Recycled Container project

Here is my first art project(of many, I hope) that I have to share with you. It is a great way to use some items around the house that would otherwise be thrown out in the garbage. I have always felt that there ought to be something I could make with the cardboard roll from ribbon and it finally hit me this year, I could make boxes from them.
The first step is to run a piece of one inch masking tape around the cylinder like this. The taped area will become the lid for your box. CAREFULLY cut along the taped edge with a utility knife. Do not try to cut into the cylinder with one pass rather go around slowly several times cutting in deeper each pass.
Smooth up the edges by moving the cut pieces in a circular pattern over a piece of sandpaper.
Next cut a strip( one inch wide by whatever length that will fit inside your cardboard roll) from a light weight piece of cardboard such as a cereal box or a gift box( I used the cardboard from inside the 2009 calendar I just bought). Using Elmer's glue attach this inside the lid portion leaving about a 1/4inch showing below the cut line.
Now you have the box. The pieces will fit tight but if you open and close them several times they will begin to loosen and smooth out a bit.
To complete the box before doing all the fun decorating I cut out two more circles that will fit inside under the lid and inside the base of box in order to cover up the holes and make a smoother surface for decorating the lid on top.
Now, you can start painting and glueing till your hearts content!!Before and After
The top of my circus container is decorated with some old ticket stubs, a bouncy ball that I cut in half(thought it looked like a clown nose!) a candy wrapper and a vintage clown cake topper. I found the cake topper from Atomic Veggie on Etsy. She has such a fun shop full of supplies to get your creative juices flowing. On the pink and black box the adorable pink sparrow came from Porkchop Scottie and the vintage plastic flowers came from Peppermint Soda, both also on Etsy.


I think it would be great to totally cover these with the cereal box printed side showing. You could use wrapping paper from a gift you received, cut up your Christmas cards, the possibilities go on and on. If you decide to make one of these recycled boxes send me a photo, I would love to see what you come up with.

Fun Project Coming Soon....

Hope everyone had a great holiday. Ours was good, went and saw The Spirit on Christmas day then had a very good lunch at the chinese buffet. I have a fun project to share with you in the next couple of days. If you have some ribbon rolls left over from all the package wrapping or tree trimming keep a hold of them and I'll show you a neat way to upcycle them. I got a new tripod for my camera so I'll be testing it out as I photograph the steps of the project.

Mmmm, Cookies!

My mom came over yesterday and brought Bryan and me some xmas sugar cookies. She makes the best decorated cookies, I ate my half immediately, Bryan's half is still in the kitchen. I'm at home today and I am using extreme will power not to gobble down his share. I just don't understand how he could not have eaten them right away like I did. I'm making a pot of potato/cheddar soup today so back in the kitchen I go!

The Weekend So Far..

The tree and mantle are finally decorated, at least as much as I'll do this year! My Christmas tree is a bit different than most. As I have mentioned before I LOVE Halloween so I carry it into Christmas as well.


This is just one of my Halloween trees. I have a white tree that I will do every other year that is all black,white,and chrome but still Halloween. Think of crows,spiders,ghosts!

I've been trying to come up with a booth display and recently found some items antiquing that I thought would work. I painted the legs of the footstool and the frame glossy black. Any feedback or ideas on this display would be greatly appreciated.

After we got the booth photo taken we went to dinner at Grinder's. The chili bomb pie is one of our new favorite things. You order whatever type pizza you like then in the center they put chili, green scallions, tater tots, and nacho style cheese! ( I could go for some of those tots right now). Usually we would go for a walk afterwards but it was just too cold so we drove around and looked at x-mas lights. I have some great photos of that to share with you tomorrow!

4 Day Weekend

I finally got the Xmas tree up from the basement. Just finished putting the lights on this evening, decorations tomorrow. I took a four day weekend and am taking another this week. I have a couple of art fair application due dates coming up and I'm hoping to get everything finished that I need to submit for those done over my time off.

We participated in a two day show on Friday night and Saturday. Here's my laughing girl bust, she's so cute! The riser that she is on is a recent antique store find. I painted the legs glossy black. I got a few more pieces that I'm revamping a little, can't wait to show you when everything is put together.

My friend Halliday was at the show too. This is one of her recent creations, Amazing! I love her style.

Here she is working on a dress for New Years made from can pop tops.

And an update on the candy table at work: ALL the chocolate mice are gone!!!

It's Corsage Show n' Tell Day!

A couple of weeks ago Elizabeth proposed the idea of a show and tell day based on her corsage tutorial. I was all too excited to accept the challenge and try my hand at making one. So here it is, my corsage for show and tell. Being that I'm a metalsmith I had to include that element into my project. I work a lot with old street signs so that is what the heart in the center is cut from and the banner stamped AMOUR is cut from sterling silver.

I came across the hot pink and polka dot ribbon just this week on a trip to my favorite antique mall.

This summer I bought a bunch of these vintage pin backs, it worked perfectly for this.

Check out Elizabeth's blog and follow the links on her site to see all the other participant's corsages!

Mouse Thief!

We were checking the table yesterday because we know that people will eat the candy right off of it when I noticed that there was a huge difference in the number of mice over the gumdrops. We started with SIX mice and now there are only TWO!! I can see someone snatching a gumdrop or something small like that but to take one of these chocolate mice! Unbelievable, I can't imagine going into a store and actually taking something off the display like that and eating it.