smith – A Smith of All Trades

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.

Hey blog world, heyyyyy.

The hubster and I had a lovely weekend at the beach hanging out with some of our best friends, but today it’s back to work and back to crafting 🙂 Oh darn.

I’ve been slowly working on a project, revamping a Smith sign my mother-in-law gave us that she had hanging out around her house. It was pretty ugly — the font is just horrifying — but I figured I’d give it a go.

Um yeah, talk about not matching much that we own. So, I primed the whole thing with white paint, which took a few coats. I then stopped my project altogether because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next.

When I was finally inspired to take the next step on this project, I started taping off stripes horizontally on the sign. I then painted every other section Behr’s Contemplation, the same color we have in our family room. I had to be really careful around the edges of the word, which I left white.

When I started this part of the project, I figured this would also be where I left it. But sometime was definitely missing. So again, I let my project sit until I had more inspiration.

Finally I figured out what I wanted to do. I’ve been playing around with EnviroTex Lite, which is a gloss that hardens on whatever surface you pour it on. I really like the way this stuff looks (wait until you see the other project I’ve been working on!), so I decided to fill the letters of our last name. So, I mod podged a single line of beads in every letter, then poured on the EnviroTex and waited for it to dry.

In the meantime, I ran over to Super Hobby Lobby World Land (that’s Brian name for it) and picked up some sweet ribbon with a silver accent in it. I pulled out my glue gun and started striping the ribbon in between each green and white stripe.