Cute framed collage

My brother just recently got married and for their wedding presents I wanted to do something that would be cute and unique. So after looking around, I decided on something I thought they would both like that would sort of match.

I unfortunately did not think of taking any pictures during the process of making either, because hers I finished making at like 1:00 AM after working on it for several hours and his I just forgot to take photos of because I was in a hurry to finish it.

His:

Hers:

But for the most part it's a pretty straightforward project just from seeing the finished project (hopefully at least). It's a pretty easy and cheap to make. I got the frames at Goodwill and the rest of the supplies can be bought from either Walmart or Hobby Lobby.

Supplies:
Black (or whatever color you're wanting to use) sheet of heavy paper ( I bought some for about 78 cents at Walmart in the craft area) or you can buy the wooden letters or pre-cut out ones if you can find them.
 poster paper (Again cheap at Walmart)
mod podge (I made my own just using water and cheap glue)
a cheap paint brush or a sponge brush (Hobby Lobby or Walmart)
The decorative paper you are using for the collage (I used newspaper but I wanted to use old books from Goodwill but I forgot to buy some before we left and for his I just copied different eras of Batman comics and cut them out).
Backs for hanging the pictures if your frame doesn't come with one (neither of mine did. I got them at Hobby Lobby in a pack in the frame section).
a hot glue gun or strong glue (I used Elmer's strong glue)
scissors

Step 1: measure out your poster paper so that it does not show behind your frame.
Step 2: If you are cutting out the letter, measure it out so it fits so it fits neatly in the middle. As you can see I did not do the greatest job of cutting out the letters but since it was sort of a last minute gift idea I had to make do. I would suggest either using a stencil or buying pre-done letters and just painting them the color you want if you get the wooden ones.
Step 3: Cut out your background pieces. I liked to get a lot of different sizes to give it variety and I would have liked to get it from different books to give it some contrast in colors and font sizes.
Step 4: Arrange your paper how you like on the and glue them down. I liked to layer them and put them at different angles, but you can do as you like.
Step 5: Cover the background with a layer of mod podge using either the cheap paint brush or the sponge brush, being careful not to get it too thick on it. Then glue the letter down and do the same to it.
Step 6: Once everything dries, put a layer of the strong glue down on the back of the frame put down your background. To dry put it right side up and leave it on a flat surface otherwise I found that the glue doesn't dry right unless it has a little pressure (then again it might be because I was trying to let it dry in the car on the way to their house)
STep 7: If you are using a frame that does not have a hook or anything to hang with I got a pack at Hobby Lobby that don't require screws and you just have to put them in with a hammer (or as we did, with a meat cleaver since my brother has yet to buy a hammer).

This would be fun to do as kid's wall decoration too or really anything. There's a lot of fun ways you could do this. I'd love to know if anyone does it and see the results!

Lemon face toner

Okay so first off I would like to apologize for not posting anything in a while. Things have been super crazy around here. I had my SAT, traveling to the states, a wedding, and a new addition to our family in the last few weeks that has kept me pretty busy. My middle brother and his lovely new wife had asked me to be a bridesmaid for the wedding so that kept me pretty busy the days before the wedding on the 18th and my oldest brother's precious little Coralynn came 10 days early at 3:43 AM on the 18th as well so that kept us on our toes with a lot of reshuffling of plans. But everything has calmed down for the most part now and I finally have time to sort of catch my breath as I will be in America for the month.

So with all that said, let's move on to the actual post. As someone with severely sensitive skin (to the point that any little thing can set off an allergic reaction on my face) I am constantly looking for natural effective ways of tending to my skin. And I found a rather surprising one after doing some research. Apparently lemon/lime juice is a natural facial toner and if left on over night it can even out your skin tone and even get rid of freckles/dark spots.

At first I was a tad but skeptical as I mentioned that I have very sensitive skin. So the first time I put on just a bit and left it on for an hour. Noing bad seemed to happen so I went to sleep with it. Sure enough in the morning I had actually seen a bit of a change and no side effect. So I started trying it out at night and after a few days it really was working!

But there are some minor drawbacks. I have found that if you don't use it fairly consistently the effects go away and your face goes back to how it was. And also if you happen to leave it on when you go out in the sun (an d for me just going out in the sun is dangerous by itself as I am extremely pale and burn very easily) it causes even more damage from what I found from research appears to be a chemical reaction. But if you use it at night and wash it off in the morning before leaving the house it is fine. I do suggest if you are just going to be around the house, wash your face and put on another layer of it.

Okay so now how to use it. It's so easy it's ridiculous. All you need is a small squeeze bottle, a lemon, and water (if you have sensitive skin you will need more water). Squeeze the lemon juice into the bottle (depending on how much you want) and then dilute it a bit with water (more for sensitive skin). After washing your face, shake the bottle to stir up everything, squeeze the juice onto a cotton pad and apply to your face (I use it all over, but you can put it where you feel you need it). It's just that easy!

How to keep jewelry from turning your skin green

Sorry about no post yesterday! I honestly meant to try to get one up, but unfortunately yesterday our volunteer Andrea left after three months of being with us, so I went to the airport with her to see her off and then I had school all afternoon once we finally got back. And since I am finishing school sometime next week (hopefully) things are going to be a little hectic around here, and therefor probably won't go too according to schedule. But I will try get up as many posts as I can. I already have a few planned out ahead of time, so hopefully that all works out.

Anyways, the one that I'm about to show you today is probably the easiest and for a lot of you probably the most useful if you are a budget fashion-chic kind of girl like me. Now my jewelry selection is kind of a crazy mix of a lot of different styles and materials. I don't really care if it is designer or expensive (in fact I usually shy away from dropping a lot of money on a piece of jewelry seeing as how little I really wear it) so most of my stuff is that cheap stuff that the top layer wears off after a while and starts leaving a lovely green mark on your skin that takes forever to get off or ruins a pair of really cute earrings. This has been driving me crazy for a while, because a lot of my favorite stuff is cheap that is now ugly looking because it all wore off. Well no more!

A lot of you might already know this really nifty trick, but for anyone who doesn't, here's the secret to keeping your cheap jewelry looking nice: clear nail polish. Seriously, that's it. You just put that dollar store clear nail polish on your jewelry and bam! No more worrying about those ugly green marks or your jewelry ruining! I paint it on both the inside and outside of my hoops and bracelets because a lot of the time my bracelets tend to turn copper all over. But seriously, for a fashion-savvy girl on a budget this is a huge saver.

Clothespin photo line

While I was staying with my future sister-in-law and my cousin in their dorm room this last October, I saw something really cool in the hall of their dorm. To display some of the art done by the girls that were in that hall, they had hot glued clothespins up on the wall and used twine to make it look connected. Then they hung the pictures on the wall with the clothespins. This is a cute and easy way to change out your decorations if you get bored with it. So a few months ago before I even began thinking of doing a blog, I had decided to try this out as the hot glue does not peel the paint if you are careful about taking it down (not pulling at an angle or sharply, otherwise I accidentally found out that it will rip it.). Well, my first try at it went somewhat successfully until two of the three clothespins I had put up fell off while I was away for a bit. After several months of trying to convince myself to stop being lazy and get out the ladder to put them back up, I finally decided that this would be a good tutorial and got about putting it back up. Unfortunately due to my poor coordination and lack of assistance in this, I could not take step by step pictures, so hopefully this makes enough sense that the end result pictures should be enough.

Before you begin, I do need to warn you to be extremely careful with the hot glue gun. I had an unfortunate incident with the hot glue gun when a huge glob of it dripped off the string onto my finger. Which you can see the lovely results here. This caused a bad blister and a lot of pain, so please use extreme caution when you use the gun!
Note: When gluing the string for the middle clothespins, do not place the glue directly onto it as the glue does not stay on! Place it directly onto the clothespin.

Okay so onto business!

Step 1: Measure out the length of twine or string (ribbon would work as well I believe) that you are wanting to use. I used about 2 feet of string to hang up three pictures, but it's up to you on that one.

Step 2: Once you have your string measured and cut and your hot glue gun is ready, carefully glue the back of the clothespin. I have found that it is best to liberally glue the back of it for added strength. Put it up quickly, and press very hard to ensure your clothespin will hold tight.

Step 3: After your clothespin is dry, open your clothespin and place a spot of glue just below where it opens then put your string in.

Step 4: Continue this with the rest of your clothespins.

Step 5: Once all of your clothespins are up and the glue has dried, place your pictures inside of the clothespins. This can be used for several different styles of pictures and papers, so be creative! I used this to place pictures I bought on the street in NYC and even in the plastic baggies, they still stay up quite nicely.

If anyone does this, or any of my other tutorials, I would love to hear suggestions or see what you've done!

Glow in the dark nail polish

First off I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts this week! I'm moving the posts to Tuesday instead of Monday because of issues with school, but this week I was so swamped with papers that I couldn't even get in that one and yesterday we were traveling out to El Sembrador which is near Catacamas, Honduras. This is actually the place where I grew up originally so I have been a bit busy around here reacquainting myself with it and showing around our volunteer. But I just got inspired (since the internet came back up) to write a new post to make up for yesterday and Monday I will do a  post to make up for my lack of post on Tuesday.

So I just recently got some nail polish from a volunteer team that was down here for a week working. They are these really nifty ones that are double sided (purple on one side and hot pink on the other and another that is bright blue and lime green) and I decided I was going to use them on my nails sometime this week while I was here. Well last night our lights went out for a bit and while we were talking in the dark, our volunteer Andrea, who is rooming with me while we're here, noticed that something was glowing on the counter. Upon closer inspection we realized that it was the blue and green nail polish that was glowing! We both promptly began freaking out and laughing excitedly . Once the lights came back on, we tested the nail polish out on the tips of my nails to see if they really glowed, and sure enough they did! So now our nails are all wonderfully glowy, and whenever we get in the dark we both wave them around excitedly like a bunch of five year olds.

                     

Example of one of the tutorials I saw for it

Well, this got me thinking. How can I make my own glow in the dark nail polish? So this evening when I finally got internet back, I looked around to find some good ways of doing it. Basically all the ones that I've seen say around the same thing: take a glow stick and cut it and mix with your clear nail polish. Well, all except one. The title of the blog got me curious. Liesthatpinteresttoldme.wordpress.com talks about the dangers of doing something so incredibly reckless as dumping something that is possibly toxic and not meant to touch your skin, all over your nails. Which, she really does make some good points, and coupled with the fact that most of the blogs/tutorials I saw from my search are people that have never actually tried and are just blindly recommending it for other people to try and tell their results, I kind of think that there really must be a better option. And there are! She links to a very cheap one that you can buy at partycity.com and I'm sure in stores, or at Walmart.com they also have one that's a bit pricier. Either way, it's a lot safer looking and much easier than trying to do it yourself. When I go up this summer to the states I'm so trying this! Let me know if anyone does this as well.

Vanilla Sugar Body Scrub

I love making body scrubs (as anyone living in this household can attest for). It's super fun and easy to make, plus the feeling of your skin afterwards is like rubbing a baby's fat tummy. Yes, a baby's chunky tummy is like the best part of big babies. Or any babies in general, but that's beside the point. The point is is that body scrubs are freaking awesome and feel like tiny babies dancing on you. Which is pretty dang awesome. Anyways so I was messing around in the kitchen one night and decided to do a a recipe from The Idea Room for a brown sugar scrub that I like. Well, I had seen some various sugar scrub recipes and decided why not try making one of my own? So I did just that! As per usual I lay it out with nice big pictures just in case (mainly because I get bored and love playing with the camera). I used an old salsa jar that we seem to be getting a lot of lately and simply used my label removing technique to get that pesky label off for a perfectly good jar.

Recipe:
1 cup white/brown sugar (whichever you want really. I have used both before and I find white is a bit more aggressive than brown is, but both feel great).
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tsp honey
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

I threw in the cinnamon and vanilla because (1 I have heard that cinnamon is great for your skin and (2 because they smell great and (3 Why not?

Alright let's get started!

Our supplies

 Step 1: pour in the one cup of sugar into your jar, making sure that you have a jar large enough

 Step 2: Pour in the 1/3 cup of oil and kind of move the jar side to side a bit to get the oil to sink in easier

Step 3: Pour in 2 tsps of honey. This part tends to get kind of messy and sticky, but you have to kind of scoop out the excess honey from your teaspoon. So as long as you don't mind having a little fun while you're making this, it should go fine!

Step 4: Pour in the 2 tsps of cinnamon. This may vary, depending on how much you like the smell of cinnamon. I personally love it so I wanted an extra good dosing of it. 

Step 5: Add in your 1 tsp of vanilla. Again this can really vary on your preference. I love the smell so I wanted to cover up the smell of oil with it. But you can add until you feel comfortable. 

Step 6: Mix all of your ingredients together with a spoon, making sure to get all of your sugar mixed with 

Step 6: Go forth and enjoy your new baby dancing awesome feeling skin! Or if you love giving homemade nifty gifts like I do, throw a bow on it and give it to someone you want to experience the amazingness.

Removing Labels from Jars

So this was supposed to go up yesterday (since my schedule is going to hopefully be Mondays and Fridays plus any day I just feel like throwing something up), but I had a paper to do on Al Capone and as such I didn't get to post. So here it is:

I enjoy making body scrubs and using jars for other random things, but I'm too cheap to go buy ones just for that plus I don't really have access to any stores in the convenient area that sell that kind of thing. So I looked around for good ways to peel off the label of an old jar without too much trouble. And after a bit of experimenting I have found a pretty easy way to do it!

Supplies: hot water and a jar

Step 1: I microwaved my water for about one minute, thirty seconds to get it nice and hot then filled my jar up a little past the top of the label. Screw the top back on and leave for about 7 minutes.

Step 2: Begin peeling from the corner carefully at first, but once it looks like it's all coming off you can go a bit faster. If it begins to seperate from the top layer, just press it back down and slowly continue peeling.

Successful!

To get the sticky stuff off I scrub it with soap and a scrub brush but I've heard that soaking it in hot water for a bit helps too! If anyone else has any ways of doing it or suggestions I'd love to hear them :)

Fake Tattoo

So being the wonderfully wild child that I enjoy being I got to thinking about tattoos. A friend of mine who is a volunteer for three months here to El Salvador decided she wanted to surprise her boyfriend for April Fool's Day. To me it was totally a no brainer! I suggested doing a fake tattoo to mess with him because he's not really a tattoo person. She thought it was a great idea and so tonight we set to work. Well, being the Pinterest addict that I am, I had seen a fake tattoo tutorial a while back that I had been meaning to try out and thought this would be a great time to try it. Unfortunately it called for a gel pen, which we gleefully ignored as we did not have one. So we set about drawing out the butterfly she had picked out for the special occasion but no dice. The ink just was not taking to her skin for some odd reason. Well, it turns out we were using the wrong pens and so we had to find a new way of doing it. After searching for a bit she happened upon a tutorial for it, but again we were missing a somewhat major component. So we thought about it and decided we would substitute a pen in instead. And so here is how we went about it:

What you need: a rag to clean up, talcum powder, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls/pads, warm water, tracing paper, a pencil, ballpoint pen and scissors

A bottle is also good to have if you're doing one on the wrist to rest on
I accidentally forgot the pencil and ballpoint pen in the picture. Forgive me

 Step one: Draw your design first with pencil. It does not need to be too heavy or thick. You might have to play with the design a bit to get what looks best to you.

 Step 2: Use the cotton swabs/pads and alcohol to clean the area you are going to "tattoo." This prevents oils and things like that from messing up the ink. Wait for it to dry a bit before moving on to step 3.

Step 3: Cut out the design with enough space around it to keep your design in tact then place it where you plan to have your tattoo.

Step 4: Dip the rag in warm water then place it onto your paper for approximately 30 seconds.

At this point you should have a faint outline of the pencil design on your skin

 Step 5: Wipe off the excess water from the surrounding area and wait for the prepped area to dry.  Now using a black ballpoint pen go over the design again carefully. We accidentally used one with a blue tint the first time and that looked bad.

Your "tattoo" should look something like this right now

 Step 6: Pour talcum powder onto the area carefully, trying not to spill everywhere like I managed to do every time.

Now wait for about another 30 seconds to a minute for the talcum powder to set in before wiping it off with your hand or if you have it a makeup brush.

This should be your finished product! 

 Hopefully if all went correctly you should have an at least somewhat legit looking tattoo for a few days. (we're not positive on how long it will last seeing as it will probably vary.)

Our lovely test tattoo

Welcome

Welcome! If you just happened upon this blog and don't have time to waste, I suggest moving your mouse to the top right corner of your screen and hit that lovely red x. Why? Well, I'm a bit of a rambler and this blog honestly does not have a set point to it. It's here because I need a place to store the crazy things I try from Pinterest or just come up with from life. It's for the crafts, jewelry, drawings, doodles, and babysitting madness that I try out when I come upon it. i want a place I can post the things I've tried that work and are not ridiculously priced so that normal people (never thought I'd ever fall under that category under "normal" circumstances) with normal people budgets (or less) can afford to do all kinds of fun/cool stuff that you would normally think you couldn't do for whatever reason it be, i.e. too expensive, difficult, time consuming, etc. So if this gets read then it's for the mothers, crafters, and babysitters that need a fun idea without dropping a lot of money on it. If not then it's a place I can ramble and place my ideas and crafts that I need a more organized space for.