So when reader Christina asked via Twitter, “hey girls! any creative ideas of what to to do with stacks of @NewYorker and @VanityFair magazines? shame to just throw away!” - we knew just what to tell her because we’ve been there before!  There are many really beautiful things you can do with old magazines! You just need to use little creativity and elbow grease. In our research, we came across this article which may provide even more inspiration, but here are just a few favorite things we’ve spied in crafty travels that are easy, fun and pretty.

Frame Them Up: Probably the easiest thing project is to select your favorite covers and carefully cut them away from the rest of the magazines to frame for the wall.  This project works best when you have frames of different shapes, sizes and textures! My hint? Never, ever buy a frame full price.  Instead, go to your local consignment shop, where you can pick up a ton for a dollar or two each.  Don’t even pay attention to color – just look for things that are funky and fun. With just a couple quick coats of spray paint – usually dry within an hour or two – you can make them all a uniform color to match the rest of your decor.  You can frame them evenly, or stagger them like the below to add a little more quirkiness.

Irregular Picture frames (via switcheroom)

DIY Coasters: I think one of the cooler upcycling projects for magazines I’ve ever seen is making coasters out of them! This tutorial from How About Orange seems complicated at first but if you take it slow and one step at a time, they come out nicely!

Image courtesy of How About Orange

Knick Knack Holders: In my apartment, storage is always hard to come by – so I loved the idea of creating some by throwing away. This vase by Izznit (made of her old magazines) is especially easy.  Just cut the magazines pages into strips, and glue them together! Remember to cut them progressively shorter so you can create the funneled look. Or, get really fancy with a little practice like the second image from StyleHive.

Magazine vase via Izznit

Magazine vases via StyleHive

Gift Bows: Finally, if you want to start very small (throwing things out can be hard to do) – start with making some gift bows for presents!  Another tutorial from How About Orange shows how easily they can be put together, with an adorable finished project that looks like this (and notice that if the present is small enough, you can use the pages to wrap too!

Photo via How About Orange

Good luck  Christina! We’d love to see what you do when you’re done!

PIE!

Essentially, this is just what it looks like – a very tiny pie making machine, that makes making pies both foolproof and fast. These are the exact reasons I do not cook pies!  But now, with this tiny device, problems = solved. It’s on sale at Williams Sonoma for just $79.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to indulge myself in some pie photos for the rest of the day, because soon, I can eat them all, all the time.

To get in the mood, I clicked around my favorite decorating sites – Martha Stewart, West Elm, Target and Williams Sonoma and put together this Olioboard mood board. Surprisingly – and without really realizing it – I found a lot of things in warm reds, light greens and slightly-shiny golds.  Here’s what it looked like:

So pretty right?  Now, if I can just get myself to buying/makings some of these great things, it will be a nice cozy winter indeed.

Here’s what I gravitated toward:

• Mulled wine spices from Williams Sonoma
• Apple Salad Plates and Placemats from Target
• Fuzzy boucle blankets from West Elm
• Magazine Christmas trees and berry wreaths from Martha Stewart crafts

Here is the first one I found.  A little juvenile, yes, but in perfectly good working condition and with an awfully cute shape to it. I immediately saw the possibility within.

Oh, hey Tigger.

While working on it, I had a little mishap:

Oops.

But with a quick trip to Goodwill, the child’s lamp above turned into this:

Now presenting, a country time lamp.

After the jump, the quick how-to!

Here is what you’ll need:

• One half yard desired fabric
• A good pair of scissors (I’m kind of obsessed with my recently purchased Gingher fabric shears)
• Hot glue gun
• Chalk for marking on fabric
• Spray paint for base
• Masking tape for protecting lamp while spray painting

Step 1: The first step is to decide whether you can remove the existing fabric from the shade without ruining it, or if it’s simply easier to re-cover it.  As you might deduce from the photo above, I learned the hard way that the fabric and the shade were stuck together. In attempt to pull them apart, I cracked the plastic shade and then, that mess ensued.

To figure out what will work best for you, see if the fabric moves against the plastic shade backing.  If it moves, it means it’s not glued to it and you can probably remove it easily. If it doesn’t move, it’s glued down. Just keep it on there. You’re going to simply re-cover the shade with your own fabric.

In my case, after I broke everything, a quick trip to Goodwill yielded a new shade for just $3.99 and I was back in business.  The new shade looked like this:

New shade found in the random home goods aisle.

Step 2: Now, whether you’ve got the existing fabric off, or you’re recovering, you have to trace the shape of the lamp with chalk onto your new fabric.

The goal here is to simply cut enough fabric so that you can completely recover the shade.  It should be slightly smaller at the top and wider at the bottom. Use a tape measure to find the circumference of the shade’s top and bottom. From there, you can connect the dots via a U-shape going across and on an angle for the top and bottom. Like this:

Tracing the new shade cover.

It doesn’t have to be the perfect shape, it just has to fit all the way around the shade.

Step 3: Cut out your fabric just outside the lines to protect you against mistakes. It should look more or less like this:

Next, just do a quick test to make sure you can get the fabric all the way around. I used pins, but you don’t have to. You can just make sure the fabric wraps all the way around and has some extra on the top and bottom. In terms of how much extra at the top and bottom – you don’t want much. Just enough to cover the lip. (If you have too much fabric on the inside of the shade, when you turn the light on, you’ll be able to see it.)

Start by pinning one side of the fabric onto the shade. Note the extra fabric on the top and bottom, too.

The fabric fully covers the shade, so we're ready to go.

Step 4: Now it’s time to glue.  This is the trickiest part. Start by folding in the fabric into the bottom of the shade and using dots of glue to hold it in place.  As you work your way around the bottom, pull the fabric tight and make sure you’re following your chalk guide so that you don’t run out of fabric.  I have to come clean, I was so focused on gluing, I forgot to take photos.  But once you get the bottom all tucked in and glued down, move around the top.  You’ll see there is just enough fabric to get over the top and bottom – but that it doesn’t go all the way down.

Use the after photo again to see how this should more or less pan out:

Step 5: Before you put everything back together, spray paint the base of your lamp in your desired color. Use tape to seal off any area where the paint should not go.

Step 6: Reattach the shade and voila! A complete lamp makeover.

Good luck!

Yes, it's that time again!

Last year for the first time, I made my own holiday cards to send to friends and family.  In fact, how I made them was one of the very first Yay! DIY posts! (See here. Cue music: Memories…) It was really fun and I got more than one thanks for the personal touch – but I learned some valuable lessons.

1.) Do not get over ambitious. Last season, my cards involved wrapping two tiny “presents” to sit at the foot of a Christmas tree or in a snowman’s hand. This didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but about 20 cards in, I hated my life and I hated Christmas and I wanted to rip the cards apart and think of an easier idea.

2.) Don’t do something that requires a lot of hand-cutting.  Not only did I have to wrap tiny presents, but I found myself cutting out hundreds of circles to make snowmen (three per card), as well as 50-odd Christmas trees.  For how I felt about this, see No. 1

3.) A black card and a silver gel pen are your best friends. Lest you think that the entire project was a nightmare, not at all was lost. The silver gel pen against the dark card provided a nice look – and it was something I want to repeat this year.

4.) You save money! Many people think that taking the time to do this project is not worth the money you save. But I disagree! It really got me in the holiday spirit and if you start with enough time, you only have to make a few a week leading up until December.  Think about how many times you just veg out in front of the TV. If you keep your hands a little busy as you do so, you’ll save a ton on expensive cards without sacrificing any time at all.

With that all said, I went searching on the Internet for some inspiration for this year’s crop.  No tiny circles or hand cutting this time around. I’m not accoutrement-adverse, but want to make sure I don’t drive myself to insanity.

Here is where I’m netting in terms of things providing inspiration!

Polka dots. Loving this simple, clean look from TinyPrints.  With a blank card and some polka dot scrapbooking paper (which I already spotted in Michaels), the cutting is straight and simple and the layering is easy.

Tinsel Town. Also loved this cool concept from Papyrus – just grab a box of tinsel and use it to frame a card. With the aforementioned gel pen, a simple “Season’s Greetings” would complete the look.  The only thing is – I’m worried about how the weight of the tinsel would affect postage. Not to mention the annoyance of possibly stuffing the tinsel in the envelope or gluing it down. Food for thought if you try it.

Gift-wrapped cards. So far, my favorite idea from the search has been these “gift wrapped” cards from Martha Stewart, which also came with a handy tutorial.  The ribbon is a nice touch – and shouldn’t be too annoying.  You could even combine this idea with using some nice scrapbooking paper (like in idea No. 1) and then complimenting with a matching ribbon.

Straight up. Again, with the use of some nice paper, you can cover the top half of a one-color vertical card with a pattern and then use the bottom half for your message.  This is also an idea from Tiny Prints.

Cut it Out. Okay, so not two minutes ago I was just ranting about cut-outs and why you should avoid, but if, key word IF, you have some kind of punching machine and could easily punch out these shapes from paper, this is a pretty darling card from Target.

I’m looking to get rolling on my own cards by next week, so stay tuned for a post on where I wind up!

]]> http://yaydiy.com/2010/11/handmade-holiday-card-inspiration/feed/ 1 http://yaydiy.com/2010/10/aidans-monsters/ http://yaydiy.com/2010/10/aidans-monsters/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:05:34 +0000 Lia http://yaydiy.com/?p=2142 Continue reading →]]> Well if this isn’t DIY, I truly don’t know what is.

Just came across a couple of links about an amazing little artist currently selling work on Etsy.  Five year old Aidan was diagnosed with Leukemia in September 2010 and in order to pay his medical bills, quickly got much of his monster art online to sell.  A truly talented little artist for his age, the paintings are all affordably priced and go toward his care. See his store here at Aidan’s Monsters.

I just bought this photograph, because it reminds me of my favorite Sesame Street character from when I was five, The Count.

Here are some others still up for grabs!

The Scream

The Wolf Man

And it all goes to benefit this little guy:

Photo courtesy of CMYBacon.com

Good luck to you little Aidan!

About 15 minutes from the downtown area, just off the beaten path in the town of Gardiner, we stumbled upon a small whiskey distillery named Tuthilltown Spirits.  It turned out to be an incredibly charming place, everything you’d want a small distillery to be: located in a picturesque setting, with a young, hip and good-looking staff and packed to the rafters with enough whiskey to create a new ocean.  I don’t even drink whiskey and I fell in love.

An inside look at Tuthilltown Spirits.

We ponied up the $10 for the tasting flight, which allowed you to taste three of the distillery’s six brands of whiskey and came with really cute complimentary glasses. Our hostess, Luz, provided us a full tutorial on how the flavors were achieved and how the whiskey was made.  We were having so much fun, that we decided to go ahead and try all six, plus the rum (don’t worry, the quantities were very small and we had a big huge meal next door before hitting the road again.) My chest was on fire when the tasting was done, but it was worth it!  We tried everything from their corn whiskey (fire water) to the single malt (much smoother) – taking in the varying levels of flavor and strength as we went and pretending we were characters in the TV show Deadwood, slinging them back.  I’m not a whiskey drinker, so it was a great education in how various types of whiskey taste and how varied it can be when you add or subtract certain elements in fermentation. It was also a great lesson in learning how not to pull faces while drinking manly drinks. I had to really work at it.

After the jump, some photos of the adventure!  And if you are in the area, definitely check out the distillery. It’s a great way to learn about how this drink is made and what local distributors do to get their products on shelves and bars!

Tuthilltown Spirits (located about 15 minutes from downtown New Paltz)

14 Grist Mill Lane
Gardiner, NY 12525

Unassuming from the outside, Tuthilltown Spirits has about a million barrels of whiskey awaiting you inside.

GC displays some of the wares.

Rows and rows of barrels, all in various stages of fermentation.

Two cats - named Bourbon and Rye - keep watch over the operations. Here is one taking a break.

Next door is a little restaurant with some magical surroundings.

As we left, the moon was rising. This photo doesn't do justice to how big it looked outside the window!

If you get the chance, check them out and tell them we sent you! Their product ships all over the country as well, so you can find it in a bar near you! (And if not, you should request it.)

Here are some pretty pictures we snapped along the way.

As you zoom through the countryside, you're greeted by all colors and hues.

For a girl from Florida, which is flat as a board, this is always breathtaking.

Walking along in a small town we passed through, we happened upon these creepy steps. Perfect for October.

GC obliged my request for the "jumping shot" so popular on girlfriends of mine on Facebook.

Look at this beautiful lane!

So sad that soon this will give away to naked branches, but with some unseasonably warm temperatures coming our way in the Northeast, glad we get to extend it at least a little while.

Check out our interview with her from this summer where you can find a lot of her tips and tricks for being green and budget friendly, too.

Check out these adorable finger crochet skulls from Etsy seller DeweyDecimalCrafts. She’s literally got hundreds of them for sale – in all shapes and forms. They would make perfect party favors.

Also – absolutely love the idea of taking some orange, white and black patterned fabrics and tying them up around the house. These would be cute strung together over the door or headed into a hallway.

This Halloween Wreath (tutorial here on Woman’s Day)  is to die for. Note the little fake finches up above the crown molding! Love it!

Halloween Wreath, compliments of WomansDay.com

Woman’s Day also has a great tutorial for this Skull Plate using just some fabric and a clean and dry plate. Love this project because with the addition of the candles, you’ve got something that can be completed in 20 minutes and for no money. But it looks like you spent a fortune!

Skull plate compliments of WomansDay.com

Happy crafting.