Ceramic tile coasters
I was mainly waiting to post about these because I didn't get to see my bff while I was in Alabama for Christmas, and I made Katie a set of coasters that she didn't get until sometime later in January. I didn't want her to read about her gift before seeing it!!
Using this Tutorial, I made four sets of four coasters. All you need are tiles, scrapbook paper (or napkins, cards, etc), mod podge and a clear acrylic spray that is waterproof. I went to Home Depot and bought 16 ceramic tiles for a whopping $0.16 each! I had mod podge, bought the spray and also gathered some new scrapbook paper that I felt would match the living rooms of three of my friends. I've never seen Katie's current living room, but since she loves purple, I figured going with a purple/lilac theme was a safe bet.
All you do is mod podge the tile, put the paper down, mod podge on top (several coats) then do several coats of the acrylic spray. Again, check out the tutorial, but this was super easy. I've since made more and I actually like cutting the paper to have a border. The tiles are 4.25 inches square, so I found cutting my paper to an easy four inches around allows me to get the cleanest, neatest look.
Tea wreath
In the first Christmas post, I showed pictures of the enormous rag quilt I made for my friend Sarah. Because that was supposed to be her gift for Christmas 2010, I also made her a tea wreath. Sarah lives with three other women, and they are near the women's college so they have a ton of girls at their house all the time. They drink lots of tea, so I thought this was a cute idea to display your tea offerings. This was the Tutorial I used. I cut out a big circle of cardboard to start:
The tutorial says you can glue scrapbook paper to the wreath for this project, but I made a mess with that. Plus, my 12x12 paper wasn't large enough. I half-panicked and looked through my fabric scraps. I found one that would work and plugged in my hot glue gun. The fabric worked so much better and was much easier to glue and stretch around the cardboard.
I then glued scrapbook paper to the clothespins and glued the clothespins to the wreath. I added some tea and voila!
Book letters
For two of my friends I decided to cover wooden letters with book pages. One of these women just finished her master's degree in secondary education and wants to teach English, so I figured it would be the perfect thing to hang in her classroom. Here's the Tutorial for those of you who want to give it a shot.
I needed scissors, an old book, a glue gun and a letter, which I bought at Michael's using a coupon.
Rip out book pages and cut them in strips that are close to the width of the part of the letter you are working on. Roll the strip, gluing at the end, then glue the roll to the letter. I hope Buffy and Ashley didn't read too closely...I used pages from a book Andrew and I had to read for premarital counseling. We didn't love it and decided to recycle it into Christmas presents :)
Book art!
For my step-sister-in-law I made this lemony moisturizing hand scrub: Tutorial.
I had olive oil, sugar and Kosher salt, bought lemon extract really cheap at Wal-Mart and grabbed some lemons at the grocery store. Follow the tutorial for amounts, but I decided in the end using a little less olive oil and more lemon extract worked best. If you cook a lot, this helps rid your hands of smells from chopping garlic and onions and keeps them soft and smelling nice! You can keep it in a jar under the sink or in the fridge if you might not use it often. My friend Kristin made some for friends and herself and found it goes pretty quickly though!
I also made an ice cream sundae basket for some friends and sewed an apron for my mother-in-law. You can find the basket on my Pinterest, but basically, package up goodies that can be used to make ice cream sundaes!! Cones, candies and I made a chocolate sauce, too. Just don't include the ice cream...unless you are running by the store on your way to gift your present!
I love my coasters and use them every day!
ReplyDelete-L