Personalized Ceramic Trivets

These are great and inexpensive gifts to make for any occasion.  I've made several of them to give as Christmas gifts.  It has allowed me to do more gift giving this year than usual because of the affordable nature of the tiles and paints.  You can give one of them as a gift or 2 or more as a set.  Your friends will think you bought custom tiles for them and only you will know you did it yourself and on a budget! How great is that?!?  Video Tutorial for this project.

Materials For this Project

From WalMart:

Folk Art Enamel Paint in Black and Metallic Gold

Paint Brushes

From Hardware Store:

6 X 6 Tumbled Ceramic Tiles

Cricut Cartridges:

Home Decor: Flurdls

Elegant Cakes: Font "Y" and "A"

Custom Ceramic Tile

I love giving personal hand made gifts for special occasions that look expensive but are actually very affordable.  For under $10 and with the use of stencils you can make custom home decor from your local hard ware store and your local craft store.  Listed below are the products I used and here is the Video Tutorial for this project.

From WalMart:

Folk Art Enamel Paints in - Light Blue, Black and Metallic Gold

Flat Paint Brushes

Contact Paper

From Hardware Store:

12 X 12 Ceramic Tile

Cricut Cartridges:

Home Decor: Flurdls

Elegant Cakes: BrdFlr-s "R"

Library Fonts - F2 for all other lettering

"Handmade By" Custom Product/Gift Tags

God bless my darling husband!!  He sees all of the things that I make as works of art and was very bothered by the fact that I didn't sign or label my hand made goods in some way that let people know I made them.  Due to his encouragement I decided to purchase a "Handmade By" stamp.  Off to Etsy I went to find the perfect stamp that would suit my taste and personality.  I was so pleased to find one that featured a butterfly.  The butterfly has long been a symbol I relate to.  It represents to me the struggles we go through before we emerge in beauty and take flight.  I had been using my stamp on the back of cards and other paper crafting projects and then it occurred to me that I could make tags to put on items I've crafted that couldn't be stamped, like knitted objects.  The idea of tags utilizing pretty scrapbook paper came to me so off to the computer and Cricut I went!  After a long search, I settled on a fairly simple tag design with just a little flourish to it.  These tags can be customized in so many ways to adorn any hand made object.  I hope you enjoy the tutorial.

Video Tutorial for this project.

Products Used for this Project:

From WalMart:

Colorbok 8 1/2 X 11 Card Stock - Craft

Colorbok 6X6 Paper Pack - Hootenanny

Colorbok 6X6 Paper Pack - Darling Jewel

Satin Ribbon

Elmer's Spray Adhesive

Cricut Cartridges/Images Used:

Lovely Floral: Tag1

Lovely Floral: Tag1-s

Lovely Floral: Frame4-s

From Etsy:

Handle Mounted Stamp from MyCustomStamps

From Amazon:

Ranger Archival Ink - Watering Can

Enamel Painted Dishes ~ Darby Smart ~ To DIY For ~ February 2015

I was super excited for this month's Darby Smart Box!! I had been curious about enamel paints and their durability. This project was a perfect test run to give them a try. I wasn't out very much money on it and if it didn't come out well then a ring dish that sits on my dresser and isn't used much is just fine! :) Anyway, the directions for this project on the Darby Smart website were spot on and led to great results -http://www.darbysmart.com/howto#cocoa. I think I was a bit unfair in the video about the value of this months box. I am going to upgrade it to a 5 because there was soooooo much paint left in each bottle to do lots more projects. Even if I had double coated each dish there would still have been plenty of paint left. So this was an overall 5 for me ~ pretty good!!


So here's the scoring - not that it's necessary! LOL
Value - 5
Ease of Use - 5
Instructions - 5
Finished Product - 5
Overall Score - 5

Bead & Resin Paperweight

I truly love resin casting projects.  It's so fun to see objects suspended in clear resin, completely preserved.  For this project I used:

Famowood 2 part epoxy resin
Plastic beads
Silicone Spatula/Stir Stick
Plastic Cups for mixing and measuring
Silicone Mold

Rustic Chalkboard Style Christmas Ornaments

Hello fellow crafters!  In my last blog post I described the DarbySmart.com web store and monthly subscription service in detail.  If you'd like to read more on it just click here.  This is the product I purchased in addition to my monthly subscription box as a project for my son and I to complete together.  We had a lot of fun, the project was fairly simple and the end product was super cute.  The kit cost $19 and I feel was well worth it.  You can order the kit here.  I am not being compensated in any way for demonstrating these products or directing you to them. We enjoyed it so much we are trying to get my husband to cut us some more wood slices so we can make more!  There was plenty enough Chalkboard paint left to do it and of course, plenty of inspiration!!  I listed the rating for this box as well as the link to the instructions below the video.  Hope you enjoy and Thanks for crafting with me!

The instructions as per the Darby Smart website can be found here.

Score for this project out of a possible 5 is as follows:
Value - 5
Ease of Use - 3
Instructions - 3
Finished Product - 4
Overall Score - 3.75

Hand Crochet Scarf ~ December 2014 Darby Smart To DIY For Box

Darby Smart is a craft supply website with a twist.  You can purchase individual craft supplies or you can purchase curated kits that contain all the products needed to make a DIY craft project from beginning to end.  There is a very wide range of projects to choose from in an equally wide range of prices.  Another thing I found interesting were the "Starter Kits".  Let's say your thing is wood burning or it is something you really want to try, just purchase the starter kit for $39 and you'll receive a wood burning pen, alphabet stamps and a wood coaster set to get started on.  This is a really cool concept for crafters like me who get a little overwhelmed when trying to get started in a new craft.  I don't always want to make huge investments to try a new craft out.  This is a much more affordable way to test the waters.

They also have a monthly subscription box called t"To DIY For" in which they send you all the products needed to complete that months project but the contents are a surprise until you receive them.  The monthly cost is $19 per month.  This month's To DIY For box contained a skein of bulky yarn and a small roll of a regular acrylic yarn.  The instructions on their website, which the link to is printed on the card in your box, show you how to hand crochet a scarf.  Below is the video I made taking you through the how to with pictures of the contents, screenshots and the finished product.  I am going to continue to subscribe to the monthly subscription and bring you videos each month of the projects and as often as I can I will purchase additional boxes with projects that interest me and bring you videos of those as well.  I've also come up with a scoring/rating system for these products to better help me evaluate the overall value of the product.  I listed the Rating for this project below the video.  Thank you so much for crafting with me today!

Rating: (On a scale of 1 to 5)
Value - 2
Ease of Use - 4
Instructions - 2
Finished Product - 3
Final Score - 2.75

Instructions for this project as per Darby Smart can be found here.

Beaded Book Cover - The Finished Project

Please visit my crafts channel for the full step by step of this project!

New Craft Videos - Bead Embroidery

I just completed my  very first bead project and it came out pretty darn good!!  I have a youtube video series posted today.  Here's the very first video in the series,