Creative DIY Gift Wrapping: The Grapevine Basket

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

When it comes to choosing the perfect present all it takes is for you to listen. In this case my family was invited to a friend’s birthday party and we had to figure out what to get her. She had mentioned before to my mom that she had wanted to paint some glasses and my mom remembered it.

We went to Hobby Lobby and bought acrylic paint, clear gloss spray to keep it on, and brushes (because how else are you going to paint a cool design on glassware if you don’t have brushes). We then went to the Dollar Tree and bought her two wine glasses to practice painting on. Voila! We put together a glassware painting kit in no time.

We also grabbed a lot of materials at the Dollar Tree to make the basket. The basket we found at Goodwill which is an awesome source for all types of baskets for way less money than you would spend at any other store. Besides saving some money you do something good for the environment by reusing it! The burlap ribbon and the cellophane paper we bought at Michael’s.

Since we were gifting our friend wine glasses and things to pain them with, we thought it would be a good idea to decorate the basket with a grapevine motif. Credit to my mom for coming up with the idea and being able to create a beautiful basket. It was kind of funny listening to her struggle for a couple of hours just trying to make the perfect bow. When we gave the gift to our friend at the party she got super excited! She loved the wrapping and loved the gift even more because it’s something she had wanted to do for a while. It’s always a struggle to figure out what to gift our friends, but it can be something as simple as listening to them to find out what to get them.

Happy birthday Sokia!

27May2014

Creative DIY Gift Wrapping: Butterfly Net

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

In one of my earlier posts I posted my first DIY gift wrapping idea where I used a toy gumball machine. I have recently been to another teenage girl party and I needed an idea for how I was going to wrap her gift up. I usually go to the dollar store to find ideas on what I want to do with the gift. The birthday party was in the spring so there were a lot of spring items there at the time. There were a lot of other ideas that we could have done but we decided to go with the butterfly net idea because to me it was cuter and a lot more girly.

Materials:

butterfly net (available at the dollar store)
fake flowers (preferably medium in size)
fake moss
plastic disk/flower arrangement disk to cover the opening of the net
ribbon
fake butterfly
tissue paper
hot glue gun and glue stick
rubber cement
clear tape
scissors

Steps:

1. Take the plastic disk and put rubber cement on the inside of the bowl.

2. Take some of the moss and pack it to the bottom of the disk until the whole disk is full of moss.

3. Take your flowers and make sure it’s just the flower (no stems) and hot glue them on top of the moss after the rubber cement has dried (10-15 minutes).

4. Take the tissue paper and put it inside of the net to where it covers the inside completely. The gift gets wrapped for the surprise, it won’t be a surprise if the person can see what they’re getting through the net.

5. Place the gift inside of the net and cover the top with the flower disk you finished earlier.

6. Secure the disk onto the net using a couple of pieces of clear tape.

7. Take your butterfly and hot glue it at the top closer to the net.

8. Take the ribbon and tie it at the top of the stick. In order to make sure it’s secure, you can apply hot glue to it.

This is a super cute idea for a girl’s gift wrapping, party favors, or even a party décor for a garden party! The options are endless, it all depends on how you want to play with it and since we had many of the materials on hand we spent only around $5.00 on the packaging which is about what you would spend in a box and gift wrapping paper anyway. It gives me great satisfaction to see the excited faces of my friends when I tell them that the packaging is pretty but that there is a gift inside as well. Usually they think that the packaging is the gift :).

1May2014

DIY Button Boot Socks

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

Just a while back I got some super cute and comfortable combat boots at Rue 21. I love wearing them with jeans in the winter because when I have jeans that don’t fit length wise I can always wear those boots to cover it up. I then started thinking for more ways I can style those boots and I thought about how cute it would be to wear them with a dress or a skirt. I tried it on with one of my dresses that matched the boots and it looked good, but it was missing something. It was missing something on the legs, so I though about boot socks. I don’t own any boot socks, so I went to go buy some. The problem was that when I went looking, I never found anything unique or different. So I decided that I was going to try and make my own.

What you will need to make your own DIY buttons boot socks are buttons (your choice of color and preferably smaller size), thread the color of the buttons you are using, a sewing needle, long socks, scissors, and if you don’t know how to sew you can use fabric glue. Although I have to admit that I don’t know how the fabric glue is going to hold the buttons after washing. I’ll update you on that once I wash them. Before you start sewing or gluing make sure you have enough buttons because you are going to need a good amount of them. Also, before you start sewing or gluing you need to lay out the buttons out on the sock they way you are going to sew them on. Make sure that there are more buttons on because the sock will later stretch out giving more space between each button. Once you have the buttons arranged the way you want it, start sewing them in. It may take a while depending on how good you are with sewing or gluing. Once I finished with the sock I tried it on and the hard work definitely paid off. The socks were super cute and even cuter with the boots. This is definitely a cheaper and cuter way to get boot socks.

See these boot socks in action by going to Floral Influence

4Mar2014

Creative DIY Birthday Gift Wrapping: Toy Gumball Machine

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

About a month ago I went to a friend’s house for her birthday party. I mentioned her party in a earlier post where I took a picture of what I wore that day. The party was a lot of fun and it was nice to see friends that I have not seen for a while. I was really excited because a lot of my closest friends were at the party so I knew it was going to be fun. They always say that time goes by fast when you’re having fun, that definitely happened in this case. It only felt like I was at the party for an hour when in reality it was about five hours.

My mom and I are very crafty, we like to create a lot of our own things. When I give out gifts I always try to make sure that it is super pretty. I enjoy the look on my friends faces when they see the cool wrapping. I think the wrapping helps set the tone for the main gift they are about to receive. I once gave one my friends her gift (it was jewelry) in a birthday glass. It’s all about creativity! The more outside of the box it is, the more it will impress the person.

For this gift, I went to the dollar store to get everything I used to wrap up the true gift. I found a gumball machine at the dollar store and some tissue paper to wrap the gifts. We found one of those price tags and painted it blue, wrote “Happy Birthday” on a piece of scrapbooking paper, and put in a ribbon on the tag as well. The tag looked very unusual but cute at the same time. I used a yellow ribbon to tie the tag around the gumball machine. I wrapped the gift in decorative tissue paper and inserted the wrapped gift into the gumball machine. I thought it was a cute idea because not only does it look good, but now she has a gumball machine that she can use to store small things inside. Creativity is the key, in this case unexpected is good!

26Feb2014

DIY Denim Bracelet

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

I have been wanting to do some do it yourself crafts for a while now, and I finally decided to do something. My first craft is a denim bracelet. I decided to make it out of denim because I could do so many things with it. You don’t have to be a big crafter to be able to do one of these bracelets. All that is required is some patience and effort, but it all pays off when you want to wear it. I wanted to do a bracelet that I know would be hard to find in stores, that way I don’t have to waste time looking for something that I can simply make. I wanted to do something different with my bracelet, I didn’t want to just get colored string and make those thin friendship bracelets.

For this craft you will need:

hot glue gun and stick of glue
fabric glue
old jeans (to cut fabric from)
scissors
bracelet (from the dollar store)
colored string of your choice (I chose bright green)

Steps:

Get your hot glue gun connected and heated up. I also recommend that you have an empty cereal box or something similar for putting the glue gun on top so nothing gets ruined.
Take your pair of jeans and cut according to how much fabric you will need to go around the circumference of the bracelet. Use the bracelet as the guide to measure how much you will need, cutting too much or too little can affect the outcome of the bracelet.
Fold the denim around the bracelet and hot glue it to the inside. Make sure it does not show on the outside and that there are no wrinkles before gluing. You are going to do this all around the bracelet till the two pieces of cloth equally connect.
Once the whole bracelet is covered in denim, take your colored string and make sure it’s untangled. Tightly wrap the string around the area where the two ends of the denim piece meet. If you don’t do it tightly, the string will look odd. A bright color is always preferred because it contrasts better against the denim.
Cut a thin piece of denim to cover the hot glue on the inside of the bracelet. Once this is all finished let it dry for at least 4 hours. I gave it a day just to be safe.
Admire your beautiful bracelet.

I am definitely looking forward to creating an outfit for you guys so you can see how I played with it. Bracelets are just the beginning to endless do it yourself crafts that can look amazing as long as you try to not rush the project. This craft took about 30 minutes with some help from my mom, we both got burned a bit by the gun, but at least we got burned together :D. You all can look forward to even more crafts that I will be doing, I had lots of fun and I just love looking at the results I got. Things that you make yourself you tend to appreciate more because you are the one taking time to do it, but it is always worth it in the end.

16Feb2014

The Paintings on the Wall

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

A few years back before I moved to Georgia, my sister and I spent the night over at my aunt’s house. In order to keep us entertained she bought some painting materials (paint, paint brushes, easels, and canvases). She gave us the option of painting whatever we wanted or painting something she learned to paint in a previous art class. My sister and I chose the option of learning to paint what she painted because it looked really pretty and cool. My aunt then went through all the steps one by one and helping us along the way with anything we needed. Our paintings didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to but no one paints the same and we all can’t be good at everything. Even though our paintings did not turn out the way we wanted them to, we had a lot of fun spending time with our aunt and learning to paint something new. I have never painted on a canvas before that day so I thought it was cool to see my work on something real.

The reason I decided to tell you this story is because I wanted to share with you what I decided to do with those paintings. When I moved to Georgia my mom decided to decorate the house a little more, including my room. We were looking through the things I already owned that we could use to decorate my room and we found the paintings. My mom bought each painting a frame and we hung them up in the room. Even though they weren’t master pieces, we still hung them up. If you think about it, anything can become art. Duchamp proved this when he put his name on a toilet and he instantly became a famous artist for this. I decided to use my sister’s painting as well to add some contrast in colors. My room is now a mixture of styles due to the mixture of paintings, furniture, and other details. I still like it though because it’s very me, I’m different and I have a lot of different styles.

14Feb2014

For The Love of Fashion Series: Valentine’s Day Favors

Posted in DIY by cardigansandnecklaces

Photo by sugarandcloth.com

Something that a lot of people have troubles with is knowing what to do or say when accepting gifts. Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and people tend to give each other gifts that day. But something we often get lost with doing is how to react when getting that gift or even what to say. There are many reactions one can give when getting a gift, the reaction can be a nice reaction or may come off as rude. My purpose of writing this post is to give some ideas or reminders on how to react when getting a gift.

Something that you should not do when getting a gift is taking the gift too lightly, you don’t want to sound like you don’t care, even if you really don’t. For example, don’t say just say thank you and leave it at that. Also don’t over react about it when you get it, you don’t want to look desperate for a gift. You don’t want to be like “O my gosh! It’s a gift! I can’t believe it! Thank you so much!” This might also annoy the person that is giving you the gift a bit. What you want to say is “I appreciate it so much, thank you. I love the gift” and try keeping a bright smile on your face. Also, no matter how much they spent on the gift, it is always good to send a thank you note. The Thank You note shows how much you appreciate the gift and makes the other person feel good knowing that you liked the gift. I gave a gift to my bus driver before Christmas break and he gave me a thank you card as soon as I walked on after break. Nice manners! When I got it I knew he appreciated the gift and it made me happy that he liked it. Gifts are something that a person doesn’t have to do for you but they still do because they like you enough as a person. You never know what extent the person getting the gift might go to. For example, say your friend wanted to get you a gift for Valentine’s Day, they might be nagging their parents to give them a ride to the store and having to buy the gift with their own money. When you put yourself in their shoes then you will learn how to accept the gift in a nicer way, even if it is candy.

Speaking of gifts, I wanted to share what I did for my friends last year. It’s been harder to come up with gifts for my friends because I can no longer get those small cards that come with free lollipops. 🙂 Last year I found these body sprays at Ross and I thought to myself: what girl doesn’t want to smell nice? I made sure to ask my friends if they were allergic to anything before I gave it to them. My sister decided to get her friends lotion because we found them along with the body sprays. We took of the labels on the bottles and made our own labels with an image we got off the internet. The label said “You’ve put a smell on me” and it had a picture of a voodoo doll next to it. Then we put the bottles in a baggie along with some chocolates. I give props to my mom for coming up with ideas and helping me out with the gifts. My friends loved the gifts and they thought that the wrapping was absolutely adorable.

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Category Archives: DIY

Creative DIY Gift Wrapping: The Grapevine Basket

Creative DIY Gift Wrapping: Butterfly Net

DIY Button Boot Socks

Creative DIY Birthday Gift Wrapping: Toy Gumball Machine

DIY Denim Bracelet

The Paintings on the Wall

For The Love of Fashion Series: Valentine’s Day Favors