Tag Archives: DIY

Monogrammed Keychains

Hi weekend crafter!

I’m always on the hunt for making something useful with polymer clay and so for this weekend, I wanted to show you how I make monogrammed keychains. Personalized items are quite popular, with people wanting to have their initials on their things. I myself am an owner of a lot of personalized things, and I’ve gotten a lot of use from them.

To make these keychains, you want to start out with making a floral slab. To make a floral slab, you will need clay, a few silicon molds of leaves and flowers, flower-shaped cutters, a clay blade and a detail needle.

Speaking of floral slabs, I want to share with you that I’ve partnered with Creative Fabrica to teach you how to make beautiful polymer clay slabs. Creative Fabrica recently launched different craft classes that you can enroll in, and one of those classes is about working with polymer clay. In this 6-part class, I show you the basics of working with polymer clay to make them into slabs. You will learn texturing, color-mixing and even assembling your pieces until you are able to make your very own accessories with polymer clay. So if you’re ever wanting to learn something new for the summer, do check out the link that I’m sharing –  https://www.creativefabrica.com/classes/ref/1130715/ .

Going back to the keychain, once you’re done with making a slab, the next thing that you need to do is to assemble your keychain. First, use a circular cutter to mark off the area of your keychain. Then, use an alphabet cutter to cut your letters out. Finally, go back to the circular cutter to cut it through. Make a hole on top for where your findings will go.

Once this is baked, use jump rings to attach the keychain findings to your clay. And that is it! When done correctly, this will result into a very beautiful and personalized keychain, perfect for gifting!

Painting on Clay Jars

Hi guys! I’ve got another DIY Decor tutorial to share with you. I found these jars that were used for school projects that were due to be thrown out. I really wanted to save them and make them fit the vibe of my home so I decided to paint them using different design inspirations.

As these pots have all been previously painted on, the first thing that I needed to do was to cover everything with a base coat of white acrylic paint. Once every jar had been painted white, I set these aside to dry completely.

Boho Chic-So, for the first project, I wanted to do a boho chic design. To achieve this look, I decided to cover the center with natural burlap. I measured about two inches from the center and measured the same width on the burlap. Then I cut off the excess. The next thing that I did was I mixed a dark shade of green with white to make mint green. Once the entire jar had been coated, I set it aside to dry completely.

When the paint had dried, I got some glue and attached the burlap fabric to the center of the jar. Finally, I coated the entire jar, including the burlap fabric with Mod Podge and let it dry completely.

Industrial-The second jar’s inspiration are the concrete décor that I see so often on pinterest. This was actually a difficult redesign because the jar was painted black and I suspect that the paint originally used on it was poster paint because every time it stuck to something, the paint would chip or leach on to my white base coat. The plan was to paint everything gray and then dry brush it with black. I had to keep going back to it because of the chipped paint, but eventually, it did get to a point where everything was covered. I quickly brushed the jar with mod podge and that did the trick to seal everything.

Farmhouse-The third jar’s inspiration is another popular design theme—farmhouse. For this craft, you will need a bit of polymer clay. I wanted the jar to have this milk jug vibe so I fashioned handles for it using polymer clay. Once I created the shape of the handles, I baked the clay following the instructions on the packaging. Once the clay handles had been baked, I attach it to the sides of the jar with glue. Then, when it had dried, I painted everything white. Then, I dry brushed the entire jar with gray.

Pastel-And finally, I decided to do something pastel. Of the four, I have to say that this is my least favorite and only because the glue gun did not cooperate with me, and I couldn’t make straight, neat lines. I decided that I wanted to have some texture in this jar, and I thought that making the lines with the glue gun would work. In fairness, I still think that it would have worked, but I think that it would have looked better if I let my lines run along the entire jar.

And these are my four upcycled and redesigned jars. I hope you got some ideas on how to decorate your own clay pots.

DIY Christmas Decor

It’s been a while since I last shared a craft tutorial. Well, since it’s Christmas and I know a lot of us are trying to get smarter with our money because of this pandemic, I thought that for this year, I would only being making my own decor. In this tutorial, I want to share some very easy DIY projects with you.

This first one is just something that you can put around the house, on shelves, on coffee tables, basically, anywhere that can use a touch of Christmas.

Christmas Tin Can

You will need the following: a used and washed can (this one is from a canned good), Christmas ribbon (recycled, preferably), twine, burlap holly, plastic figs (from an old wreath perhaps), glue gun and plier.

  1. The first thing that you need to do is to remove any label from the can. Then, bend the sides of the can so that the edges don’t cut you. I also glued some paper twine around the opening for extra protection.
  2. I got the ribbon and glued this around the can. I glued a second ribbon for contrast (note that you can switch up the colors to suit your overall Christmas theme).
  3. I then cut a small piece of burlap, about an inch, to hide where the ends of my ribbon were glued.
  4. Then, I tightly would up some paper twine to glue at the base of then can. This will hold my figs upright.
  5. I decorated my twigs with a bit of holly first before I stuck them to the bottom of the can.
  6. Optional: You can add some tulle, or green fruits bags and fashion them as leaves.
  7. Optional: You can use a white marker to put touches of white on the ends of the fig to make them look like they’ve been snowed on.

I hope that you learned something from this tutorial! For the full tutorial, do head on to the Craft Time Studio – https://youtu.be/0A3n9SoLlh0

Eco-Friendly Dish Washing Net Cloths

I love finding ways of recycling everyday items, so when I watched how I can reuse my fruit nets and turn them into dish washing net cloths, I immediately had to try it out!

What You’ll Need

Fruit nets (about 6 pcs)

Elastic

Scrap ribbon

Scissors

What to Do

  1. Fold the ends of the fruit net at the center.
  2. Form into bow.
  3. Secure the bow with elastic (or you can also sew them up using a needle and thread).
  4. Do steps 1-3 for the remaining fruit nets.
  5. Stack the bows on top of each other and tie with elastic.
  6. Attach a scrap ribbon so that you can hang the net cloths on the faucet.

 

Craft Tutorial: Rainbow Polymer Clay Earrings

It’s been a while since I’ve shared a clay craft. But because of this quarantine, I’ve had more time to go back to clay-making. Here’s a simple tutorial on rainbow earrings that you can teach your kids how to make.

For materials, you will need:

  • polymer clay in rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet)
  • clay blade
  • earring findings
  • detail needle

What to Do:

  1. Roll out your rainbow clay into thin snakes.
  2. Starting from the violet clay, carefully bend the clay snake into a U-shape.
  3. Bend the successive colors, following the violet one, until all the colors have been placed.
  4. Use your clay blade to cut the excess clay.
  5. Get your detail needle and poke a hole at the topmost color.
  6. Bake the polymer clay following the instructions on the packaging.
  7. Attach the earring findings.

There you have it, a simple craft to make with your kids! You can also switch the colors up, using bolder colors, or lighter colors, depending on your mood.

Wash your hands and stay safe!

Summer Crafts for Kids #3: Gaudi-inspired Coaster

Since we’re always at the beach these days, we got to collect a lot of sea glass. At a certain point, we had one too many. So, we thought of another super simple craft to make use of these beautiful beach finds.

Level of Difficulty: Beginners

In this craft activity, you will need:

Used paper bowl (cleaned and dried)

Sea glass

Scissors

Silicon

Acrylic paint

Paint brush

What to Do:

  1. Cut the bottom of the paper bowl.
  2. Flip it and paint the sides with acrylic paint. Set aside to dry.
  3. Once the paint is dry, fill the bottom with silicon. (Note: silicon sets very quickly so your sea glass pieces should be on hand).
  4. Decorate with sea glass. Leave overnight to dry.

Summer Crafts for Kids #2: Bohemian Keychain

As a tourist in a foreign country, I found it very challenging to engage my child in crafts, while making sure that 1.) we don’t spend on too many craft supplies that we can’t bring home and 2. We also don’t create more garbage.

As a result of some creative thinking, we came out with this very simple and whimsical accessory.

Level of Difficulty: Beginners. This is literally a 5-minute craft. The only part that took long was for the glue to dry.

In this craft activity, you will need:

0.5 cm wide ribbons, cut into 8 cm strips  (the ones we had on hand were from clothing tags)

Jump ring

All purpose glue

Feathers (*optional. We picked these feathers on the beach)

What to Do:

  1. Get a strip and fold into half.
  2. Attach to the jump ring using a cow hitch knot.
  3. Continue to do this until you’ve covered about half of the jump ring.
  4. To achieve a more bohemian look, you can also glue feathers.

 

Summer Crafts for Kids #1: Aqua Beads

It’s summer once again and for parents, this means that a lot of time will be spent on thinking of what to do with the kids at home. Luckily, I’ve discovered that there are a lot of simple and relatively inexpensive crafts to do with the kiddos to make sure that their time is occupied on meaningful endeavors, and not just mindless play (eg. Internet surfing, etc.).

Level of Difficulty: Beginners

For this craft activity, you will need:

  • Aqua beads set (which includes templates, aqua beads, water spray, and layout tray)
  • Clean bottle with lid
  • Glue gun

What to Do:

  1. Put the layout tray on top of the bottle lid so that you can measure how big your design can be.
  2. Start putting the beads on the tray to make your design.
  3. Once you’re happy with the design, spritz the entire thing with water. Let it dry overnight as the beads will not attach properly if the water is not completely dry.
  4. Glue the pattern to the lid using glue gun.

The advantage of this craft is that the beads come in a variety of colors. They also sell beads by the pack. The disadvantage is that once the kids get a hang of making them, they can finish quite quickly. Challenge them to a game of making the most number of designs.

Watch out every Wednesday for a new set of summer crafts!

Tiny Knick Knack Jars

Hello crafters!

It’s been a while since my last craft post. Apologies, but no excuses. I am a strong believer that if you want to get something done, you make time for it. So this is me, carving out some time to post a new project for you to try out.

I love tiny things, I love organizing and I love upcycling! So for this easy five-minute project, I combined my three loves.

For this craft, you will need–

*washed, cleaned and dried glass jam jars (the one that you usually see in hotels)

*paper tape

*circular stickers

*supplies (paperclips, pushpins, etc.)

What to Do:

  1. Fill your jam jars with supplies. Sometimes, I like to put monocromatic stuff inside (eg. same-colored pins, paperclips, etc.). Or if I’m feeling playful, I’ll mix all different colors in one jar!

2. Get your paper tape and cut the end into an inverted V. I do this by folding my tape in half and cutting the end at an angle. Stick the end of the tape to the metal lid of the jam jar.

 

3. Finally, I put my circular stickers on top of the lid. As you can see from the materials I used, most of them were in the gold color theme.

Happy crafting!

Customized Kiddie Shoes

I really love making my daughter smile. It’s part of the reason why I craft. So for another easy tutorial, I designed this pair of shoes for my daughter. 

You will need:

Canvas shoes

Pencil

Acrylic paint
Paintbrush 

Ribbon

What to do:

1. Pick a design that you want to paint on the canvas shoes and trace it on the shoe itself. I picked a cat drawing because my daughter loves cat faces. 

2. Paint it on. 

3. Sew matching bows on top of the canvas shoe.