Winter is cold, time for some projects at home to keep warm!

First up is the painted popcorn tin!  I painted this to use for holding my cats' food so it's not just an ugly bag sitting out. Plus then my oldest can't chew a hole through it for no reason.

I got the idea originally from this blog here: 

Tidy Mom

 

So!  Here's what I'm working with!  Notice I have two in the picture but I've only painted one so far.

 

Here it is with the first coat of paint!  To get it to be a smooth color with no indication of what was previously on it I had to apply 3-4 layers of the paint.  The first two would scratch easily so I had to be careful with it.

 Here it is in progress.  I mixed in silver with both colors but it didn't have the same sheen as the metallic sapphire.  At first I intended to make it simple with just the word "Cat"  written across.  Turns out I made the letters huge so you would only be able to see one letter at any given time.  I made the word smaller and painted it in a different color and thought it looked better but needed more.  So then I put the pawprints.

At this point I still had purple and orange paint left over that I knew I wouldn't use for something else.  So I just painted a bunch of dots all around the tin.  All done!  Now I just need to give it a good spray with gloss before I can start using it. Hopefully soon, but with how cold it is I can't warrant taking it outside to spray it.

 

Another idea I got from pinterest:

T-shirt beanbag chair :D

I have a lot of t-shirts from conventions, game promos and limited editions that I really didn't want to have to throw out or give away. So to find this was great!  I still haven't sewn them, but I've cut out the pieces.

Here's a link to directions!

Makezine Pillow Chair 

The ones on the left are going to be on the outside.  I cut solid color pieces to sew the chair out of and then cut out the designs by themselves. I'll be sewing them onto the chair wedges as I go.  The ones on the right are for the inner layer.  I decided to double everything up to give it some more strength.   I still need to make a bag layer for easy washing of the outside and then stitch it all together.

Late Co-worker's secret santa present!

I did give her something that day but I JUST finished the other part of her present. But first, here's what I made her earlier!

Yoshi bathroom items!

The one on the left is a toothbrush holder and the right is a soap dispenser without the top.  This is how they looked AFTER I put them in the oven.  I used the technique with sharpies where you draw and then put them in the oven and the ink sticks. However, I used regular permanent marker not sharpie specifically.  Sooooo that may've been the problem.

 

 Here's what they looked like originally.  After taking them out of the oven I went back over them with the markers and just had them sprayed with a coat of gloss. Much nicer looking for sure.

The next item I made was a trashcan for her.  This was another marker project.  I traced the picture I wanted in black on paper and put it on the inside of the trashcan.  I traced over that and started coloring. Because of the way the green marker would release ink some areas would be darker than others.  So that's why I did the lines in the middle to give it a nicer look.  After I colored in all the colors I went back over it with black.

 And then I dotted it with all the others colors so it'd match with the other two items. 

I'm glad she liked them :D