Craft Projects

Remmy’s Baked Treats

** BRAG POST **

My talented big sister painted the most amazing Christmas gift for B and me. I am OBSESSED.

Remmys Baked Treats

Holy crap is she talented or what!!??!!

If you live in or are visiting the Chicago area, make sure you check out her store, Sip & Splash! She teaches group painting classes. Oh yeah, you booze while you paint. WINNING!

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Clearance Jug Lamps

I hope you all had a merry Christmas and a wonderful New Years! I’ve been off work for three whole weeks and it has been amazing! You might think I would update my blog more since I had a lot of time off, but I’ve been happily hanging out with my family and friends instead of doing work of any kind! That’s not to say I didn’t craft on my three-week staycation. Stay tuned for a bunch of new projects that I’ve been working on!

Today’s project couldn’t be easier to make. And yes, if you read the title of the post, it is a lamp!

An easy lamp? Yup!

I was browsing around at Michaels a couple of months ago and I found two beautiful green glass jugs on clearance for around $3 a piece. I knew right then and there that I wanted to turn them into a set of lamps for our night stands. You see, ever since B and I have lived together (oh, 4+ years), he’s had a lamp and I haven’t. Or at least that’s how I remember it. I definitely have had one since we moved to our house.

I’ve wanted to buy a matching set but they are SO EXPENSIVE. So when I saw these jugs I knew I already had the perfect tools to turn them into lamps.

Even longer ago — sheesh, probably two years ago — I bought a kit on Amazon to turn a wine bottle into a lamp. After I bought the kit I decided that a wine bottle makes for an awkward lamp, but I saved the kit for later. Perfectly enough, the clearance jugs had an opening and a neck as skinny as a wine bottle! So making my lamp was as easy as plugging the kit into the opening of the bottle. I thought I might have to seal it with glue, but the cork is in the neck of the jug very tightly.

 

 

Cork Adapter

You can see the cork in the neck of the bottle in the above photo. For a better photo, or to buy your own, check out this listing on Amazon. I definitely don’t think I paid $20 for a set of two. I think I paid closer to $10…. so maybe shop around?

Anyway, I made two lamps in two minutes. The hard part? Finding shades! See, the jugs aren’t huge, so a normal shade would be too big. And then I found one at Target I loved, but they only had one. I held onto the one for about a month before giving up on finding its mate. I returned my favorite shade, then found a set of two a couple of weeks later. SCORE!

Here’s how the lamps turned out:

Jug Lamp

The only downside to the kit is that the cord runs out at the fixture instead of through the lamp, but I love them regardless.

Jug Lamp On

 

And now I finally have a lamp to go in my nightstand. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me, amiright?

Hope you are all doing well in 2014! It’s back to work tomorrow and back to more diligent blogging. Getting back into the groove will be rough, but normal will be a nice change.

 

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Holiday, Wine Crafts

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Ribbon-Wrapped Cork Letters

Ribbon Wrapped Cork Letters

This summer I scored A TON of free wine corks for a winery in Hamburg, New York. Talk about a sweet score, huh? I saw all of the corks in a bucket and asked what they did with them. The woman working told me they threw them away! CRAZY! So I scooped up hundreds of corks to take home and am nowhere close to using them all.

When we were at the winery, my cousin asked me to make her daughter a wine cork letter for her room, so I did a variation of my wine cork “S” post.

Supplies:

  • Wine corks
  • Small wooden letter
  • Ribbon
  • Button
  • Tack
  • Hot glue

Steps:

  1. Space out the corks on the wooden letter.Cork E before
  2. Hot glue the corks straight to the wood.
  3. When the corks are all secure, place a glob of glue at the bottom of the letter to secure the ribbon.
  4. Place glue along the center of the corks, securing the ribbon as you go.
  5. When the ribbon is wrapped all the way around, fold the end under and secure with glue.
  6. Tie a bow out of the ribbon and pin it to the cork using a tack.
  7. Embellish bow with a button.

Cork E