DIY Dress Form Display & 50% Off!

Howdy folks! First up I want to let you know that Everything at Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff is 50% off today only, yay!  Next up I want to share a dress from display I made:

Guess what, I made it from an empty dish soap bottle. When I saw this tutorial on Beansie Babbles blog I knew I had to try it! Of course with my housekeeping {or lack there-of} style I don’t empty a bottle of dish soap that often (everything, I mean EVERYTHING gets crammed in the dishwasher so I rarely use the wash-by-hand soap) but when I did happen to empty a bottle this week I had to try it!

I think if I make another one I will use a bottle of JOY or AJAX because the bottles are slimmer. My Nature’s Place all natural bottle is a bit full-figured…well, I guess the old adage about every piece of art being a self-portrait is true LOL!

After covering the bottle with tape I painted it:

I used up my matte decopague glue on my jewelry display board last week so all I had left was glossy Mod-Podge, I’m not crazy about the shine, I should have used watered down glue I think…

The decorating is the fun part, I used some papermart tulle and elastic to make a removable tu-tu, and added scraps of lace and plastic bead strands. I think I will use it on my craft fair table to hold a sign or hand jewelry off, I’m not sure.  I decided not to have a pedestal under it because I did not want it to be tipsy but I bet an old candle stick would work if you wanted one.

Tacky or classy? What do you think? Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Craft an Easy Centerpiece!

Well folks, it’s Cub Scout Blue & Gold banquet time and I was asked to come up with 24 centerpieces for the banquet tables.  Since the budget was small (and I did not want to dip into pack funds for a decoration) I raided my recycle bin and put my printer & Cricut to work and made this:

The base is a soup can that I punched decorative holes around the rim with my Crop-a-Dial and then sponged on some brown acrylic paint, then I filled it halfway with sand to make it stable. Then I printed out the Cub Scout Law, Law of the Pack and the Cub Scout Oath using the font LD Neetle (so great for kid projects) as well as some clip art and paper from the Camping Out Collection from Lettering Delights (It’s on sale right now too BTW 🙂 ) on cream cover stock. I covered the center of the can with pattern paper then tore around the printed oath and law, inked the edges then glued them to the can. Here is the front and back (BTW the faux grass is just brown construction paper I ran through the office shredder and crumpled up):

Then I used a 12″x18″  sheet of construction paper and cut it into 2-6″x12″ strips and 2-3″x12″ strips and accordion folded them to make rosettes. I glued the rosettes to skewers and added the printed clipart (punched into circles) over the centers so it would be pretty from either side. I punched the gold layer with my I-top punch but I am pretty sure that same shape is on the Accent essentials Cricut CArt, oh I also cut the Fleur-de-lis from AE as well. I glued that to the skewer holding the star.

For the star cut 2 6″ stars from brown construction paper (honestly you might want to use cardstock because construction paper tends to snag but I am on a budget here and I used plain old construction paper) I used the star from the george cartridge. To make it easy to glue together  I welded a tab to the side of on one of the stars so it would be easier to glue two together. I simply folded the star point to indent, then gathered the point folds up to make a “barn star, then I cut out a strip of paper with the cub scout motto “Do Your Best” and notched the ends, inked the edges and glued one to each side of the star.

I think I “Did My Best” with this project, what do you think?

By the numbers: The cost of this project was small, I am making 24 centerpieces and I used:

1 bag if skewers: $1

24 empty soup bans: free

1 package brown and 1 package blue construction paper: ($2 each) $4

and from my stash: 24 sheets of cream cover stock, ink pad, a dollop of brown acrylic paint and hot glue sticks.

So $5 for a total of 24 centerpieces, not bad eh? The look on the boy’s faces when they get their awards: Priceless!

Thanks for stopping by today! Hey, did you know you can read my blog on your Kindle reading device? Now you can! Get your frugalcrafting on the go, check out ThefrugalCrafter on Amazon.com for details!

Till next time happy crafting!