On A Roll!

Three posts in three days!?!?!? It's MADNESS! ;)

When I first starting setting up my {craft room} I knew I'd need a place to put stuff up on the walls....a corkboard, magnet board...something. I bought 4 of those lovely little corkboard squares that come with the little adhesives that are supposed to hold them up on the wall. I say "supposed to" because I found out really quickly that those little adhesive thingies don't work for poo. So I consulted my stash of magazines and came across a dog-eared page in an old issue of DIY Ideas....

Those nifty metal {thingies} are actually gutter covers. Yep - the things that are meant to keep leaves and stuff out of your rain gutters. I paid around $10 for 5 of them. 2 cup hooks for each panel and a few quick taps with a hammer and {bam} ~ these babies were on the wall in about 5 minutes once I decided where I wanted them. Now, mine have the hinges on them, and I need to clip them off, but aside from that I'm pretty happy with the end result.

I picked up some clip-style magnets at Target ($6 for 6 magnets, so a little pricier than I wanted, but they're strong magnets so I'm happy) and then I went to town with a little {mod podge} and some scrapbook paper to personalize them and tie them in with the room.

Only having 6 magnets means that I can't over-clutter the area, which I think will help me weed out the old as I put up the new. Let's see how that works out. ;)

Be True To Your School!

A while back I posted about Tulip Fabric Spray Paint. This stuff is {awesome} and I figured I should probably come back and do a proper post & tutorial. So here you go!

I used the fabric paint (this time) to make myself a shirt with the BGSU Falcon logo. (The old one...the one they used when I was a student....b/c I'm nostalgic like that). First, I found the logo online. The logo was {tiny}, so I had to save the photo to my computer, then open it up in Paint (you could use photoshop, too) and use the stretch/skew tool to enlarge it. Then I printed it out on regular paper.

Next step was cutting it out. Be careful when you do this b/c you're going to trace this shape...

Next I traced the shape onto freezer paper and cut it out. Now it gets a little tricky. I wanted the falcon head to be orange, so I had to be very careful when I cut this out so that I had all of the negative space entact. This is a simple design, so it wasn't too hard to do, but more intricate designs with a lot of cutouts can be difficult. Once I had the shape cut out, I placed the freezer paper onto the shirt where I wanted it, and ironed it on. I then cut out strips of freezer paper and ironed those on around the template so that the whole front of the shirt was covered and protected from any overspray. I also put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt so that the paint wouldn't bleed through to the back.

Then I picked up the trusty spraypaint....

and sprayed the living daylights out of it. ;)

You could go lighter for a distressed look, but I got a little trigger happy. And here I am modeling the end result.

My team didn't win ~ it wasn't even close ~ but I showed my BG Pride anyway. ;) GO FALCONS!

Say {Hello} To My Little Friend...

At risk of sounding like a high-strung infomercial announcer.... Don't you just hate the way your countertop or desk looks with a bunch of tangled up cords from your chargers? Cell phones, cameras, kids' handheld games, etc. ~ all of them have chargers and there is never a good place to {put} all that stuff. It's not pretty to look at, but it's all necessary. That's why I {love} this solution that I found in an issue of DIY Ideas Magazine.

First, meet my new buddy the hole saw.

Affordable & {super easy} to use, it's just an attachment that fits on your drill. The hubband handed this baby over to me without the usual 15-20 minute safety & use demonstration. It's really that easy to use.

What did I do with it? Simple. Remember that dresser that I painted a while back and moved into my craft room? Well, I designated the top drawer of the dresser to be a storage and re-charging drawer. So I drilled/sawed a hole into the back of the drawer, and cut another hole in the back of the dresser itself, lined up with the hole in the drawer. Then I put a surge protector/power strip into the drawer, fed the plug and wire through the hole, plugged it into the wall and {voila!} ~ a hidden charging center!

Before, I was charging my cell phone and camera batteries on the kitchen counter. It was a matter of time before something got fried by spilled coffee or juice, or didn't get fully charged because someone unplugged it so they could use the outlet for something else. And the tiny people had their Leapsters charging in their bedroom, which made it difficult to control how late they were staying up {playing} after lights out with the volume turned down. It's so nice to have a designated spot for all of my things to charge ~ where it's all safely tucked away.

I'm telling you, if you haven't picked up a DIY Ideas Magazine, you totally should. I'll be bringing you another project taken from an issue of the magazine sometime this weekend! I'm thinking a subscription needs to go on my Christmas list!

I'm linking up to Tatertots & Jello...b/c no one rocks like Jen rocks. For serious.

On a completely unrelated note, the ole' alma mater has a big football game tomorrow. BGSU takes on UofM at noon. It happens a couple of times a year in hockey (I hated going to UofM to watch the hubband play....those fans are MEAN, and when your boyfriend is the goalie it's really....REALLY unpleasant) but not so often in football. Just wanted to give a shout out to my FALCONS!

{ROLL ALONG!}

Don't You {Forget} About Me!

I'm BACK!

The last month has been a little {crazy} with weekend trips out of town, going to the cottage Up North, and a full-fledged {vacation} to Florida with the ILs. Disney was awesome ~ the tiny people had a blast, and now we're back home and settling into the first week of school. (and.....exhale....)

With all that traveling, and bags that were going to be checked for our flight from Detroit to Orlando, I thought it would be a good idea to make some luggage tags for our suitcases. The hubband laughed at me ~ because really, he said, how would we miss the girls' bubblegum pink and bright green suitcases. Well, when we sat down on the plane and saw the {exact same suitcases} in one of the overhead bins, he started to understand a bit more.

So here's what I did. First I designed the tags in Photoshop. I chose to make our tags round, because I thought they would stand out more than the standard rectangle tag. I made 2 templates, with the first initial of the owner on one (the front) and the full name, address and phone number on the other (the back). Then I had each of them printed at Costco's lovely photo lab.

When I got them home, I cut the circles out and taped the 2 pieces together, back to back. I then used some store bought laminating sheets and laminated the tags. I found after doing a few of these that it was easier to use the hole punch first {before} laminating, and then punch another hole just through the plastic.

Then I tied them to our suitcases with bright, coordinating ribbon, just as an extra eye-catcher for the baggage claim area. (Don't worry, I didn't use hot pink for the hubband. ;) )

This worked really well. The bags were super easy to find and I didn't worry at all about someone grabbing ours by accident. One thing I would suggest if you decide to do this, though, is to take the tags someplace (Kinko's?) and have them {heat laminated} rather than using the sheets, and they have started to seperate ~ and honestly for the amount that I paid for those sheets, it's a little disappointing. I'm going to make tags like these, only smaller, for the tiny people's backpacks and for the not quite as tiny one's lunch box. Better safe than sorry, right?