A Peek into my Life

Last summer, I did some crafting on glass bottles and vases. I love glass as a material. I like shiny and glamorous things :) (although I am sure you wouldn't guess that if you saw me) Lets start with the shiniest of them all. I used glass gems on this one. These glass gems come in a variety of colors at any craft store. I first sorted the gems by their color. I also cleaned the bottle. I removed the label, washed and dried it beforehand. I used some rubbing alcohol to clean the outside of the bottle before gluing the gems on. A clean surface is highly recommended for any glass craft. I did not want to cover the bottle entirely with the gems and wanted some of the beautiful color of the bottle itself to peek through. I drew a design on the bottle with a marker to roughly mark where I need to leave out the gemstones. I tried to keep the lines equidistant but I am not good with measuring and straight lines. I just tried my best. I glued the gem stones starting from the bot...

Today's post is just me showing off the new lamp which we made using a glass bottle as a base. Last year, when we had gone for strawberry picking at a local farm, they had some gallon cider jugs (like this ) out to take for free. I have a thing for glass and I just couldn't pass up a beautiful and free glass jug, even though I had no idea what to do with it. I looked around for ideas sporadically on the internet and I finally decided to make a lamp out of the bottle. We got a Bottle Lamp kit from walmart and a lamp shade with ring with goes under the lamp. The lamp kit makes it very easy to convert a bottle into a lamp. There are lots of tutorials on the internet for bottle lamps ( like this ). I did not drill a hole in the bottle for the wire, like some tutorials say. I just let the wire hang behind and it is not very noticeable at all. I had used a plain lamp shade and the lamp was looking a bit boring. I decided to dress it up with ribbon. I found a nice ribbon at ...

This week me and my daughter did some Christmasy crafts to get into the holiday spirit. We did some pinecone christmas trees and cards for the daughter's preschool teachers. I had some pinecones lying around the house and decided to put them to good use by crafting them into Christmas trees. I had picked up some foam glitter stars from Michael's the other day. Those were used as the star tree toppers. I did two kinds of pinecone trees. The first was very simple. Just some glitter glue and some glitter stars. I arranged some pinecones in a plastic tub which used to be a takeout container (reuse!). Just added some red and white glitter glue and topped with silver glitter stars. I kept it simple so the arrangement can work for other seasons with some modifications. For the second arrangement, I went the whole wintery route. First, I made faux snow. There are different ways to do faux snow. I opened up a clean diaper and removed the powdery stuff inside and placed it in...

During the summer I worked on a few craft projects; one of which was a cardboard play kitchen. It is made completely from recycled materials which would otherwise have ended up in trash. I had seen the idea on Spoonful and immediately loved it. It took me a few months to really get working on the idea because it seemed kind of daunting; but once I got to it, it was fun. I am so glad this went from bookmark to reality because my daughter was so excited about it while we were building it and it is still her favourite "toy". finished kitchen First I started collecting cardboard boxes. 2 equal sized boxes for the base, a pizza box for the window, 2 smaller boxes for the shelves. I fixed them all together using duck tape (big duck tape fan). Then I added the details. For the window, I looked for a nice picture from my stack of magazines and glued it on to the pizza box lid. Then I cut up one of my daughter's old dress to make curtains and glued them on. For the sin...

Spring is usually the time when wind-chimes come out to hang. I could see them hanging in many a houses but instead of buying one, I decided to challenge myself into making one. In the spirit of recycling, I began to look around for things that could be used to make windchimes. I narrowed down on metal as the material of choice because it had to make a sound when it clanked together. I also did a google search and saw a few ideas. I decided, metal cans it will be. I spent most of spring collecting metal cans of various sizes. Finally I made two different kind of wind chimes. Cascading Can Chime When I looked at my collection of metal cans, I saw four of them fit inside each other just perfectly. That led me to this cascading wind chime design. I used tiny jingle bells to anchor the cans on the metal wire and also for the sound they make. Materials: metal cans of different sizes metal beading wire small bells acrylic colors Remove any labels from your metal...

My daughter is a big animal (and bird) lover. I thought bird feeders are a good way to let birds into our balcony. The daughter gets to see them up close. The birds get good food. Win-win for both. I started looking up ideas for bird feeders. I wanted to recycle regular household materials. Because recycling is always good! I found a couple of ideas on the internet and promptly (not really! I hardly do anything promptly ) sat with my daughter to work on the bird feeders. Bird feeder using a milk carton This was an easy choice since we go through a lot of milk cartons. It would work great hanging from a tree in your backyard. But we don't have a backyard, we only have a balcony. I wedged the carton between the balcony slats. Materials: milk carton or juice carton x-acto knife acrylic colors wooden skewer duck tape Cut out rectangles on all 4 sides of the carton. Leave about 2 inches at the bottom of the carton to fill with bird seed. Let your baby go crazy w...

The Easter egg hunt is long over but your house is still filled with the plastic Easter eggs. What do you do with them? That is the question I asked myself ....and to Google a while ago. Turns out, a lot of people have that question and have answers to them too. So the ideas here are not original but I went through a lot of them and many were repeated on so many places that I do not have the proper links to credit them. My daughter loved the Easter egg hunt at her preschool and she loved her plastic Easter eggs. It was her first egg hunt. But when I turned those eggs into something more, she was excited. Musical Egg Shakers The first thing we made were musical egg shakers. This is the easiest to make. Materials: plastic eggs rice, beans clear tape Open up the plastic egg. Fill a little bit of rice or beans or other grains in them. I used rice for one and black eyed peas for another. Tape the egg closed so that the fillings do not fall out. Have fun making m...