Clay Pot- Dachshund

7/ 13/ 14


Hello, my lovely craftaholics!  I'm going to tell you how to make a

clay dachshund that is simultaneously a pot! I made this when I was at a crafting seminar and it was so much fun!  I made this for 4- H and put it in the county fair; it got reserve champion!  I now use it to hold some of my jewelry.  Do you need something to hold all of your little trinkets?  Well this cute little pot would be perfect!


Dachshund pot:


Supplies:


-Paint (Preferably normal dog colors)

-Paint brush

-Scrap paper to paint on

-An old shirt, so you don't get any nice ones all painty

-Water in a plastic, throwaway cup for getting rid of extra paint on the paintbrush

-Large bowl

Ingredients for clay:

-2 cups of salt

-2 1/2 cups flour

-1 cup water (extra water may be needed if ingredients do not mix well enough)

Directions:

1. Mix flour and salt together in large bowl.

2. Add and mix in the water.

3. Knead doughy mixture until smooth.

4. Cover bowl and refrigerate.

5. Once the mixture is cold, take out of the refrigerator and break into 10 parts (1 really small part, 6 normal small parts, 1 medium part, 1 large part, and 1 extra large part).

6. Pick up your extra large piece and roll around in your hands, making a long, spherical shape.

7. Start pushing into the clay near an end of the long sphere, making a pot- like indentation.

8. Pick up your large piece and roll it around in your hands, focusing on making one part of your ball stick out like a nose.

9. Take two normal small pieces roll in your hands separately.

10. Flatten the pieces separately, making sure one end of each is rounded.

11.  Press the flat pieces on opposite sides of the large piece like dachshund ears.

12. Take your smallest piece and roll into a tidy small ball.

13.  Press onto the tip of the longer part of the large piece.  Do not be afraid to flatten it a little as you press it in, it's fine.

14.  Take the large piece with all of it's pieces still attached and gebtly press it intk your largest piece with the pot- like indentation.   You may have to take some clay off of each piece and press it over the crevice separarting the pieces.

14.  Now take the 4 normal small pieces and flatten them into dachshund feet shapes.  You can use anything with a pointy end and draw 4 lines in each foot to signify the toes.

15.  Take your last piece and roll it into whatever kind of tail you want your dachshund pot to have.  Stick it onto the end of the pot.

16.  Let your pot dry in the sun for about a day or until it is hard and not soft.

17.  Get the colors you want your dachshund to be and lay them out in front of you.

18.  Place your dried pot on top of some paper and paint away!  Be sure not to forgeg the eyes!

Making this pot was so much fun for me, and I hope you have just as much fun!

Jewelry Board

Do you have way to much jewelry and no were to put it? I used to be like that.  I found a way to fix this.  The story goes like so.  You see I was just making my way through stuff on Pinterest Liking and Repinning things here and there when I came across this totally awesome idea!  It was one of those cork boards with thumb tacks in them, but guess what it had jewelry hanging off of it!  I was in desperate need of some way to clean stuff up and make them look nicer at the time and I was excited to find this.  I could finally clean up a box full of tangled jewelry.  I went straight to work.  When I got my board out from a closet (Luckily I had been saving this board for a special occasion, because I had gotten a new board that was zebra earlier.) I started thinking this wouldn't look awesomely, amazing just sitting there on the wall.  I mean it was just a plain brown!  I decided I'd put my favorite things on the board to spice it up; of these things were deer, Harry Potter, my family, dogs, owls, and a few more.  When I was finally happy with my work I started to put my pins in the places I needed them.  I then started untangling my jewelry and placed them on the thumb tacks.  It was totally painless.  This is probably why I like it so much.  If you don't have very much wall space I wouldn't do this project.


Jewelry Board:

Supplies:

Cork board
Paper
Decorating supplies EX. Markers, glitter, etc.
Thumb tacks
Jewelry
Wall
A human body (Yeah, I know I'm going overboard with the supplies...)
Earth to walk on (Yeah, I'm listing EVERYTHING)
Air, so you can breathe.

Directions:

1. Get a cork board.
2. Draw your favorite things on about 10 pieces of paper.  EX.  Deer, owls, etc.
3. Place these things on your cork board using thumb tacks.
4. Hang your cork board on the wall vertically.
5. Now take your jewelry and hang them off the thumb tacks.
6. Now you see how totally painless this is!

Now I have somewhere to put my jewelry and it makes me really happy!  Did you have the same problem as me; you just couldn't get all your jewelry in one jewelry box?  Well, if you did your problems have now been fixed!  

Did you get confused along the way?  Please tell me in the Comments!  Did you absolutely love it?  Tell me in the Comments!

Have I told you about my other blogs?  Well I have two others: mostlyfantasybookwriter.blogspot.com and mydivapets.blogspot.com.  The writing blog, the first one, has excerpts every now and then from my latest story The First Wizard.  Does the book title strike your interest?  If so, go ahead and check it out!  If you've read some of the excerpts and you want the whole book all you have to do is enter the book cover contest!  For more information check out the blog!  For my dog training blog, the second one, it's all about training your dog.  Have fun!

Valentines Day

 Valentines Day is coming up!  Do you have a special somebody that you want to give a Valentine to?  Do you have a best friend that deserves a card?  Well, I made a Valentine that was for my best friend and it was pretty simple.  Do you want to know how to make one?  Oh, well, okay!

Valentine Card:

Supplies:

Paper (Colored or not)

Scissors

Decorating supplies

Pen or pencil (Can be colored)

Directions:

1. Fold your paper in half, hamburger style.

2. Draw a heart on the creased side of the paper.

3. Cut only on the line you drew.

4. Write whatever you want on the front.  I wrote Happy Singles Awareness Day!

5. Add glitter or whatever you wanted.  I added some rope I found.

My card went pretty well, but the rope wouldn't stay with just one piece of tape.  I wonder why that happened? :P  Then I just taped it in every spot that popped up.  On the tape, since I didn't use invisible, I drew hearts.   On the inside I wrote a quote about friends.  "A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you." - Elbert Hubbard.  I really liked this.  Some more great friend quotes are here http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_friendship.html, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/friendship?auto_login_attempted=true, http://boardofwisdom.com/togo/?viewid=1005&listname=friendship, and http://quotelicious.com/quotes/friendship-quotes.

Did you like the instructions?  Did you get confused?  If so, just post a comment!  

Make your own Harry Potter Wand!

Last month was my birthday and I was dying to have a Harry Potter (I'm obsessed!) birthday party.  I had so many ideas, some of which never even happened at the party.  I had this thought that we would run out of things to do!  Well, we didn't run out of things.  I was working on the goody bags (Chocolate frog card, chocolate frog, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, the page found in the book Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter glasses, and how to tea stain things card, word search) and I started thinking maybe my guests should have their very own wands!  I went online and found that all wands were about thirty dollars, and I almost died on the spot!  At one point I thought maybe I should make my own wand for free!  I looked it up online and they ALL included a hot glue gun, which of course I didn't have at the moment due to me moving to Colorado recently and most of my supplies sitting in a cupboard being unused when I could have been using them right then! I decided I'd just make my own!  I happened to have my cousin, Allison, over when we started making the wands.  She's the one who came up with this brilliant idea!  So do you have a Harry Potter lover, or are you a Harry Potter lover.  Do you want your own wand, but the prices online are ridiculously crazy online?  Even the used ones are expensive.  No worries I've got your back.  I'm going to tell you how to make your very own wand that you can personalize!

Drying Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours

Harry Potter Homemade Wand:

Crafting Supplies:

Paper
Stick from outside (Straight!)
Hot Glue Gun (Optional)
Hair Dryer (Optional)
Paint 
Bead (Preferably round) 
Paintbrush
Something to cover the surface your painting on
Surface to paint on
A cup to get the paint off your paintbrush
A painting shirt (One that is old or you don't like)
A strong desire to make a wand!

Directions:

1. Get a stick form outside; make sure it's straight!
2. Using you piece of paper, wrap the stick.  Make sure you get the top and the bottom wrapped up!  If you want a cool look put the paper on tight but loose.  Then twist the paper until the paper's all twisty and the paper is tightened.
3. Paint your wand!  I would recommend using colors like black, brown, and white.  
4. You can use the hair dryer to speed up the drying process; if you don't mind the wait you can just, well, wait!  
5. Using the hot glue gun, if you have one, glue the bead on the top of your wand.  If you don't have one, don't fret!  You can just paint over the bead and put a lot of paint around the edges.
6. Let the whole wand dry.  
7. Yay, you made a wand!  If you want to give it more design just add more beads by running your wand through glue and then run them through the beads.

Do you have questions?  Just post a comment.  I'll answer as soon as possible.

Have a Skater?

Do you have a skater in your family?  Have you noticed how expensive those dresses are?  Well, fabrics cheaper and it makes for a lovely dress!  A homemade dress can be cheaper and it can be made exactly the way you want it.  I got the idea to make a dress, because, well, I'm a figure skater!  I had a Christmas recital coming up, and I didn't have a dress!  (By the way, I didn't do great at the recital.)  I didn't feel like going shopping.  I was thinking on how I was going to get a dress on time, when it hit me!  Why not make it yourself?  I went to Joanne's (Yeah, I know.  I went shopping, but it's a CRAFT store!) and started looking for fabric.  My music was Candy Cane Lane, so I wanted to make the dress like a candy cane.  It was around Halloween (Yeah, not that close to Christmas, but it was close enough.) and there was a whole lot of Halloween fabric.  I go over there and I find one with red and white stripes!  It was perfect.  I got some of that (I'm sorry, I'm not sure how much.  Just use an old dress and find out how much fabric was used for it and get extra.)  
Then I found a red leotard, snowflake buttons, a white scarf, and red and white socks.  My outfit was done before I knew it.

Materials:

Scissors
Fabric
An idea
A skating dress
Leotard
Sewing supplies
Iron (Optional)

Directions:

1. Get a leotard the color you want your dress to be.
2. Sketch out your design
3. Using an old skating dress with a nice skirt, trace the skirt on the fabric you want the skirt on.  (Make sure the fabric you use is stretchy.)
4.  Cut the hole in the middle where you will go in.
5. Sew a half inch of the bottom of the fabric you just cut out over.
6. Sew the skirt onto the dress.
7. Add any accessories you want on the dress.

When folding half an inch over and then sewing over it.  To keep it flat while sewing, you can iron over it first.

You may want the skirt on top of a skirt like I did and this is how you do it.

Materials:

Stretchy band
Tuil (It's a fabric, not sure if i spelled the name right.) x2.  Preferrably different colors.
Sewing supplies

2nd Skirt:

1. Get a stretchy band.
2. Cut the band to fit your waste a little tight, but not to tight.
3. Cut about 2 in. thick strands out of one color tuil and about elbow length.
4. Using the other color of tuil cut it shorter then the last and only an in. thick.
5. Tie the tuil on, alternating from one color to the next.
6. Sew the skirt onto your other skirt waste, but not totally sewed on.  Just sew it in places.  It will seem loose, but it will tighten when you get in the dress.

When doing the second skirt, you can also do the same size strands with different colors.

If you were confused with these instructions, please tell me where and why.  I will fix it as soon as possible.

Fabulous Trash Can!

I was cleaning my bathroom in my new house (Colorado, so fun!), dreaming of the ugly yellow paint painted over and the new fabulous decor.  I wanted to get started on the bathroom right away; it was sort of planned out in my head.  The colors are going to be peach, brown, and steel blue (Not sure on the blue.  Does it look good with the other colors?  What do you think, should I keep it or leave it?).  I didn't have the paint yet, so there goes painting.  I was looking around and my eyes landed  on the trash can.  It was hideous.  I had to give it some cute factor.  I clicked into Pinterest (my lovely Pinterest) and started looking around.  Nothing seemed perfect, but one was close.  I used a trash can with patterns all over as my inspiration.  I thought maybe instead of totally covering the trash can paint it a different color and put pictures on it!  I liked the idea, so I put it into action.  It's normal to put pictures on trash cans, there's no problem to it.

Supplies:

Colored Spray Paint

Modpodge

Ugly trash can

Large rock

Pictures

Directions:

1.  Get you ugly trash can and spray paint and bring it outside.

2.  Place the trash can on an overturned rock. (It needs to be overturned so the top of the rock can still be untouched and natural.)

3.  Spray paint your trash can until completely covered.  (You can spray paint the inside, but I didn't.)

4.  Wait until your trash can is dry. (Once the trash can is semi dry I'd recommend taking it into your mudroom or a place like that.  I suggest this, because a gust of wind may flip your trash can on its side getting it dirty and messing up the paint.)

5.  When dry, get some pictures off your computer that you like and print them the way they are originally, or use a photo editing site to tint it to the colors of your bathroom. (The pictures you print shouldn't be glossy.  They just need to be printed on regular white paper.) I chose to tint my pictures using Picmonkey.  Since I used Picmonkey that's the only editing website I can help you use.  To tint your picture on Picmonkey, a free photo editing site, upload it into the editing site.  Next, go to effects.  Once in effects scroll down until you see Tint, click on it and change it to the color you want.

6.  Now modpodge your pictures on your trash can in any way you like.

7.  Let modpodge dry.

8.  You have just awesomed up your trash can!


If you don't like the idea of putting pictures on a TRASH can, I totally understand; that's why you can also use patterned paper for a substitute like my inspiration trash can.

Confused?  Just post a comment!  I will answer right away!

Have a suggestion to make this fun project even better? Just tell me by posting a comment!

Homemade Yoga Strap

Do you have a yoga mat that just keeps rolling out of the tight cylinder you put it in?  You don't feel like buying one and you have extra ribbon around?  Why not use that ribbon and make a fabulous yoga strap with what you already own!  Just to make everything better it's easy!

Homemade Yoga Strap:

1. Grab your ribbon.  (I'd recommend two different flattering colors such as pink and blue.)

2. Cut one of the ribbons into two pieces, making sure that they're long enough to tie a bow around your yoga mat.

3. Tie one bow on each end of the yoga mat using the ribbon you cut into two pieces.

4. On the part of the bow encircling the yoga mat, tie your other ribbon on (make sure you can tie a little knot on both ends and put it around your body like a messenger bag.) both ends.

5. Tada! 

Instructions not good?  Post a comment below!  I'll fix it as soon as possible.