and I both have last names that begin with V. (Really I just want to craft the letter itself, let’s be honest.)

Happy crafting! 🙂

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A Little Crayon Art

10 Jun


You may have thought crayons were left behind in your 3rd grade desk, but NO…there are still so many wonderful things you can do with these little guys. The basis behind this project is the simple fact that crayons melt. In the process of melting, these make a wonderful art creation that rivals how colors bleed and blend in a watercolor.

This is a very popular pin on pinterest that most who are even infrequent visitors to the site, have stumbled upon and maybe even too, been inspired by.

The original pin on pinterest that inspired me:

From Whatever…

Before I made my own version of this a few months ago, I decided I’d take a slightly different approach. As much as I love the Crayola brand, I preferred to have the wrapper off of the crayons I was using. I also wanted to use only a select few colors on each canvas I made: greens/yellows….blues/purples etc.

I tackled this craft for the first time with a good friend of mine, Katie. She was as intrigued as I was if it would work, so we bought ourselves quite a few of the 64 boxes of Crayola crayons and set to work.

My first attempt turned out pretty cool, far better than I anticipated. The only negative, didn’t realize until after the fact I had created art out of Packer colors. Oops. The deep love I have for Minnesota sports did make me feel a little bad about that. Trust me, this was unintentional!

Because the first canvas turned out so great, I wanted to give it another go and track the craft progress with some photos to share with you all. This is fun no matter what your age, so if you have little kids around that need a good, easy and not-too-messy craft project, this is perfect. This is also an ideal craft if you just want your mind to drift and think about nothing other than how beautiful certain colors are as they merge and trickle down the canvas. Very soothing.

How to Make:

First step, buy yourself some crayons and a canvas (any size will work, but I like the bigger, square ones myself). Depending on how you want your final canvas to look, you may need to buy a few boxes of crayons. To get all the blues/purples that I needed, I bought 3 boxes of 64 Crayola crayons.

Next step is to peel off the paper on all of the crayons. I truly believe this project works better without the wrapping, and it’ll look a lot nicer up on your wall that way too. Give yourself a good chunk of time to unwrap crayons; it does take you a bit longer than you may anticipate. One and a half Disney movies should get you through it. Or 3-4 Brothers & Sisters episodes. (The latter is my current obsession. This is my 3rd time through the series and it still is as great as the 1st time I watched it. If you haven’t watched it before, check it out. All 5 seasons are on Netflix!)

Next, heat up your hot glue gun. Also, figure out how you’d like your colors laid out on the canvas. I wanted a random assortment of blues and purples, so you’ll see I started gluing them on the canvas without much rhyme or reason. But, this could also look great with all one color merging into another (i.e. all blues…fading into all purples). Up to you!

You’ll want these glued along one side of your canvas. Try to keep them as close to one together as you can. Just a few dabs of hot glue will keep each crayon in place.

Keep going until all of your crayons are securely glued. Don’t get discouraged by the weird color of the crayons right now. It’s hard to tell what the actual colors will look like together at this point (cerulean and blue violet may appear to look the same color at this stage, but we know they do NOT when the crayon is used on paper). Have no fear.

I use my bathtub for this next part, because all the mess is then easily contained. I lined the bathtub bottom with leftover grocery bags to catch any of the waxy drips.

You’ll want to aim your canvas with the crayons dripping down. Hold the canvas from the back or the top and tip the canvas to get the type of drips you want.

I use my hairdryer on the hottest setting as well as the lowest setting. This helps keep the crayons from splattering too much.

This is after only about 10 seconds of heat:

I use the method of moving heat over all of the crayons first before focusing heat in on certain sections. This is what it looked like after this first pass over.

Then, after a good chunk of time of melting all of these crayons out, this is what it turned into.


At first, I felt that I wanted all of the white spots gone. But as I’ve left it sitting perched on my tub all week, every time I walk by or in the bathroom I took a second to think if it looked ‘done’ or not. I kind of like the imperfection, so I think I’m taking this as ‘done’. 🙂

You can go for as long as you’d like until the canvas looks like your idea of ‘finished’.

For easy cleanup, just toss your grocery bag ‘dropcloths’ into the trash. Any other stray drips that ended up hitting the tub can be picked off once the wax cools (I just filled the tub with cold water and then picked them off) and then scrub over any colored waxy stains with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for a few seconds. You won’t have a single stain on the tub that way.

This looks great anywhere you need a pop of color. I have both the green/yellow canvas and the blue/purple canvas up on either side of the mirror in my bedroom. It’s perfect.

I’ve seen other versions of this (also on pinterest) that could be fun to try as well:

From Light&Spoon

From an Etsy shop: JKCreate

From Dilly-Dali Art

May have to make a ‘V’ for the next version of this (perhaps oranges/reds/pinks?) for our living room. (Both my roommate and I have ‘V’ last names). We’ll see if I can make that happen.

I hope this inspires you to dig up your old crayon collection and get a little artsy. 🙂

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Earring Chain

6 Mar

So this was an idea I came across at some point in the last few months, I believe it was pinterest (do you sense a theme here?). Super simple idea for those of us who have a problem with having too many earrings and having no idea how to store them. I’ve tried different boxes for different types, arranging on a plate etc. None of these methods seem to work too well so I was up for trying something new…an earring chain!

I am a bit concerned that when taking a pair off, others will also fall. A few attempts I made this week while packing for work (I travel for work and usually pack 3-4 different earrings…one must accessorize each outfit!) caused some others to fall. I’ll have to see if it’s just me learning to take them off the chain, or perhaps the chain needs to be farther away from the wall to avoid that problem? I’ll continue the experiment and see.

All you need for this craft is a metal chain. I got mine at Home Depot and had the guy helping me cut off about two feet. I hung it with two nails, but I’d imagine hooks would work too. It may be more stable and allow you more room between the chain and wall for your earrings to ‘dangle’ instead of be ‘pinned’ between the wall and chain, like mine. I will forewarn, the more of a ‘U’ you have, the more the earrings will sag together. I think it’s more fun to see all the earrings you have, so aiming for more of a line vs. a ‘U’ shape should help with that.

I recommend hanging your heaviest pairs in the middle and the more dainty on the outside. This helps keep the slight ‘U’ shape while avoiding anything dainty being smashed or hidden by heavier pairs.

Good luck and happy earring hanging!

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