Hey guys,

Remember the post I did about Dollarama awhile back? Remember those adorable animal-lidded jars I mentioned being obsessed with? Well, I finished making a set of my own and I wanted to show them to you.

It's a very simple project.

Supplies
Clean glass jars with metal lids (like old olive jars).
Plastic animals from the dollar store.
Epoxy glue.
White primer or other well-adhering paint in the colour(s) of your choice.

All you need to do is glue the animals to the jar lids and then paint the lids (and the animals) a solid colour. My animals were a bit too big for some of my jars, so I cut them in half (with a sturdy utility knife). The effect is a bit more surreal, with animal bums on some jars and partial torsos on others, but I like it. Here are the snaps:

Initially, I made these planning to give them to my niece, but I love them so much, I may have to keep them for myself.

Since I was talking about kid-friendly stuff earlier in the week, I thought I'd continue on with that theme and share a project I did with my four-year-old niece last weekend.

We made rainbow crayons.

I had promised her an "art day" as her Christmas present (just me and her) and the crayon idea was one I had in my pocket for when we got tired of painting (which we did). It's a really easy one, and there are instructions all over the week. Google "rainbow crayons" and you'll see what I mean. Here's how we made ours:

Step 1: Pick out all the bits of broken crayons for your crayon jar (I know you have one!). This is a simple task that even a toddler can handle. It's about digging and selecting and little ones are good at that.

Step 2: Line a muffin tin with paper cups (or don't, but this will be easier if you do).

Step 3: Peel the bits of broken crayon and place the pieces willy nilly in the muffin tin cups. (If you like, you can organize the bits of crayon by colour. I didn't, because we were "experimenting" but you really can't go wrong, no matter what you do.

Step 4: Once the paper cups are about 1/2 full of broken crayon, put the tray into the oven at a low temp. (We set ours to 170 degrees F. because that's the lowest it would go.)

Step 5: Go off and do something else. Check on your melting crayons every 10 minutes or so.

Step 6: When you notice that the crayons have all melted, remove the muffin tin and leave it out to cool. (Or melting process took about 35 mins). If you put a lot of different colours in each cup, the tops of your melted crayons may look oily and yucky (probably greyish brown). Don't worry! Just be patient and let them cool.

In other words, even if your crayons look like this don't worry:
They need a little more time in the oven, and the murky look is not a problem.

Step 7: When the tray has cooled, remove the new, round crayons and peel off the paper cups. Even if the tops looked kind of icky, the bottoms will be vibrant and wonderful looking.

Step 8: Colour! You now have a set of round, rainbow crayons that will look a little like colourful peanut butter cups. Find some fresh paper and make some art!

Hey dudes... guess what!?

We're getting close to Apartment Therapy day! Apparently, my house tour is set to be posted next week. (Woo woo!)

In the meantime, I have one sneak peek photo to show you, taken by the lovely Abby Cook (who shot our place for the feature). AND, it's a great picture to share because it really highlights one of my recent projects: bright door edging.

I was inspired to paint the edge of every door in our apartment after I saw the September 2001 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The mag featured this project among other easy ways to jazz up your doors and it seemed so simple, I couldn't wait to try it.

I did a different, complimentary or contrasting colour on every door. The guest room (shown above) has green accents, so I chose a bright acid green edge for that room. Our bathroom is dark chocolate brown, and I used a hot pink in there. In our dark blue bedroom, the door edge is now pumpkin orange, and in the dining room, it's teal.

You could use any acrylic paint for this project, and I would recommend you apply it with a plain old artist paint brush. Don't bother taping. The door itself will guide you, and if you slip up, just wipe away your mistake with a wet rag. Acrylic is very easy to work with.

In order to get a REALLY bright look, I went with some of the new colours/paints from the Mantegna line, purchased at Woolfit's in Toronto. (Any art store will have good paints. I went to Woolfit's because it's around the corner from my office.) You only need a little tube of any one colour to do each door, and you'll have paint left over.

_See the "Luminous Green" shown on the right of the top-most line of colours? That's what you see in the first picture above.

This is an EXTREMELY fast and easy project. I highly recommend you try it. When your doors are closed, you won't notice the change at all, but when they're open, you get that pop of colour and it's fun and happy. Think about it.

A long while back, I posted about a project where I decoupaged some birds onto an old stool. Here's a photo to refresh your memory.

I was never perfectly happy with how this project turned out. I felt it needed more birds. Or that the birds weren't well laid out.

But it was good enough, and for a long time, I lived with it.

Then, thanks to a hot cup and a low attention span, I ruined it. I scalded the top of the stool and a big fat chunk of varnish, bird and paint tore away.

This gave me an opportunity to start again.

Using my handy-dandy oscillating sander, I stripped away the old decoupage. (I should have used paint stripper for this. I'm so lazy. Don't be lazy like me. Do things right and you'll save yourself heartache.)

I brushed on a new under-coat of black paint, then found, printed and carefully cut out a picture of a water lily to take the place of the lost birds.

Here's how it turned out:

I used regular paper and my home printer for the water lily. Again, not wise. Decoupage works a lot better with thick paper and inks that won't bleed.

I re-decoupaged the top of the stool with the flower. The thin paper wrinkled and I had major bubble problems along the way. I tried to solve these with a needle and patience.

The result is imperfect. If you look at the stool up close, you can see that the varnish isn't smooth and the flower itself is a bit blurred, but nonetheless, I am very happy with it. It's better than the birds, I think. The water lily has more impact.

I did the whole thing while watching a movie on a Saturday afternoon, so it wasn't exactly hard labour.

Have you decoupaged anything recently?

Over the weekend, I hosted a little crafting get-together at my apartment. I wanted an excuse to work with the pine cones I've been hoarding for the last year. I've posted about these before. When my niece was three, she helped me gather a whole bag full, and I've been trying to think of how to use them ever since.

Here's what I finally settled on:

I got this garland idea from Twig and Thistle. Their DIY pine cone garland is really gorgeous. That said, the Twig and Thistle instructions are a bit difficult. I doodled around with a bunch of different supplies before I settled on a plan of my own that yielded a similar effect, but was less work to execute.

I didn't bother with drilling holes in the cones, using screw hooks, or even ribbon. Instead, I used an old beaded necklace and attached the pine cones simply, with white thread and basic knots.

As a result, my cones hang horizontally, with the florets opening out, as opposed to pointing down, vertically. But I think they look good. Also, using a beaded necklace rather than ribbon meant I could just count out the same number of beads between each cone to end up with an even placement. (No measuring!)

I used an uneven number of cones (so one cone would fall in the centre of the garland) and eyeballed the sizes to make that centre cone the largest, moving out from the centre with cones in decreasing sizes, and placing the littlest cones on either end.

I knocked a couple of new nails into my mantle and strung it up. Done!

What do you think? Rustic and festive, right?

This would be an easy project to do with kids. Even the littlest little ones can gather pine cones, and if you consider paint, there are a lot of different possibilities for pretty garlands to match your decor. Let me know if you try it!

I've been wanting to experiment with felting for a long time now, but I've hesitated because it seemed like... well, like a lot of work, frankly. All that poking and knotting. All the necessary felting accoutrement. But I was recently alerted to a potential felting shortcut and I just had to try it. Here's what you do:

1. Get something made of wool (like an old hat).
2. Wash the heck out of it in hot water and soap (in the washing machine).
3. What comes out? Felt! Mold it to the shape you want and let dry.
   

Here, let me show you.

First, we have the initial object: a crochet woolen hat, which I got from Goodwill. I meant to wear it. It was lovely. Warm.

And itchy as all get out.

So, I decided to say goodbye.

Into the washing machine it went. Wash wash wash. Dry dry dry. I ran it through a good five times. (I didn't want to waste water or power by running washes exclusively for this project, so I waited until I had light loads of regular laundry to do. So the whole washing process ended up taking awhile. But obviously, if you were feeling impatient, you could speed things up a bit.)

The result? Felt!

I cut the rim/brim off with plain kitchen shears and voila - a bowl.

Fabulous for fall, if you ask me (which you didn't, but let's pretend you did).
I'm pretty proud of this project. Easy and highly satisfying. Just my style. You like?

I posted about Halloween awhile back, remember?

And after posting, I immediately went to Dollarama, bought some supplies and made a wreath.

It took all of 10 minutes, I swear.

Supplies:
1. Three black-feather boas (Dollarama, $2 each)
2. One plastic wall clock, black (Dollarama, $2 each)
3. Screwdriver

I tend to use these plastic clocks for my wreath forms because they're cheap, light, and readily available at dollar stores (which means there's no need to visit a specialist craft place). To get at the black plastic hoop, just flip the clock over and unscrew the back. The other parts of the clock (face, hands, backing, glass cover, etc.) might be handy for other projects, so set aside.

Method:
1. To get at the black plastic hoop, just flip the clock over and unscrew the back, as mentioned above.
2. Wrap the black plastic hoop in the feather boa... going around and around. You can secure it to the hoop with hot glue if you like, but I just wrapped and found that the boa stayed in position pretty well on it's own. It took three boas to cover the hoop twice. Tie the ends of the boas together as you go, so there are no gaps.
3. Done!

I personally think the plain black feathers work on their own. They flap in a disturbing fashion when anyone opens our screen door (and it really freaks people out... hee hee.) But if you like, you can decorate your wreath with ribbon or baubles. Just tie them on with black thread or use hot glue.

Here's my finished wreath. Total cost? $8.

Over the next month, I may decorate it a little. Maybe I'll add some little birds, bats or baby skulls. Maybe not. Either way, this is a super-simple Halloween craft that takes all of 10 minutes and looks pretty darn good as is.

It's more than a month away, but Halloween is already in full swing in the retail sphere. I know this because I popped in to Dollarama this morning and was assaulted by a full aisle of spooky, mass-produced paraphernalia. Pretty intense.

But I love Halloween. (Spooky Halloween, not sexy Halloween, but let's not get in to that.) And In my mind, no one really does it better than Martha. Here are just a few of the projects I've seen her do that I think can be mimicked with supplies from the dollar store.

Actually, just tooling around the Dollarama gave me a lot of original ideas as well. Their Halloween stock seems particularly good this year.

I think really successful holiday decorating is about doing creative things (and sometimes, cutting corners by using pre-fab materials). I never like to do anything that's straight out of the box, if you know what I mean.

This year, though, there are almost too many options.

What are you thinking about for Halloween decor this year? (Or is it too early to be thinking about it at all?)

Today's DIY is extremely simple.

Basically, it's a variation on the gold birds I've been making recently, only this time, instead of gold, I've spray painted the birds matte white, in order to imitate the look of plaster.

To do this project, start with an object with an interesting or appealing shape.

I began with two plastic peacocks from my local Salvation Army (@2.99 each).

 As you can see from this before photo, the birds were an ugly black/bronze colour initially. This sort of ugliness is what you have to look past when choosing your object. Think ONLY about shape. Ignore colour completely.

Next, choose your paint. I went with an outdoor, rust-proofing spray for metal and wood. I know, I know, my object is plastic, but this was the only spray I could find at my local hardware store that was flat/matte enough for my purposes. Just apply the spray in light coats, letting each coat dry for a good 30 minutes before you add another. Work slowly and the paint will likely adhere well enough for indoor display, even if it's not an ideal paint for your object's base material.

Don't forget to spray in a well-ventilated area. (This alkyd stuff is pretty toxic.)

And that's it. Once the paint is dry, you have a matte, white object, reminiscent of plaster.

Do you like it? I think I like it. I was inspired to give it a go when I saw Mr. Goodwill Hunting do a similar makeover on a object shaped like a horse's head. (Thanks for the idea, Rashon!)