Apple Soap Teacher's Gift

The end of the school year is here all ready and it's time to make teachers gift's. If you are like me this is a very hard thing to do. I never know what to make or buy. My good friend came up with a brilliant idea to make apple soaps as gifts. She is brilliant I tell ya, brilliant. Of course we should make cute little apple soap to spoil my kids teachers. Okay so I think you get the point, I am very excited about this idea. So we got to it and came up with these cute little soap's. They even smell like apples!

Here is how you can make your own.

Supplies:

Glycerin Soap

Apple Soap Scent

Red & Green Soap Colors

Leaf Cookie Cutter

Small Round Containers

I picked up the bag of glycerin soap cubes from Hobby Lobby for $6.99, actually I used a 40% off so it was even cheaper than that. In the soap making isle at Hobby Lobby they also have scents and colors made especially for making soap. I picked up the leaf cookie cutter at Walmart. While I was there I also grabbed some zip-lock containers, pick containers that are the size you want your finished soaps to be.

 Start out by melting a few glycerin cubes in a large plastic measuring cup. Microwave in small increments. I usually start with 30 seconds and if that is not enough to melt the cubes I microwave them for another 10-20 seconds. This step should never take longer than 1 minute in the microwave. Once your cubes are melted add apple scent and red coloring.  I had this square soap mold from one of my other projects, you can use square containers or whatever you have hanging around that is square. Pour the melted soap into your mold. Fill the mold as full as you want your apples to be tall. I hope that makes sense. These are going to end up being your apples in the center of your soap so if you want skinny bars of soap pour your molds really shallow. Let the bars cool until they become solid. If you want to speed up this proses you can put the whole thing into the freezer for a few minutes. Just a heads up I made 4 red bars and only ended up using 1 1/2 bars to make apples for my 6 bars of soap.

 Once your soap is solid turn your mold over and pop your bars out. Slice the bars lengthwise and curl them into circles. If you do this step while the bars are still a little warm they are easier to curl.

 Next make some green soap. I used one of my kids small Ikea bowls to make a small green bar to cut leaves out of. Remove it from the bowl as soon as you can so that you will be able to easily cut through it with a cookie cutter.

 The soap got stuck in the cookie cutter so I used a Q-tip to help push it out.

 Place the leaves and apples into the bottom of your containers.

Next microwave more glycerin soap. This batch you are going to leave clear, do not color it. Do however add your apple scent to it. After you have melted more glycerin blocks in the microwave let them cool down for awhile before you pour it over your apples. I learned this lesson the hard way. The first apple I poured hot soap over and it melted my apple and made a mess. So let it cool down a little before you pour it over the soap and pour it slowly too. If you have a lot of bubbles in your soap take a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol and spray the top of the soap and the bubbles will pop. Once you have filled your mold place it into the freezer, this will help to not melt your apple. I only fill my molds full enough to cover my apple, you can fill yours as full as you like. Once the soap is set pop it out of its mold and voila cute little apple soap.

 

 I put my soap into zip bags then I whipped out some apple tags to tie onto them. You can also wrap your soap in plastic wrap instead of putting them into bags.

I sure hope my kids teachers enjoy them. 

I made these a few months ago. Click here if you want to see how I made them.

Have fun making soap!

I linked this project to:
craftomaniac    sistersstuff
homemakeronadime
pinkapotamus
thecreativecrate
runwithglitter
todayscreativeblog
serenitynow4amanda
pollywantacrafter 

Fabric Flower Tutorial

I made up this cute flower pattern for headbands to match my girls Easter dresses. They turned out so cute that as promised I thought I would share them with you!

Start out by cutting your material into 2 inch strips, they need to be about 20 inches long. (you will need 1 strip per flower)

fold your material in half lengthwise placing wrong sides together and iron.

This flower is basically made by shaping your fabric into triangles.  

Start out by folding the top over to make a dog ear out of the fabric then iron in place.

Fold fabric over to create a triangle shape and press with iron.

Next you are going to loop your fabric back

and tuck it in between your triangle.

Snug the fabric up into a triangle and press.

Again you are going to loop your fabric back around

this time tuck the fabric behind the triangle

Fold your fabric down and tuck under triangle.

Snug up triangle and press (sorry for the blurry picture)

Continue folding and pressing to make a triangle shape until you run out of fabric.

When you are done it should look something like this.

Take a needle and thread in a similar color to fabric and sew threw the center of the flower catching all the layers to secure them together.

Next take a small piece of felt and a clip and hot glue them to the underside of flower.

I always turn the clip upside down when gluing because when you turn the flower over it will be right side up.

Embellish your flower however you choose. For this flower I chose flat back gems and hot glued them into place.

Now you are done!

This flower has pearl beads sewn into it center.

For this headband I made 3 flower that were the same size. Then I glued them to a fabric headband that I had made. I also used a piece of feather boa behind the flowers to give it that finishing touch.

I hope that was not to confusing. Just think "triangles" and you will be fine. Thanks for stopping by and happy folding!











I linked this project to:
craftomaniac 
homemakeronadime
makingtheworldcuter
thecreativecrate
runwithglitter
todayscreativeblog
pollywantacrafter
diybydesign
sweetpeasandbb
sistersstuff
fingerprintsonthefridge
sugaranddots 

Light Box

I saw this light box at ??? who the heck knows, I just spent the last hour trying to figure that out with no luck. I liked it so much I decided to make one of my own. Just a helpful hint before you get started, make sure you have somewhere to store a very large and very fragile box, if you breath on the thing it breaks. Just a fore warning. Moving on, mine works like a charm. It's not very hard to put together and is cheap to make. If you are like me who has a bright "wash out every picture" flash on your camera this will really help.

It looks like a worthless cardboard box, however this thing is pretty handy.

Take a large cardboard box and cut wholes in both sides of the box. Then cut off the entire top of the box. Next line the sides and the top with tissue paper. Be super careful not to rip the tissue because you do not want any cracks or rips that the sun light can shine through. Last line the bottom of the box with a white poster board, I did not even tape mine in I just set it inside. Now you are set to take awesome pictures.

I put my light box in direct sun light and here are the shots that I got. You can also use a lamp if you are going to be taking indoor pictures.

I made these headbands for my daughter's Easter dresses. I will have to make a tutorial on them soon because they turned out super cute.

I hope this is helpful to all you picture takers. Good luck.

Magnetic Board

I finally painted my magnetic board. I have had it for a couple years now and could never decide what color to paint it. After much debating I painted it a magenta pink! And I LOVE it! This was also my first ever glazing project. 

I picked up some wood accessories from Home Depot and used wood glue to glue them to my board. Before I painted it I used a hammer and a screw driver to beat the frame up a little bit. This step is if you are going to glaze your project then you want some dings in it to distress. Then I primed the entire board with some white paint that I had hangin around. I applied 2 coats.

After letting it dry really well I applied 2 coats of my pink paint. I chose a color from Home Depot's paint samples and had them mix me a small container of sample paint. It was plenty of paint to do the job and only cost $2.99. Sorry I have no picture of this step. Next I picked up a can of faux finish glaze, yes back to home depot yet again. The paint counter let me know that in order to tint your glaze its 3 parts glaze and

1 part color. When I got home I mixed a small amount with black and began to brush it all over my frame, making sure to get it in all of the cracks. I found with glaze that there is a perfect time to wipe it back off, usually a couple of minutes is long enough. Use a damp washcloth and wipe all of the glaze back off. This step leaves black in all the cracks and dings. Make sure not to get too far ahead of yourself with the glaze because when it does dry it is really hard to get it back off. If you are not satisfied with how it looks apply another coat. I ended up doing 2 coats on mine and the last coat almost kicked my butt, almost, I was scrubbing it off pretty hard. I am glad I started out with a small project for my first time just to get the hang of it.

Then I stuck all of my crap back on the board and I was done!

I linked this project to:
craftomaniac
homemakeronadime
thecreativecrate
 runwithglitter
todayscreativeblog
serenitynow4amanda
pollywantacrafter
madincrafts
sweetpeasandbb
sistersstuff
fingerprintsonthefridge
sugaranddots