Subheading

Showin' some love to the sheer awesomeness of homemade gifts



Monday, January 17, 2011

Bowl - it's really a roll of tickets!

Here's another idea I wish I'd thought of.  It's a ticket bowl made from a roll of tickets and some mod podge.  The original was posted at Buggie and Jellybean, complete with a tutorial full of pictures.  I saw this and immediately thought of my dad, who received a coordinating set for Christmas.  Here's how his turned out:

It took six little cork disks to fill in each roll center but now they are solid.

My one goof-up was not finding the perfect little glass bowls until after the mod podging (is that a word?) was complete.  Once the bowls were finished, I found the perfect bowls at the dollar store and with the proper planning, I could have formed the tickets to the glass bowls for the perfect washable lining.  Ah well, better luck next time.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Alien Abduction Lamp

With little kiddos and Christmas and New Years to take care of, I got pretty lazy about posting.  But with the holidays over, I have some fun things to share!  This alien abduction lamp one of my favorite projects from our most recent round of homemade Christmas gifts. 

It was inspired by the lamp created at Dollar Store Crafts.  Heather at DSC had the brilliant idea to make a lamp out of two bowls and an acrylic glass.  My modifications were using a round wooden cutting board as a base and adding polymer clay creatures. 
I painted the cutting board brown, then sponged it with shades of green for a ore grassy look.  Then a coat of mod podge sealed it up and made it look a little more finished.  This pic is before the mod podge shined it up.
I did not find small animals or aliens that were quite cute enough, so I made a sheep and some aliens out of polymer clay.
The glass is a green acrylic glass from Target.  I only had a drill to work with so cutting the bottom of the bowl out was not going to work.  So instead, I drilled as many holes into the bottom of the lower bowl as I could before the drill battery died.  The way the light filters through the holes gives the lamp a little bit of a fun eery feel.

Check out the link above for more details on how to make one!