Bracing

Earlier this week, I stumbled on a fab DIY blog where she made a really cool neon bracelet. I'm a fan of anything neon so I figured I needed to make this. It was wrapping thread around a band, it couldn't be that hard, right? Well, the actual construction wasn't hard, but finding the materials proved more difficult that it should have. After visiting 2 of the 3 craft stores in town, plus Walmart, I was still empty handed. Fortunately, I'm married to a genius and he suggested that we stop at Claire's for the cuff at least. I found a couple that were ok but nothing that really grabbed me. Then RF knocked it out of the park again and found these.

Yes, those are giant hoop earrings and they were perfect! I used wire cutters to snip off the posts, so I wasn't stabbing myself all the time.

We went back to Hobby Lobby and looked at several different types of threads. None fo them were quite right. Some were too thin, meaning it would take a million wraps and a ton of thread where others were too thick and scratchy (I can't do scratchy). Then we found this. It is a nylon thread, but it is thicker than regular thread.

I put a dab of Aleene's Tacky Glue on the inside of the hoop and held the thread in it until it dried. Then I wrapped the thread around the hoop. The key is to wrap it tight and pull it so there are no gaps between the wraps. I wrapped it all the way to the end and glued it down. Then I put another small dab over the 4-5 rows at the beginning and the end, just to add some stability to the wraps. Ta-da, fab neon cuff bracelets

And because anything neon needs to ready to wear to the see the Brat Pack, I bought some cheap letter pins and pinned them to the bracelets, to show my BP love!

Dumpster Diving

Several weeks ago, we went to a school event at our new building (our school is moving buildings this year while our current building is upgraded and expanded). The school that was in the new building before is getting a brand new building, with all brand new furniture, so they didn't want the stuff that was in this building. Our school didn't really need any of the furniture, since we had our own stuff as well, so the district decided to toss most of it and it happened to be outside, in and around a huge dumpster, the night of our event. Several of us snagged various pieces of furniture, including wooden teacher desks, 6 foot long solid wooden tables, teacher chairs, student desks, bookshelves, etc. I grabbed a small wooden desk, which was pretty beat up. However, it was solid as the day is long and I figured I could refinish it fairly easily, since it was all straight pieces. RF wanted to use it as a game table, but I decided I wanted to use it as a TV table in the living room. Here is the picture before I started working on it. You can see the scratches, gouges, and paint splatters all over it.

I took it all apart and sanded it all down and put poly on it. I don't like painted wood and I'm not a huge fan of stain on wood either, so I kept the natural color and used a clear coat. It was about as easy as I expected it to be, except for the fact that it has been a thousand degrees recently and I wasn't interested in working on it in the heat, so it has just been sitting in the garage. But I've decided to do some redecorating in other parts of the house and it all hinged on getting this table done, so I can repurpose, and get rid of, other furniture. Since the weather was nice on Friday, I hauled everything outside and hit it hard. We bought some new hardware (the bolts were all mis-matched and different sizes) and got it set up this afternoon

We are using the drawer for loose games and things and Xbox and controllers are perfect on the shelf. For a total cost of less than $4, for all new hardware, this is one of my better dumpster diving finds!

Nailed it!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, which is my super favorite holiday! Other than the heat, there is nothing I don't like about this holiday. In that spirit, I decided to rock an awesome 4th of July manicure. Before I start, I should mention that one color and a little glitter is about all I can ever manage and even then I usually make a mess. 3 colors is so far beyond my skill set, it's amazing any of them turned out. I started out by painting my nails with a coat of white. Next I grabbed some painters tape, although the tutorials online say you can use basically any type of tape, from medical to Scotch.

Then, because who wants silly straight lines, I grabbed an old pair of scrapbooking scissors and cut the tape into shapes

Here, make a note, when the tutorial says wait for the first coat to be completely dry, it means it! 100% totally completely dry is a requirement. In fact, if I do something like this again, I would likely do the base coat one day and the tape the next. Once things are completely dry, apply the tape to your nail. Make sure that it goes from the nail bed all the way over the tip. Also make sure that all your edges are sealed tightly, to prevent bleed. Next, I painted one side of the tape with a dark blue and the other side with red. Once that coat of paint was dry, I carefully peeled off the tape and came out with this:

I had several issues with the white peeling off, because it wasn't dry enough when I put the tape on but I was able to touch it up for the most part. I'm hoping it all smoothes out a little bit once I get the clear coat on it.