Sharpie Mugs

I made these for a good friend as an engagement gift. I used Crate and Barrel mugs, but feel free to find dishes at a thrift store or in the back of your cabinet :) All you need to make these are a couple of sharpies, white ceramic dishes, and an oven. I free handed these, but you could use a stencil.

Step 1: Design your mug, decide which colors you want and what design you will draw.
Step 2: Draw the design on the mug carefully. If you make a mistake use a q-tip with nail polish remover to touch it up.
Step 3: When your masterpiece is finished bake at 350 for 30min. to set the ink.
Step 4: Avoid the dishwasher! Hand wash only.

Back to School

Let the countdown begin! Only 1 week left of my summer...sad face...I spent a solid week in my classroom getting it put back together, so I thought I'd share some of my ideas, or Pinterest's ideas rather.

The desks are ready to go! With a name tag, book mark, pencil, red pen and a snack for the first day. The snack is goldfish (I feel extremely guilty feeding these to students, I guess I'll need to switch to an apple next year)...the tag says "You are O "fish" ally in 3rd grade!"

My students are seated in tables of 8. I attended a Kagan Learning program at the beginning of the summer and loved it! That's where the twister template comes into play.

This is a new addition to the room this year! I saw it on Pinterest, and decided I needed a little "white board" to write notes on to help me remind students before they walk out the door!

My sis over at Rosita Designs made this chart for me. It is perfect for surveys or quizzes.

This Octopus is by far the best part of my classroom. A good friend free-handed him! Who does that??  I use the Octopus to show which traits cause someone to be the helper of the week. I started last year with various different helpers and decided that 1 helper was much easier to keep track of!!

Telling time is huge in 3rd grade, so I have these clocks posted to help my students learn time! It also helps limit the number of "what time is...." questions I get asked throughout the day. That's not true, I still get asked.

Thrift Store Crafts

Two things my momma and I have in common are our loves for crafts and thrift stores! She might have a thrift store obsession, but it works out well for our family. The middle sis gets clothes for her kiddos, I was able to find most of my wedding decorations here, and I love going clothes shopping at a particular store on holidays (50% off!!). Here are a few of the crafts my momma and I did with thrift store buys!

Yard Art: My momma saw these totem poles and decided she needed to make one herself. They are made out of old dishes, vases and ceramic knick knacks. We simply glued them together, making sure a vase was on the bottom so we could stick it on a piece of rebar.

I adore this little rooster

More Yard Art: These are flowers that will be glued onto a piece of PVC pipe and put on rebar as well. My momma loves her yard and loves to decorate it!

Don't you love this little lighthouse!

Jewelry/Cake Stands: We had some left over yellow plates, and my guest room happens to be yellow and gray. This is what we came up with! We just glued 2 plates to either side of a martini/wine glass.

The glass we used was one of my grandmother's and it happened to be chipped. This is a great way to up-cycle old dishes and create something useful out of sentimental pieces!

DIY Infinity Circle Scarf

I've seen this infinity scarf pinned millions of times on Pinterest, but had to search harder to actually find a good tutorial. This girl's video is awesome and I absolutely love the music in the background. I also think she used a material other than jersey knit, so I'm looking to try that in the future. I love how the 3 I made turned out and how warm and versatile it is!This scarf can be worn countless ways. The American Apparel website sells them for about $30 and they show girls wearing them even as a dress (mine isn't wide enough for that.) If you made it wide enough it could double as a baby carrier (sling style).  I used jersey knit, one solid, one print and it cost about $10 a yard, but I had a coupon for 50% off from MonaVie, and made my purchases on black friday (big savings!). There are lots of good deals online including eBay where you can get it for cheaper.

What you'll need:
2 yards of Jersey knit fabric
Sewing machine
Needle
Thread
Good scissors

You can use all of the fabric or cut it down width wise to make it a little thinner. I cut mine to 60" by 45" I used the scraps to make a mini scarf that Sweet P is modeling up top. Remember that you want to be able to wear it as a hood. This video is too good for me to explain the process any better. Good luck and let me know how it goes!!

Towel Beach Tote

The week of crafts continues with a beach bag made from a towel. This was another Pinterest find that I finally got around to doing. I hand-sewed it because I didn't own a sewing machine until today!!! and I couldn't be more excited! I have big plans for my new friend :)

Back to the bag:

What you'll need:

An old towel in good condition (mine was free from a Bacardi promotion at Albertson's ;))

A needle and thread or sewing machine

Scissors

Plus velcro

Directions:

I didn't want to use the whole towel so I decided to make a bag just big enough for my favorite magazine. I cut the rest of the towel into smaller pieces to use as gym towels and rags. The thick edge of the towel will serve as the handle, a thick ribbon would also work, or a piece of twisted rope. Begin by folding the towel in half inside out. Stitch up the two sides. Sew the handle into the top corners of the bag (I only used one strap, but two would work great too). Iron the seams for a more professional look. Use velcro on the inside of the bag as a clasp. Load it up with your favorite sunscreen, magazine, shades, and you're ready for the beach!

Repurpose, recycle, up-cycle

Repurpose, recycle, up-cycle, whatever you call it, its good for the environment and can save money. As you know, I'm an avid Pinterest user and there a lot of Green ideas floating around the site. I tried out a few and thought they were good enough to share:

A small milk jug turned into a toilet brush holder, a gallon water jug turned into a sandwich container (with velcro to hold it together), and a shampoo bottle turned into a cellphone hanger.

Cellphone Hanger

This is a hack from lifehacker and it is super simple. All you need is a pair of scissors and an empty shampoo bottle (any plastic bottle will work). Cut 1/2 inch from the top of the shampoo bottle off and discard. Half way down the bottle, cut the front and sides of the bottle completely off. I cut the top of mine like a hanger, but next time I am going to cut a circle out of the top so it hangs better. I'm waiting on a red bottle of shampoo to run out so I can repurpose it :)

Headphones

I saw these amazing headphones on Etsy, and had to find a way to replicate them myself.

All you need is some embroidery floss and a pair of headphones. Close-pins also come in handy to use a spool for the thread. I used to make friendship bracelets all the time when I was younger, and its not something you forget (like riding a bike!).

I choose to use 3 colors: aqua, turquoise, and purple, but any combination would work, you just have to consider the thickness and the complexity of using more colors. I started at the earbud end of the headphones and tied on the embroidery thread (you won't cut the thread until the end of the project).

After the thread is tied on, choose your first color and pull it to the left side.

Bring the other two colors in line with the headphones.

Make a 4 with the first color over the headphones.

Bring the first color thread under the headphones and through the 4 that you made.

Pull tight. Repeat until you make it to the end of the headphones strand. Tie the thread off and tuck it under itself.

Originally decorated earbuds...Voila!

T-Shirt Crafts

I've been visiting my sister in Iowa for the past few weeks and have done some serious crafting. I've been focused mainly on my t-shirt quilt made from all of my old t-shirts from LSU. I just finished 4 years there as a collegiate swimmer, so needless to say I have enough t-shirts to stock the local goodwill (and many of them have actually ended up there). With the leftover scraps we made scarves and knotted bracelets and even a few fabric flowers. I'll fill you in on the details below. All you will need are scissors, t-shirts, and some sewing materials.

We'll start with the details of the blanket which you can find in a different variation here at my sister's blog. Gather up your old (or new) t-shirts and you're favorite pair of scissors and cut out 13x13in squares depending on how big you want the blanket. I wouldn't go any smaller but you could maybe go an inch or two larger depending on the size of the t-shirt, just make sure each square is the same size. Don't worry about having perfect squares. For one, it will give you an ulcer after cutting out 30 t-shirts and two the material is very "forgiving." After you have your t-shirt squares line them up how you want them (half for the front and half for the back of the quilt) and pin them together in rows. Sew each square in a row together and run it through the sewing machine. Once you have the rows finished pin the rows together, starting with 2 rows and adding 1 on as you go. Do this for both the front and the back then lay the two pieces on top of each other front side out. Lay a piece of batting (optional) the same size as the quilt and pin the 3 pieces together (front side of quilt, backside, and batting). Sew around the outer edge leaving one square one one of the 4 sides unsewn so you can turn it right side out. Once you have sewn and turned it right side out, sew a closing stitch to finish it off. Now snuggle up on the couch and enjoy!! Here is my finished project:

Now onto the knotted bracelet. This is pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and I adapted it from V and Co.'s jersey knit bracelet. The use a much longer piece of material and offer a video tutorial and 2 other variations of the bracelet (my blogging skills aren't as advanced).

Start out with a 1 inch strip of jersey material (I used the bottoms of the left over t-shirts.) If you cut in a spiral it makes a continuous strip. I use about a 48in strip. Note that I do have child size wrists that are NOT proportional to the rest of my arm.

The pictures are better than my wording, so I'll give the best commentary I can.

1. Hold the strand with your palm and thumb

2. Weave it through your fingers (you can use 2, 3, or 4 fingers depending on how thick you want it.)

3. Repeat the weave in the opposite direction, then pull the strand of your hand without weaving, rest this strand above the weave (I forgot to take that picture!).

4. Then pull the woven stand over the flat strand and off of your finger. Repeat steps 2-4 until you have a long enough braid to fit your wrist. The tie off is really simple, just loop the excess through the weave and tie the two ends of the braid together. It will stretch out a little bit. Also when you begin the bracelet make sure to have it nice and loose because I learned that it can get tight enough to cute off your circulation hah.

Here it is finished:

Now onto the Scarf, I stole this idea from my sister who gave us each one for Christmas. This is by far the easiest craft you will ever do, you don't even have to cut straight. I used the bottom halves of the t-shirts that didn't go into the quilt. My friend K loves the packers so I made her one out of a green and yellow shirt, so feel free to combine 2 shirts of different colors! And of course I made a purple and gold one in honor of LSU ;)

Cut the t-shirt into 1 inch strips. They should be loops/circles, so you will just be cutting straight across the shirt, cutting the back and front at the same time.

Give the loops a nice stretch to make give them that rolled look, and use another scrap to tie them off, it can be the same color or different like the pink and black one I made below:

Now don't tell me that wasn't easy.