Tag: sharpie

Furniture

Crate Coffee Table, part 2

Jessica Smith

Earlier this year I found a crate on my local Freecycle listserv that I scooped up, added some caster to and turned into a coffee table.

Crate Coffee Table

The crate sat as is for a while, but the wood was rough around the edges and the crate had been written on and scuffed up. I decided to take on the coffee table crate project for a second time, this time opting to stain the crate and make the piece a little more polished — well, as polished as an old wood crate can look.

The side of the crate was painted a dark, charcoal gray. I decided to stain the crate a gray to pull out the charcoal-colored sides.

Before I could start staining, I had to sand the hell outta the crate. The top was covered in nicks, scuffs, sharpie, old sticker goo…. It wasn’t pretty.

Crate

It looked like someone had kept score on the crate, or attempted math? Who knows. But the sharpie had to go.

CrateTop

Once the whole crate was sanded down, I applied a gray stain to the whole thing, including the painted sides. Since some of the paint was scuffed off, I wanted to make sure the exposed wood was gray, too.

CrateStained

The wood soaked up the stain lie crazy, turning the whole crate a charcoal gray with wood grain popping through. I love the color mixed with the natural wood peeping through.

Once it dried, I coated the whole thing in a polyurethane.

CrateGray

The finished product is still a roughed up, old crate — but a much nicer looking old crate. I like the gray a lot and how it tied the sides and the rest of the piece together. I also like the lack of graffiti on my furniture. That’s a plus for sure.

Crate iside

We aren’t currently using the crate as a coffee table, so I’m not sure what we’ll do with it. But I really like the cleaned up look for this neat old piece.

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Holiday, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wine Crafts

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Jessica Smith

Wine Charms

Need quick and easy gifts to give this holiday season? Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some super simple, super affordable gift ideas — all made with things you probably already have around the house.

Today’s gift idea: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Brilliant, right? Who wouldn’t want to make a wine accessory out of something that comes in wine?!

Supplies:

  • Wine corks
  • Permanent Marker or Stamps
  • Drill
  • Hoop Earring findings
  • Jump Rings
  • Cutting tool

Steps:

  1. Using a knife, scissors, or any other cutting tool, CAREFULLY cut your cork into half-inch thick pieces. I recommend creating sets of 4 or 6, so cut enough to make as many sets as you’d like to gift.
  2. Using a permanent marker or a stamp, draw or stamp your design onto each cork sliver. It is important to note that each design should be easy to remember and different from one another. For example, I drew numbers (well, my neighbor did) on my corks. If I had stamped different scrolly patterns on each, you’d never remember whose wine was whose.
  3. Drill a hole through the top of each sliver. Test out your drill bit size on a scrap piece of cork.
  4. Put your jump ring through the hole and tighten.
  5. Attach your hoop earring finding  by looping it through the jump ring and bending the straight end into a sharp angle. This will prevent the circle on one end of the finding from sliding off of the other end and will allow it to stay on the wine glass.
  6. Fill up your wine glass, add your charms and end enjoy!

Charms

Like the idea of wine charms but don’t have a ton of extra corks around the house? Try making these other holiday themed charms.

Christmas Light Wine Charms

Holiday wine charms

Christmas Cookie Cutter Wine Charms

wine charms

Color Coded Wine Charms

wine charms cg

Craft Projects, Jewelry

Spoon earrings

Jessica Smith

I was a crafting machine this weekend and tackled a project I’ve been meaning to try for some time now: spoon stamping! I have a bunch of old, silver spoons sitting in my craft room (not sure at this point where they came from) that I was able to break in half pretty easily, and from there went about flattening and stamping both the spoon and the handle.

What you’ll need for this project:

  • Spoons (at least two if you want to make earrings)
  • Pliers
  • Ear hooks
  • Thin chain
  • Drill
  • Mallet
  • Clamps
  • Hammer
  • Metal Stamps
  • Two pieces of wood
  • Sandpaper

First off, break your spoon in half! You can bend it back and forth until it breaks, or get it started with wire cutting pliers. Both ways work. Both ways are fun. After all, who doesn’t like to break stuff?

Your spoon will be rough where the break occurs, so sand the edge until it is smooth.

Then, place your spoon onto a piece of wood.

Sandwich your spoon with another piece of wood and tap on it with a rubber mallet to flatten in out.

Once it is flattened, take the top piece of wood and tap your spoon with a hammer. This will help flatten it out even more. Note: My spoon is all sorts of wobbly in the middle, which I really like. I didn’t try to get all of the wrinkles out.

With my spoon flattened, it was time to stamp it. I bought a small set of stamps off of Amazon, so I pulled those out and got to work. It was pretty easy… just place your stamp where you want it and hammer gently. If you hammer too hard, you’ll see little circles around your letters.

Once your letters are stamped into your spoon, you can fill them with sharpie and then clean off the excess with a dryer sheet or a jewelry cleaning sheet. Both work remarkably well for cleaning up old silver.

Next up: drilling holes. Clamp your flattened and stamped spoon onto your piece of wood and drill through the tops using a small drill bit. My electric drill is MUCH better at doing this than my cordless drill. When your holes are drilled, attach them to ear hooks (I used chains to do this) and your spoon earrings are complete.

If you have cool handles too, you can turn them into earrings as well using the same process.

Happy Tuesday!