Late night crafting and a few other things

The other night I went to bed at about 10:45, when suddenly an idea popped into my head. So of course I had to jump up and try it. What else was I going to do, lay there and go to sleep? Uh, no.

I'd found 3 of these big glass juice bottles at a thrift store earlier in the week. They're cute as is, but I thought I'd try dressing them up a little. (Sorry for the badly lit night-time photos, by the way.)

I cut a nice wide strip of burlap and pulled out a couple of strands on each side to fray it a little.

Then using just regular acrylic craft paint I free handed a number off-center on the burlap.

A little hot glue to keep it in place...

...and the plain glass jar is now a little more interesting.

For the next one I tried a couple of stripes to go with the number.

Then I had to try it on some upholstery webbing.

This milk bottle already had the year 1852 on the glass, so I just went with that for my painting detail.

Another thrifted jar with a big cork lid got a two-tone treatment and a couple of pieces of string tied around the middle.

I think the milk and juice bottles would make really cute flower vases.

I've also done a couple more signs recently. I particularly loved this piece of wood with the big knots in it. I had to glue the small ones to keep them from falling out, but I liked the missing one in the middle.

I've been experimenting with some new fonts and I'm really loving this swirly one. What do you think of the little hints of pink? I thought it was appropriate for a "sweets" sign.

Same font but this time with white highlights inside the letters.



I like this font, too. Now I'm wishing I'd used more of a variety when I was making all of those other signs!


I've mentioned it a lot lately, but in case you haven't seen it, I posted a tutorial for making these signs a while back. They're super easy. The basic steps are:

Print backwards.

Turn over and wet a little.

Rub a lot.

Done!

Tonight I tried my hand at candle making. I scavenged the Bargain Center for saucers and cups (I really wanted teacups but those are hard to come by, so I had to settle for small coffee cups). Tonight I picked up a big bag of soy wax and some wicks at Michaels then came home and made 8 candles.

They're cooling and hardening downstairs right this minute, so I'm hoping tomorrow morning they'll look nice. I'll let you know how it goes!