Sunday, May 20, 2012

DuctTape Rose Pens

My newest craft projects.  After being inspired by seeing one of these pens, I decided I wanted to try to make them.  They are suprisingly fun and addictive to make.  Duct take come in all sorts of colors and patterns, and with a few hours effort you can end up with something like this.  I was able to repurpose a small paper cutter that I have for my bookmark scrapbook paper.  That made it easy to measure out the duct tape and cut small strips that were all the same size.  Then a bit of folding and sticking, and you are off.  A selection of these ended up at Mother's Day presents, and now the rest are available in my Etsy shop.










Friday, May 18, 2012

Building a Woodland Terrarium

This week, my mom wanted to create a woodland terrarium for my grandmother for Mother's Day. (Yes, we are a little late)  It turned out to be a fun project that was easy to make and we ended up with a very cute little terrarium. 

First, gather the supplies:

Moss
                 

Branches and Flowers (we chose silk plants, as we aren't too reliable at keeping small plants alive - must be a family trait).


                

Gather a fun glass container.  We found this small glass decorative jar at the store and decided it would be perfect.  :)

                



Other decorative elements.  We found these silk butterflies at the store.  And a deal.  Two of the butterflies were missing and one was a bit ragged, so we bargained and got them for half off.  Also, a nice sized rock - courtesy of the backyard.

            

Now, on to the decorating.  Since all of our plants were silk, we didn't have to deal with potting soil or putting in a drainage level of gravel.  We just used a hot glue gun to attach the stem to the bottom of the jar.  And after a few attempts we were able to get it to stay in place.

           


 Next, add some dried moss.  The idea here is to have the moss over the bottom of the jar, creating a carpet-like effect.

         


After much trial and error with hot glue and some trimming, here is the successful attachment of moss and the stem/flowers.

       


Now to add some more decorative flowers.  Detach flowers from the stems and hold in pliers.

    



Use hot glue gun to put a dot of hot glue on the flower.



Using pliers, place silk flowers into moss on onto rock until it looks festive.  :P





Add a few more flowers just to be sure.

 



 Very nice, with all the extra flowers.  And the rock.  Guess we forgot to take a picture of adding the rock.  It went in after the moss.

 


Butterflies.  What woodland terrarium would be complete without some visiting butterflies?  Just like the silk flowers, detach butterflies from their wires and use dots of hot glue and pliers to place in realistic poses around the terrarium.

  





And here is the final result.  A beautiful woodland terrarium.  Perfect to bring a breath of spring into Grandma's house.  :)