Turning jars into pot plants

Recycled jars can be transformed into just about anything...including a pot plant! For this project, I used an old pasta sauce jar. After washing and drying, I covered it with paper cuttings from a brochure that arrived in my mailbox, as I quite liked the design and the paper was nice and thick. To secure the paper cuttings in place over the jar's curved surface, I used strips of cellophane tape. This was also to sort of "waterproof" the jar as water can be wiped off a cellophane-taped surface quite easily without wetting the paper cuttings underneath it.

Warning - this only works for certain plants. Not all can survive in water alone. You'll also need to take a cutting from an existing plant as it's not likely to work with a seed. I did initially hope to be able to put earth in the jar, but found out that without drainage, no plant would be able to survive. So I tried water. That worked pretty well... for this little plant anyway :-)

Baby shower scrapbook-cum-album

Here's an idea for a baby shower gift - make a scrapbook and album for the mum-to-be!

To do this, first try to get hold of a large album with fully laminated pages. The kind you can peel upward and re-paste once you've decorated the page. Not that easy to find in these days of digital photos and online albums, I know...they date back to the good old days when people actually printed out their photos and stuck them in albums :-).

Next, plan the project. Ideally, you'd like to give it to the mum-to-be as a gift after the baby shower. So since you'll definitely want photographs, it's best if you take a camera along to the shower so that you can take your own photos (as there may or may not be an official photographer!).

Another quick tip is to get to the venue early so that you can photograph decorations, cakes, party favours, balloons etc, before the arrival of the other guests. Having too many people in a confined space can make it difficult to get the photos that you want. Of course, you'll want a few pictures of the guests as well for the album but photos of the decorations are very important - these will give you the colour scheme from which to choose your embellishments when you decorate the album later on.

So, next step - develop the photos and decide how they should be arranged in the album. Look at the colours that jump out at you. Do you see one main theme, or a combination of colours? Either way, start choosing your embellishments. You have a choice of going out and buying pre-made embellishments from a craft store, or opening what I call a "project box". A project box is basically a shoebox or any box in which you can put scraps of material, papers, pressed flowers, bits of ribbon, coloured cardboard, buttons, or other materials that you've collected to decorate a particular project. Obviously if your project theme is blue, then you'd want to collect blue stuff - you get the idea! :-)

Crafts to make and sell

For those who are interested in turning crafts into more than just a hobby, there are a lot of online resources that can help with this. You can learn more about what sort of crafts sell best, find customers who would want to buy these crafts, as well as how to promote crafts, and they types of crafts that sell, through resources such as this:

Click Here!

craftster.org

Today I'd like to share a link to a craft websites that I love checking out....  http://www.craftster.org/

It's a great site to browse for ideas for potential projects, connect with other craftsters and learn more about almost every kind of crafting.

Jar deco projects

An assortment of former jam jars, honey jars, pasta sauce jars and a used olive oil bottle, get upcycled for use as storage containers and vases. Materials used for decoration include glass paint, tile grout and crayons.

Creative ways to use up leftover tile grout

Leftover tile grout can be used to decorate recycled items as well. Here, these recycled pasta sauce jars and jam jars have been covered with a layer of tile grout before craft items such as beads from broken chains, odd buttons and other items, were embedded into the grout before it set. A crayon was then used to outline the natural ridges that appeared once the tile grout became dry and hard. In the brown jars, acrylic paint was used to cover the jar and tile grout was used to stick on the shell and other items.

Using up leftover thread

I discovered a packet full of leftover thread - primarily from old sewing projects - and wondered if there might be a use for them. Turns out bits and pieces of thread can be used to decorate a glass jar or other object - just use glue as a base and finish the project with cellophane tape or another fixer (though presumably anything too wet such as an adhesive spray, will cause the thread to become damp).

Used gift wrap and ribbon project

If you like the gift wrap and ribbon on a present you've received, there's no need to throw it away once you've opened the gift - you can use the bits and pieces for a craft project.

Here, an old jam jar was first washed and dried, then covered with a coat of mod podge. The gift wrap and ribbon was cut into smaller pieces and stuck onto the jar. A final coat of mod podge holds everything together.

Coffee jar deco

This time, it's a Nescafe bottle....washed and dried, with the labels removed (by soaking the jar in water overnight).

The middle part is wrapping paper, and the material forming the top and bottom border is actually a piece of the strap that used to be part of a straw bag. The strap snapped, so I cut it into pieces and put it aside to use in a craft project. The wrapping paper was cello-taped to the coffee jar and the straw borders are stuck on with double-sided tape.

Xmas Jam Jar

Over Christmas 2012, I tried to figure out a way to use up excess odd-shaped pieces of christmas wrapping paper. Turned out that they were perfect for punching out shapes! Having collected a decent number of sun-shaped cut-outs, I decided to use them to decorate a used jam jar.

The jar was washed out and soaked overnight in water to make removing the labels easier. Once dried, I covered it in gold glitter and stuck on the cut-outs using glue dots to stick them onto the jar.

Upcycling - Shoebox and Mooncake Tin

When Mooncake season rolls around, here's something to do with the rather nice tin they are sometimes packaged in! The same goes for the shoebox that your new shoes come in, provided that the box is sturdy, made of sufficiently thick cardboard, and in good condition.

Most crafsters have scrap paper, old cards, ribbon, cut-outs, scrap cloth and other odds and ends saved for projects such as these. Now's the time to bring them all out!

Once you've decided which materials you want to use on your project, glue, cello-tape or otherwise secure them onto the surface of the box/tin in the desired arrangement. Here, the shoebox is covered with scraps of cloth and the tin is covered with the remnants of birthday and other cards from years gone by. To create a finish, I just cello-taped the surfaces - but any form of fixing would work.

I use the box and tin for...what else...storing craft supplies! :-)