Custom Spice Jars Make You The Envy of All Your Friends!

One day while getting my hair cut my hair dresser and I were discussing our mutual love of Bulk Barn and she was telling me that she tossed her mis-matched spice jars, bought all new ones from the dollar store and filled them with cheap bulk spices, saving a fortune, and ending up with cute matching spice jars.  Clever girl.  So naturally when I moved out on my own and needed ALL new spices, I did the same....but craftier!

Step 1: Go to the dollarstore and find your GLASS spice jars... also, set up little backgrounds using other dollarstore items to take nicer looking pictures and get weird looks from people passing by....

I liked these, but they didn't have "shaker lids"

These were super cheap at 3/$1 but I was worried the white lids would get dirty really quick - like curried and gross.

I ended up going with these because they had 3 different hole sizes and looked pretty snazzy!

Step 2: Buy 20 of them.  Find out that the guy at the till has trouble multiplying 4x5 to get 20 and counts them all one by one.  (clearly the education system has failed somewhere...)

Step 3: I washed them.  And the realized I would need to wash them again after etching... so this step is really not necessary.

Step 4: Figure out what spices you want and create your Silhouette file(s).

Step 5: Cut out your vinyl labels & attach to jars.

Step 6: Apply etching cream according to directions.

Step 7: Remove etching cream and labels. Wash the spice jars...again.

Step 8: Buy said spices at Bulk Barn (or wherever you like really)

Step 9: Fill spice jars and take many many photos with poor lighting!

Step 10: Finally put spice jars away in their home.

Oh yeah, and Step 11: do a happy dance because you spent:

$25 spice jars

~$20 on spices!

Boo-yeah! 

 

http://www.cleanandscentsible.com/2013/08/the-inspiration-exchange-no-12.html

Movember crafts {Vinyl Mo's}

The first Mo craft I bring you as part of Movember is the vinyl mustache.

I simply found a set of mustaches in the Silhouette online store and cut them out of my black adhesive vinyl.

They're super fun...

A Mo for your morning coffee

or how about on the mirror?

(Yes, we did recently reno the bathroom - more on that hopefully soon!!)

There ya have it folks!  A super simple fun mustache craft that only takes a couple minutes.  

More funny vinyl "families"

This one was a present for my boss's 30th birthday.  He's the one who I made this for (for his girlfriend for Christmas)

The tall guy on the left is meant to be my boss, I'm the girl, and the guy next to me is a co-worker who works closely with us, but is technically supervised by someone else.  

Now before you go thinking my boss is a big jerk, let me explain.  I'm an electrical engineer, and so a large part of my job is creating drawings for my designs in AutoCad (I'm sounding really cool now, huh?)  As part of the drawing control procedure, someone else has to officially check the drawing (my boss).  Last summer, my boss was out of the office, and I was going through my drawings that he'd checked and on one of them I missed something really obvious and written on the page in big red letters was "DO BETTER!"  I BURST OUT LAUGHING.  I also realized that that's kinda my boss's catch phrase.  So "Do better" has kinda become a joke around the office.  

One of the best things about this - it cost me nothing.


I figure this probably isn't going to be the last twisted vinyl family I make.  And yes, I would take orders.  

     http://www.creatingreallyawesomefreethings.com/

Silhouette Vinyl Family

This was a special project I was commissioned to make by my boss for his girlfriend for Christmas.

(in the end it was in a black frame, but I liked the red better, and it's my blog, so that's what I'm posting!)

Most of us at work think these families on cars are pretty ridiculous, so the original idea was just the thought bubble on the right.  But then my boss decided that if he went with that, he might be single.  :P  So then the idea was to do all 3 scenarios, but we ran into "logistical" problems when trying to figure out how to frame it.  I did have some 12x12 scrapbook frames kicking around, so I suggested the thought bubbles, which he really liked, and voila!  


His girlfriend loved it...word has it she cried! 


        

Thank You Cards

Alright, so some of you may have noticed that I have seemingly fallen off the planet lately, and in some ways it feels like I have.  My dad's been in the hospital for the last 5 weeks, about 3 of those were in the Intensive Care Unit.  My dad is doing better, but it is still a long and uncertain road to travel.  Things are somewhat getting back to normal, but still pretty hectic!

My family and I have been completely floored by how amazing the ICU staff have been.  A few years ago my grandma was in ICU at a different hospital in the city, and it was a very different atmosphere than this time.  The staff caring for my dad have been amazing.  My sister and I made cards for dad's nurses, and some of the other staff who were fantastic.

Here are the ones I made.  A couple of them are from my Pinterest card inspiration board.

Inspired by this card

This one is created with the scraps from that Bo Bunny Layout I did at Think Pink 

This card inspired by this one

There just aren't words to fully thank the incredible nurses who took excellent care of my dad, but I hope that they enjoy these cards!  Nurses are often overworked and under appreciated, and it's definitely something that I wouldn't be able to do, and it makes me appreciate them that much more!

Don't forget to thank people who are important to you!!


     

Another Baby Card

This one was a "copy" of this card I found on pinterest

I really like the colors used and all the layers (I love cards that use lots of paper... sometimes I find it hard to use my "expensive" embellishments on things I'm giving away! )

Here's my version:

I finished it at 10 PM and it was being given away the next day, so I apologize for the crappy lighting!

I made my card longer because this was for a girl my mom works with and it was to be from their whole office, so I made it bigger so that people had more room to sign.

My color inspiration came from the yellow patterned paper. 

Cards!!

I love this one! I got the idea from here:

http://pinterest.com/pin/89571524/

The owl stamp and Celebrate stamps are from the $1.50 bin at Michaels.  I modified the Celebrate stamp from saying "woo hoo" to "woo hoot" Yup. I think I'm clever!

Adam and I have a lot of weddings coming up, so I thought I would do up some wedding-type cards.

This card was inspired by this one:

http://pinterest.com/pin/62466763/

I put this vellum sentiment on the inside:

Help & Advice Needed! Aka more tile coasters

My obsession with tile coasters continues with this grey set.  The plan was to use these at work and continue decorating my cubicle

This time I wanted to use my silhouette! I JUST learned how to use the trace function and it blew my mind a little!  (WHA?! You mean I can cut out any image I want?!)

I found a quatrefoil design I liked and cut it out of white vinyl to fit my coaster.

(hard to see here, but...)

(a little easier to see once I removed the stuff I didn't want)

Using transfer paper I stuck it to my coaster

And then removed the transfer paper leaving my nice little stencil

I then painted it in with yellow acrylic.

The problems began when I started taking off the vinyl.

It looked great, but the paint didn't want to stick to the coaster.  :(

I'm not sure what to do with this now.

Do I:
1) Continue on, and then put a million coats of sealer on it and pray it turns out
2) Peel off everything including the existing paint and....
        2a) Spray the coaster with some medium so that the paint will adhere to it and start over
        2b) Try again with spray paint instead of acrylic
3) Ditch the idea all together because I'm considering going for a green/white/zen kinda feel for my desk


Let me know what you think.  I have one half finished coaster sitting here and it's driving me nuts!