A Whole New Light On Lampshades

Some time ago, I bought a dozen small paper lampshades at a local reuse/recycle shop. So many ideas floated through my head as to how to decorate them! 

I knew this would be a perfect project for my art class students to toy with so I set out various items to spark the imagination and we got busy. With buttons, paints, ribbons, faux flowers, and more, we got to work. Time flies when you're having fun and in a couple of hours we celebrated our creativity!

We stationed the lampshades on tall wine glasses (sans wine!) and placed tealights and inside the glasses for a soft glow. How pretty these would be as table decorations at a wedding or other party. Sweet and simple with just the right amount of pizzazz!

I have a few bare lampshades left over and am anxious to hear how they tell me they would like to be "dressed". A favorite poem in a fancy script? A feathered shade? Paper punched designs? A beaded fringe? The possibilities are endless!

Boo-tiful Crafts to Make

With Halloween just a week away, pumpkin carving projects came to my mind as a perfect treat to make for celebrating this holiday. 

I challenged my art students to come up with their own twist on creating jack-o-lanterns. As usual, they met the summons with gusto and, before long, we had a table filled with beautiful achievements!

Alicia was very excited about this project - or perhaps it was the wine and tangerine margarita's working?!

Here's how we made decorative vases: 

SUPPLIES

• Hollow, styrofoam pumpkin (I found a 6 inch size at a dollar store)
• Serrated knife
• Various fall-colored artificial flowers and Halloween related items
• Hot glue gun (optional)

HOW TO MAKE IT

• Carefully make a circle cut at the top of the pumpkin using the knife, at least big enough to put your hand inside (shown at the right is the cut-out I made on the side of a pumpkin to prepare it for a diorama)
  

Option 1:

• Place artificial floral stems inside the pumpkin allowing the blooms and greenery to pop from the top 

Rosa's Fall Floral Vase - with a touch of bones

Option 2:

• Hot glue objects to the pumpkin so that they're peeking out of the top (I rummaged through my stash of Halloween decorations and put them out for the group to find clever ways to reuse them - styrofoam skulls and bones, plastic witches and spiders, leaves, etc.) 
  
  

  

  Carol's Witchy Vase

Option 3:

• Place a glass cup inside the pumpkin, tall enough to reach the rim, and fill with potting soil and a succulent or other live plant.

The floral vases make pretty tabletop displays or hostess gifts, perfect for this holiday and through the Thanksgiving season.

To make a diorama:

SUPPLIES

• Hollow, styrofoam pumpkin, any size
• Serrated knife
• Various fall-colored artificial flowers, moss, vegetable netting, and Halloween related items
• Hot glue gun
• Battery operated tea lights (optional)

HOW TO MAKE IT

• Carefully make an oval cut at the side of the pumpkin using the knife
• Fill the pumpkin with whatever suits your fancy! 
• We hot glued moss, florals, and spooky objects inside and outside the pumpkins. I cut up a bit of netting from a vegetable bag and hot glued that to the inside back of a pumpkin and then glued a spider to the "web". In another pumpkin, I placed a plastic skull from a dollar store that I painted in a sugar skull fashion on top of a bed of moss. I put a battery operated tea light on either side of the skull so that they would flicker inside the pumpkin and show off the skull. As you can see from the picture at the top of this page, it turned out quite booo-tiful!

Sandy's Floral Diorama with Skeleton Pair

Carol's Fright Night Scene

Alicia and Nicole's Spooky Creations

Don't be afraid to create your own frighteningly beautiful art!

Put A Cork In It

With the 4th of July approaching, I thought it would be fun to create a craft project that would be a nice nod to the holiday but would also be attractive as a year-round wall decoration. 

I introduced this idea to my craft class and they got busy gluing corks to wood bases that they brought in like trays, bulletin boards, and round wood slices. I found a great oblong wood slice at JoAnn's to use as my base. I really liked the interesting bark edging on this slice which gives the final creation a nice look.

Here's how to make this:

SUPPLIES

• Wine corks - I used 64 corks for my project but yours will vary depending on the size of the base you use
• Oblong base - wood slice/board, very heavy cardboard, bulletin board, wooden or acrylic serving tray, etc. My wood slice is about 10"x13".
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Red, white, and blue acyclic paints
• Paint brushes and water pots
• Hacksaw, serrated knife, or scissors (optional)
• Twine or fabric ribbon (optional)
• 1 - 2 picture hooks, hammer, and nails (optional)

HOW TO MAKE THIS

• If your flag will be hung on a wall, hammer 1 or 2 picture hooks to the back of your base.
• Tie the twine or ribbon to these hooks long enough for a nice drape from another wall hook.
• Arrange corks on the surface of your base in a pattern that appeals to you.

Nicole's wooden tray 

• Using the hacksaw, carefully cut each cork in half lengthwise. This is an optional step. It took me several hours to cut enough corks for all of my students projects. ugh! I did this because I thought the corks would sit better and looked nicer but skipping that step and just using the whole round corks turns out great too.

• If you find that there's a space at the end of a row that you don't like, carefully use a serrated knife, scissors, or the hacksaw to cut a cork to the size that will finish the row evenly. In my case, I liked the uneven row edging so I didn't worry about cutting cork end pieces.
• Use the glue gun to adhere the corks to your base.

Lin's bulletin board base

• Once this is completed, decide whether you like the natural look of the corks or if you want to use the paints to add the traditional flag colors to your piece. For a light wash of color, add water to a bit of acrylic paint before brushing the color to the cork. The corks have such interesting words and images that the water downed paint allows the cork artwork to peek through.
• Pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Your finished piece can be hung on the wall as a holiday or permanent decoration, used as a hot plate, or bulletin board. Make smaller ones to use as drink coasters. 

Come up with your own designs and uses for your new cork creation then celebrate in style!

Solar Glam In A Jar

Light up the night with this quick and easy project! With just a few supplies from a dollar store, and free energy from the sun, you can have little pots of glowing light to brighten up your garden and patio.

Supplies needed:

• Mason jars of any size or clear glass bottles
• Clear and colored glass marbles, stones, or strings of beads
• Small solar lights (sold with ground stakes)

How to make these:

• Pull the solar lights off of the stakes 
• Fill the jars with the glass stones or beads
• Press the solar lights into the jar of stones or beads so that the top of the lights are even with the top of the jar (you can choose to use the mason jar's screw-on ring or not)
• Set the jars in the sun to let them soak up the light and get energized

Place these "mini lanterns" around your deck, patio, porch, or anywhere that you want a bit off nighttime glamour. You could bring the jars into the house at night so that you have soft glowing lights in a guest bathroom or bedroom as a pretty nightlight. These would make a beautiful tabletop decoration or garden feature at your next party!

Let's Make Tissue Paper Flowers!

Making tissue paper flowers is simple and they add plenty of colorful impact perfect for Mother's Day, parties, or just a pretty vase. They can be made in various sizes from a boutonniere to extra large bouquets. 

One of my craft class students walked us through the making of these beautiful delights. Here's what Sandy showed us:

Materials

• Sheets of standard sized tissue paper
• Scissors
• Floral wire
• Floral tape

How to make this

• For a medium sized flower, fold one tissue paper sheet in half

• Fold the sheet again into thirds, bringing the outer edges towards the middle

• Cut the folds so that you end up with 6 squares of tissue

 

• Fan-fold the stack of tissues - starting at one edge of the paper, fold the sheets about 1 inch and crease, then flip the tissue stack over and fold the tissues 1 inch and crease, flip the stack over, and continue until you reach the other edge of the stack. The folds should be even in size.

• Fold the center of the "fan" in half.

• Cut the floral wire into a 10 inch length, or more or less depending on how tall you want your flower to stand.
• Bend one end of the floral wire over about 2 inches.

• Place the center fold of the fan into the fold of the wire and twist the wire around itself to close it.

• Wind a strip of floral tape around the wire to hide it.

• Use scissors to cut an oval shape at each end of the fan. Of course, I don't follow directions well, so I cut my tips into a pointed shape.

               

• Push each side of the fan outwards into a cup-like shape.
• Gently separate each sheet and pull them towards the center.

• Fluff the sheets into a pleasing shape.

To make a large sized flower, follow the above steps but instead of folding the sheets in half and thirds, simply start the fan-fold process and go from there. 

Smaller flowers can be made just by making your tissue stack into smaller squares.

Try using multiple sheets of tissue for a fuller flower or using more than one color of tissue at a time for a variegated look.

How pretty and fun! 

Let's Make Flowers...From Q-Tips!

Let's say you find you're in the mood to make a craft project. And, you have a box of Q-tips plus a few foam balls left over from a project you never got around to making. What do you do? Make flowers, of course!

This simple and easy project is fun to make and creates a cute flower in just an hour.

Supplies needed:

• Styrofoam balls - I used 1.5-inch, 3-inch, and 5-inch balls
• 1 large box of Q-tips
• Glue gun and glue sticks
• Food coloring
• Rubber gloves
• A glass bowl
• Floral stem with leaves (pop the flower off and save it for another project) or bamboo skewers

How to make them:

Cut Q-tips in half. I used about 150 halves to cover the 3-inch ball. That makes for a full looking ball but you may use fewer spaced farther apart.

• Heat up the glue gun. When it's ready, dab a dot of glue onto the cut end of a Q-tip and poke it into the ball. You don't have to use a glue gun but I found that it helps to hold the Q-tip in the ball permanently.
• Timesaver tip: squirt a small pool of glue onto a paper towel and dip the end of the Q-tip into the glue rather than directly from the glue gun.
• Keep dabbing the end of each Q-tip with glue and poking it into the ball - not too close together because it will take too long to finish but not too far apart that the ball looks half done.
• I made a single line around the ball then made a second line of Q-tips going the opposite direction so that the ball was in quarters. You don't have to be that precise - just start glueing and poking!
• Fill in the rest of the ball with the Q-tips until it is full.

• At this point, you can admire your "snowball" and you are done. Imagine how cute a bowl of snowballs would be!
• If you choose to add color to the balls, get on your rubber gloves.

• In a glass bowl, add a few drops of food coloring to a small amount of water and stir together. 
• Dip the Q-tips into the food coloring just enough to saturate the cotton tips. Do this over the entire ball (the food coloring will stain clothing and skin so, wear the gloves and watch your shirt!)
• Set the balls aside to dry on a plate.

Lana's sunburst flower

• You can display these just like that as a table top display or move on to the next step.
• Once the balls are dry, use the glue gun to put a bit of glue on to the top of the floral stem or skewer. Poke the stem or skewer into the ball deep enough to keep the ball from flopping over.

That's it! You can make a garden of these flowers in an afternoon. They would be pretty for a springtime party or shower!