Salt Dough Recipe

I am going to be posting a few projects using good ol' salt dough here on the blog soon. So to save myself from typing the recipe again and again I thought I would just post it once and then link over to here when I needed to.

4 Cups Flour
1 Cup Table Salt
2 Cups Water

Mix thoroughly, Knead 4 to 5 minutes until the dough feels smooth and not sticky. When the dough is properly needed you should not be able to feel the salt crystals.

Bake at 325 degrees. The recipe says for 1 hour but honestly it just depends. I usually bake for 20 minutes and check, and repeat until my pieces are sufficiently baked.

Notes:

*This recipe should not be doubled or halved.

Little Touches...The Crayon Basket

Little Touches….


Sometimes all it takes is a little touch here and there to make a big difference in your home. The other day I was commenting to my hubby man about how cluttered I thought our house was getting. We started talking about our #1 hotspot, the little counter that divides the living room from the kitchen.

And then he said, Well we just need someplace to put those crayons and throw the rest away. I was astonished when I found out that he was right! Mischievious Mike refuses to leave the crayons alone. Yet they need to be kept in the dining room so that we can use them for school projects. Hmmmm….. Way up high in our dining room I have a collection of stuff that I have spray painted black. Up there would be the perfect spot to put the crayons. I can reach them but no way can MM, at least not yet! I pray that day is far in the distance. Anyways I went a searching for the perfect basket, and by perfect I mean any ugly basket that I could spray paint. Meet Ugly Basket….

All spray painted up……………..

Then I hotglued some burgundy ribbon around it and painted a little scrapbook tag the same color as our walls and wrote crayons on them with a sharpie! Ta da! A beautiful, functional little touch that made a big difference!.

Cute and Cheap Valentines Project!

Gah! I am soooo in love with this project. When I purchased the little hearts I had what I was going to do with them in mind but it turned out so much CUTER than I ever imagined! It is so stinkin' adorable. I asked hubby what he thought and he said "You made that, nah, it looks professional" Not too sure if I should be proud or upset with his lack of confidence. Hahaha. This project was also CHEAP. I used two packs of these hearts that I bought at JoAnn's in their $1 section. They originally look like the message hearts but I don't really like those or like pastels in my house so I did something different.

What you need for this project:

Wooden Hearts
Skewers or Pieces of Thin Dowel
Block of Wood (I used a spare chunk of 2x4) mine is 5" long
Paint (Red, Black and White is what I used)
Spray Adhesive
Glitter
Sharpie Marker
Drill and A Glue Gun

First I painted the hearts, for my project, I used 7 hearts, 3 red, 3 white and 2 black.  Between each coat I outlined the words that were pre-printed on my hearts. If your hearts don't have words just freehand sweet little sayings. I also painted my skewers and my block of wood black.

I sprayed each heart with spray adhesive and then sprinkled them with silver glitter. A couple of tips, I use the back of a magazine underneath my glitter projects. It is the perfect weight to pick up curl the edges and dump the excess glitter back in the container. I also use a sticky lint remover whenever I am using glitter. I buy them at the $ store and they work great for quick pickups.

On the hearts that have sayings I used an old paintbrush to carefully remove most of the glitter on the inside of the heart. Just leaving a border of glitter around the edges.

Now for the fun part. I love using power tools! Using a drill bit that is just a little bit bigger than your skewer or dowel drill holes in your block of wood. On second thought you really should drill the holes before you paint the block of wood. I used a marker to mark where I wanted my holes to be, keeping in mind that I wanted my hearts to have a staggered appearance. (sorry for the crappy photo but you get the idea)

Once your holes are drilled you can start arranging your skewers/dowels making them different lengths. Hotglue your skewers to the back of your dowels, and put just a dab of hotglue on the end of the skewer before sticking them into your drilled holes. Ta-Da! This project cost me $2.00 and was really easy to do. Fun too!

Family Cartoon Art

I just love my little cartoon family so much on Facebook that I decided to print them out and make a piece of cute art for my home! If you are on Facebook you can click here to access the FamilyFriend application http://apps.facebook.com/familyfriend/selectfam1.php.

Once there I just copied and pasted the images I liked into a word document. I sized them to fit my page and added the appropriate names underneath. Then  I printed them out on cardstock. After adding some color with my Watercolor pencils, I traced around the images with a fine tip black marker, just to sharpen the images up a bit.

All that was left was framing my fabulously simple piece of "art". Now to find my little cartoon family a home!

A new blog!

After a whole lotta thought I have decided to make a new blog to fit in with what has been up with me lately, I have been crafting up a storm and have also been reading a TON of craft blogs. In fact reading craft blogs and crafting is all I have been doing as of late. So I thought I would have a go at creating my own. I sew, paint, make jewelry, scrapbook and do lots of home decor stuff. So what a fun idea to show off all of that! So please forgive me for abondoning my old blogs and follow along with this one. When I reach just 10 followers I have a fun giveaway so please make my day and join up.

Thanks,
Kelly