Mason Jars!

Lately I have become slightly obsessed with crafts dealing with mason jars. In fact for Christmas last year I made my boyfriend's mom a mason jar chandelier for outside parties that she can hang in her gazebo. I of course didn't take any pictures but it looked so good and she loved it. So for today's blog I made soap dispensers out of mason jars!!

There it is, my new project. I meant to sell these at the swap meet in Portland that I was at last week ad tons of people looked and loved them but just no one wanted to b/c their husbands kept dragging them away since it wasn't car parts lol so thankfully I have all of the women on Kyle's side of the family to give them to.

Here's what ya need:

1. Mason jars- any size I used quart 
2. soap pumps
3. soap
4. pebeo glass paint 
5. pebeo thinner
6. foam brush
7. silicone
8. clear nail polish
9. ribbon
10. card stock
11. gold paint
12. black fine tip marker
13. wire

To get the purple look I went to Michael's and bought Pebeo glass paint. I bought the purple and you'll also need the paint thinner. This was over by  the stained glass section and there are TONS of colors just make sure its the GLASS not PORCELAIN one! Next you'll put a couple of drops of color in a cup and mix it with a few teaspoons of thinner. flip the jars upside down and with the foam brush make long smooth strokes all around the jar. try to avoid air bubbles and lines. Let dry for 24 hours then place in a coll oven on a pan(keep upside down) turn the oven on I don't remember the temp but it says on the color bottle and bake for 40 minutes. Turn the oven off but keep the jars in until the oven is cold. It will smell a little while it bakes so open a window or vent. VOILA!!!! colored jars. 

Alright next I went to the dollar store and bought four different kinds of hand soap and dumped them in the jars. When its empty you'll take the top of the soap bottles and cut it off so you have the threads. Then recycle the rest of it.

Take your lids and silicon the two pieces together put a little on both sides and smooth it out. Then drill a hole in the center of the lid and use tin snips to make it big enough for the threads to go through.

Put a little bit of clear nail polish on the cut metal to avoid rusting. 

 Next stick the threaded part of the bottle through the hole and silicon it in place.

Take the pump from the bottle and thread it into place.

Then screw the lid on to the jar and now you have your very own soap dispenser!!!

Time for the finishing touches! 

I took some white card stock and cut out this design and then took some gold acrylic paint I had laying around and painted a filigree on it and traced it with a black fine point sharpie.

On the back I wrote hand soap so people knew what kind was in. I then wrote the "flavor" of soap on the side with the filigree.

With the rest of the card stock I cut out a square and painted it all gold. I poked holes the top of both and ran gold wire though it.

I bought some cream colored ribbon at the dollar store and made a bow following the instructions on this website.

http://www.save-on-crafts.com/tailoredbow.html

I then wrapped some of the ribbon around the jar hot gluing the eds together but not on the jars so they can be taken off. I took the wire that I put on the tags and wrapped it around the ribbon on the jar. 

Then I hot glued the bow on the ribbon where the two ends were glued together. 

And there ya have it, soap dispensers made from mason jars.

Birthday

My boyfriend and his brother love Legos, and for Christmas we bought his brother a Lego man flashlight so I thought it'd only be fitting to make him a Lego block cake. He loves lime green so I knew it had to be that color but how was I going to make it.

I love baking/cooking so I knew I could do it but besides making a cake and just serving it in a pan or watching Duff make cakes I had no real idea of what to do.This was my inspiration.

Now what I needed was:

• 2 cake mixes plus ingredients for it
• 2 things of vanilla frosting
• blue and green Neon food coloring
• cupcake pan
• cake pan
• knife
• butter knife
• writing icing
• wax paper
• TIME!!!!!

Follow the directions on the back of the box and bake your cake. 

With the other box of cake make cupcakes!!! YUM! 

Let it cool. Slide a knife around the edges of the cake and take a larger pan and put it on top of the cake pan. Flip it over and watch your cake slide out. If pieces stick don't freak out just pull em out and use a little frosting as the glue.

Next take the cake and cut it to size and layer the two pieces on top of each other with a small layer of frosting in the middle. Then slide your knife over the top making it level. My cake was super super moist(who's complaining?!) so i had to let it set over night to try and give it some stability.

Next you'll take your vanilla frosting and do a "crumb coating" over it. Basically thin out the frosting a bit and do a really light cover of the cake. You'll want to see the cake through it. Let it sit for a few hours up to 24hours. It needs to have dried so its got a "crust" on it.

 This step basically just traps all the crumbs and when you put you're final frosting coat on it will be smooth.

The tinting was super easy just empty the rest of the frosting into a bowl and follow the direction on the back of the food coloring box. It was like 50 drops of green and 4 drops of blue(REMEMBER I USED NEON, so if you try the same color make sure you get NEON!!)

Put some wax paper around the edges of the cake to keep the frosting off the plate. Now frost away! 

Set aside 6 cupcakes to use as the circles on top of the Lego.

Here's the cake all frosted

Take the cupcakes and cut off the round tops, try and get them all the same size.

Place them on the cake with the rough side down makes it easier to frost.Take your frosting and do the sides and then the tops.

now if you've ever seen a Lego you know the they have "Lego" written on the circles so I used a tube of writing icing (yes, I know the colors don't match but I liked how it looked)

Here's the finished product!!! When we took it over Derek was ecstatic and was super happy. I took the rest of the cupcakes and just frosted them green and wrote Lego on them as well just to fit the theme. 

This was a big hit and he has already asked for a red one next year and his mom asked if I could make her a Eiffel Tower cake for her birthday, so come August there may be a post for it! 

Leftovers

As promised here is the post I was telling you about with the scraps from the baby blankie.

I knew that with a new baby lots of spitting up and burping would be occurring and with those you need some burping towels! So I was thinking hmm whats absorbent and pocket friendly and reusable....DUH cloth diapers!!!

So i bought a 4 pack, oddly enough they were cheapest at Joann's. Who knew a fabric store even would carry them but when they are cheaper then Wally world and Target I am not going to judge.

I also bought a little iron on elephant for "Peanut" at Michael's since I had a gift card and made a monogram. I felt like giving her an assortment and just had fun with it. Now when you make these just be very careful when stitching because the needle may shred the diaper, thankfully I didn't have any problems with that but I could see how it would happen because it is that gauze-y material (if you have never felt or seen a cloth diaper before.)

Here's a closer look at 3 out of 4 of them. 2 of them were very similar. They both said "BABY" but one used the green polka dot fabric lining the sides, so I only took one picture of them.

I am so glad that she liked these. It was funny I got called and put on speaker phone to hear here open my gift and I didn't know how my mom had wrapped it so all I heard was "Oh my gosh she made these?! They are so adorable!" I wasn't quite sure what she had gotten to first and hearing the "oooos" and "awws" from the ladies I couldn't really hear, but then I heard the gasp and even louder "oooooos" and I knew she had found the blanket. I am really glad that she enjoyed it and being able to hear her surprise and love for them was the best thing that I could ask for!   

Love you Christy can't wait to see little Peanut! 

Baby Time!!

My older sister Christy is having her first baby in May and our nickname for him is Peanut. Her husband came up with it b/c when they found out he was the size of a peanut so it just stuck. Now since I found out I knew I wanted to make a baby blanket since growing up I was attached to mine and she went everywhere with me. YES I said SHE! lol my blanket was with me wherever I went and she was considered part of me. I went through 2 so I knew any nephew of mine would need one and it had to be cute and sturdy! I found a really awesome blanket on Pinterest and went to the ladies blog and just went crazy. http://www.aestheticnest.com/2010/08/sewing-heirloom-cut-chenille-baby.html

I fell in love with it and just went wild with all the ideas of patterns and colors that I could do. Well I went with my boyfriend to Joann's and we wandered around looking for an hour. We knew we had to get it that day b/c they had their fabric on 30% off. We found this really adorable nursery fabric that had blocks and BABY in them. It also had cute little handprints and footprints on it. They were perfect colors for a boy in light yellow, green, blue, cream and brown. That helped me pick the other colors that I wanted. Now I waited on what flannel fabric I was going to buy cuz we were on a budget so a week or so later Joann's had their flannel on sale. I took the patterned fabric with me and found a light blue, a light yellow, and a light green with polka dot fabric. I then also bought the Ivy satin blanket binding and a washable fabric marker from them too.  I bought 3 spools of cream thread from Walmart since it was cheaper and then went straight to work.

HERE'S WHAT YA NEED:

• 1 cotton fabric (mine was 43" wide so I did 45" in length)
• 3 flannel fabrics that go with the cotton fab. (again 43" wide 45"length)
• 2-3 spools of thread 
• 1 pkg of satin binding 
• scissors
• fabric marker
• straight pins
• string or yard stick
• plate or anything for a round corner
• washer/dryer

I lost a few pictures but what i did was lay my cotton patterned fabric face down on the floor and put my 3 flannels on top with the colors facing up. I pinned them all together with my straight pins and then measuring them making it 41" every side. The blanket may shift on you so the cuts don't have to be perfect b/c you will be trimming here and there. After it is all pinned together start sewing. I did a straight middle sew and started in the middle of my blanket. You will be sewing diagonally down the blanket from one corner to the next. To make a straight line flip the blanket over so your pattern is up  and lay a yard stick or string from one corner to the other and mark the line. OH AND SEW WITH THE PATTERN FACING YOU SO THE "UGLY"  SIDE STITCHES WILL BE ON THE BOTTOM YOU'LL SEE WHY AT THE END.

On mine I didn't do the measure for the first line b/c my pattern had boxes on it where I could just sew diagonal in the boxes. So for me I sewed the middle lines through all the boxes first. Next I took my yard stick and my marker and measured 2 lines inside the already sewn ones. 

 I sewed where I drew the lines all through the blanket.

This is what it looks on the back half. Don't mind the puckers it won't matter. 

When you are all done sewing trim all the sides and get off any fabric that is hanging over and square it all up. Next comes a pretty tedious task. 

Grab your scissors and start snipping between the stitches. JUST CUT THE FLANNEL DON'T GO ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE PATTERNED FABRIC!!!

Once you're all done cutting the lines lay your blanket flat on the ground and lay a plate on the corner to give you the rounded edge. I marked it with my marker and then cut. Use that 1st corner as your guide for the next ones.

It'll look like this.

Next take out your satin binding and press it out with the iron. Don't iron on the satin side it will make it look funky. Then you'll iron it to how big you want your binding. Mine was a 2" bind that i folded in half to make a 1" bind for my blanket.

Then you'll take your straight pins and pin it to your blanket. More pins around the corners and start sewing. at the end fold the binding on itself and just stitch it closed.

Now you're almost done. Throw it in the wash with a little detergent and then dry. The dryer makes the flannel frill and get all wavy and beautiful! That's why you stitch with the pattern up b/c the ugly stitches or your mess ups get covered up by the frill. Also it only frills if you cut on the bias hence why you sew diagonally.

This is the softest blanket ever and the more you wash it the more it will frill! It has kind of the puffy feeling quilts do with all the stitching going on but isn't near as heavy or bulky as quilts can get. If you sew your lines closer together I bet the tighter the frill would be and it may do more! 

Here is the blanket all finished and ready to be sent home to CO for baby! I had to wait until today to put this up b/c she wasn't getting it until her baby shower which was the afternoon. I made this back in January so my mom had been holding on to it for a long time! 

Hope you all enjoy and if you have any questions definitely feel free to ask and look at the blog with the original post. She has lots of great ideas and projects and can show you how to do different bindings and some pretty good photos on how to make the blanket that I didn't.

My next post will show what I did with the scraps and how to make burp clothes.