Fanciful Friday: Giant Heels

Today is the birthday of a friend of mine who is the sister of a very good friend of mine.  She and I share a love of shoes and sports, though we unfortunately are fans of different teams altogether.  I have been dying to post about the present that I made her, but I could not until now, because I did not want to spoil the surprise! But since today is her birthday and her present has arrived and been opened, you are in luck.

I wanted to get something unique, different, and totally fitting for this beautiful, sweet, fun girl.  In the fall when I was looking for the NFL schedule I came across a picture of some shoes she would love - a combination of footwear, glitter, and the NY Giants.  They were perfect for her, but not for sale.  So just like my mom, instead of feeling defeated, my instant feeling was "I can do that," and I did.

I bought a pair of plain heels.  I was looking for something that would be easy to paint over and would give me enough room on the side to put the name of the team and the logo.  This is what I ended up with.

Before ... plain shoes!

My first step was to use a pencil to trace on the Giants name and logo.  Then I painted it is with white fabric paint.  I did it free hand, but you could probably use some sort of stencil too. 

Start with stenciling and painting

After I completed the name and logo, I did the base of the shoe (the platform part) and the heel.  I painted sections in a fabric glue and then sprinkled red glitter over the top.

Add some glitter

Once the red glitter was applied to the base and heel, it was time to finish the rest of the shoe.  I again painted sections of the shoe with fabric paint, starting with the hardest part, around the logo and name which I had already painted on in white.  As I painted each section I applied the blue glitter.  I finished the shoes off with a flexible clear, glossy glaze.

And you have some beautiful, sparkly shoes 

that any female sports fan will adore!!

I must say that despite the fact that the NY Giants are not my favorite NFL team, I adore these shoes.  I could not think of a better person to give them to either!  Happy Birthday!!  :)

Say yes to shoes!

Fanciful Friday: New Furniture

With this little new little thing called Pinterest, I have craft project ideas coming out my ears!!  I have been trying to do something creative every week or so just because it is fun.  My main project for December 2012 was furniture.  Yes, you read correctly, furniture.

I wanted to have matching furniture in my new apartment but I was not ready to pay a fortune for it.  Thankfully my mom passed her creativity on to me.  I did a little searching on craigslist and in thrift stores.  And to my delight I found what I needed and wanted.  A headboard, a long dresser, and a small dresser, all in desperate need of repair and refinishing. 

Luckily my dad sanded everything down for me before I moved it to southern California.  All that was left was to prime and paint.  I thought I could do it all in one day, but it took about 2.5.  All in all though, not a bad project.  Check out the pictures below to see the transformation!

HEADBOARD

 

 This is the only "before picture I have, but imagine it 

with no primer and a hideous metal piece on top ...

that came off first!

 All primed and ready to go!

 The finished project, minus the mattress.

 SMALL DRESSER

 Before sanding, this dresser was a puce color.  

Apparently it once had been blue too.

 The drawers

 Prepped and primed!

 The finished product with eclectic knobs (my favorite part!)

Say yes to refinishing your own furniture!

Fanciful Friday: Candy Thank Yous

Back at the beginning of the summer I was babysitting for a family I have known for years.  I not only babysit for this family, but I have done Christmas wrapping for them, run errands, worked on the wife’s business, and done a variety of other tasks that fit into the “jack of all trades” category. 

I was asked to help out on another project.  The wife does a lot of work for the school district, specifically a lot of fundraising.  Her team raised a couple MILLION dollars for the school district and she wanted to thank them for their hard work.  She came up with this idea to have cocktail glasses filled with candy as a thank you gift.  She suggested using jelly beans and creating a margarita, pink champagne, and daiquiri using various colors.  It was my job to execute this idea.

First I went to Diddum and bought the glasses – plastic margarita glasses as small as I could find.  Then I had to find the jelly beans.  I went to a couple place and could not find the right colors.  Finally I went to Powell Street Candy where I found all the jelly beans I wanted in all the right colors.  I bought a couple pounds of cotton candy (pink), cherry (red), lime (green), and coconut (white).  I filled a third of the cups with green, a third of the cups with red and a third of the cups with pink.  On the green sups I added white to the top to make them look like margaritas.  The red cups got a sprinkling of pink to make them look like daiquiris.  The pink cups got a few white beans to represent the bubbles in the pink champagne. 

After filling the cups, I carefully wrapped each one with saran wrap over the top to prevent the beans from falling out.  I then tied a matching ribbon around the base of the glass to keep the saran wrap in place.

Now that the cups were done, there was something missing.  Every good drink needs a good swizzle stick.  While I was at the candy store I had seen these sticks of liquid candy (like honey sticks that you can get at the fair).  I bought several in green apple (green), cherry (red) and honey (a champagne color).  I cut a tiny slit in the top of the saran wrap and inserted the candy straws into the cups.

After assembly was done we added stickers to the bottom that said thank you and the presents were good to go.  From what I heard they were quite a hit!

 Creating something from someone else's idea takes gumption!

Fanciful Friday: Alcohol Lei

Recently I went to a Bachlorette party for a very good friend of mine.  The bachlorette party was held in Santa Barbara … we went wine tasting!  I knew I wanted to bring something special for the bride, but I was not sure what. 

When I turned 21, another friend of mine brought me an alcohol lei from Hawaii.  It consisted of 5 bottles of Smirnoff Vodka wrapped in a netting and spaced out with silk flowers.  I thought a recreation of this lei would be perfect for the bachlorette party.  Being the craft person that I am, I decided that instead of going out and purchasing an alcohol lei, I could instead just make one!  Plus, in making it I could customize the type of alcohol, the number of bottles and the colors I wanted to use.

I set out in search of the perfect “netting.”  The very first thing I thought of was fishnet stockings.  I could slip the bottle inside, tie off a knot, make a space, tie another knot, slip another bottle in, tie another knot, etc. until the stocking was full.  This is basically what I did.  But I took the stocking and cut the legs apart so there were two pieces.  Then I filled each “leg” and tied the legs together to make the necklace longer.  Between each of the bottles I left a space in which I could tie ribbon.  This made the lei look prettier and spacing out the bottles made it not as heavy as well.  

Someday I may write out step-by-step instructions, but for now, you will just have to enjoy the finished product OR if you really look at the pictures and think it through, I bet you can figure out how to make one yourself.

 The Bride wearing her the alcohol lei!

This makes the perfect gift for 21^st birthdays, bachlorette parties, and other celebrations!

Crafting leis takes gumption!

Fanciful Friday: Anniversary Presents

A number of my friends have been getting married lately.  It is pretty cool but also a bit scary.  I have been to 6 weddings of close friends, and in 3 of those weddings.  The weddings are very special days full of friends, family and fun. 

The first wedding that I was in was in August of 2008 … my best friend’s wedding! :)  It was a beautiful outdoor beach ceremony with a reception at the close by yacht club.  Her color was blue.  We all wore blue dresses and had bouquets of blue and white flowers and stargazer lilies.  After an exceptionally fun night I took home my bouquet as well as one of the table arrangements.  The flowers sat on my table for a few days while I tried to figure out what to do with them.  I decided that I should dry some of the petals.  So I picked a bunch of them off before they all began to wilt and I placed them between pieces of paper towel.  I then placed the paper towels in between the pages of my law school books and piled the books on top of each other (NOTE: this is a great use for law school books that just sit on the bookshelf!)

A few months later I check on the petals.  They had dried beautifully, retaining their blue hue.  It was then that I knew I had to do something with the petals … turn them into a gift for the new couple.  I decided that I would create an image with the petals and press them between pieces of glass with a surrounding frame so it could be hung on the wall.  I also decided that I would give it to the couple as a 1 year anniversary present. 

About a week before the 1 year anniversary of the wedding I pulled out the petals.  I started playing with them, making different arrangements.  I settled on a heart with the initials MH in the middle (the initials of both the bride and the groom).  I purchased a frame from Michaels that was glass with a black frame.  Then I used fabric glue to glue the petals to the glass.  Once the glue dried I cleaned up around the edges a bit with a wet q-tip.  Then I placed the second piece of glass on top and secured the black frame around the edge.  The couple loved the gift and now has it displayed in their bedroom.

I repeated the process for the other weddings that I have gone to and/or been in.  The next wedding was Disney themes wedding so I dried the pink flowers and used them to create a Mickey head on the glass.  I used larger flowers for the head and smaller ones for the ears.

Next was the Hollywood themed wedding.  I was in this wedding so I dried the flowers from my bouquet.  I made a star shape with the red petals from this wedding.

Then I went to a wedding for one of my best friends from law school.  Both his name and his wife’s name start with “R” and they collect things monogrammed with the letter.  I was not in this wedding, but asked to take a flower from one of the centerpieces and was granted permission.  I arranged the coral petals from this flower into the shape of an “R”.

I have flowers from 2 more weddings currently drying in my law school books.  One is for an anniversary July 2012, and the other is for an anniversary in September 2012.  I already have ideas for both of these designs, but because those individuals may actually read this blog, I am not going to share just yet!  You will have to come back in July and September to find out!

Making creative and sentimental anniversary presents takes gumption!

Fanciful Fridays - Hawaii Scrapbook

In the past my friends have marveled at some of the creative and thoughtful ideas and gifts that I have come up with.  During law school however, my creativity was slightly stifled by my analytical workload and my extreme lack of time.  Now however, with all of this extra time on my hands I have found myself tapping into my creative juices like never before.

Over the past few months I have worked on several projects.  Some were fairly large projects that took a lot of time and energy, others were smaller projects that took barely any time at all and provided almost an instant gratification.

Since I have so often been asked “how do you come up with this stuff?”  I decided to post some of my projects on this blog in the hopes that friends and readers will be inspired to tap into their own creativity.  Thus, Fridays will now be “Fanciful Fridays” and posts will showcase past or current creative projects.  Let’s get started!

In March I found myself with a ridiculous amount of free time on my hands.  I had just taken the CO bar and was not ready to jump into studying for anything else.  I spent time at the gym and looking for a job, but still the free hours piled up.  I had to find something to occupy my mind and my hands so that I would not go stir crazy.  It was time to be creative.

I have been a long time scrapbooker.  I have a scrapbook for every year since eighth grade thru my senior year in college.  Law school put a halt to my scrapbooking but I still have all the photos and other memorabilia to eventually finish those years as well.  The original books are smaller (8.5x11) whereas the college years are bigger (12x12).  As I grew up, my skills developed and my books started to look better.  As I contemplated what to do with my free time, scrapbooking naturally came to mind fairly quickly.

I was hesitant to tackle the law school years knowing that three years of undocumented photos and items might overwhelm me.  So I thought about what else I could work on.  Luckily in September 2010 I had taken a trip to Hawaii and had taken so many pictures that the trip would need its own book instead of being lumped inside another year.  This provided the perfect project – plenty to do but not overwhelming. 

I started by having all the pictures printed.  I sent them online to costco because it was the cheapest and the quality is decent.  When I got the pictures back I divided them into days that we were on the island – 7 piles in total.  I got large ziplock bags and placed each pile in a separate bag, labeling the bag with the date and where we had gone on the island. 

After dealing with the pictures, I dug through my boxes of saved items until I found all of the stuff from my Hawaii trip – ticket stubs, brochures, napkins, dried flowers, business cards, etc.  I then sorted this stuff into the 7 days as well, placing the items into the corresponding picture bags.  Once that was done it was time to start!

I took one bag at a time and figure out the paper and the matting I was going to use for each set of photos.  Then I trimmed the main page and started cropping the photos and the matting.  I arranged the photos on the page, added a little glue and then moved on to the next page.  I know that some people decorate as they go, but I prefer to get all the pictures on pages and then go back and add the details like lettering, journaling, and stickers.  But, to each his own!

It took me almost 2 weeks to finish putting the photos on pages.  Then it took me a few more days to do the decorating.  Most of the pages are completely finished, but I still have to journal about the events of the trip and paste in a few more titles – just the finishing touches!

Scrapbooking takes gumption.  

Here are some of the finished pages.  Enjoy!

Part of the R&R wedding photos.

 

The view from Pali Lookout.

(the bottom photo is actually 3 different photos lined up to create 1 image!)

Photos from our hike to the waterfall.

 Beautiful Hibiscus Flowers!

Photos from our day at Shark's Cove!

(there are different fish in each of the blue bubbles)

The sunsets were stunning!