Mark Montano's Mermaid Bottle Art

Love mermaids? Do you have some cool empty bottles begging to be beautified? Check out Mark Montano's mermaid bottle craft on YouTube where he shows how to turn a naked bottle into a glamorous mermaid-inspired work of art. His entire library of videos are worth taking a look at for more inspirational projects. 

"Sea" what you can make!

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!

Crazy Crayon Flower Vase

Let's say you have a ton of old crayons laying around at home. They look pretty and you just don't want to throw them away but coloring in books is so "been there, done that". And, you have a lot of time one day. And, you own a woodworking lathe. Hmmm. An idea comes to mind.

Watch what one man does with his crayons and his tools. Prepare to be amazed!

Crayon Flower Vase

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!

Spray Paint Whatever Doesn't Move!

     My hardware store was having a moving sale. Wanting to help the local economy, I went nuts in the paint department! Spray paint adds an impressive impact to just about anything. Grab your favorite color, a pair of plastic gloves, painters tape, a drop cloth or box to catch the over spray, and your object of desire. Here are examples of what I've done so far:

    A plastic dollar store skull and some seashells went from plain to pizzazz! I hot glued some artificial flowers onto the spray painted skull for a Dia de los Muertos celebration.

All those plain glass vases hiding in cabinets are now gleaming eye candy!

Pinecones anyone? Nature never looked so good!

With wood slices, I used painters tape to mask the bark where I didn't want the spray paint to show. I used black chalkboard paint to spray the tops of the slices.

Tah Dah!

I used a gel medium called molding paste to stencil a design on top of one piece of wood.

On this piece, I've hand written a quote with a gold paint pen. 

PROJECT TIP! Wear gloves, long ones if you can, or long sleeves. Uh, I did not have full protection, as you can see. It took a long time to scrap the paint off of my poor skin. ow.

Oh what fun, oh what next? Picture frames, plastic patio chairs, plant pots, lamp bases...yeeehaaa!