Paper Flowers in a Wine Bottle Vase

My friend Beth and I wanted to do something nice for our friend who is going through some difficult times right now. We decided on making a sort of care package for her. I said, “Let’s buy flowers for her!” but Beth said, “Aww. I want her to have some flowers that can last forever.” This was a conniving statement, since she KNOWS I do crafts. So we decided to do paper flowers!

The vase started off as a wine bottle that I had in my kitchen. I had peeled the label off by soaking it in a pitcher of water (I had already finished the margaritas from the pitcher) then scraping it off with a smooth like butterknife.

I crumpled up a bunch of 2x2” encyclopedia pages to fill up the bottle. Too bad it wasn’t filled with wine. I drank it. I love wine. Wine wine wine.

We made paper roses using a slightly modified version of this tutorial and more encyclopedia book pages. The stem is made from a rolled up page and then the flower is glued directly to the stem during the process.

We made 3 roses to place in the vase. 4 looked like too many and 2 was just odd. Tissue paper was also placed around the wine bottle for a little pop of color.

 

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet but only because we sprayed these ones with perfume.

Beach Pea

Sometimes (twice), I go to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on Wednesdays for a Guild of Nature Artists meeting. This is when a bunch of nature enthusiasts get together and draw things in the museum. For the past few months, they have been drawing things in the birds section, and I was sick of birds so I chose to draw a flower. (Ok. This was only my second time and my first time I drew a bird. But I was still sick of them, ok? They’re just so very flighty.)

I found my Clayworks Cooperative pottery instructor, and I wanted to sit by her so I quickly pretended like I wanted to draw this picture of a Beach Pea. So cool looking, right??

I started by sketching it out. I was bummed because I bought watercolor pencils and watercolor paper specifically to go do this at the Museum, but I tore my apartment apart (I guess that’s why they call it an tornapartment) looking for it. I could only rummage up graph paper and a mechanical pencil. I was so distraught that I actually tweeted @goCMNH that I couldn’t find my art supplies. They didn’t tweet me back, probably because they don’t care.

Last time I was there, I saw my incredibly talented pottery instructor, who had just started watercoloring a year ago, doing watercolors. I thought, “I want to do watercolors too!!” So this time I brought my $4 children’s art kit (which I am a firm believer that everyone should own) and went to town on this drawing.

I know what you’re thinking. “Nidhi, you are so talented! How did you ever do this on your first time doing watercolors??” WELL, if you remember, this isn’t my first time doing watercolors. Idiot. Ha. Hahaha.

One thing I learned today: graph paper gets very crinkly if you do watercolors on it. The wisest amongst you might know that from spilling coffee on your important work papers. I knew that, which is why I bought watercolor paper. I just appear to have…misplaced it. I’ll frantically look for it again the next time I decide to go to CMNH.

Share Your Love 2012

Etsy does this every year, and for craft club (yes, I started a craft club) this week, we decided on doing this.

Pictures of the living room craft room in action!

And our beautiful cards. We made 26 in total!

And here is Ali, doing some sort of science experiment in my kitchen. :)

Sorry about the poor picture quality today! I apparently have no idea how to use my camera.

Coffee Table Redux

You may remember when I redid the coffee table that I stole from my parents … 2 years ago. About a year ago, I decided that I no longer loved it and cut out the center part and then had a coffee table with a hole in it. I was going to do an inlaid mosaic tile in the center, but then I didn’t. It was hanging out in my living room in a configuration I call “Homage to Cleveland Architecture”.

This weekend, I finally decided it was time to cowgirl up and  make it look like an adult lives in this apartment. I painted the legs black since I’m trying to have a black furniture theme.

I decided to do a cushion-ish bench type thing. I started out by sewing my old mattress pad to it. Ever since I got my new memory foam mattress, I have been sleeping fantastically AND plotting a new coffee table.

Then, I covered the cushion with a tablecloth I got at a thriftstore. Yay! The best part about this design is that I can switch out the cover relatively easily. And we all know how good I am about following through on my coffee table projects in a timely fashion. (Hint: very poor.) I’ve kept the wooden boards under it for structure.

I want to get a tray for the center of it. And maybe tuft it. Baby steps!

The Lazy Girl’s Book Box

I’ve always wanted a secret compartment book, and since Tuesday is craft night, my friend Anna and I thought it would be Toads McGoats (on purpose) if we made them! If you look through the Internet for a tutorial, it will tell you things like ‘Use the Xacto knife to cut through 1,000,000,000 pages’ or ‘Why don’t you own a scroll saw to cut through books, dumbass?’ So since I’m ultra lazy sometimes, I had to devise my own method. (By devise my own method, I mean sort of use the method here.)

I started out with an Encyclopædia Britannica (surprise! I used an encyclopedia for this) and cut out the actual content.

Then, I haphazardly devised a box shape out of a cardboard box that I had. This cardboard box was from a 20” box fan that I bought during the first Heat Wave of 2011. I was saving the box for this very project apparently.

Then, I covered this fan box (see what I did there?) with corrugated cardboard to give it a look like it was pages. It doesn’t look like pages at all, in fact, but actually a fan box covered with corrugated cardboard.

Then! I glued the fan box (does anyone else want that to say fan boy?) the inside of the book, which I had neatly dressed up in encyclopedia pages. I also glued the inside edge of the book to the fanbox assembly.

Ta-Dah! I glued a tiny bit of corrugated cardboard to cover the fanbox corners.

I use it to store my remotes. My remotes will never go missing again! (That’s not entirely true. Less than 10 minutes after I stored these, my living room was still a mess and I wanted to change the channel. I tried in vain to find my remotes but this box was ever-so-new to my decor that I had completely forgotten about it.)

Unrelatedly, Anna has me in her phone as ‘Nidhi Currypants’.

A Very Smutty Birthday Card

I have a friend turning 25 this weekend, so I made a gorgeous birthday and slightly smutty card for him.

It’s a card using my manila folder method. I cut out a shape of a birthday card, and found some holiday sparkle in one of my magazines. I think it was an article highlighting how to have sexy fingernails. I always thought sexy fingernails were ones that had been trimmed and had little to no dirt underneath them.

See? Slightly smutty.

The envelope for this card was made using a Cosmopolitan photoshoot highlighting clothes that can apparently get you into dangerously sexy situations. Cut it up to this shape, and fold and glue!

I actually secretly kind of liked this Cosmo photoshoot and definitely used it to add to the smuttiness of the card. Best 25th birthday ever, hopefully.