Mosaic Stepping Stones

Mama and I went to a small craft fair in Mill Creek a few weeks ago and saw some very cute paw print Mosaic stepping stones. These would be easy to make and a great gift for animals lovers.

This is the closest picture I found online to our original inspiration.

Completed Projects

I finally finished the other set of napkin rings and napkins I was working on. I think Anna's vase idea works well for the presentation.

Here is a picture my painting from the class Tamara and I took, which will be Charlotte's Christmas present.

St. Brendan's Craft Fair (Bothell)

Here are some of the cool ideas I saw:

• Teacups, cut in half, and turned into the cover on a night light.
• Necklaces made out of the tip of the handle of old utensils.
• Ready to go alcohol infusions. Think similar to those jars of ready to go cookie mixes, with the pretty layers of ingredients. They were in pretty bottles with large grain sugar on the bottom and dried fruit or spices layered on top. They had instructions to add your favorite wine/rum/vodka (depending on the mixture and your taste), let sit for two weeks, shaking each day. Examples were blueberry mango or ginger cranberry. Tamara got one for Will. I'll have to ask her to take a picture for the blog.
• Another food one was feta cheese marinated with olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, and other spices in a pretty jar.
• For the pet lover, catnip or dog treats in pretty bottles.
• Mirrors framed with glass Mosaic.
• Purses made out of old sweaters.
• Those are the things that stood out to me, but there were lots of cool things that you traditionally see at craft fairs that we could make: potholders, aprons, cards with photography, table runners, beaded jewelry, etc.

Napkin Rings 3

This was my attempt at napkin rings. I found some napkin rings at Cost Plus, and just painted over the design. I think I'm going to coat them either with a clear acrylic or some sort of other sealer because I don't want them to get scratched. I made napkins from the red fabric.

Napkin Rings Part 2

I ended up making some napkin rings for my brother-in-law's girlfriend. They turned out really cute. I had quite a time picking out beads and such from Michaels. I plan to make napkins from the fabric in the background and am working on decorating a case for the whole thing. I will post a picture of the finished project when done. I was just so excited about how the napkin rings turned out, I needed to post a interim-project update. :)

Soap Dispenser

I came up with this simple idea to use a bottle from a thrift store, add a little paint and a pump, and turn it into a soap dispenser. It was actually pretty hard to find pumps in a local store so I ordered online and bought a few extra to have on hand.

The pattern inspiration came from the shower curtain and vinyl flooring in my brother's bathroom.

Soap dispensers you buy at the store usually cost $12 minimum and this was only about $3 worth of supplies. The painting was difficult on the curved surface and didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but if you find cute enough pieces to start with, you don't need to paint. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for more things to convert into soap dispensers.

Christmas card holder

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the ribbon photo holders, but you could use Christmas fabric and display Christmas cards you receive in it instead of having to find a flat surface to put them on.