DIY etched wine glass...

One of my favorite things to do with my honey bunny is date nights at home. We grab our personalized wine glasses and a few bottles of wine, order take out and watch some good ol' TV on the couch! Well, while on our "date night" last week SOMEBODY had one too many glasses of wine (Errol), knocked over my glass and broke it!!! Why couldn't he break his own? It's always my stuff he breaks. It might be his passive aggressive way of getting back at me. For what? I'm not sure because I'm an amazingly wonderful partner who NEVER has attitude or is stubborn or call him out on his BS. I'm a peach! Anywho, now I'm left without a glass with my name on it and that needs to be fixed.

It's actually a pretty easy  fix. This is one of my favorite gifts to make (I hope my BFF isn't reading this cause I haven't made one for her...YET!). I mean, who doesn't like wine? People who aren't  my  friends. That's who. You can also do this project on those giant glass beer mugs. Guys love those! We're wine drinkers in my home, so we have wine glasses.

Everyone who really knows me knows that I HATE spending money. Unless it's on shoes, I heart Loubs!! SO, luckily for us half of these materials could be purchased at the dollar store. The dollar store literally has the best most resilient wine glasses. I'm really shocked this glass has made it this long! I mean, I load them on the bottom rack of the dishwasher! I've purchased expensive wine glasses and NEVER AGAIN! I'm a clumsy ass person with a child and a clumsy ass other half. These suckers need to last okay? Make sure you don't get the bubbly globe looking ones because 1. they're ugly and I don't want them in your home, and 2. They're much more difficult to etch because of their shape. Also at the dollar store, get some contact paper! Okay, full list of materials...

Materials:

• wine glasses or glass beer mugs (dollar store)
• light colored contact paper (dollar store)
• etching cream (Michaels($14 ish- please use a 40% off coupon!)
• cutting machine or a x-acto knife and printer

I'm gonna use my Silhouette portrait to cut out my name, BUT I have done it the good old fashioned way before and although it's a little more work, it's worth the end result.

To do it by hand:

• Use word or even notepad (or any word processor), find a font that is chunky and bold because that will make better cutting lines and you'll be able to see your word more clearly. Type your word, a little over an inch high is a good height. Also, if you don't find a font you like, you can buy fonts online or search Pinterest for free fonts. Just don't download anything sketchy y'all! You don't want a virus. 
• Print your word or design.
• Now, some old school stuff. Shade the back side of your printed design with a pencil. Yes, we are really gonna do this! Shade that design so we can trace it!! Make it thick!
• Trace your design onto the  contact paper. The pencil shading will leave a perfect outline of your design. This is why you need light contact paper.
• Cut around the contact paper a good 1/2 inch around your design and stick it onto your glass.
• With your x-acto knife trace around your design and peel away the contact paper from your design. REMEMBER the part that's showing is what's going to be etched!

My craft setup (don't mind that popcorn on the floor!)

With a cutter:

• Pick out your font or design and send it to the cutter. I attached a photo of my silhouette settings so you can put the contact paper in without using a mat.
• Cut around your design, leaving a 1/2 inch around the edge and stick it to your glass.

For BOTH:

• EASIEST PART! Get a thick layer of etching cream on your design. Make sure the cream is only touching the glass parts you want etched. I would tell you you need a brush or something but really, you could put that on with a spoon and it would be fine!
• Follow the etching cream instructions. Depending on the brand, they might be  different. I only had to leave mine on for 60 seconds.

 

THAT'S IT!

Wash your glass and gift it. If the gift is to yourself, that's even better! 

These would make GREAT wedding or anniversary gifts...just sayin'!

DIY Gold Sea Urchins...

I keep seeing these super cute golden sea urchins all over the place and I LOVE them. I'm sure you've seen them too. Well, I ran into them while shopping at Target last week and I quickly threw two packages of them in my cart when I thought...What am I doing? They're golden sticks for $15 a pack and they're not even very big (Also, I thought about what my other half would say when I came home with these after he just finished telling me we need to watch our spending. Haha!).Well, I snapped a picture, put them back, and put the gears to work in my head. I spent a few bucks on skewers and gold paint,, and made a trip to the dollar store, because I KNEW I had seen styrofoam balls there before and I KNEW they were much much more at Michaels. 

Well I got home and googled "Gold Sea Urchin" and what the heck? I saw some selling for up to $180!! So now, I'm a little more excited for this project. The pricier the knock off that I can pull off, the happier it makes me! Well,, I also saw that there are several tutorials out there to replicate the urchins, but they were all missing something. THE DARK CENTER! Well...I didn't buy any black paint. I did have some black watercolors, so I decided to just use what I had at home.  I apologize for the photo quality of some of these. I was working on this late at night after the baby went to bed...and after a few glasses of wine.

Materials:

• Pkg of skewers
• Small styrofoam balls (or half spheres)
• Gold and black paint
• Sponge brushes
• Glue gun and glue sticks

This is the perfect size sphere. If you get the half spheres, you're ready for the next step. If not, cut your sphere in half.

Next, paint your half sphere black. It doesn't have to be perfect, you'll barely see it when your're done but you don't want to see a bright white center. You want it to just dissapear. 

-Woopsie, I forgot to take a photo of this step, so I took it from my snapchat (@jaaaamazing). 

Start cutting your skewers. I cut them to a little over 4". The small overage is the point that's going to be stuck in the half sphere. I actually just layed them all down in a straight line and took a colored pencil and drew a straight line across so that each skewer got a tiny measurement notch. I scored each skewer at the notch and then just snapped them all to size. It was kind of annoying to cut each skewer and then go chasing after the part that flew off. So I found this to be easier.

You're going to want to paint the pointy skewer black about 1/3 of the way and let dry.

After they are all painted black and dry, begin painting the other side gold. You're going to want to overlap the gold paint onto the black a little bit to create a fade effect.

Once the first coat was done and dry, I felt like mine weren't gold enough and I took all the skewers off my drying styrofoam and gave them one more coat. (Whenever we order something that comes with a good piece of styrofoam I stash it away for occasions like this! Errol thinks I'm crazy but HA!! It worked for this project IN.YOUR.FACE! LOL)

Now you want to have your black half sphere and skewers ready.

I laid my glue gun on its side and just allowed the glue to melt onto a paper towel where I could just dip the tip of the skewer into and then insert it into the half sphere.

This is the part of the tutorial where you want to be very careful to equally space the skewers or else it's not going to look like the original ones. Place them very close together but with an even sunburst v shape beginning at the bottom of the sphere. 

 I did see a few tutorials where they used toothpicks or chop sticks and I just  didn't like the effect as much as I liked the skewers. They're much more close to the real ones. 

On the next row up, make sure to place the skewer between the gap of the lower skewer to give it that random (but not random) sunburst effect.

Continue to alternate the order of the skewers as you move on to the next row. Once you're done, you can go back and fill in any gaps but make sure you don't overdo it or you'll crack your sphere...like I did. 

If this happens, just flood it with hot glue and cut out a paper circle that's the same size. I just happened to have this laying around. (I think it's the packaging to some macarons I bought. Haha! I keep a lot of junk for "just in case") 

THAT'S IT! You're done and you have a beautiful gold sea urchin decoration! You can hot glue a little loop to the back of it and hang it on your wall or just use it as surface decor. I think I'm going to put it up on my wall but we move A LOT, so I'm just going to attach some 3M strips to the back of it. That's how I attach EVERYTHING to my walls. I like to switch up my decor so much anyways and those work perfectly for people who change their minds as much as I do.

If I missed anything or if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. I'd love to see how yours turn out!

My Version $4!!

zincdoor.com $147-197.50

Target $14.99

cruising...

I turned the big 3-0!!! Again. Haha! For my 30th birthday last year I was very pregnant and very lazy, fatigued, tired and really didn't want to do anything. So my other half decided that we were going to celebrate my 30th birthday again this year and we were going to go BIG! So cake and ice cream was just not going to cut it. A 7 day cruise? YES!

We sailed to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Mexico. It was a wonderful vacation to focus on us and our relationship and I just wanted to share a few photos of the trip, but mainly a few photos of my favorite swimsuit.

I literally tried on over 30 bathing suits and it's so difficult to find one to fit my body type. I learned a long time ago how to dress for my body type. Mainly from Stacy London and Clinton Kelly. Their biggest piece of advice and what's always imprinted in my head has been to dress the biggest part of your body and everything else can be tailored. Luckily for me. I can sew! However, sewing a bathing suit, is not very easy, so I'd rather just purchase a good one. That task was easier said than done.

I tried on bathing suits ranging from $20 to $550 and the lucky winner was the $20 suit from Forever 21 that you can get HERE. It's not too "young" looking, it's modest (for a two piece), and it's mommy appropriate. I've always dressed modestly although I did like to show cleavage from time to time, but now that I'm a mom, I just don't feel as comfortable in some clothes. I think it's just about my own personal level of appropriateness.