Jennifer Andrew

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Mercury Glass Mason Jar Vases

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Let’s talk about DIY fails. I would prefer not to experience them, but at the same time they’re always kind of funny. And rewarding! Sometimes. One of my 2014 goals, as I shared here, is to finish what I start even if it seems completely doomed. Making these mercury glass jars was one of those frustrating, doomed projects. But I’m glad I finished the project because now I have a better idea of what to do next time.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a can of Krylon Looking Glass spray paint from Amazon. I had a tough time finding it at craft stores, so I figured ordering it would save me time. I looked around online for different tutorials and found that many were very different from one another. Using this kind of spray paint is all about trial and error.
I followed a couple of tutorials that you can find here and here. Most of them emphasize that you should use a scrap piece of glass before starting your project so you can figure out the best method. I have a trillion mason jars that I don’t use, so I wasn’t worried about potentially making a couple of them not-so-pretty.
My biggest issue was that this Looking Glass paint is sooooo messy. Instead of spraying forward it just dripped onto the ground or created streaks on the glass. Not cool. But it isn’t the paint’s fault necessarily. I broke the rules by painting the outside of the jars rather than the inside. This method takes practice and it’s good to spray the paint quickly and from far away. Note to friends: wear gloves and clothes that you don’t really like.
Look how pretty this jar looks out of focus! At least it’s good for something. :)

I’m definitely going to try this again and work on making it less streaky. Have you tried creating faux mercury glass? Any tips? I need all the information I can get!

DIY Instagram Wall Calendar

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Since I moved into this new house a few months ago, I’ve been pretty careful not to add too many crazy color accents to my bedroom. I can never decide on color schemes and I always want to change things around. So I figured neutrals were the way to go, with added pops of color here and there. I have also had this instagram wall calendar idea on my mind since I moved in! As much as I love colorful photos, it made sense to go with a grayscale theme for this project. Black and white photographs are also really sweet. The last time I hung out with my friend Charity, she mentioned that black and white photos take out the colorful details but make the memories even more vivid. I love that. :)

Supplies Needed:
31 4×4 printed instagrams
white paint pen (or any color)
chipboard letters and/or cardstock and glitter paper
sticky tac

First I chose 31+ Instagrams of nice memories from the past year. If they weren’t b/w already, I edited them with Afterlight. Then I ordered all of them through PostalPix, which has amazing rates and beautiful quality. I’m a huge fan.

When I received the photos, I spent a long time deciding on the placement of each photo, because…I forgot that the days of the week change every month. Duh. Anyway, this was still helpful in deciding which photos should go side by side! I went with “light, dark, light, dark” pattern. Next, I numbered each photo with a white paint pen. If you want your numbers to show up better on the lighter photographs, you might consider switching to a black or gold paint pen or sharpie.

I attached the photos to my wall using sticky tac so that they would be easy to move around each month. Because of my dorm days, I think this will always be my favorite adhesive.

For the days of the week, I used chipboard letters that I found in the Target dollar section. To spell out January, I printed large bold letters in Helvetica onto cardstock paper. I mirrored the image with my printing settings so each letter would print backwards. Then I cut out the letters and glued them to the back of a super glittery cardstock (from Michaels). I cut out the letters again and stickytac’d them to the wall. I’m planning to customize each month to look a little different and special. Can’t wait for February. :)

Heat Embossed Gold Silhouettes

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The other day, I found a plain wooden plaque at Michael’s for $2 and thought it would look great with a gold silhouette on it. Originally, I had planned on gold leafing it but I decided at the last minute to go with heat embossing. If you haven’t tried heat embossing before…it’s magical. Truly. I used to demo the embossing process at my work and nearly everyone would walk away with the heat embossing set (including me). It’s that fun.

Heat embossing is normally used for stamping. It makes stamps become shiny, upraised and beautiful. I love using it for greeting cards and it came in handy with those DIY gift tags over the holidays. I’ll do a stamp tutorial soon, but let’s jump the gun and experiment today.

Supplies needed:
Wooden plaque (or a piece of wood, canvas, anything really)
Cardstock
Painter’s tape (or any tape, really)
Embossing Powder – I always pick gold!
Embossing Heat Tool
Versamark Watermark Stamp Pad
Optional Glitter Tray

First, choose your silhouette. I found mine here. Just search “free _____ silhouette” and you’ll get a lot of options. I tried to find something without too much detail. Print your silhouette out onto your cardstock paper. Carefully cut out the silhouette so that you have a stencil. Then, tape it to the wooden plaque or whatever type of surface you are using. The wonderful thing about heat embossing is that it works on so many different kinds of surfaces – paper, cloth, wood, etc.

Carefully, stamp the entire cut-out area using a Versamark Watermark Stamp Pad.

Next, remove the tape and stencil and cover the silhouette with your embossing powder. Funnel the remaining powder back into the jar. After pouring all of my powder out of the jar, I felt like I would lose at least half of it to the bunny. But when I poured it back into the jar (thank goodness for that glitter tray!), I hardly noticed a difference. Embossing powder goes a really long way.

At this point, you’ll have to be careful not to mess up your silhouette at all. If you touch it, the powder will just fall off. Do make sure to clean up around the edges though. As you can see above, mine turned out super messy at first, but I cleaned it up with a cotton swap. It’s a little tedious but worth it because after you apply the heat tool, all of that stray embossing powder will be stuck there.
Once it’s nice and neat, plug in your heat tool, turn it on and hover it directly over the image. You’ll start to see the powder melt and it will become metallic and pretty. Evenly emboss the silhouette making sure not to spend too much time on one section. The tool heats up to 650 degrees (!!!) so you don’t want it to burn the surface. Your silhouette will dry pretty quickly (in just a few minutes). I just set mine aside and left for awhile.
Later, I decided to give my new planner a little makeover with a simple gold embossed heart. I love it!
Have you tried heat embossing? And if so, do you think it’s the best thing ever??
Thanks for letting me share!

New Year’s Eve Cupcake Toppers

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Inspired by Anthropologie’s sparkly star cupcake toppers, I set out to make a few different kinds of my own. I had planned on using sparkly paper but I decided against it. It was shedding way too much!

Supplies needed: cardstock paper, star punch, toothpick, pens

To make these just punch out some stars and tape them to the back of toothpicks. I made the flags at the last minute and used a white gel pen to write on them, and for the gold I used a glue pen and gold embossing powder before I hit it with a heating tool. I’ll share a tutorial on that very soon!

All of the paper I used is from Paper Source (I actually used tiny business card-sized papers) and the star punch is from Michael’s.

Are you working on any New Year’s crafts? Please share!

DIY Photo Booth Props

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For New Year’s Eve this year, I plan to set up a little makeshift photo booth. By this I mean I’m going to hang up a sheet and a banner and put a camera on a tripod in front of it. Super simple. I did it at my Galentine’s Day party and we used a self-timer remote. It was so fun!! This time, I wanted to have some dress up props. Besides the traditional New Year’s hats and party horns, I decided to make a few props from clipart and templates found online.

Supplies needed: wooden dowels, decorative or plain cardstock paper, glue stick, scissors, tape, printer, X-Acto knife (optional).

 To make these, first print out the templates you want to use (mine are listed at the end of this post). You might need to do some resizing before you print the images. The printer I was using stopped working randomly so I ended up tracing some of the images straight from my computer screen.

Cut out the objects and glue them to the backside of a piece of cardstock. Glitter is good. Patterns are good. I went with a solid color for the mustache because I didn’t want my New Year’s party to get too crazy.

Then cut the objects out again. I guess you could do all of the cutting in one step. My glitter paper was really thick though so I decided to do it in multiple steps. For glasses and masks, you might want to use an X-Acto knife. I lost mine so I just used scissors.

Break your wooden dowels in half if they’re too tall and tape them to the backs of the props!

Ta-da! Don’t Devin and Chris look so festive? Oh and that dinosaur…he joined in on the fun too.

Can’t wait to use these on New Year’s Eve!

 

(templates used: bow tie, mustache, heart-shaped glasses, mask)

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