Ladybug Redo

My mum in law gave me these little white handmade lady bugs a while back and now I've finally thought of an idea on how to use 'em!  And that would be in the nursery, seeing as though the theme is partly about cute bugs.  :)

I just painted them red.
And they already have a pin on the back, so I'm going to pin them on the curtain just to for the sake of cuteness:

Ta-daaaa:

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Repurposed Jam Jar

We had a lot of sweets left over from our halloween party, so I thought today I'll decorate an empty jam jar that we can use to store at least some of them sweeties. :)

Here's the before:

I didn't even remove most of the label glue or left-over labels.

I tore up a piece of mulberry paper and decopuaged it all over the jar and the lid, and added 2 coats of varnish over it.  I glued on a butterfly and took 3 pieces of ribbon, plaited them together and tied it around the jar and glued 2 beads on the ends of the ribbon.

 

Now it's got a neat little home on top of one of our dvd cabinets.

Mmmmmm......Nut Puffs.......

Linky Parties linked to:

I Heart Nap Time               A Vision to Remember
Truly Lovely                       . 

Also posted here:

GGCAA   .


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Old Jewellery Box Before & After, & Yummy Savoury Sauce

First, sorry there was no Who Made What? Weekends! this weekend! We were out of town the whole of Thursday until late at night and I totally forgot to set it up in advance, but it shall be back again next weekend. :)

What I've been working on in the mean time is an old jewellery box that I've had since I was small.  It's just been sitting in the back of my cupboard for years now 'cause I didn't want to throw it away.

 

So I decided to do a before-&-after. :D  And here's the after:

I removed the little windows from the front and everything inside as well:

I still have to find the right fabric to cover the inside with.

Then I decoupaged scrapbook paper all over the box.  After tons of measuring I cut the paper to fit the roof and the sides etc, and decoupaged it on.  Then I took a brown ink pad, dapped a small sponge on it and rubbed the sponge along the corners & edges of the box to give it a more interesting look (you can see it in the pic above).

And then came the decorations.  I added a gold goodie that was recycled from a wedding invitation:

I made little paper flowers too using another patterned scrapbook paper, a small flower punch & gold brads:

And then for a while now (a couple months actually) I've been looking for self adhesive swirly pearl designs, but couldn't find any.  So I finally decided to make my own decorations by drawing (or dotting) freehand swirly patterns with gold glittler glue.  Here's the left side of the roof:

And here's the right side:

I also glued on that pretty butterfly.

And then I wanted to add something to the front of the "house" because it looked a little empty, so I came up with this cute idea - I used teeny glass bottles, removed the corks and added black, red & green glitter (as the soil).  I have little white organza roses that I dabbed onto with a red ink pad to give them some colour, and for their stems I glued on some of that green wiry things that I removed from some bees that I used in a previous craft project (I knew I could still find a use of these!).  So I glued a little rose pot plant on each corner on the front:

Finally done! :D  I've put it in the dining room and we're now using it to store the keys for the patio doors & gates leading out from the dining room.

Lastly I thought I'd share one of my favourite sauces.  We usually eat it with a crumbly maize meal "porridge" that we have when we have a BBQ, but this time I didn't have maize meal so we poured it over cous cous instead, and it was just as good. :)  It's really yummy & tangy with a strong flavour.

250 g     butter
1 tsp      dry mustard powder
30 ml     worcestershire sauce
125 ml   sugar
125 ml   vinegar
250 ml   tomato sauce
1            onion, finely chopped
1            green pepper (what I think some of you call bell peppers?), finely chopped

Cook everything together in a pot for 10 minutes.  This is a large batch, so anything you don't use can be frozen and it lasts for ages.  Just defrost and heat up before serving again.

How simple is that? :D Enjoy. :)

LINKY PARTIES linked to:

I Heart Nap Time                     The Tattered Tag
Under the Table & Dreaming    Scrappy Gifts
Making the World Cuter           Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Between Naps on the Porch       .

Crafty Recycling - Decoupaged Tissue Box

So I started decoupaging for the first time a few days ago, and my test subject was this tissue box:

When I started out, it didn't look too promising:

But I think it turned out not too bad, hehe.  I took some left over curtain scraps that I kept from our TV room curtains, cut them up into little squares, and decoupaged them all over this box.  The material is not smooth and flat, but has some texture to it, so it shows on the finished tissue box.  Also keep in mind that the box is thin cardboard, and so it warbled a little from the wet decoupaging!  But anyway....here is the final product:

I also decoupaged some pictures onto it - these are little pictures that I got from a friend in primary school....probably about 20 years ago! :0  As usual, I just couldn't throw them away, even though I didn't know what to do with them.  So I finally used them now.  I also added a ribbon and some "bling", as well as glitter glue to the pictures (which isn't so visible on the photos, boo).

This is by no means the greatest craft, but I kind of like it, it's cute, and it's my first decoupaged goodie! :D
And the perfect place to store all my confetti's that I had laying around in different boxes in my craft room.
How's that for cheap storage, and a way to use up scraps of material and decorations!

LINKY PARTIES linked to:

It's A Hodgepodge Life
Craft-O-Maniac
Texas Monkey
Keeping It Simple