bottle cap mural.

Bottle Cap Murals have become a unique way to create art for your school, and teach kids about helping the environment! An oak tree is our school symbol so we decided to use that as the inspiration for our mural.  My 60 Art Club students completed this in 5  2 hour club meetings.

 This project was originally inspired by this artist and my friend that did a bottle cap mural with her students!

STEP ONE: collecting the caps...
The students brought in somewhere over 24,000 bottlecaps ranging in size, shape and color. We had a competition between classes to see who could bring in the most! Then we washed and sorted them all by color in boxes.

STEP TWO:
 We used 2 pieces of plywood to create 1 8'x8' panel.  The tree was the only part where we chose to have paint under the caps, everything else  we let the natural wood show through. I assembled the 2 wood panels together with screws before we started adding caps, and we made sure not to cover the screws yet so I could undo it to transport it upstairs for its final installation.

 

STEP THREE: ADD CAPS! We filled in the tree first with just black tops and then drew lines in crayon so we would know where to put each color.

Here's how things progressed...

                    

AND THE FINAL PRODUCT.....

                     

                             

DIY for you: fabric flower headband

what you will need:

*headband

*fabric of your favorite color

* hot glue/gun

*scissors

how to:

1. glue a 1" wide piece of fabric around the headband where you want the flowers to go.

2. cut 3 circles of fabric. smallest to largest.

3. starting with the small circle put a medium size dot of hot glue in the top middle. pinch up sides. repeat process, adding the last 2 circles under the small one.

4. I chose to make 2 flowers.. so if you want 2 make another!

5.  Glue flowers to headband.

 

  

its truly unCANny..

Here's a quick DIY you can whip up for instant storage. These were a perfect solution for storage in our home office/studio. If you are lacking drawers..just put those items in cans!

YOU WILL NEED:
*an assortment of cans
*acrylic paint, brushes
*mod podge
*and I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying process.

1. Prime cans with white primer, or just white acrylic paint.
2. Paint away- just be sure to let dry thoroughly in between layers!
3. Coat with Mod Podge

for the home diy: painted serving tray

So I had this tray... and it needed some love. I wasn't quite sure how this cork-like material would hold up once it was painted so keep in mind this is definitely an experiment. 

Before

1. one coat of primer

2. I painted 2 coats of an ice blue color and then cut out a design pattern I had drawn.I traced this pattern across the tray.

3. I then painted the circle design bright green

4. added a yellow lime outline and a monogram

5. Applied 2 coats of Mod Podge and sprayed with Krylon Crystal Clear- We'll see how this does for waterproofing, I might need to add a more serious varnish.

 

vanilla sprinkle cake

A homemade version of everyone's favorite box cake. 

* 1 3/4 cup of cake flour

*1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

*2 cups sugar

*1 tbsp baking powder

*1 tbsp sour cream

*3/4 tsp salt

*2 sticks of butter cut into cubes

*1 cup whole milk

*1tsp vanilla

*4 large eggs

*about 1/4 cup sprinkles(OR MORE)

(makes about 30)

*Preheat 325, mix flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt until combined. Then add butter until just coated.

*Whisk eggs, sour cream, milk, and vanilla. Add wet ingredients in 3 parts, let each mix until incorporated, stir in sprinkles.

*bake @325 for about 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

                                                      HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAVANNAH!

diy: paint swatch art

This has been on my to do list for quite a while. I have a MILLION paint swatches and they were begging to be used for more than color decisions. So here's what I created.  I've been looking at lots of ideas for this project via Pinterest but here's what I came up with...

 

Supplies needed:

*Lots of paint swatches in your desired colors

*Paper cut to frame size to adhere swatches to

* Frame

*Rubber Cement

*Scissors

1. I laid all of my swatches out so I could see what I was dealing with.

2. I created a template to cut all of my shapes by.

3. arranging and gluing

4. Added some lettering with some fancy gold paper I found for 25 cents at a yard sale.

And there you have it.