15 Doggy Treat Jar

I'm frustratingly limited in my blogging for the time being while I wait for my new computer to arrive in the mail (HOLY CRAP! I am SOOOOOO excited about it though!!!)... I've literally been unable to see all Blogger-hosted blogs for the past few days. However, I can get in to Blogger, so I'm publishing a recent project I made and post I wrote up. I'll be back up and running soon though, I'm sure!

The pups really love their rawhide retriever rolls. So much so that they both know how to dig through grocery bags and open top canvas bags to get to them. Even when they're all in plastic wrap. So we needed a big jar or something so that the rolls don't get retrieved by some greedy pups who have already eaten too much that day... so we ended up with a big glass jar to store the rawhides in. But it wasn't quite pretty enough and we have a big tin jar that has the word "treats" on it that the plain jar was going to sit next to, so it was time for some crafty magic!

• Glass jar
• Rub-ons and popsicle stick
• Ruler/measuring tape
• Scotch tape
• Scissors
• Clear gloss coat spray

This might be the easiest craft yet and because of that, I have limited pictures of the process... but I'll still explain what I did, just in case you want to make your own super-cute treat jar! Basically, grab your glass jar and wash it off. Let it dry so you don't have any issues with your rub-ons staying put. Decide what you want the jar to say, grab your letters, measure them out and lay them on the jar.

I taped the paper backing to the jar so that I could just remove it and use the popsicle stick to rub the letter in place without messing up the spacing, but you can do it however you want.

After I got the word "rawhides" in place, I thought the jar just needed a little something extra. So I found these glittery polka dots and a dog-themed sheet of rub-ons in my scrapbooking stash and added some dots and paw prints to make it extra-cute.

Max and Bella were mostly uninterested in the process, though Max tried to keep an eye on me for good measure...

Though he didn't really have much of an opinion about spacing and decorating the jar, so I mostly guessed and played with it, starting with the little polka dot underline that's a bit off-center because it's shorter than the word "rawhides."

Then came the glittery polka dotted circles...

And the paw print and more circles... and then when I was done, I sprayed it with a coat of clear acrylic gloss type stuff that I had leftover from the Lemonhead wreath. I'm not sure how important this is, but I was glad to have it as an option because rub-ons make me nervous. Especially on something that's going to be handled frequently.

Finally it was time to fill it up and admire the work!

Not too bad for something that was basically free - not counting the jar that we already had in mind for the rawhides (and I think that was a Hobby Lobby treasure). And it makes me happy when it sits on the kitchen counter next to the green treat jar!

I'm linking up to some of my favorite conferences!

2 Heartsy

I think this is another thing that you all probably know about, but I just discovered it and seriously LOVE it! It's quickly become the first thing I check in the morning (barring other life emergencies) - Heartsy! It's like Groupon, Living Social, or GroopDealz, except for Etsy and with another AWESOME twist! Sometimes you see offers on those sites for what amounts to gift card type things - where you pay $10 and then you get $20 in credit to a place, you know?

Well, that's what Heartsy is! They have several deals a day and you can pay to be a VIP member so that you can buy deals the day before and then sometimes you get an extra $10 for free or free shipping on your first order. Most deals are only good for 3 months, but if you get excited when you buy it, you'll end up spending it right away (not that I know anything about that)! : ) It's seriously super-easy and everything is at least 50% off! It's amazing! The other wonderful part is that if you sign up with a referral, you and the referrer split $10 credit!

No one is paying me for this - it's just the deal I'm telling you about! If you sign up without the referral, I don't think you get any money at all (though I am not completely sure - this is what I can figure out from my own account and the promos and fine print), but if you follow the link below, you'll get five bucks credit (as will I) - so it's legitimately a pretty cool thing for both of us! Here's the link to follow to sign up and get your $5 credit!

In case you hadn't noticed, there's a Heartsy button on my sidebar, right under the BlogFrog widget and above the Amazon Associates stuff so you can always find your way to Heartsy!

23 Duke Papercut Art

So my little sister just moved into her very first apartment, as in, post-college, real life, non-dorm apartment. Before she could even ask for specific pieces of art work to decorate her new place, I began working on some things... this project in particular. In the future, projects for her will actually go with her color scheme - blues and browns - but for this one, I focused in on Duke. As in, Duke University. That's because my sister is starting graduate school at Duke now! She's not necessarily as into sports as I am so I wanted to make her something less sporty, more "yay! new school!"-ish and I was feeling inspired by the project I made my dad for Father's Day and this is what I came up with...

• Logo to make stencil
• Cardstock, solid colored paper
• Gorilla glue (the kind that dries white, not the wood one)
• 3-D foam squares/circles AND/OR scrap paper and binder clips
• Dollar store frames
• Pen
• X-acto knife
• Dollar store matting
• Printed out sheets of patterned paper from Aimee at Sprik Space (and her AMAZING "Pattern Pieces" series!)

First, I found a couple of Duke logos and made them a bit bigger in GIMP. They were a little distorted, but not so much that I couldn't just make the lines straighter when I cut them.

(I realize that I maybe shouldn't have done this because it's a logo and copywritten and I'm sorry... I just didn't think about it and hopefully the people of Duke are more flattered not horrified and I'm not selling this or making a profit, so again, hopefully it's okay... but be more careful when you make your own, I guess!)

I printed out my big images and cut them out using an X-acto knife. Then I put my paper face down and put the stencil face down on top of it (so that the back of the stencil is facing you and on top of the back of the pretty colored paper) and traced the letters onto the pretty paper.

Then, cut out your letters. I first was going to just make one or two of these things and just the kind with the solid blue paper and a pattern peeking through underneath, but I realized that the letters I was cutting out could also be turned into fun artwork!

At first, I was actually going to just use magazine strips (like in the fleur-de-lis project I did) because my sister mentioned that she liked that project and the stripes, so I made that little collage of magazines and then sort of tried out how it would look...

But I really didn't like it... and I thought the potential with the pattern pieces was just much greater!

You all would have made the same decision, I swear! So I went with the pattern pieces. I just downloaded some that I really liked - mostly blues and grays - and printed them out (I might have used the Print Properties  to scale them to the page, but I don't think it matters) and cut them to fit the frames I had. (Seriously, aren't these AMAZING? Go download some now... for FREE from Aimee at Sprik Space!)

Then, I grabbed some 3-D foam squares and cut them into pieces so that the pattern pieces would be separated from the cut out letters.

And voila - here's the first one (not actually a result of the pic just before, but you get the picture)!

For this next one, I used matting from the Dollar Store to add around the pattern piece and then glued the letters on... it wasn't a perfect fit, but I wanted to use the letters and the frames I had on hand, so I let the letters kind of peek out from the matting (and told myself I was thinking outside the box). Also, if you don't want to use up all your foam squares... or you run out, I managed to roll up scrap paper, add a dot of Gorilla glue, and then put it in a binder clip to dry and it worked just fine as a little lift!

Here it is in the frame... (Note that I had to get rid of the glass from this frame because the glass squished the letters, but I thought it looked pretty good without... as long as I was thinking outside the box, haha!)

And this is the side view so you can see the dimensionality...

Here are some of the others I made (that I did managed to put into frame and keep the glass on)...

I actually had something like this in mind when I started this project...

Once I finally felt like I had to be done or my sister's little apartment would be wallpapered in this, I laid them all out so that I could see how they'd look on her walls and see how they look together...

Another view...

And the whole thing!

I'm linking up to some of my favorite conferences!

2 Your Experiments: Laura's Paint Chip Art

I'm SOOOO excited to be bringing you all this little series... I didn't start this blog as a source of income, but instead, I wanted to share my ideas and projects with everyone and sort of collect my own inspiration and this series helps me see that my projects have had an impact, which, in turn, helps me feel inspired all over again! So, without further ado, here's the next installment in our little series of awesomeness... Laura at Smallgood Hearth's Paint Chip Family Tree Art!

Laura saw my little paint chip abstract art thing and made a freaking family tree out of it! How awesome is that? And then she added the cutest little swing to it... and I'm just in LOVE with it!

You can see more of Laura's awesomeness at her blog, Smallgood Hearth, by clicking the button below:

I'm feeling like I need to buy some big canvases to make some of these projects... not to mention more pretty green paint chips! Thanks for letting me share your work, Laura!

And if you've made anything inspired by something you saw on the blog, please email me! I'd honestly just love to see it, but I'd also be pretty excited if you'd let me share it here because I'm loving this little series!

12 How to Enable Comment Replies: No More "noreply-comment@blogger"!

One of the most frustrating things as a blogger is getting comments from you guys and wanting to answer your questions or respond in some way and seeing that you don't have a setting corrected on your profile so I can't email you to respond to your comment! Instead of your email, I see "noreply-comment@blogger.com" in the reply-to box. I try to tell as many of you as possible when I track you down that this setting isn't set up correctly, but that's not always possible. Plus, I usually direct you to the wonderful Michele's blog (The Scrap Shoppe) to see her tutorial, but Blogger continues to change and the way you can fix this has changed so I figured I'd make my own tutorial!

I'm definitely not an expert and there may be other ways to do this, but this is just one way I know works and I'd really appreciate it if you all checked this on your profiles!

First, you want to log in to Blogger and just get to the dashboard... basically, go to blogger.com and if you're already logged in, you'll end up at a page that looks like this:

From there, you want to go up to that little box on the right hand side next to your email address and click on that arrow (I have the little arrow telling you where to go).

A little box will drop down or pop up at that point and you'll want to click on "Blogger Profile" (as highlighted below). (And if you're lucky, your profile can look very crushed and your head like a weird square too!)

That opens up a page like this (mine opens in a new tab, but that might just be my weird settings)...

From there, you want to click on that little blue box on the left hand side that says "Edit Profile" like the arrow is showing you here:

Then, the important thing to look for is "Show my email address" and you want to make sure that box is checked (it's highlighted and there's that big orange arrow pointing to it below). This is the critical part - that box MUST be checked so that I can see your email address and email you back (and all the other awesome bloggers you want to talk to)!

Also, the blue arrow is pointing you to the email address that shows up when I leave comments. This is NOT the same email address that I use to sign in to Blogger with and you can make your own separate account just for blogging if you want so you don't have to worry about not being anonymous if you check this box! 

Now, you just need to scroll down the page and save your work and comment everywhere!

You can feel free to try it out here - if you leave a comment and ask me to email you if you got it right, I'll do that (it might not be instantaneous, but I'll do it)!

3 Pretty Palette: Navy Blue and Lime Green

Remember a million years ago when I wrote about my love for dark, deep blue (which grew from an Essie nail polish at Walmart)? Well, I continue to go on little color obsession streaks where I just LOVE one color or scheme and I really do love Ez's "Color Crush" series over at here Creature Comforts blog, so I think I'm going to try to regularly share with you some "Pretty Palettes" and here's the latest... 

I'm a big fan of lime green. Lime green and sour apple colors might be my most favorite colors for now. For some reason, I recently decided that I wanted some clothes or SOMETHING that was lime green and navy blue, preferably with navy stripes and some lime piping or detail. I haven't had much luck with that, but I did find some examples of my recent color crush... 

navy blue and lime pinwheel party found here

Wedding stationery found here

navy and lime skirt from coco + kelley via Pinterest

lime and navy living room from maddigdesigns via Pinterest

Class Canvas tote via Etsy

bobby pins via Etsy

adorable chevron + bangle clutch! via Etsy

bead and rosette necklace via Etsy

lime and navy damask belt via Etsy

navy and lime wedding from The Perfect Palette

Ready to blow your life savings on navy blue and lime colored things now? Or still just me?