DIY Glitter Flats

Once again, Pinterest and blogs got the best of me and I was inspired to do a fun DIY project!  

After my closet clean-out this week, I decided to try to glitterizing some old flats in an attempt to give some old shoes new life.  I searched "DIY glitter shoes" on Pinterest and found a bunch of pins linking to this project.  I also remembered that my friend Andi did a super cute glitter DIY to some shoes.  (You can see here post here.)

The perfect pair of shoes for this project was a pair of well-loved Target flats.  Due to lots of wear and the material of the shoes they were a little worn in spots and had pretty much been retired to the old shoe box in the sky (otherwise known as the top shelf of my closet).  

Worn, but still in decent shape!

Before shot!

I stopped into JoAnne Fabrics (the new one by my house is much more like a Michaels than a fabric store) and sought out some glitter.  Since the flats were black and this was my first attempt at this project I knew I wanted to go for something dark.  I also wanted to get a super fine glitter (following a few recommendations I found online).  

3 materials

I ended up getting this super pretty glitter in "onyx."  It's very dark, but with  blueish sliver glow about it.  It's a lovely alternative to just plain black!

Onyx glitter

The easiest "recipe" for this project was to combine glitter with Mod Podge and paint it on one layer at a time.  I mixed this on a plate and used a sponge brush that I found in my craft box.  I already had the Mod Podge, so the total cost was $2.99 for the jar of glitter.

Layer #1 on the first shoe!

As you can see, the Mod Podge has a milky finish before it dries.  I waited about 20 minutes between applications and did a total of 3 layers of glitter.  I had to remix my Mod Podge glitter each time and I actually ended up making my mixture a lot heavier on the glitter after the first coat.  

Finished and ready to dry!

I left them to dry (and went to a friend's house to enjoy conversation and wine) and came home to find my lovely dried glittery goodness flats!  

All dry and sparkly!

Please excuse my super white feet!

I used a little leftover mixture on a spare black headband!

I'm thinking about glitterizing some sandals next!  

Have you done any DIY projects lately?

Getting Crafty With Painted Plates

I wanted to show off this super cute Christmas craft that my students did at their Christmas party back in December.  My amazing room mom came up with this and ran the show, but it's definitely an idea I'm filing away for the future.

These plates are actually chargers that she purchased at Michael's for less than $1 each.  (I believe they were on sale and she had a coupon.)  The paint that we used is just regular craft paint, which can be wiped off if the kids make a mistake while painting, but needs to be handled carefully afterwards because it may chip off.

She gave the kids cardboard stencils to trace to get started.  They got to select a Christmas tree, angel / gingerbread man (that one was kind of ambiguous), and star and they traced this with a Sharpie.  She also write some phrases that they could paint on their plates (to help with spelling) or they could come up with their own.

Other than that, the kids were pretty much left to their own creativity to finish the project.  To layer the paint, we let it dry so that the wet colors didn't bleed.  We started painting early afternoon, did that off and on, and then let them dry for about an hour before school ended.  All of the plates were dry and ready to go home that day.

I really liked this craft and may use it in the future as a keepsake for parents.  The kids had a blast doing the painting and getting their creative juices flowing.  (My district doesn't have art teachers at the elementary level, so it's pretty rare that our kids get to do any painting or anything artsy like this.)  My room mom even had an extra plate for the kids to sign in metallic paint pen, so I have my own plate with all of their names and the year!  How sweet is that?!?

I've seen a lot of similar chargers on clearance lately, so I figured even though Christmas and the whole holiday season has passed, it was still worth sharing.  With crafts like this, I try to keep the cost at around $1 per student, so this stays right within that budget.  

**PS ~ Rather than have parents donate specific treats for our Christmas party we had them donate money (any amount) to cover the cost of pizza, drinks, and the craft supplies.  I gave all of the money to our room mom and she did all of the shopping.  We had enough to feed everyone and even had some money leftover to put towards supplies for our Valentine's party!

Memo Board Makeover

This is one of those posts I never really got around to writing.  I took the pictures and then kinda forgot about doing the post.  As I was going through my camera recently I found these and decided to go on and show you how did a little makeover a clearance memo board!

This is how the board started out.  I actually really like this vintage-y postcard print, but it wasn't quite what I wanted for my kitchen.  It was on clearance at Hobby Lobby for a little over $10.  I really liked the size and the frame, so I decided to go on and make it work for what I was wanting.

A few months earlier I had picked up a set of yellow napkins on clearance at Target.  I have a similar print in placemats and even a pillow in red, so I grabbed the napkins thinking I could use them somehow.  (I'm not really a cloth napkin kinda person.)

I started out by removing the back of the board.  (This was one thing I paid attention to when looking for boards at Hobby Lobby.)  I wanted to keep the original fabric and just cover it with the yellow in case I change my mind later.  

Since the black print showed through the yellow and white pattern, I found some plastic packaging (I think I snagged it from my TV box in the storage room) and added that as a layer between the two fabrics.  I simply used a regular stapler to staple them at the very edge of the original board.  I had to stay pretty close to the edge because the lip of the frame didn't have much overhang.  I was also a bit of a challenge to get it stretched out and even, but after a few attempts, I got it to look pretty good!  

And here's the final product...  It's not 100% perfect, but it really did end up being what I wanted.  I'd looked at a few other memo boards on Esty and other sites and they were all $20+.  In all, I spent about $14 and still have 3 napkins to use for other products if I wish.  

Finally, here's the board on my kitchen wall!  One of these days I'll make / decorate some cute pins, but it's just perfect for this space!  I don't really like a lot of clutter on the fridge, so this board is a great alternative for posting a few little notes.  

Another DIY!

I've been trying to get a few items for my apartment for when I move just for a fun, cheap refresh.  Since my goal is saving money to buy a house, I've been trying to be as budget-friendly as possible in getting new items.  I've been looking at memo boards on Etsy, in stores, and online and wasn't really finding much below $30 or so.  I'm going to have a blank wall in my new kitchen that I thought would be a nice place to a cute board and would be convenient for a small command center as I come and go.

I'd looked at this memo board at Hobby Lobby a few times, but wasn't completely convinced of the print.  I like the vintage-y scribbles, but I just didn't think it was the look I was going for in my kitchen.  But, during my last HL visit I found this board on the clearance aisle marked down from $29.99 to $10.20.  It suddenly became much more appealing, but I still wasn't totally sold on the fabric.  If you look closely the black frame also had some white spots showing through where the paint had chipped off.  I debated, but for just over $10 I decided to grab it (since it was the only one left) and make it work!

When I got home I pulled out these yellow napkins that I snagged on clearance at Target a couple months back.  I don't really entertain or use cloth napkins at all, but I loved this pattern (it compliments some placemats and pillows I have that are also from Target) and decided to go on and get them since the 4 were less than $3.  I measured the board and found that one of the napkins was the perfect size to use the fabric to recover the board!  I'd been wanting to go with yellow accents in my kitchen and this is the perfect starting point!

I wanted to preserve the existing fabric on the board in case I change my mind down the line, so I found some thin packaging foam downstairs from when I bought my TV.  I cut it to fit around the existing board and just stapled it on to add a little extra cushion and so that the black print wouldn't be visible through the fabric.

From there, I repeated the process of cutting the napkin and stapling it to the board.  The frame overlaps so I had about 1/3 of an inch to work with to where my staples would still be hidden.  It took a few tries and it's not completely perfect and straight, but it's pretty darn close!

The final step was to touch up the black paint.  I was able to do this pretty easily with about 3 drops of black paint and a little sponge brush.

And then, voila!  A cute new memo board for my kitchen!  The total cost was less than $14 and I still have 3 more of the napkins to decorate with!  (I'm contemplating finding a way to sew them into a throw pillow or 2!)

Mother's Day Crafts

Mother's Day is one of those holidays I always forget about until the last minute.  Blame it on the fact that it's the end of the school year and we have about a zillion activities going on right now.  My calendar is full of special events, most of which involve the word "party."

I always seem to lack ideas for Mother's Day gifts.  There was the year of the cookbooks.  I assembled and bound 20 cookbooks.  I had so many kind thank yous for that one, but it was sooooo much work!  I don't think I have the time or patience to embark on that project again.

Then, last year we made the picture tiles.  (You can read about those here.)  Those were really great, but I did those already this year as Christmas gifts.  I've actually run across this craft of mine on Pinterest a few times!

So, now I'm left to figure out an easy, cute, and cheap Mother's Day gift idea that I can hammer out in the next week.  (And by "week" I mean Monday and Tuesday since Wednesday is a baseball game field trip, Thursday is reading training, and Friday is Field Day!)

Pinterest to the rescue!

I'm not sure which, if any, of these I'm going to do.  I need to review these a little more and then see how much this Hobby Lobby trip will set me back.

Here's the best of Pinterest's easy Mother's Day gift ideas...

Slacker teachers like me shall take note!

Source: crafts.kaboose.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Source: andsewwecraft.com via Crafty on Pinterest

Source: familyfun.go.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Source: starpictures.info via Grisel on Pinterest

Source: belladia.typepad.com via Robyn on Pinterest

Source: applesandabcs.blogspot.com via Polly on Pinterest

Happy Easter Eve!

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunderstorms and decided to roll over and go back to sleep for a while...  I've been fighting an allergy cold for a few days so I'm pretty sure I needed the extra sleep to help fight that.  I was convinced that it was going to be another gloomy rainy day, but it's absolutely gorgeous today!  Not too warm, not too cold, sunny with a little breeze, and just plain fabulous! I need to find an excuse to get out soon... I was off yesterday and went to my church's Easter service last night. (I go to a really big church, so they were doing 6 of the same service this weekend, Friday through Sunday!) Even though I've technically been to an Easter service already, I'm still getting dressed up and going to the morning service at my old church tomorrow! Hopefully tomorrow is just as beautiful to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ! 

 Since I haven't been in my classroom or doing much teaching with my class I haven't really done any seasonal activities with my class. I've been finding all sorts of cute ideas on Pinterest, though, and will hopefully have the opportunity to do them in the future. With the changes with our reading curriculum and moving to Common Core, one thing that I'm actually excited about is being able to come up with my own ideas for reading. We really aren't using our reading series anymore, so my coworkers and I are working on coming up with theme ideas for reading. Pretty much any holiday can be a theme because there are so many books to go along with them! So, I wanted to share a few findings... Enjoy!

Source: thequeenofswag.com via Joyce on Pinterest

Source: marthastewart.com via Tara on Pinterest

Source: room-mom101.blogspot.com via Shawns Nana on Pinterest

Source: saylorslog.blogspot.com via Molly on Pinterest

And finally, I leave you with my own little Easter decor photo from today...

Christmas Gifts for Parents

Every year I seem to struggle with coming up with Christmas gift ideas for parents. I try to come up with something that is personal and creative, but all the while won't cost me my entire paycheck to reproduce for 20+ students. I'm pretty sure I've settled on making picture tiles again because they were super easy and cheap.

I made them for Mother's Day last year, so you can check out that post here. I think I'm going to attempt using the spray Mod Podge and see how that works. I think that'll speed up the process!

I've been finding all sorts of cute ideas on Pinterest and have pinned them on a few of my boards.

Classroom Stuff

&

'Tis the Season

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite Pinterest findings... If you click on the image you will be directed the the pin and from there can go to the website link.

Obviously this would be simplified a lot if I did it with my third graders, but you could totally make a cute collage Christmas tree with buttons and scrapbook paper. I picked up some really great unfinished wooden frames at Dollar Tree that would be good for this project as well.

I think this would be really cute to do with little kids. I'm not totally sure about how I feel about painting / inking feet, but I know if I were a parent this would be a picture to treasure.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have my class make these cards to go along with their tiles. Aren't these adorable? I feel like painting hands would be a lot less messy than painting feet, making this project a bit more appealing.

Again with the feet... I love this idea, but I'm not 100% sure on the mess factor. I think I'd definitely have to have some additional adult supervision and major painter's plastic on the floor of my classroom.

What Christmas crafts are on your classroom agendas over the next couple weeks?

Let's get crafty!

I mentioned in my previous post that I spent some time with my old college roommate that is also a teacher. She changed schools this year and her new school does a different theme with each grade level. I think this is a really cool idea, but changing things every year can be a pain and can also get expensive. My school has done themes 4 of my 5 years and it's been fun, but I've also learned not to go too overboard with my theme decor. For my friend's grade level, they had a candy theme. It's very cute, but as you might guess, there's not much already made that goes along with this theme. The teachers were very creative at coming up with cute ways to tie the theme into their decor. Another good friend of ours found this candy themed idea online, so off we went to one of my favorite places... Hobby Lobby! The lanterns were found in the party supply area and came in 3 packs with 3 different sizes per pack. Two of the packs were $6.99 and the other was $7.99 (it had a slightly larger sided lantern). We also purchased two rolls of cellophane, and two rolls of cute polka dot ribbon.

Making the "candies" was definitely a two-person job. We wrapped the lanterns twice in cellophane and then taped the seam and wrapped tape around the ends where the ribbon would eventually go. We had one "fatty" lantern that required more cellophane, but in the end it all worked out quite well! We made 9 candy lanterns altogether, hanging them in 3's in the classroom and outside the classroom doors.

Here you can see the candies floating above the reading area. Aren't they cute?!? I believe the total cost lingered below $40 and the lanterns can be unwrapped and used again with a non-candy theme. I love that they add a pop of color to the room and tie in to the theme without being over the top. We also concluded that with the candy lanterns in front of the window that purchasing / making little curtains was no longer necessary.

My First Summer Project!

Let me begin my expressing my deep love for Hobby Lobby... I've pretty much lived within walking distance of that store since I was in 8th grade so that is my go-to craft store. I was in there the other day looking for a diploma frame (Yes, it's official, I have my Master's now!) and I happened upon these adorable little black buckets. I'd seen them before and actually have some small colorful ones from Target's dollar section, but I loved the look of the black ones. Even better... They marked for clearance 50% off! Then, I got inspired...

Cute Ribbon + Hot Glue = Instantly Cute Buckets!

I tested out the long one and it's just the perfect size to store pocket folders. I bought two medium and one small for Sharpies, pens, and other desk accessories.

But, WAIT! There's MORE!

If you've looked at my classroom photos you might have picked up on the fact that I'm a pretty big K-State fan and I'm NOT afraid to show that in my classroom. (I had a class full KU fans this past year. I kept telling them they were bullying me!) I realized that a few years ago I'd purchased some super cute K-State ribbon that was purple, black, and white and would look adorable on these buckets. Unfortunately, the K-State ribbon is in storage at school and the kind Hobby Lobby had in stock was not near as cute as what I already had. Rolls of ribbon were on sale for half price, though, so I decided to go on and pick up a few cute coordinating rolls so that I'm all prepared for my project when I get my other roll at school. I'm excited to share my final project once it's done.

Don't you love the polka dots?!? They coordinate with my curtains I made to cover up all the junk on my shelves. I'm also a huge fan of CTP's Poppin' Patterns collection so it ties into some of those items as well. I'm all about *trying* to make things in my classroom look cute and coordinated.

I'm tempted to get more of these buckets while they're still in stock and decorate them all cute to give as gifts. Remember my cute teacher appreciation gift? Yeah...

Okay, it's a little late... Mother's Day Project

Things have been kind of crazy with school lately and so blogging was put on the back burner until summer.... Thankfully, SUMMER VACATION IS HERE!

Anyway, I'm getting caught up on a few posts I was meaning to share.

This was our Mother's Day project for the year. It's a picture tile. Total cost for me: 9 cents per student. (I had all supplies except the tiles on hand already!)

I can never settle on what to do for Mother's Day and I honestly forget about that holiday until usually a few days before. I've had years over being an over-achiever (Mother's Day cookbook = hours and hours of work on my part = very happy moms) to under-achiever (poems on construction paper made on Friday afternoon.)

I actually "borrowed" this idea from my aunt who is a first grade teacher in my building.

Here's what you need:

1. Plain white paper and a color printer


2. Plain 4x4 white tiles (I got mine at Menards on sale for 9 cents each.)


3. Mod Podge


4. Foam brush


5. Craft Bond stick glue


6. Digital camera


7. Paper cutter

I had the students select a place and a pose out on the playground. The kids got pretty creative with how they wanted their pictures and I *tried* to make them look somewhat artsy.

I printed the pictures on regular paper on my inkjet printer. I just printed them as regular 4x6 photos and then cropped them down to about 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 with my paper cutter. (Some pics I adjusted my cropping to make them look better.)

Now, here's where I messed up and learned a lesson the hard way. Wait to let the pictures REALLY dry before gluing and applying the Mod Podge. (Had I not been in such a hurry doing this project on Friday morning I may not have had problems with pictures bubbling and curling a bit.) I had the kids help me with gluing the pictures down and rubbing them flat.

With the foam brush, apply a thin layer of Mod Podge over the picture. It's best to use a wide brush so that you can apply a layer in just 2 or 3 strokes. I went over all of the tiles once, let them dry about 15 minutes and then applied another layer. I repeated this about 3 times until they all had a nice glossy finish.

Mod Podge dries pretty fast, so we worked on the project in the morning, let them dry during specials and lunch, and then were able to wrap them up right after lunch. I had the kids create a card and let them decorate a white sack. We wrapped the tiles in pretty Dollar Tree tissue paper.