Mother's Day Crafting with Lexie

Hey everyone. Yesterday was a huge day for the hubby and I. We got a new car :) a 2007 Nissan Altima. It is gorgeous. After that he had a VA appointment so we were out in Hillsboro. We decided to go out to my sister Megan's house so I could do some crafts with the kids and have a little BBQ.... We are having great weather for that finally! Below is a quick tutorial for the crafts Lexie and I did, plus a video tutorial because I didn't get a lot of pictures.

First project is painted candles. For this you will need:

A pillar candle

Wax or parchment paper

Hair dryer

White tissue paper

Acrylic paint

And a cute little kid, like Lexie... Obviously this one is optional because an adult could do this as well.

Begin by laying out some parchment paper, this craft can get a wee bit messy. Then, cut a piece of tissue paper slightly smaller than your candle. This will be your painting surface. I gave Lexie about four colors to choose from and let her paint however she wanted. Now, Lex is two so her painting wasn't more than dots really. Anyways, I let her paint and after she was done I added some finishing touches. You'll see those below in the finished picture.

Once your kiddo is done painting, and you've added your finishing touches, wrap the tissue paper around the candle, paint side out. This part is a little tricky since you don't want to smear the paint, so just be patient and take your time.

Next, wrap the parchment paper around your candle and tissue paper. This will be a handle for you to hold onto while you use the blow dryer. Now you should find a comfy spot next to a outlet and plug in your dryer. Sit down, hold onto the parchment paper, turn the dryer on high, and start blowing the candle. Soon, you will start to see the tissue paper disappear and the colors become brighter, and don't worry, you can take the parchment paper off while drying too and check. Basically, your candle should feel like wax again and not tissue paper. Below you can see the finished products, one for mom and one for grandma.

Another cute project we did was footprint animals. These are a cute way to remember feet at different ages, and makes a great gift from little babies like Avery. You can see ours below.

I love the way all these projects turned out :) I hope you all enjoy doing some Mother's day crafting and I know all the mom's out there will love these crafts.

 

Enjoy the crafting :)

 

Crazy Fun Spoon Mirror Tutorial

Hey everyone, after a busy weekend I was finally able to get a tutorial done. This one was really fun to do; we were playing around cutting the spoons, but it took some patience... And a lot of glue.

Materials- sorry I didn't get the picture of all this

Plastic spoons- the flimsy white kind, I used almost six packs of 48 spoons

Small round mirror

MDF wreath frame 18"- this can be found at Michaels in the floral section

Poster board

Hot glue gun and glue, also wood glue

Paint in your colors of choosing- I used three reds to do a slight fade from dark to light though you can't see it in the pictures

To begin, use your MDF frame to trace and cut out a circle from your poster board. This will be the base for the mirror.

I traced a few different sized circles onto one side of my poster board to use as reference points when gluing on the spoons. The largest is the inside of the wreath, the middle is a plate, and the inner is the mirror. Next, I glued the wreath frame on the opposite side of the poster board. Use whatever glue you would like on this part.

While the base is drying cut all the spoons handles off. I used probably close to five boxes of the spoons, but I would have six on hand. I found that these spoons are just flimsy enough that you can cut through them with regular scissors.

You want to cut as close to the rounded part as possible, but I found that leaving a little piece of handle on some of them came in handy.

I also recommend sanding down the edges of the spoons that will be used for the smallest circle. This will be about 23 spoons. Do this so that if any of the edges are seen around the mirror they look clean instead of jagged.

Next comes the gluing. Plug in your hot glue gun and let it get nice and hot.

Start on the smallest circle that you traced, the outline of the mirror, and glue the spoons on. Try to keep them right on that circle. You can overlap them a little depending on the look you want.

Continue gluing the spoons on in circles going outward. Tuck the bottom of each new layer underneath the layer on top of it so it is hidden well.

The next step is painting. I wanted to have a slight fading effect in my colors so I used three different shades of red that were very close together. You can do any sort of painting effect that you would like.

I started painting from the inside to the out, using my darkest color on the inside and moving to my lightest color.

You can't really see the color change in the picture because it is so minimal but here is what my final painting looked like. The husband picked red because it is his favorite color and also one of our main accent colors downstairs.

 

The final step is gluing the mirror into the middle. I had to be a little creative in this part because mine didn't sit flush against the base, so I used a paper plate the same size as the mirror to give a little more room to glue. Use whatever kind of glue you feel comfortable with here. Then, secure some string onto the back for hanging or just put some nails in the wall and use the MDF frame to hang, either way, do it how you like it done :)

 

 

There you have it, a fun mirror made out of spoons that I would say cost about $15 :) I love it and hope you guys do too.

 

 

YouTube.com/lanaloulittle

 

Spring Branches Tutorial plus Extras :)

Hey guys. The weather has been AWESOME the last few days here. I have loved it. Here's a new tutorial for you guys. It was really simple and cheap.

The quick run through is this : grab some branches from your backyard, scrapbook paper, florist wire, scissors, and glue. Cut out some leaf shapes and glue them back to back with wire in between. Wrap the wire around the branches and voila... Decorative spring branches :)

For the more detailed explanation see my video below. Plus, it is always nice to see things done for you in video form.

 

Now, for the extras. I found a clear iPhone case on Amazon for super cheap and ordered it. Then, I took some scrapbook paper and other stuff and made some cute backings... Now I have a completely customizable case for my phone. Genius, I know. :) Everyone should do it; really easy and worth it. Just be careful with the thickness of what you want for your design.

Anyways, thank you to all my awesome readers and YouTube viewers. I really do appreciate you all.

 

Crafts for Kids

Saturday my big sister Megan, her husband Sam, and their kids Lexie (2) and Avery (6months) are coming to visit. Megan and I had some crafting to do so to keep Lex entertained I made a few things.

First off was this cute little guy. I made him from leftover plastic Easter eggs. It was raly simple. Basically, I threaded some yarn through the eggs. I made sure that the bottom of each egg was resting inside the top half of the egg. At the end, I put the whole egg on there and glued it shut. Put some googly eyes on there and a felt tongue and you have a snake. Another idea is to throw some beads or something in the end before you glue it closed so that it makes a rattle snake.



Then, I made some play-doh. Follow my recipie below and you will never buy store bought play-doh ever again. Seriously, this stuff is the best.

In a pot pour all your ingredients:

1 cup flour

1cup water

1/4 cup salt

1 tbs oil

2 tsp cream of tartar

Food coloring- I love the neon colors, or even kool-aid powder will work

Place the pot over medium heat and stir, stir, stir.

The mix will go from watery to play-doh pretty quickly and once it looks like the picture to the right it's done. You should be able to scoop it all out at once.



















Now comes my favorite part. Divide the batch into two parts.

Add a few drops of food coloring to each half and knead it in.

Once you're done with that you have the best play-doh ever. I repeated this process so I had four colors, but you could just double the recipie in the first place and then divide it into four parts.

So Lexie didn't last long, but her sleeping is still really cute. And Coco decided to cuddle up with her.

Now, this is the actual project Megan and I did. She had a lot of baby food containers that needed to be turned into storage containers.

First start by removing any labels and cleaning them up.

Next, take the lids and paint them with chalkboard paint. We tried to do a yellow around the rim and just the chalkboard on top, but it did not look good so we painted it all the black.

To make the jars look cuter I hot glued a little lace ribbon around the jar. This also helped to cover up the glue from the label that didn't come off and also any printing that was on the jar. Personally, I think they turned out really cute, but I may be biased :)

Check back later this week for my next tutorial and I'll be doing a video soon!

YouTube Video

Hey guys, it's not a new tutorial for my readers but I put my iPad case tutorial into a video. Check it out. Oh and later this week I will have a new tutorial up and a new video on storage for all my crafting things :)

 

Lovelovelove

Book Storage Tutorial

Hey guys, I've got a great new tutorial for you:) I love going to the craft stores and finding things to make. Sometimes though, you walk in there and see all these great things but have no idea what to do with them. Well, one thing I found last time I was in there was this cardboard book. I've always wanted a fake book to it on a shelf or table to store stuff in. Finally I was able to do it without destroying one of the books that I love.

Materials-

Cardboard Book- found at Michael's or another craft store

Painters Tape

Assorted Sizes of Paintbrushes

Stencils of you're choosing- or anything else you want to decorate your book with

Paint in however many colors you'd like

 

 

 

First, tape off any areas on the book that you do not want to be your base color. For me, this was the stripes on the spine of the book and what would be considered the pages.

Once you have the book taped start painting. I used a sponge brush to paint the bulk of it. The sponge brushes leave less streaks in my opinion and I like the look that leaves. The paint will soak into the cardboard so you may need more paint than you think.

Once the base color is dry, peel of the tape you have already put on the book. Next, tape the outsides of where you took off the tape. This will make it so you can paint the smaller areas in the color of your choice.

I had to paint over some of my base color, so the red needed a few coats. Let each coat dry between a new coat.

 

 

 

Using a really small paintbrush, make any touch-ups that are needed. I mostly needed mine along the spine where I had done the red painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the spine was dry I opened it up and taped off the bottom part of the book. I used yellow to paint the book where the pages would go and also the inside of the book. For this part I painted with a thicker paintbrush and that allowed for some streaks to be left in the yellow paint, which just happened to make them look like there was pages :)

 

 

 

 

Once the inside is all dry, close the book up. Grab your stencil and place it on the book how you would like.

I used Martha Stewart stencils that I found at Michaels. I know I use a lot of her products, but I like the quality of them the most. They last well and the paint works on everything, literally everything! I love it so that is why I recommend everyone use it to :)

Anyways, back to the book. Use different sized brushes to paint the different parts of the stencil if you are doing it like I am. I used red for the flowers to match the spine and green for the leaves.

There is my final product. Now I can put it on my craft shelf to store all my little knick-knacks in. Perfect right?

Go out and craft! If you make a book storage take a picture and send it to me :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out my YouTube channel too!

Lovelovelove.

Quick Craft: Sunburst/Flower Painting Tutorial

 

Cute right? Well, this is my first quick craft and it's a great way to add some color to a room. Perfect for spring :) They are really simple to make; I'm pretty sure it only took me about 15 minutes to complete the whole thing.

 

 

 

 

Materials:

Canvas- bought at Michaels for about $5

Spray Adhesive- I use the Elmer's brand

Acrylic Paint- I recommend Martha Stewart Brand

Paper Petal Cutouts- about 42

Foam Paintbrush

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using your paint color of choice, paint the entire canvas. Let that dry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the spray adhesive, thoroughly coat the backs of the petals. Do this one or two at a time so they don't dry before they are placed on the canvas.

Place them on the canvas so they begin to form a flower. For the innermost part I use 8 petals. Then on the second rotation around, place a new petal in between every two of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And below, you will see my beginning placements of the petals and then my final project. I loved the way that it turned out and it looks great in our living room.

Here's my video tutorial as well. Check it out. Leave some comments. Click on some ads. Surf the net. But, whatever you do come back to my blog and video :)

LoveLoveLove.