Toolbox Rescue!

When my dad passed away I kept a fair bit of his stuff that was either overly sentimental or useful.  Falling into the latter category was his tool box.

It however did not meet my standards for aesthetics - especially if I was going to move it to my new condo!  I had to give it a bit of a makeover!

To show you where I started, let's take a look at the original, shall we?

Not so pretty.  Very orange, very stickered!

This was my childhood contribution I'm pretty sure!  Hahahaha.

STEP 1: REMOVE THE STICKERS

When I started, I just started peeling them off.  This wasn't the best idea because they left the glue behind and I spent a lot of time goo-gone-ing them.

When I got to the really stubborn ones, I googled some solutions.  What worked for me was to heat them up with a hair dryer.  They came off really easily, glue and all.  I wished I would have done that with all of them from the beginning.

Starting to look better already!!

STEP 2: PREP

All I did was give it a good wash/wipe down with soap and water and tape off the hardware.

STEP 3: PAINT

I gave it about 2-3 coats of spray paint.  I think this is what I used (is it terrible I can't remember?!)

I also gave the inside tray a quick coat to make it all shiny and new too!

And there you have it! All ready to use in my new place!!


   
       

 

$5 of Decorating Fun

Once every year I get to remind my boss how "old" he is (old in quotation marks because he's only 4 years older than I am, and neither of us are actually old) I like to do this by decorating his cubicle for his birthday. 

This year I spent a total of $5 at the dollar store, and produced fairly good results - and that included a card!

This banner was left over from last year...but you can't go wrong with one of these!

I decided against the Disney Princess theme and went with something slightly less emasculating and less obnoxious - hockey theme!

I found a package of Canadian hockey team napkins - perfect!

I also picked up some streamers, balloons and tissue paper!  Streamers and balloons are pretty obvious as to what to do with them, but the tissue paper I took one sheet at a time and grabbed it by the middle and stuck it in random crevices...like between his monitors.

So for not very much money, I was able to decorate the cubicle and still have plenty left over! 

Work Anniversary Cake

This year was my company's 4th anniversary.  It happens to fall on Valentines day, so the girls at the office decided to have a bit of a party/BBQ.

I can't turn down the opportunity to make desserts, so I offered to make a cake!

Since I pinned these cute little discs here, I wanted to make some.

Source: somewhatsimple.com via Jill on Pinterest

I soon discovered that

1) I was too lazy to do the whole sugar disc thing

2) I really didn't want to buy food markers

For the cake, my original idea was to make a stencil of our logo, and then use those spray cans to "paint" it on fondant.  As I read more reviews about the sprays, the less I wanted to use them (apparently the black is extra terrible!)

I did however discover that you can 'paint' fondant with gel colors mixed with a little vodka.  This sounded like a good plan seeing as how

1) I have some gel colors

2) I will use gel colors again

3) Gel colors are cheap

WIN.

So that's what I did.

As to solve my lazy problem...  I was searching for my piping bags, and what do I find?! White candy melts. "Hmmm" she things "these are about the right size and colour..."

I outlined them with a fine paint brush first...

Then I filled them in with colour

The ended up looking pretty good.

Each cupcake had a green liner (should have doubled them up so that they actually looked green!), white buttercream pipped on with a large tip, one candy disc with logo, and a sprinkle of course sugar (BULK BARN!!) for some sparkle!

The cake I just painted with gel colours in a similar fashion!  I did have a printed copy of what I wanted to put on it, and traced it out with a toothpick first.  Luckily my company has a really easy logo!

Painting with gel colours was fun and SUPER easy.  I would most definitely do it again, and recommend it to anyone looking for a new way to get an image on a cake!

ReStore Fun

The other day I went to our local ReStore because I was actually looking for a light fixture for the hallway, but had fun just wandering around.

If you've never been to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore I highly recommend it.  It's a crafter's dream!

This is what I was actually looking for:

A light like this.  Unfortunately these ones were black, and I was hoping for brushed nickel.  I find that at our ReStore, because there's so much construction in our city, often you can find brand new items in boxes that were left over from condo developments, etc.

All of these get me excited for summer...

I want to put those flameless tea lights under them in the garden!

Source: theartofdoingstuff.com via Jill on Pinterest

Look at this little cupboard door

I would want to make him into something like this Flamingo Toes

File cabinets anyone?!

Look at all those fun colours!!

Definitely the place to pick up random tiles for cheap...

I want to do some sort of tiling project for outdoors!

There's also all sorts of paint

I find that my Home Depot doesn't have much for mis-tints, so this place would probably be a better bet for me!

They also have some furniture sometimes.  Check out these pieces screaming for a little love:

Sharpie Mugs

For Christmas I wanted to give the two girls in the accounting/admin department a little something because I really like them, and the three of us are the only females in the office.  I decided to make them custom monogram mugs filled with loose tea from Bulk Barn (quite possibly my favorite place on the planet!)

Now I know there are a lot of tutorials for this all over the internet.  I used this one: http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/06/his-her-sharpie-mug-diy.html 

I decided to do each of their first initials.  I decided to make Gwen's Irish-esque and Monique's French-ish.

Here was my first attempt at Gwen's:

I really didn't like how it was turning out, so here's a trick you might not have known: rubbing alcohol takes permanent marker off of hard surfaces!

Here I just put some on a cotton ball and wiped off the whole design and started over again!

Same thing happened with Monique's mug! lol  Another tip is that you can put rubbing alcohol on a q-tip and use it to clean up parts of your design!

Finished:

 

     

Wallpaper Before & After

Here's the final pictures of our painted kitchen.  We still intend to renovate the kitchen, but event the fresh paint is a huge improvement!

To see the in progress shots, click here.




























The kitchen still has a long way to go, but this made a huge difference!