Category: craft

Yay! It’s February! I get to decorate for not one, but two holidays this month – Valentine’s Day, and Mardi Gras, which goes up right when Valentine’s Day stuff comes down!

The first thing I’ve done for Valentine’s Day is a ‘I Love You’ banner. It’s very simple, and looks pretty nice!

Materials:
I used scrapbook paper to cut the hearts out – I used a red & white checked pattern. To stencil the letters, I used a paper from Thailand that had little strings running through it (I know there’s a name for that, but I don’t know enough about paper to know what to call it!) and isn’t quite 100% opaque. In total, use one sheet of scrapbook paper for each letter and space (so for ‘I Love You’, I needed ten pages, plus a couple extra in case I made a mistake) and half that for the letters and spaces of the contrasting color, because you can do multiple letters on one sheet of paper.

Also:
Letter Stencils (or if you’re really good, you can just do this freehand)
Stencil paint (I used white)
Stencil brush
Decorative Scissors (these have a little scallop edge. You could use a straight scissor, too, though)
Mod Podge (matte or glossy – I used matte for this)
A cheapy black foam brush to mod-podge with
Ribbon to hang the banner with
A hole punch, or improvise carefully with a pen

Directions:

First, I cut the hearts out of the checkered paper freehand.

(Quick note – I wanted to have a heart space between each of the words, so out of the solid red paper, I freehand cut a small heart shape. You can see those in the last banner pic below.)

Next, I cut rectangles of the red paper to stencil my letters on. I just laid the stencil on top of the paper:

And dabbed the stencil paint on with the brush in an up & down motion. This keeps the paint from trying to get underneath the stencil, and it has a nice look to it once you lift the stencil. It looks a little more natural than ‘painted on’:

I used my scallop scissors to cut down the original letter paper once the stenciling was done. Next, I just glued the letter paper onto the heart with some Mod-Podge, then I Mod-Podged the entire front of the heart. This makes certain that the letter stays in place:

I gave everything a few hours to dry (although it’s mostly dry in about 15 minutes), then punched a hole through the middle of the top of each heart to make a place for the ribbon. The very easiest way to do this is to fold the heart in half length-wise so you know the hole will line up. Then I just strung my ribbon through each of the holes:

And attached it to the mantle (all cleaned off, ready for more decorations!):

I’ve seen the promotions for the new Martha Stewart dvds, so I added them to my Netflix queue. The first one I got was ‘Martha Stewart Homemade Holidays’ which is geared for Christmas and Chanukah (I know, I’m a little late!).

The dvd has seven main categories – Christmas supper, baking recipes, decorating ideas, ornaments, a Chanukah section, and sections for homemade gifts and gift wrapping.

The Chanukah section has three things: a gelt bag, a recipe for her latkes, and Claudia Roden making zalabia. The handmade gifts section has five different projects: a velvet frame, polar fleece hats (which are *so* cute), a button necklace (which I made – pics from that project below), a magnetic chalkboard, and a candy wreath teacher’s gift.

The ‘special features’ on the dvd are just links to direct your internet browser to the page on the MS website where they have instructions for the different projects – and I *think* that these projects are maybe all from the older Martha Stewart Living shows…so it’s not entirely new content (so I’m glad I put these on my Netflix queue rather than buying them).

The button necklace that’s demonstrated on the dvd is so pretty…I went to Hancock Fabrics (for the buttons, but I found these pretty shell-like pieces and used those instead) and Hobby Lobby for the supplies.

The supplies for the necklace are: nylon beading string, pretty buttons or shells with holes (around 60-80), crimp beads, clasp closure, jump rings, and needle-nose pliers.

Note: this is my first time making a necklace like this…the directions for the button necklace can be found at the Martha Stewart site here, so if you like the way this turned out and want to try it yourself, definitely print out and go by their directions as well – mine *so* isn’t perfect – but I don’t think anybody would ever know! hahaha!

First, cut the beading string into five strings that are at least 40″ in length (I liked 44″ better).
Fold each of the strings in half, and at about 2″ from each string’s end, tie a knot:

Slip a button or shell down one of the strings, and tie a knot…you want these knots to be about 1″ apart.

Keep slipping buttons/shells and tying knots until you get until about 2″ from the other end of the strings, and make one final knot. Now, do this same thing to the other four strands (you don’t have to do five strands – just however many you think you’ll like best).

Grasp the ends of the five finished lines and crimp them with your crimp bead using the pliers. Do the same thing to the other side. I added a jumpring to both ends, then added the closure to one of them. All done!

Tonight I was just *so* in the mood to make something with Sculpey. My Tivo had recorded the DIY Network show “Jewelry Making with Jackie Guerra” – and oday’s episode had three people on who made jewelry with Sculpey clay. One lady made these really pretty flowers with Sculpey, and as she was describing some of her techniques, I was thinking about how I could use some of her ideas to make my favorite sushi roll – the bagel roll – out of Sculpey and turn it into a magnet.

Here’s how I made the Sculpey sushi magnets:

(above:) To get the color of the salmon, I just took mostly red, some yellow, and some orange Sculpey, and mixed the colors together in my hands, then ran them through the manual pasta machine several times. Once the color was right, I shaped it into a somewhat square shape.

(above:) I made several incisions all the way through the square with my craft clay razor and inserted pieces of white sculpey that had been conditioned in the pasta machine between each section (I made six or seven cuts total, so finished it would mimic the look of salmon). Once that was done, I cut all sides of the salmon piece so that each side was neat. I then rolled that between my hands to make it a longer piece.

(above:) I’ve taken the salmon piece, and next to it I’ve put just a solid white ‘snake’ of pure white (to mimic the cream cheese) about the same length as the salmon piece. Around all this, I’ve wrapped a sheet of black Sculpey.

(above:) I rolled this all together to get it to be longer.

(above:) I wrapped a piece of transparent Sculpey around that, rolled it a little more, then cut off just the very tip of each end to make a neat surface.

(above:) The transparent Sculpey is a very good color for the rice, but I wanted the sushi pieces to have the texture of rice, too. I just took a thin sheet of transparent that I had conditioned in the pasta machine, and pinched off tiny little pieces, rolled them between my fingers, and made tiny rice shapes. I rolled the sushi through my little scattering of rice a few times and filled in any empty spots too.

(above:) Once all that was done, I just took my craft clay razor and cut six even slices.

(above:) Here they are, ready to be set in the oven.

(above:) These went in the oven at 275*, and were done in about 18 minutes.

(above:) They only take a little while to cool off. Once they were cool, I glued a magnet onto one side of each of the sushi pieces with my hot glue gun.

(above:) All done! They’re so neat – Av was super-impressed and thought that they really did resemble bagel rolls without me even telling him what I was trying to do! I’ve got them on my refrigerator now, and I’ll probably give a couple of them away to friends as tiny little no-special-occasion surprises.

My friend Leslie and I had the best time doing these paint-it-yourself pottery pieces yesterday! I chose this cupcake plate, and Leslie did the huge soup cup with these neat dots all over. It was so much fun! We get to pick them up late next week – I can’t wait to see how they’ll turn out!

I’ve always thought about how much fun it would be to own a paint-your-own pottery shop…Leslie and I were talking about it, and she said what would make it really neat would be to make it a place where you could do all kinds of crafts – not just pottery or mosaics, but other things like soap-making, candle-making, beading, scrapbooking, knitting, crocheting, etc. That is a *great* idea…I can just see it – a huge open space with lots of worktables, then some smaller spaces, where people could come in and lounge around on a couch and work on their knitting projects.

…maybe a daycare area so people could bring their kids…

*So* neat! I think she came up with an awesome idea! Now all we have to do is actually do it! hehehehehe! Seriously, though…hmmm…..

This Chanukah, I really wanted to try making my own beeswax candles for the menorahs. We have some really pretty dipped wax candles, but beeswax is a little different because it burns longer than other similarly-sized candles, it doesn’t put off any smoke, and it doesn’t drip wax – which is a big advantage, I think.

Hobby Lobby had sheets of beeswax – they were selling two sheets of 8″x16-1/2″ sheets per pack. Some wick was included in the pack, but I went ahead and bought more to make certain I had enough for the project (the wick labels will indicate what size is best).

(Below:) Here’s what I used: a menorah to make sure I was making the candles the correct thickness (but beeswax is so forgiving…you can just pinch it to make it fit if it isn’t exact the first time), the beeswax, a hairdryer (to make the wax pliable – but it really wasn’t necessary), scissors to cut the wax, wick, and an old Martha Stewart magazine that gave dimensions to cut the wax sheets. I cut the wax into 4″x2″ sheets and was able to make about 32 candles.

Next, just cut the wick a bit longer than the wax sheet…about 5″, and make a little knot at one of the ends of the wick:

Lay the wick at one edge of the beeswax, and just roll it (pretty tightly, but not tight enough to break the wax) all the way to the other side. I just used my fingers to rub the seam of the finished candle so that it wasn’t noticeable.

Here they are, all piled up. The two sheets of beeswax made about 32 candles:

…and here they are! The candles burned for about 45 minutes (they have to last at least 30 minutes according to minhag), and they were so pretty! Now I’m thinking about making Shabbos candles with beeswax, and some other ideas.