Tag: stamp

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

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Cork LOVE Magnets

Jessica Smith

Cork LOVE Magnets

Day two of the gift guide and what do we have — stamped cork magnets!

If you don’t think these are adorable, well you might be cray cray.

You’ll love how easy peasy this project is. It takes 5 minutes, tops!

Supplies: 

  • Corks
  • Small stamps
  • Magnets (Michaels sells round magnets that are slightly smaller that a cork round. Match made in heaven? I think so!)
  • Ink
  • Hot glue
  • Cutting tool

Steps:

  1. Like in yesterday’s post, carefully slice your corks to about a 1/2-inch thickness. You can use a steak knife, scissors (if the are really sharp) or any other tool you have that might cut through the cork.
  2. Stamp each cork round with your small stamp and ink. It might take you a few tries to get your stamp centered the way you like it. Some of the LOVE stamps looked more like LOVF. Oops.
  3. Place a dab of hot glue on the back of the cork and secure it to the magnet. Let cool.
  4. Stick your magnets on your fridge and marvel at their cuteness.

Love Magnets

Is there a wine lover in your family who would love these!? There are definitely a few people in my family who I think would like them!

Love magnets2

Check back tomorrow for the next DIY gift post!

 

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!

Furniture

Refinished side table

Jessica Smith

Don’t you just love when you turn something you hate into something you love? That’s exactly what happened with this project. I semi-inherited this side/end table, taking purely for its usefulness, not its looks.

I’ve had it for a few years now and finally came to the point where I had to refinish it or donate it. So I gave refinishing it a try.

First I used furniture refinisher to remove some of the existing stain.

It didn’t work like I imagined it would (pretty certain it was user error), so I still had to sand a little bit. Then it was time to stain. I picked out a black stain with polyurethane already in it. A few coats later, and my table was good and black!


It was still missing something though, so I pulled out a stamp I had and painted it silver with a small green accent flower in the middle. I stamped it on each of the corners to give the table that extra something it needed.

Now I think the table is quite charming! It looks pretty good next to our sofa, too.

 

I’m sure we’ll eventually get a matching coffee table and side tables, but until then, this little piece will do just fine!