My very productive non-nano weekend

This weekend I put off the Nano. Sure I could have written to 40k, but I didn't! I'm wishing I sort of had added to my word count though.

This past weekend my nieces were to come over again. Per usual every time they come over I have a project planned. This weekend had MANY projects planned.

1. I needed to finish my pillow, which is a gift for a friend. I hand embroidered, sewed and stuffed! And voila!

Because this fan has always been such a Beatles fan, it has lyrics from Blackbird on it, a song that particularly reminds me of her. I love the Gothic feeling of it. The white is not just plain white but rather a very faint floral (I had wanted a different pattern on the fabric, but just couldn't find it!). The back of the pillow (not shown) is a black on black, matte on shiny, damask type pattern. Very proud of it if I do say so myself! And that pillow sucked up a whole bag of stuffing! The pig!

After I finished the pillow, I still had hours left in my evening (not really, it was almost 10, but) we decided to continue on with projects! 

2. Home Made Epsom Bath Salts. This one is super duper easy. Basically you need jars, Epsom salt, food color (or the coloring for soap, which is what I used) and your choice of essential oils (again I used the one for soap...which could all be found at Michael's in handy little containers all in one area).

The steps are pretty easy. You measure, you mix in the coloring and the scent, then pour back into the jar.

The fun part is the decorating. Because the jars were cute on their own, not much had to be done.

I will note that I just sort of bought a ton of Epsom salts, 8 kg. 4 large mason jars only used half of one 4 kg container of Epsom salts. I had to buy 6 more jars from Walmart (the kind with the sealable pop latching lid) and that finished off 8kg, almost perfectly.

3. Tea Cup Candles.

This one I was looking forward to, but ended up taking almost an entire day to do! Usually crafts I plan take a couple hours and we're done, but not the candles. Also this one involved a lot of waiting and wasn't that great for doing with kids, as must of it the adults have to do as its dealing with hot wax.

PS: hot wax doesn't burn but it hurts like hell when you get it on you!

My sister got a giant box of candles for $5.00 at the auction, so we lucked out lots of candles to recycle. We separated candles into color. The girls would then take a hammer to a double bagged bag of one set of color, and try to break the candles off of the wicks. Then it was put them all in a pot that was sitting in another, larger, pot of boiling water (no direct heat). Then I would stir until melted and pour into the cups (which were already washed and ready) Then, while the wax is still hot and liquid, quickly put the wick in and make sure that it stands straight up.

I suggest doing the candles in layers. The first couple ones we finished turned out great, however, the more rushed I got (and the more quickly i filled the cups in) I noticed we would have them sinking in the middle. This probably has something do with the wax shrinking as it cooled, but either way it didn't look good. So do it in layers so you can fix any caving in.

4. Modge Podge! I don't think I need to give instructions for this, as almost everyone knows how to do it. The girls however had not, I instructed and found that one seemed to enjoy it, the other didn't really have an eye for the details (getting bubbles out) and was quickly moving to hang out with my husband and the video game.  I needed to change the wrapping for some decorative boxes into something less "birthday" and more "everyday". So we went about modge podging. I also found some ugly frames and changed them up a bit. One my niece did leopard print and took home, the other I absolutely loved, it had a shabby chic feeling to it with Haiku's on it from a book I found when I went thrift shopping for my tea cups!



Love this one!



Putting them all together to show off how much we had done (and so I could share with you), it looks like we certainly accomplished a lot this weekend! Plus there was a family bon fire we went to and we got to see some of our cousins again!