Custom Magnets

Want magnets to match your home or kitchen decor? 

Trust me, they look way better than those free ones you have from your realtor or local pizza delivery or whatever. Make these super easy ones for yourself or a friend. A simple custom handmade gift. 

I wish took more pictures, sorry, but this is so easy you won't need a lot of instruction from me. 

Get some of those glass blobs from Micheal's or the dollar store. They are round on top and flat on the bottom, you usually see them in a bag or net for a couple bucks. I think they are actually called glass beads for vase filler. They come in lots of colours and are used in floral arrangements and stuff. "Stuff" being these custom magnets!

Then get some basic magnets, small discs work best. These are also found at Micheal's or a dollar store. 

Finally, gather up a magazine of interest or some of your favorite scrapbooking papers. 

Here I have a recent PotteryBarn catalogue, flipping through it I saw this picture and really like the colour combos:

Here's another picture I like, cute colours, eh?

So simple stuff here...

Cut out a circle of the paper you like, then use modge podge or glue to attach it to the flat side of the glass blob.

When the paper and glue is completely dry, go ahead a glue the magnet on. 

I told you, simple simple! And super cute for your home!

A few of them together is a nice little collection for your fridge, or for your friend!

~Jess

Design Inspiration

Lately, I've been considering updating the painting in my house. I've lived here for over 11 years now, so it's just time for some changes, and paint is definitely going to be cheaper than finishing the basement (though that's on the "To Do" list for sure).

Jess had mentioned once that she looked for colour palettes on Pinterest for card making, so I had a look. Some had links to looking for inspiration from other fabrics or things you have, so I'll probably head in that direction. I already used my kitchen chairs (some of the seat pictured above) as inspiration for some accent paint around my pantry door, so I'll now probably use some of the neutrals in it to have some continuity throughout the house.
*Note: The two paint sample strips on the chair were to figure out the best colour to use and my design friends said I could actually use any of those colours. I went with the top left for the wall as I thought it was a little more vibrant than the bottom row.

Aaaanywho, I ended up pinning quite a few colour palettes as I figured I'd need them at some point anyway in my crafting. And I discovered that I had quite a few from Design Seeds (http://design-seeds.com/), so I explored that site more and thought I'd share.

http://design-seeds.com/home/entry/petaled-hues5

What I liked about that site is that it gives you an image and pulls colours from it. Then if you like a particular one, you can click on it on the right side under "see similar colours" and it will take you to other colour palettes that use similar colours. For example, I clicked on the top-right greenish colour and got to eight different palettes that might work, depending on what overall feeling your going for. http://design-seeds.com/search?hex=cfccb0

So this is all well and good, great for card making, maybe some clothing design, inspiration for choosing colour options, but this doesn't really help you buy the paint for the walls.

But wait! I found another website that will help with that. EasyRBG http://www.easyrgb.com/?X=SEEK

This will take computer colours and turn them into the paint colour names from different companies. You'll need either the RGB values or the hex code of the colour. The beauty of the Design Seeds site is that if you hover your mouse over the colour, the hex code will pop up. It's also the end code of the webpage you follow if you click to see the similar colours. So for the greenish colour noted above you can see the end string is "cfccb0".

I know my local paint store sells Benjamin Moore paint, so I entered "cfccb0" in the colour code, chose the "Benjamin Moore Color Preview" as my color collection, and voilà! It gives me the names of four optional matches that Benjamin Moore produces. The centre block is the colour I entered and the four smaller ones around it are the options. In this case, it came up with Guillford Green, Soft Fern, Abingdon Putty, and Carrington Beige.

So now just head to the store, grab those colour samples and decide where your project is headed.

Translating computer screen colour to real life may take a little trial and error, but here's some help to getting the ideas from your head onto the walls!

~Lisa

Mala Beads

Do you need a bit of calm in your life? Ya... I know you do. Try meditation.

No. I mean it. Seriously, give it a try.

At times being a mother, wife, nurse, friend, sister, and everything else can feel overwhelming. Sometimes a quite moment of reflection is needed to bring you back to your best self.

These mala bead necklaces can be used to guide you through a simple meditation. And the making of your own mala necklace is a meditation practice in itself.

You will need 108 beads of your choice in any sort of combination you wish. Pick colours and shapes that you enjoy. These can be made of wood, seeds, stones, semi-precious stones, glass, whatever you find that seems to speak to you.

And choose one special bead, or series of beads, this is the intention or guru bead that acts like a pendant, centering your mala bead necklace.

To string it all together I used embroidery floss, but you could use any kind of thread, yarn, or string.

Tie a knot (or two) at the end of the string, leaving about 4 inches of a "tail" so you'll have lots to work with when tying the two ends together.

I found it useful to lay out the beads in place and see the result before I strung them together. This way you can see the pattern and it's easy to adjust or change as you like. Then, once you are satisfied with your design, start stringing them together.  

When all the beads are on the string, tie a knot (or 2 again) to secure them. Now tie the two "tails" together creating a circle necklace. Thread both tails through the special bead(s) and tie a knot to secure it onto the necklace.

I added a tassel to the end, this is a pretty addition and serves as a gentle reminder of the infinite connections in the universe. It helps to keep you grounded!

You can use your mala bead necklace as a piece of jewelry, as an ornament, or as an aid to your meditation practice. 

~Jess

Two Crafty Girls on a beach

We were fortunate to be able to take a trip to Cuba at the end of March! We probably haven't gone anywhere, just the two of us, since we were in Beijing in 2002. It was an awesome break from the never-ending snow in Alberta this past winter, and while we were there we kept our eyes open for what some "crafty girls" could craft.

Of course, you could start with fancy shapes out of towels and blankets. They're just like giant napkins, right? You don't even have to make anything since you've got the materials at home already! A bird and a flower on the bed, and then some characters to greet us at the buffet.

Then inside the buffet were some decorations placed around the food areas. So all you need is 45 pounds of soft butter and make it into whatever shape you want. Besides Grumpy Dwarf, Scrat, and the crest, we also saw Davy Jones (from Pirates of the Caribbean) and a big bull.

Or if you're feeling adventurous, why not carve some flowers into a melon? While we haven't tried this yet ourselves, apparently the trick is just to carve away everything that doesn't look like a flower. :)

And since we're talking about the food on the trip, how about special coffees and baked goods? There was a cappuccino bar at the resort, so it was easy to get those a couple times a day. Layering the coffee is about the differing densities of the liquids (these crafty girls are also proud nerdy girls), but no one wants to think too hard on that while on vacation, so the barista Karina made those coffees for us each morning. There were some delicious shortbread-type cookies that we ate several times a day, the fresh croissants, and some cinnamon-roll cookie that was a bit like biscotti and held up really well dunked in the coffee. Might actually have to figure that one out....

Or mimosas with baked goods? Probably the best part about all of this is that someone else is making all of it for you. And, they take away the dirty dishes when you're done!

Jewellery anyone? The flower and the green band are made of cow horn (and they smell like it when they get wet), and the other is some metal twists with a bead on it. The trouble with wanting to try and make these is that it's so much easier to bargain for them at 3 rings for 5 pesos in the market instead of trying to find the materials. The wire and bead are probably easy enough, but it might be harder to find an available cow horn.

Now, beach huts don't seem that hard. A main pole stuck in the sand, support ribs for the roof, covered in palm leaves. This one even has a shelf for your slushy drinks! We can't figure out why the people on Survivor generally seem to have a hard time with this....

But we'll totally admit that several rows of palapas seems rather ambitious. We'd just have to stay on the beach for several weeks, which I think we'd both be alright with.

*Sigh* Time to head home and back to reality. Tons of fun picking out the things we could make if we really tried. :)

The one thing that we (ok, really just Jess) actually did make for the trip were these headbands. Great help for stopping a sunburned forehead. Watch for the real post about how to make those soon!

P.S. Bonus points for anyone that can explain to us why Lisa is always on the right side of the picture, Jess on the left. Seriously, we don't know why we arrange ourselves this way.

Counteract smelly dishcloths

Now you can't tell me that this has never been an issue for you - a dishcloth that's smelling a little "off".

It seemed that all of my dishcloths had that smell, even when they were first pulled out of the drawer, so I thought I should try fixing that before I went and got new dishcloths. I've tried this vinegar and baking soda refresher for my bath towels, so figured I'd give it a try and see if it worked on the stronger smells of the dishcloths. Certainly cheap ingredients to be experimenting with even if it didn't work out.

I just grabbed by dutch-oven pot and put all the dishcloths in and filled it with water. Just be sure to leave some space for the boiling because it's going to get a little frothy. Then dump in a couple glugs of vinegar. Yep, that's an official measuring term from Mom. You know the sound it's going to make when you pour a liquid out of a big jug quickly, so a couple of those. If you really want me to guess, I'd say it would be about a half cup of vinegar.

Bring to a boil and let them bubble for about 10 minutes. I pushed them around every couple of minutes to make sure that they all had a chance in the vinegar bath. Remember, this is boiling vinegar so you might think it smells worse than the dishcloths and you're going to wonder if it's worth it. Don't worry, it is. :-)

Then I just dumped them out into the sink and let them drain.

The next step is to boil them with the baking soda, so I put a bit of water in the pot and sprinkled some baking soda in so that I could be sure it dissolved. Maybe a tablespoon or so. The cloths stay quite hot, so I used tongs to toss them all back into the pot and filled it up with water again. Boil for another 10 minutes or so. Some more bubbles!

Drain again and rinse. They do stay hot for a long time, so be careful. Then I put the cloths through a normal hot-water wash cycle in the washing machine. Seems to have fixed the problem! 

When I was researching this after I had gone through the process, one of the suggestions to avoiding smelly dishcloths is to just use a new one every time you want to wipe something up. Seems rather unrealistic to me, so I think I'll just spend the 30 minutes and a cost of about 20 cents for the vinegar and baking soda to do this again. 

WARNING: If you have a weak stomach, don't look at these next pictures. 

This is the colour of the water after boiling in the baking soda. What's most disturbing to me is that I had pulled most of these cloths "clean" from the drawer. Ya, not so clean I guess.....

~Lisa

Two Crafty Girls come from Two Crafty Parents

In honour of our parents' birthdays, it seems appropriate to share just how awesome we think they are and to give them all the credit for teaching us to be crafty. Though we are both grown adults, and do know quite a few things by now, we both still look to our parents for advice and as the examples for how to live our lives.

It was somehow a combination of having high expectations for us and instilling the self-confidence to be able to say "of course we can". You want to learn to knit? Of course you can, and it's completely OK if it's just a long strip (the infamous "snake blanket") that has a different number of stitches on each row. You want to learn to sew? Of course you can, and Dad will proudly wear the plaid tie you made for him.

If you want to try to make something on the mechanical or wood-craft side, such as a built-in cabinet or learning to do an oil change, it starts as "Dad, can you help me...", which really means "Dad, can I help you...", and often turns into "Dad, can I watch while you....". Alright, not entirely true as we both know how to change the oil in the car.

With Mom, she would start with making you do it yourself. If it was something you could do but didn't want to, like hemming a pair of pants, all you had to do was keep asking her questions or starting doing it so badly that she couldn't stand it anymore. She would try to stand back but eventually caves-in, and usually with the phrase, "You're giving me a stomach ache".

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our Two Crafty Parents from these Two Crafty Girls!