DIY Vase Gem Jewelry

Introducing...

The Dollar Store Challenge!!! 

This is a new segment, I am introducing to my blog because of my new found OBSESSION with the dollar store (I usually shop at my local Dollar Tree). I mean what is better than walking in a store and knowing that everything costs a mere dollar??!!!

The Dollar Store is a gold-mine of DIY and crafting inspiration/supplies, and recently perusing the aisles for potential projects has become one of my favorite pass-times!

So, on every post where my lovely "Dollar Store Challenge" logo appears (above), the majority (if not all) of the materials used in that project were purchased at the dollar store!!


For my first $ Project...

Drumroll Please...

If you are not familiar with them, vase gems are just that, small glass gems that are meant to be used in vases for decorative filler! But why limit their use to filler, when they can be used for so much more, like DIY jewelry!!

In essence, the vase gems are being used as replacement glass cabochons, which usually cost about $0.50 each (I know not a lot, BUT at the dollar store you can get a bag of about 50 vase gems for $1!) Also cabochons are not readily available at craft stores and usually need to be ordered from an online supplier.


First, I made a number of cabochons:

I used a few different techniques to make these cabs, but the sky is the limit! 

Nail-Polish: 

The top gem in the pic above was made by painting the back with two kinds of nail polish! 

Decorative Paper:

The music note gem was made by adhering the gem to a piece of patterned card stock with clear jewelry glue (see below). 

Once dry, I cut out around the gem and then sealed the back with Mod Podge to protect it! 

Glitter:

These are my Favs!! They are so easy! First dip the back of the gems into regular Elmer's glue and then sprinkle on glitter to completely cover the back. After they are dry, seal over the glitter with Mod Podge! 

Next, fashion your gems into jewelry. As you can see above I made a necklace, a ring and a pair of blue glittery earrings! 

Necklace:

To make my necklace, I used lettered cardstock and glued my gem over just the upper and lower-case E (for Elizabeth!) 

 Then I glued a flat-back loop to the back (available at Michaels) and attached a chain I already had.

:)

Ring:

For my ring I used a gold glitter gem and glued it onto a broken ring I had. 

Great way to reuse broken jewelry! You can also purchase ring blanks off of etsy or an online jewelry supplier.

Earrings: 

For the earrings, I again used glitter gems (I love this glitter!) and glued on blank studs (Michaels)! Blank studs and backs are very affordable and each package comes with about 50 of each!

I love how this jewelry came out! And the possibilities really are endless! They can be totally customized with any material or design!

 More ideas:

- Print a custom design!

- Use old maps, or book pages

- Use material or even experiment with lace!

- Try painting on a design

- Use colored gems for a funkier look! 

- Personalize with family photos

ETC, ETC! 

I can't wait to make more of these!! 

Thanks for stopping by!

-Liz :)

Placemat Crafts

I am always on the look-out for unique crafting materials so when I came across two packages of vintage placemats at a thrift store I knew it was a major score!

Here are just a few of them:

Some of them are your standard restaurant placemats with floral borders, but many are actually pretty cool! As you can see from the picture above, there are ones showing different kinds of seashells, flowers, and leaves, one showing patterns of bird migration, one depicting the solar system and another with about 20 optical illusions! And the graphics are awesome!

So I started brainstorming inventive ways to use them. So far I have thought of two (I think pretty awesome) ways...

First 

A Placemat Tray!!

This placemat features recipes for some common cocktails. Perfect for a tray!

I used a wooden tray from Michaels that I sprayed black, and then Mod Podged the placemat onto the bottom! 

Second

Placemat Notebooks!!

Back Covers!

I used super cheap composition notebooks from target for this project, total cost: $4! I simply Mod Podged the placemats onto the front and back covers and secured them on the inside of the covers like so: 

More Pics :)

I used a placemat with an Asian-inspired scene for this mini composition notebook. This is going to be a birthday gift for my Mom :)

Another mini notebook done with a leaf identification placemat!  

Full-sized Comp. Notebook with a North American Birds placemat

I made this one for my boyfriend using a Florida map placemat!

I still have a ton of these placemats left, so I'm sure I will find some other ways to use them soon! 

Thanks for stopping by!

-Liz :)

Easy DIY Lampshade

Believe it or not, I made this lampshade with only a stencil and a blue marker! 

I needed a new lampshade for an Ikea floor lamp that we just moved into our living room from our screened-in patio (the old one was paper and it was filthy from being outside!) So, I went shopping! First I checked out targets website and found a number of graphic lampshades that I loved, but when I got to the store I was disappointed to see none of the shades I loved online :(. I didn't want to go through the process of ordering online, paying for shipping, etc. for a lampshade, so it was time for plan b! I grabbed a large white shade ($20) and took it home to brainstorm! 

I knew I wanted some kind of geometric pattern, so I went straight to my stencils and pulled out this star pattern. The actual stencil has 5 stars in a square shape, but instead of just stenciling the whole shade I randomly placed my stencil and only colored in parts of the stencil (3-4 stars). To color in my stencil I used this blue marker from Recollections:

This is a blue opaque marker from Recollections that I got at Michaels.

I continued moving my stencil around the shade until I was satisfied with how it looked! 

Note: I used a LINEN shade, and although the marker did bleed a little it isn't enough to be noticeable. DO NOT use a SILK shade for this it will definitely bleed. Or you could use a paint pen or sponge on paint to avoid this! 

Close-up!

This lamp stands in my entry way right next to my sewing machine-entry table and my awesome new turquoise mirror from HomeGoods! 

Looks great on too!! 

And that's it! This took me about 20 mins total! 

Thanks for stopping by!

-Liz :)

DIY Time Zone Clocks

Here is the latest addition to my master bedroom! I decided to decorate this room with maps and eclectic items to give it a travel theme since I love to travel. One night I was laying in bed looking up at the drop ceiling leading to my master bathroom, and cue lightbulb moment as I thought, "That would be the perfect place for a clock!" Then for some strange reason my brain took that a step further and  I thought, "Or maybe 3 clocks??" And that's what sparked the idea of time zone clocks, which fits perfectly into my travel theme!

The first thing I did was buy my clocks! I got an amazing deal on these clocks from target: 

$3.99 each in stores! 

When I first decided to do this project I immediately thought global. My original plan was to set my 3 time zones to: 1. Plantation, FL (duh!) 2. Sydney, Australia and 3. Johannesburg, South Africa. And originally thats what I did. Then I had to tackle the problem of how to label/indicate the time zones on the clocks. So at first I made some decal lettering to simply spell out the names of the cities:

I apologize for the quality of this photo :( It was taken with my old phone, good riddance! 

But, after putting it up I wasn't as crazy about it as I thought I would be :(

So, I took it all down except for the center clock, and it stayed like that for about a month. 

Then cue second lightbulb!! One day when my gaze meet the singular remaining clock  I thought, "I wonder if I could take that apart". Being a 4$ plastic clock from target I figured I probably could. So I took it down, and after some struggle I got the plastic dome off the front. Ten more minutes of struggle and I had the domes and hands off of all three clocks!

This is when I decided to get more personal with these clocks. As I have mentioned before I am from Wisconsin (best state!) and I am not sure if I have mentioned, but my boyfriend is from Puerto Rico. Granted there is not much of a time difference between Wisco, FL, and PR (only 1 hr place-to-place!) BUT it is a difference, so I ran with it! 

So, (finally, I know!) Here's what I did:

1. I printed simple outlines of my three places to use as stencils: 

2. I cut out my stencils, traced them on bright blue card stock (6 pack on sale for $0.14 at target!!!) and cut out my states (you could skip this step entirely and print straight onto your card stock if you have faith in your printer to run the card stock through without jamming, clearly I have no such faith in mine!):

3. Next I Mod Podged the states onto my clocks. Florida was the easiest because it just so happens the state of FL is the perfect shape to fit on a clock face, who knew?! For the other two states I ended up having to take the battery pack off of the back so the middle part of the clock that holds the hands wasn't in the way:

Then I was able to glue my paper flat and cut out the center hole with my Xacto knife. 

4. Last, I reassembled my clocks, and set the times!!

I love the pop of color the clocks add to this area of the room :)

Close-up of the best one :)

Florida and Puerto Rico don't look too shabby either!

I love how these turned out! And the best part is the whole project cost only $12.14!! 

Make It Your Own:

This idea could be customized to any state, country or city. In the case of a city, a cut-out could be made of the country or continent where it is located and then a star or another marker placed where the city is. 

Or, instead of a silhouette, a city or city code could be spelled out on the clock-face. 

The possibilities are endless!!  

Thanks for stopping by, 

-Liz :)

Simple Stone Plant Labels

Last week I posted about my new container gardens, which are growing great by the way! Yayy! But in my herb garden I still had the herb labels that come with the plants, which although informative are not super aesthetically pleasing! So, the obvious answer of course was to d.i.y. some! I have seen a number of these done before on other blogs and pinterest, using everything from popsicle sticks to spoons, but I wanted to keep mine more natural so I decided to use...

Rocks!!!

It doesn't get much simpler than this! And in terms of $$, well rocks are free!!!

All you need besides your rocks is a paint pen of any color. I like the look of dark rocks with white lettering but you could do any color you want!

If you are worried about the paint washing off from watering, just give them a quick spray with clear sealant or brush a little outdoor Mod Podge over the writing once dry.

Rosemary :)

I used a larger rock I found right outside my door to make a cute label for my succulent garden as well :)

Even collecting the rocks was fun! Would be a great activity for children as well, take them on a nature walk/scavenger hunt and have them help you find some pretty, smooth rocks! :) Or just take a leisurely walk yourself and don't forget to smell those roses!!

Thanks for stopping by

-Liz :)

Lovely Lacey Wall Art

I have previously mentioned my struggle with my master bathroom. This was the one room in my apartment that i just could not seem to develop a clear concept or even color scheme to tie the room together. I think I considered just about every color to "pop" off my black and gray chevron shower curtain from yellows and oranges to blues and greens, I even considered going totally girly despite my boyfriend's protests to the land of purples and pinks!

And then I got an idea! The lace design of the washi tape I used on my medicine cabinet (see here), inspired me to use more lace! Check it out:

By painting the lace (see below), I was able to set a color scheme (blues and greens win!) while keeping it modern and not too girly!!

So for anyone out there who likes my lacey wall art and wants to know how to recreate it, heres how i did it:

1) First I bought some lace! I got mine from Joann's where you can buy lace by the yard. I got 1/2 yard of each kind of lace (each cost between $1.99-$2.99/yd). My total cost for lace was only $5!!

2) Next I cut my lace to size. I knew I wanted to mat it to 8x10" so I cut my pieces to about 9" to have a little wiggle room.

3) Next I painted my lace using a pouncer to dab on the paint like so:

4) Once all my pieces were painted I arranged them on a piece of white cover stock and secured the ends with a little double-stick tape

5) Last I got a pre-matted white-on-white frame from target ($17), matted and framed my artwork and voila!

Close- up :)

Looks great with my towels too! lol

Bathroom panorama! Love how the colors pop off the white-on-white frame 

Now I have unique statement piece to build this room off of :) And for less than $25!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Liz :)

Washi Tape Medicine Cabinet

Hey!

So the only room left in my apartment that is still pretty much untouched save for a couple small projects that I have already featured on this blog, (DIY Decals and Canvas Quote Tutorial) is my master bathroom (pretty much a standard size bathroom but it is "en suite" so thats pretty fancy!). Lately, I have been kind of obsessed with washi tape so this morning while brushing my teeth (inspiration strikes at the strangest times, am I right?) I got and idea!

To the right of the mirror above the sink in my bathroom is a medicine cabinet that isn't too bad on a scale from horrible to normal medicine cabinets. Instead of the awful mirror or laminate door it has a white shutter looking door, and this is what got me thinking! Why not add just a little something to take this medicine cabinet from standard to greatness, as far as medicine cabinets are concerned!

So here it is:

:)!

Wider angle for the full effect! And sweet reflection!

So as you can see I took advantage of the "shutter-like" door and striped it with this awesome craft tape from recollections that looks like black lace :). Sorry I forgot to take a before picture, but I promise this is a great improvement!!

If you are wondering how I did it, its so simple!!

First I just ripped off strips of tape slightly bigger than my slats and adhered them:

Then after I got all the pieces on, I got my Xacto knife and trimmed the edges like so:

And then Voila!! Super easy!! And great for renters like me, it will stay put but when its time to take it off, the tape isn't so adhesive that it will remove the finish!

Close-up of this awesome washi tape! Recollections brand, I got it at Michaels :)

Hope you enjoy!! Go and see what you can washi-fy! 

-Liz :)

Road Trip!

Broadcasting live from the open road! I'm currently on a family road trip through the Midwest from Iowa to South Dakota to Minnesota back up to Northern Wisconsin! So look forward to some camping crafts and road trip finds!