glue – Page 4 – A Smith of All Trades

How to NOT glitter shoes

January 4, 2013January 4, 2013 Jessica Smith

I don’t often talk about projects that are total flops, but I had an oober flop of a project last night that I thought I’d share in case anyone else is thinking about trying it. I had an old pair of black pumps that are SO comfy and SO beat up, so I wanted to try my hand at glittering my shoes with Mod Podge.

Well, it was bad. Really bad. I had skimmed some other tutorials on how to do this and finally was ready to part with my pumps and try it out, hoping for the best.

Turns out I followed a bad tutorial. Meh, oh well!

Here’s what I did:

I Mod Podged sections of my shoes and spread thick layers of glitter on top before shaking it off.

After I had the whole shoe glittered I let it dry for a few hours.

And here’s where I went terribly wrong. Dun dun dunnnnnn.

Once my glitter was dry I wanted to secure it to the shoe so it wouldn’t fall off as I walked. SO… I put Mod Podge on top of the glitter to seal it on the shoe. DO NOT DO THIS! Haha. Please. Don’t.

Mod Podge Shoes Gone Wrong

By sealing the glitter with Mod Podge I pretty much took all of the shine and sparkle out of the glitter. Boo.

By the time it dried, my shoe was so boringly black with no sparkle at all… ugh, such a fail. It also had a terrible texture to it

To make matters worse, even though I tried to make it better, I painted the tops of my shoe, the heel and the strap gold. Ugh. Bigger mistake.

Mod Podge Shoes Gone Wrong

Ugliest. Shoe. Ever.

Thankfully, I took this project one shoe at a time and didn’t waste any glitter or Mod Podge on the other shoe. Not so thankfully, I ruined my possibly awesome shoes. Oh well!

After looking around the interwebs to try and figure out just where I went wrong, it looks like a lot of people seal their glitter shoes with a clear glaze spray. That’s what I’ll be trying next time around.

Anywho, I figured I share my mishap since there seems to be lots of glitter shoes on Pinterest. If I can save another project from going awry then that’s a good thing!

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday

Christmas Tree craft

January 2, 2013 Jessica Smith

I got the best Christmas present ever when my dad called me on Dec. 23 to ask if I wanted to do a Christmas craft on Christmas Eve morning before all of our festivities began. I said yes (duh) and dad went out hunting for supplies. When he was younger, his mom made Christmas trees out of mixed nuts that she decorated and hung on a wall in their home. He wanted to make one just like it for his home and for mine.

For this project we used:

Thin sheets of wood
Hot glue
Nuts in their shells (three or four bags)
Pinecones
Metallic spray paint
Small ornaments
Fabric
Batting
Drill
Jigsaw
Wire
Felt

Step 1: Bake pinecones to kill any critters that may be living inside. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees. That should do the trick. We gathered ours outside of our gym at 6:30 a.m. … in the dark. I’m sure we looked wayyy creepy.

Step 2: Sketch out a tree shape onto a piece of wood. We drew a triangle for the tree, a small rectangle for the stump and a trapezoid for the base.

Step 3: Cut out your tree using a jigsaw (or a hand saw if you prefer).

Step 4: If you want to make more than one, use your cutout tree as a stencil and trace it onto the first sheet of wood.

Step 5: Drill a hole in the top of the tree and string wire through to make it easy to hang later on.

Step 6: Start gluing on your nuts and pinecones. I used a pine cone for the top of my tree. Dad used a prickly seed from a sweet gum tree as his topper.

It is OK to have gaps in your nuts and pine cones because you’ll be filling it in with ornaments later on.

Step 7: Spray paint the top of the tree using a metallic spray paint of your choice. Dad went with a bronze metallic.

I chose a metallic silver for mine.

Step 8: Once your tree is painted, it is time to create the trunk. I clipped edged of pinecones and glued them onto the trunk.

Dad went with thin twigs. If you’d like your trunk to be the same color as your tree, do this step right after gluing on your nuts.

Step 9: Glue your ornaments onto the tree.

Step 10: Cover the base of the tree in batting. Then, cover with fabric. Our wood wasn’t thick enough for staples, so we hot glued all of our fabric and batting directly to the wood.

Step 11: If you see the need, which we did, glue felt to the back of your tree (small circles will do) to spots of the tree that might rub against the door or wall you will hang it on. You don’t want to scuff your walls, and small circles of felt in the corners and around the wire will help.

Step 12: You are done! Hang your tree up for the holiday season and admire.

This was definitely best part of my holiday break, which is saying a lot because I had an amazing holiday break. I loved doing such a fun and sentimental project with my dad. We have one more base for next year. Dad’s got grand plans for how to make our next trees even better.

meanddad

Thanks for the great idea, Dad 🙂 Love you.

One last thing…. happy birthday to my awesome mother-in-law, Robin!

Craft Projects, Graphic Design

Applesauce Labels

December 17, 2012December 17, 2012 Jessica Smith

Remember all of that applesauce I made last month? Well, it’s getting super close to Christmas and time to give it all away. I wanted to jazz up my gift a little by making labels for the applesauce, so I designed a super cute red and green label in InDesign.

I printed them out and started cutting each label out. I applied them to the jars in different ways, but the way I liked best was adding it to the jar with ribbon. To do so, I cut two lines on either side of the label using an exacto knife, then I slid the ribbon through these holes.

I then put a few dabs of hot glue onto the back the label and placed it onto the jar, making sure to secure the ribbon with a dab or two of hot glue as well.

Don’t the labels look great? I left a line at the bottom so I could write in the flavor of the applesauce before giving them to my coworkers for Christmas.

Here’s one with a little bow instead of ribbon around the jar. These turned out adorable as well.

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