Adventures in DIY: Personalized Pyrex Dishware

My cousin in Oregon is getting married next month! Her bridal shower was Saturday, and while my mom, sister and I could not attend the out-of-state celebration we wanted to send her something special.  After seeing a few ideas on Pinterest, I thought it would be cool to send her a personalized bridal shower gift.

As much as we love desserts and baking in our family, we decided a personalized Pyrex dish would be just the right thing. Here's how I did it:

Using my Silhouette Cameo, I made vinyl negatives of cousin's new last name with a few cute hearts to etch on the sides of the dish, and I made a vinyl negative of these cute lovey owls on a tree for the bottom of the dish!

I simply placed the vinyl negatives directly onto the Pyrex, paying close attention to really making sure it was stuck on there pretty well. Just to be safe, all  of our stencils were placed on the outside of the dish, so no foodstuffs would touch the etched areas.

The Silhouette store sells etchAll etching creme to use for an etching craft, but I got my Armour Etch, at our local Michael's with my 40% off coupon.

Following the directions on the bottle of the Armour Etch, I donned thick protective gloves, and applied the etching creme directly onto the Pyrex dish. (We were a little worried as the bottle does say that the creme doesn't work with all Pyrex dishware.) I applied it with a Q-tip because I was anxious and didn't want to go get a paint brush. I recommend you use a paint brush. :) We let the mixture sit for a few minutes before we wiped most of it off with a paper towel. Then we washed the glass dish thoroughly.

It turned out great!  (Sorry the pictures are not great, I was a little excited.) There are a few imperfections, but I consider that to be part of the charm. 

We added a cute oven glove, and a few other baking utensils, and mailed it off in style. A classy gift for a beautiful bride-to-be.

Adventures in DIY: Personalized Picnic Cooler

One of the coolest wedding gifts we received was a picnic cooler filled with goodies. Not only did it have a nice bottle of wine, and tasty snacks, but the cooler itself has a zipper pouch with service for two. I love it! My mom loves it, too, which is why she asked for one for her birthday.

Photo from Overstock.com 

I searched online for a good deal, and found a reasonably priced picnic cooler with service for four from Overstock.com. This one even had a wheelie stand that would allow you to roll your cooler around! I figured this was perfect for my parents to take with them on their boating adventures.

The picnic basket itself is awesome, but a little nondescript, so I wanted to spruce it up a little with some personalization.

Having just opened the box to my new Silhouette Cameo, I didn't have a ton of materials to work with. I used my machine to cut an encircled monogram letter out of vinyl. I had no clue if using vinyl as a painting stencil on this canvas would work or not, but I decided to give it a try. (Note the use of blue tape as transfer paper, as I didn't have any yet!)  I placed the negative space vinyl directly onto the canvas of the picnic cooler and hoped for the best. 

The colors featured on the plates and napkins are a cute tan plaid, with a stripe of hot pink. Since this was my Mom's cooler, I decided to make the monogram pink. (Plus it was one of four colors I could actually find!) Using run-of-the-mill acrylic paint, I used a sponge brush to fill in the stencil. I was a little worried that the paint was bleeding past the stencil, but decided just to keep painting and hope for the best. I put nearly four coats of pink on, using a hair dryer to speed up the process. (I am sorry, but I am pretty impatient.)

Keeping my fingers crossed for fairly clean edges, I pulled the stencil off. I could not have been more happy with the results. :) The paint was not quite as bright as I would have hoped, but it almost looked intentionally washed out. I was so excited!

The letter W is cool, but I thought it would be even cooler to add an overlay. So I went to my Silhouette Cameo and made an additional stencil that I simply laid right on top of the monogram. Again, I applied several letters of paint, drying them impatiently with a hair dryer between each coat. I wanted the next layer to really stand out, so I used white. I knew I would need several coats, and I applied the paint liberally. After the white was bright (and dry!) I simply took off the stencil — and voilà!

An awesomely personalized picnic cooler filled with my mom's favorite treats and goodies.

Adventures in DIY: Wedding Vow Gallery Wrapped Photo

I saw the coolest thing on Pinterest. The Etsy store, Geezee'sCustomCanvas takes photos, adds words (like your wedding vows, or the lyrics to your first dance) and prints it out onto a gallery wrapped canvas. I thought it was so cool. I wanted one. But I wanted to make it myself. :) To start the project, I found a Groupon for a great discount on a gallery wrapped photo from Picture It On Canvas. (Costco often has photo center coupons for the same service.)

Being cheap, and having a husband that loves open source software, I decided to use the free software GIMP. Photoshop would work awesomely, too, but like I said... I am cheap.

I started out by choosing the photo I wanted to add words to, and importing it into GIMP making sure to use a layout equivalent to the size of gallery wrapped photo I was going to buy. Of course, I had to pick a smoochy picture.

My husband I decided that we wanted the quote to be short and sweet, so we decided to use our wedding vows. Being extra-nerdy, I also wanted to use the fonts we chose for the wedding invitations, programs and thank you cards. I added a text box with our vows written in the more basic sans-serif font (Futura Light). I deleted a few words I wanted to emphasize and replaced the characters with spaces.

After making sure I had plenty of room for the emphasized words, I used our more fancy serif font (Citadel Script) to add our keywords of love, joy, grow and life. Each word was a different text box, in a different layer. I carefully placed each word.

Once I was happy with the placement of the words, I simply cropped it to the desired size, flattened the image and uploaded it to Picture It On Canvas. There, I had the photo gallery wrapped using a special edging that just stretched out the sides, as I used a photo that didn't leave extra room around the edges. It worked perfectly. Less than a week later my new gallery wrapped photo was happily hanging in the center of my gallery wall! 

Adventures in Crafting: A New Toy for Kristina

It. Has. Arrived.

My Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting tool was dropped off by the super awesome FedEx people today!

For my first project, I decided to make a vinyl sticker for my laptop. (My sister and I have the exact same computer, so I thought an identifying sticker would be nice.)

Things I have learned today:

• This thing is AWE-SOME. 
• Make sure the little blue lever is down before trying to cut. 
• Did I mention it is awesome? 
• Don't try and recut vinyl that you already messed up.
• Hey, I should tell you this thing is awesome. 
• Don't make something with super intricate cuts for your first project. Ease into it.
• Oh, yeah. The finished result? Awesome. ♥ 

My experience in Instagram Photos....

Adventures in Homeownership: Closet Transformation

Compared to many girls, my shoe collection really isn't that bad. But, I rarely wear what I do have because they were stuck in boxes and not visible. My goal was to change that.

We have a small closet in our master bedroom that I really wanted to use as a shoe and purse display. So for the past few days, I have gotten to work on my closet transformation.  

This is what I started with... 

Wanting something to diplay my shoes, I decided to go with a closetmaid 15-cubby organizer. Okay, two. I bought mine at my local Target, but you can get it just about anywhere. They were pretty easy to put together, but it did go much faster with two people. 

Okay, fine 30 cubbies turned out to be... well, not quite enough. So while browsing in Home Depot, I bought two closetmaid 24-inch horizontal organizers. They are just baby book shelves. Since all of the closetmaid products are designed to fit together, I was able to stack all four products together into one tower of shoe fabulousness. (Cue angelic musical flourish.)

But I still needed to display my purse collection. Oh, my purse collection. Sigh. I do love them, and they are so pretty, I wanted to display them so I bask in their beauty every time I opened the closet door. At first I thought I would just buy a few 3M hooks -- that would totally work. But it wasn't pretty enough. Then I had an epiphany. Currently, I hang my purse from my dresser drawer knob*, just to keep it out of the way. What if I used drawer pulls as hangers!?!? I have seen them used on Pinterest to hang frames, why not purses! Or course, all of the pins I could find put the knob onto a wooden board, and put those on the wall. I wanted the knobs to go directly into the wall. So, with a little ingenuity, we went to work. For more on how I did that... go here! 

After a little hard work, we put up four drawer pulls/knobs and now my pretty little closet features four of my purses. 

And just for a little more pizazz, here is a before and after photo:

*Okay -- Time for a poll! You know the little thingys that are an drawers or cabinets, and you pull them to get the drawer or cabinet open? What do you call them? Drawer pulls? Knobs? Please tell me! (My husband and I disagree as to the proper terminology.) Your comment/vote will be greatly appreciated!

Adventures in DIY: Drawer Pulls/Knobs as Purse Hangers

Desperately wanting to display my purse collection in my closet, I wanted a way to hang them directly on the wall. I could have used those resticky 3M hooky-thingys. I could have used hooks. But no. I wanted drawer pulls. Knobs. Whatever you call them, that is what I wanted. Up to this point, I saw several pins and posts of people using them as coat racks, and necklace holders. In each of those cases, the pulls/knobs were first mounted to a board and that board was displayed on the wall. I wanted my pulls/knobs protruding straight from my wall! So with a little ingenuity, a little bit of sweat equity, I got my purse hangers! 

Materials Needed:

Power Drill

Hacksaw (Or a Dremel tool if you are cool enough to have one.) 

Drawer Pulls/Knobs

Wall Anchors

We started out by using the hacksaw to hack off the head of the screws that came with my drawer pulls/knobs. If you have one of those super cool dremmel tools that can cut the head off the screw, well that would be awesome. But we had to make do with a hacksaw. It worked, it just took a while. Whereas I just held the screw with my hands and hacked, my husband found it easier to hold the screw with some pliers while hacking.

After beheading the screws, we drilled holes in the wall to hold our wall anchors, appropriate to the size of the wall anchor. Note: Be sure to purchase wall anchors that fit properly with the screws from the drawer pull/knob package. 

After drilling, we hammered in the wall anchor. 

Screwing the headless screw into the drawer pull/knob first, we then screwed that directly into the wall anchor. 

And the finished project made my heart happy. 

I also tried something new and linked this project to Hookin Up with HOH.

Adventures in DIY: Using Ribbons to Hang Photo Frames

I got this idea from a friend of mine, while on a tour of her home before Bunco. I thought I absolutely had to do this with my wedding photos! I posted a picture of the finished project on my Facebook page, and some friends suggested I add it to Pinterest. But before doing that, I realized that I get super frustrated when people post things on Pinterest, with no link to directions on how to DIY! So, here are the steps I took to make this cute little frame display.


Materials Needed:

• Curtain Rod    And its required accessories; we used a power drill, because my husband likes power tools
• Three frames     I chose 8x10 frames that I got on clearance at TJ Maxx, with photos from our wedding
• Sturdy Ribbon
      I used three different colors of 2" grosgrain ribbon I had left over from the wedding. 
• A staple gun and staples

First, I enlisted the help of my husband to put up the curtain rod. He loves using power tools! The curtain rod we used was a random rod we used at the old house that would have been on the garage sale list if it weren't for this project. We decided that we wanted the rod to be pretty high up on the wall, so that the finished project would take up the majority of the wall. He used dry wall screws, so that the curtain rod could hold the weight of three fairly large and heavy wood frames. 


While he did that, I measured the distance from the curtain rod to the top of the headboard and cut six lengths of ribbon (two of each color) in double the measured length. Be sure to put your pictures in the frame first, as depending on how much you like to staple things, it might be difficult to change the photos out. I used several staples to secure the ribbon to the frame, on both the top and bottom edges. 

After that, I lined up the frames in the order I wanted them hanging, and we slid the curtain rod through the loop of the ribbon. I also had some leftover white pomander bouquet balls from the wedding, so I slid one of those through, between each frame. My handy tall husband simply held the curtain rod level and lifted it into the wall brackets. And we were done!

I think it turned out quite pretty! The possibilities are endless! Have fun! ♥

Oh, hey, I also linked up to...