Saturday 29 September 2012

I only ALMOST burnt the house down, Honey!

Inspiration struck me, or rather "Pin"spiration when I stumbled across this fantastic idea on Pinterest.  (Isn't that how all the best stories start?)

Original Pin:

Memory Frame
http://pinterest.com/pin/198299189813518706/

What I ended up with was similar but definitely not as professional.  (and still needs some tweaking)

I learned a few lessons while making this;

  • Even though something looks and feels like wood, doesn't make it wood.
  • Plastic melts super fast and stinks really bad
  • cardboard smokes and starts on fire quite easily
Ok so I knew these things before, but I forget things from time to time.

This frame looked like wood.  Boy was I wrong!  Totally plastic!  The inside part to keep the back from touching the frame (I'm sure there is a technical term for that)  totally looked like wood. (more like particleboard I guess)  Again, very wrong.  Totally cardboard!  I thought I would just make a slice with the angle grinder in the top to make the hole for items to get dropped into.  Yeah not going to do that again.  My house was FULL of smoke!  I am so glad hubby was at work, or he may not want me going near power tools again after that! haha..  Anyhow, I ended up with a horrible melted mess at the top of the frame where I cut the hole, and didn't get it all cut the way I wanted it.


I ended up with some jagged edges I'm going to have to try to sand down somehow.  When I try to drop in ticket stubs etc.  they get caught and don't fall in the way I want them to.  Also, the backing in this particular frame is a strange sort of cloth material that really grabs hold of all the perforated edges of the tickets.  That is why there is a zoo ticket stub just hanging out in the middle of the frame!

I still love it though.  It serves its purpose of being a place to stuff things I want to save, without taking up space in my junk drawer.  Now I just have to go through all my junk drawers and find all the stuff I saved to put in there!


Thrifty Harvest Wreath

I love wreaths.  I wish I could have an excuse to have one up all year around.  I really wanted to keep my son busy this morning, so we set out to make a Harvest/Thanksgiving wreath out of crafty materials I picked up on clearance throughout the year.

Here is the mess of a table that we started with:



Yep.  That is a pool noodle!  I bought it on clearance for 25 cents this fall.  Great jumping off point for us since it is already orange!  Tape the two ends together with clear packing tape, and Voila!  Wreath shape!



Start adding whatever decorations you like.  I chose a couple different kinds of ribbon.  (I love animal prints)



Burn yourself a few times on the hot glue gun, because really, you haven't done a craft properly unless you burn yourself or something else! hahaha.

Add some leafy pieces next.  (I got my strand of leaves with little pumpkins and berries attached on clearance for 2 bucks after Thanksgiving last year)  I wrapped it around and around and then pulled off the leaves that were on the back side, then glued them to the front side.



Next I had to come up with something to attach it to the door since the pool noodle is too fat to sit in one of my wreath hooks nicely.  I took and made a large loop of ribbon in one of the colors I already used and attached it at the top with hot glue.



Almost done.  Next step was to let my son have fun with some gemstones.  He isn't old enough yet to use the glue gun, so I gave him a roll of Glue Dots and a bag of gems and let him just stick them on wherever he felt like.  He is all about things being symmetrical so he was very careful to evenly space them and put the same colors in the same places on all sides of the wreath.  (Yes he probably gets that from me)



It was missing something.  I didn't know what, so I stared at it for a while.  Then a while longer.  Then it hit me.  It just needed a flower.  So we glued on a flower and stuck some of the berries from the leafy strand in the center.  Then we hung it up by sticking a really strong magnet inside the loop of ribbon at the top and sticking it to our (metal) door.




And just because I love playing with Instagram:



All together I think this project ended up costing about $8. (mostly in the cost of the pretty ribbon)  I can handle that!