0 Crayon Rain

Look what I made! =]

This is now hanging by my front door. Its pretty neat, I like it and it was easy enough to make. 

Here's what you need:

Okay you'll need to get a silhouette onto a canvas, I used sharpie markers, I did take a bunch of pictures of this whole process but my computer decided to be dumb and it crashed and I lost everything that wasn't backed up online. You can get a glue gun for like $3 at Walmart, painters tape is probably laying around in your garage or laundry room somewhere and I pulled various blue crayons from my stock pile. 

Tape off your silhouette and put a plastic baggie under your canvas, decide how much drip you want and angle your canvas accordingly. 

Shove the crayons into the glue gun as though they're glue sticks, you'll probably have to push them through, they don't fit exactly..

Alternate blues to get a god variety of color

Carefully peel off the tape..

And there you have it =]

**I will probably edit this later, I have pictures on my camera to add but it is currently "exhausted" and I don't have my charger with me. 

0 Melty Crayons

I've been seriously slacking off. I'm sorry. I made this a few months ago and just never posted it. I'm still pretty psyched about it though =]

Okay, once these started showing up everywhere I'm pretty sure we all knew it was just a matter of time before I made my own:

You've seen these around right? Probably about a thousand times. I like them, they come in all shapes and sizes with varying levels of creativity poured into them. Mine is the bare bones version but I'll show you how I did it...

 I picked all these things up at walmart. My walmart happens to have an excellent craft section for which I am very grateful. 

I started by laying out the "regular" colors in the order I wanted them

I lined them up along the side of the canvas to be sure I had enough and not too many..

These are all the "weird" colors and the grey/black/white/browns

I used hot glue to stick the crayons down, label side up, along side each other

Gently press each crayon into place

Then...

Voila! 

Now to melt them...

 It doesn't take long before you start to see the drips

You can direct the drips by altering the angle of the canvas

Keep going

Slowly move across the canvas trying to distribute the heat as evenly as possible, some colors will run a little more than others

And BAM! You can see in the lavender area where the drips go at a kind of slant, this is where I learned the importance of keeping the heat directed at the crayon and not at the drips, try to stay near the tops of the crayons, that will help. Also, don't use the hair dryer on high, use a low setting. 

This was a very fun project I was very happy with it. It now sits on a tiny display easel on a coffee table in my parents' house. 

Happy Crafting! 

Enjoy =]

0 Leaf Flowers

Yesterday I made flowers out of leaves =] I had a really good day at work and when I got home I just sat in the yard and played. Does it get any better? Nope. Here they are:

Pretty right? So if you live someplace that has seasons like I do, your yard probably looks something like this:

Or, you know:

Either way, my suggestion is that you plop yourself down amid the leaves on the ground with these:

Grandma's old sewing kit and some scissors.. unless your sewing kit contains scissors..

Thanks for the sewing kit Gradma! =]

Find you a good leaf to start with, you'll want to make a pile next to you of leaves that are freshly fallen, you don't want the brittle/dry ones

Fold down the center point

Then one side

Then the other side..

Start rolling it up from one side to the other

When it looks like this set it aside, you can set your scissors on top of it to keep it from unraveling

Pick up another leaf, be sure not to use the dry ones

Fold down the center

And the side..

And the other side..

Put the first leaf on the second leaf like this..

Bring one side over..

Then the other.. =]

Keep adding more leaves just like that and it ill start to come together pretty quick

When you get to the desired size, get out some thread

Wrap the thread several times around the base of your "rose" then tie it off

Yay! Aren't they pretty? I like them.

I made three.

Tear the label off of an old Ale-8-one bottle and there you have it =]

Photo Bomb! Haha! Hank just had to get in one of these pictures, gotta love him =] Other people have done this as well, I got the idea from >HERE< though I think they may have done it a little differently. They look a little sickly in these last couple pictures, I again apologize for that, my camera doesn't like taking pictures inside, it puts a weird orange-y yellow tint on things. 

Happy Crafting!

Enjoy! =]

0 Sandwich Container

I've never been one to bring my lunch along with me to school or work or whatever.. I like hot meals, there's nothing wrong with that. Until you wake up one day and wonder why your pockets are always empty. Its clearly much more economical to pack along a sandwich. So I've joined the lunch bringers, but now that that decision has been made, how do you get your lunch from A to B? For some its simple, dig out the old lunch box you used back in school.. I don't have one. So I bought a lunchbox at the grocery store a few weeks ago on sale for like $3 which is totally cool but I can't just throw my sandwich in it.. Some people go with baggies which is fine but significantly wasteful. So, I need a sandwich container. Some of you may be familiar with the ziplock sandwich box things >HERE< I think glad makes them too and probably a handful of other companies as well. I don't like them. Not at all, not for anything. A little extreme? Maybe. Here is my alternative solution:

Cute right? Eco-chic too.. Yeah, that's right ECO-chic, that thing used to be a milk jug. I stumbled across >THIS< the other day and had to make my own. So to start with you'll need a milk jug..

This is our local gas-station brand milk, I had a jug all rinsed out and ready to go then someone threw it out on me, but fortunately/unfortunately we go through about a gallon of milk a day at my house so I finished this one off in my cereal this morning and here we are. 

So I rinsed it out and removed the label, which comes off best if you pull up a corner then use cold water to loosen the rest as you peel it. It came off pretty clean.

Draw your lines on as a guide

Scissor time! Cut along your lines, I started way up there to make sure I could get the scissors into the jug without destroying anything. 

Make sure the indent part isn't on your tall side.. unless you want a big circle in the middle of your container.. which could be cool.. I should've thought of that before.. use it as a label type area.. put a circular sticker in the center of it.. Oh well. 

It's all coming together =] Clean up the edges if they need it and fold it up.

Yes, like that..

So you can see it's a little bigger than your average sandwich, you could as the link I posted in the beginning says, throw in some grapes or carrot sticks but I really just pack a sandwich and a drink usually.

But how will we keep it closed? Well after searching unsuccessfully for a big rubber band to put around it I dug out my great-big-craft-bag-of-everything and found some string. There was also some shoe laces and ribbon and whatnot that could've also worked but I went this route. 

See how much you'll need, then cut off a piece..

BAM! Eco-chic sandwich container =] 

Cute and environmentally friendly, what more could you want? I'm really happy with this project and I'd love for others to take part in this one so make your own, then comment and let me know what you think of it =]

Happy Crafting!

Enjoy! =]