Bio-Buddies Forever!

Everyone has those friends that you are super close to, but you don't live very close together anymore...for me - it's my Bio-Buddy!

The nick name came from college when we lived and breathed biology studies all the time and really helped each other out.  By that - I mean, she helped me survive my freshman year of college when I was more focused on Brian rather than on studying...and really kicked me into high gear in the later years.  Even outside of the classroom - she is an amazing person!  Every time we catch up and I hear about everything she is doing now, I am always impressed!  She is one of the most genuine, sweet, caring and good hearted people I have ever met. 

So for her birthday this past May, I wanted to make her something special.  I found the idea on pinterest and made it personalized with our state.  We live on the the opposite sides of MO, but I am always thinking of her and I am super proud of everything she accomplishes!

The quote says "No matter the miles that keep us apart, friends don't count the distance; friendship is measured by the heart!"  I may not have seen her in person in 2 years...but she will always be my bio-buddy!

Love you Brittany!

Love on a Canvas

We recently just remodeled our upstairs level which now has a room, walk in closet and a bathroom.  Our room is quite large and we decided to get a King size bed that is great...but it was kind of empty above the bed.  We like big, bold colors - so we went with a gray and coral theme...but the coral wall needed some toning down....

So I saw this as inspiration on pinterest:

I didn't like all of their quotes and didn't really think they fit Brian and I, so I made up a few of my own with some brainstorming help from Brian.  We chose to do one large canvas and 4 smaller ones.  I literally stood in front of all the canvases for about 20 minutes to make sure the dimensions would turn out right when they were all up on the wall together.  I actually had a great deal on these; they were buy one get one free - so I got them for super cheap!  Then I wrote out all our sayings and bought all the letters.  The ones that I bought came in packs of two - so I had to get A LOT of letters.  I ended up bouncing back between 3 stores over the KC area for a week until I finally got all the letters I needed. 

I came home and laid out all the canvases to get a feel for what they would look like together and then I put the letters on top of the wrapping to work on spacing and make sure I liked it before I glued everything down and couldn't return it.

Next came the gluing.  E6000 worked great for me.

On the small canvases, I eyeballed the spacing and alignment, much to my husbands anger.  (He is very particular about measuring out everything!

and I think it turned out just fine! :)

Next came the big kahuna!  I did put lines on this one because even I can't estimate straight lines that far of a distance, planned it all out, centered it and started gluing.  It seemed like it was never ending!

Finally I got them done!  Here is what they say:

Love one another

Lost in this Moment

Shut up and Kiss Me

Love you Mostest

"I've seen a million miles, met a million faces, took all that I knew to reach all these places, and i'd do it all again if it brings me back to you" 

Please ignore the missing "t's" I got impatient waiting on the products to come in.  

Then the handy-dandy husband came into play again and spray painted them for me. He did a light gray and then a white because the white wasn't covering the wood well at all.  Then we measured it all out and hung them above the bed.  I think they turned out pretty cool! 

Much more personalized and a lot cheaper than paying for made wall art.

First Pinterest Fail

If you know me, you know that my family is a PINTEREST FAN.  When I say that....I mean really.  We spend probably 2 hours combined on pinterest a day.  We watch TV and multitask while on pinterest, to the point that we have to pause the TV to share funny pins. We also get a lot of inspiration for cooking dinners, we try an average of 3 new meals every week based on yummy things we made...we also use it to inspire new remodel ideas and new craft creations.  Needless to say, we really like pinterest!

So....normally everything on pinterest is GREAT!  We rarely have any issues...until my friend and I decided that this looked really cool. 

Key word: LOOKED.

Now, buying the supplies was the easiest part.  Seriously.

Once we got it home; we decided that we would only put the dragon eyes on the glass bowls for the evening; let them dry and then come back the next day and do the Plaster of Paris.  Let that dry and then clean them off.

So - Step One:  Apply the dragon eyes. Sounds easy enough right?
       Clue #1: Don't use E6000 as suggested on the link.  It doesn't work. At all.
       Clue #2:  Buy more dragon eyes.  Really, if you think you have enough - buy 3 more bags.
       Clue #3: Hot glue guns actually will hold the dragon eyes on when you use a TON of it
       Clue #4: Hot glue is HOT.  Causes burns. They hurt. Especially when they are located on 7 out of 10 fingers.

Step Two: Call husbands who are at Walmart to ask them to bring home burn ointment.  Cuss them out while they laugh.

Step Three: Persevere through the extremely painful burns and try not to cry when you burn yourself yet again. 

Step Four:  Go get a bucket of ice for your friend who is now down to 2 working fingers.

Step Five: Finish the damn things and then swear them off for about a week.  Go play monopoly to distract from the pain.

 

------------------------------------ Next Day -------------------------------------

Step Six: Invite your friend back over to finish the project, remind her that she loves crafting when she says 'no'.

Step Seven: Make up the Plaster of Paris and realize that the manufacturer really wasn't kidding when they said it hardens in 7 minutes. Work faster to cover all 6 glass jars.

Step Eight: Make more plaster and do a second coat.

Step Nine: Throw the bucket you made the plaster in away.  There is no way you are getting it clean.

Step Ten: Avoid cleaning off the excess plaster for 3 weeks because you now hate this project and wish you never started.

Step Eleven: Finally attempt to clean off the excess plaster.  Don't kid yourself, the green cleaning pad that is suggested doesn't work.  Use a wire brush to get most of it off and then go back and scrub to where you think your arm will fall off just to get the ONE dragon eye clean.  No worries, only 134 more dragon eyes to go.

Step Twelve: Think you are really making some headway on this one glass and you turn it over to realized this happened on the other side because you were pushing so hard with the wire brush.

Step Thirteen: Give up.

Step Fourteen: Throw all evidence of your pathetic attempt in the trash.

Step Fifteen: Go make a strong drink.

A Little Classroom Inspiration

My newest addition to my classroom! 

Here is the inspiration from pinterest:

I couldn't do anything quite that large...so I went smaller. I bought a cheap frame from Michaels with my 40% off an individual item.  It was the one with the slide on sides and just cardboard from backing.  Then the sneaky characteristics of mine had to kick into play.  I went into The Home Depot and my husband aided me in grabbing a huge stack of various paint chip samples.  We literally walked away with a stack that was about 1.5" high.

Since we were working on building my craft room....the supplies sat for about a month before I finally did something with it.  I started mine like this:

I organized the paint chips by color and then arranged them on the large piece of paper that came with the frame. 

 Got this far and realized I didn't have enough paint chips.  So back to The Home Depot I went....So when you think you have enough...get more.

Here is what it looked like then...

 

The next step was to take it apart; one by one and cut off the lettering on the sample and then glue it back down.  Now, I would HIGHLY recommend you cut the lettering off BEFORE you lay it all down.  It will make your life much easier!

Once all glued down (I used the scrapbook tape glue), I used my cricut to cut out the letters.  I used the Art Philosophy cartridge and then arranged the letters on the paint chips and glued them down as well and this is what it looked like:

Finally, we put it into the frame and hung it on my wall at school!  I love it!  Can't wait to hear some of my kids reactions to it.  I think its a great quote and especially good in a classroom because kids don't always WANT to do some of the fun stuff we plan, but when they have a positive attitude; they always get more out of it!

Missouri Love

Welcome to my new blog!  This is where I will be posting crafty things that I have made and want to share with people.  Sometimes pictures just aren't enough and I'm sure you will enjoy my mishaps along the way. 

First up!  Missouri Love!

Here's how you do it: 

1.  Marry a handy husband. 
2.  Buy a piece of wood from Hobby Lobby.  I went with the one with finished edges just to make life a little easier.  I think I paid around $4 with a 40% off coupon.  (if you don't have their app - get it!!)
3.  Ask previously mentioned husband very nicely to spray paint the piece of wood.  I fail at spray painting, so he is the obvious option.  I didn't want to paint it with a brush and end up having brushstrokes, I really wanted a nice clean finish. 
4.  Wait for paint to dry....seriously.  Don't do it when its wet. 
5.  Print out a map of your state.  It may take some adjusting in Word and multiple trials to get it to the right size, but you'll get there. 
6.  Cut out and center the state on the wood.  Tape it down. 

7.  To please the handy husband...I marked out every 1/4" for the nails.  Its gets kind of hard around the curves, but just estimate the best you can. Make your marks small so they won't be visible when you take the paper off. 
8.  Start nailing.  I used the small nails that are used to hang pictures on the wall.  The package was about $2 at Hobby Lobby with another 40% coupon. 

9.  Locate the county in which your reside and put a nail where the a side of the heart will be. Take out the nail.  (its just a marker)
10.  Remove the paper template.  
11.  Use your pre-marked spot for your heart and add in the other nails.  You should get something that looks like this.

12.  Take your string (shown in the top of the previous picture) and make a loop at the end like this (please excuse the terrible manicure....suprisingly my nails now look worse!):

13.  Hook your loop onto your starting nail, I started in the bottom corner.  Then hook it around a nail of the heart and back down, then back up, then back down, then back up...you get the idea.  I counted my nails out - because i'm OCD like that - and I figured I had to about 8 outside nails per inside heart nail.  

14.  Keep going....there are a lot of nails to go.  Once you get round one done...it looked like this: 

15.  I didn't like that the strings were at an angle for each set of 8 per heart nail...so i decided to go over all the nails again and do a double layer of string. I didn't stick to my 8 string rule this time...I just filled in where I thought it needed it the most.  I ended up with the finished product.  

16. Post pictures on facebook and make a blog about it to make you feel like your time was well spent :) 
17.  Hang it on a wall to show off your creativity - or ability to copy others ideas - thank you pinterest!