Hair Necklace

I'd found this tutorial on how to create a really awesome "hair necklace" on Pinterest a few months ago.  This weekend, some friends and I got together for a James Bond-themed party, and I was trying to find a really awesome way to fix my hair. After deciding to go with an asymmetrical sock bun, I began wondering if the hair necklace would be a nice finishing touch. I bought two kinds of chain at Michael's: a shiny silver one and a gunmetal one, as well as a hair comb from the bridal department. I'd originally wanted a plain metal one, but all they had was metal with rhinestone flowers, or plain clear plastic, so I decided to go with the rhinestones. I didn't measure anything--I just held the chains up to decide how long I wanted them, then wired one end of each to the comb. I put the other ends on a little jump ring, which I slid onto a bobby pin, and I was finished! I'm really looking forward to trying this underneath a normal, centered-on-my-head type of bun.

Manly Gift Wrap

 A guy friend's birthday was this past week, and I wanted to wrap his present nicely without making it look to "girly." This is what I came up with. It's wrapped in the same black-on-black paper I put on the back of my bookcase a few months back. I figured that was elegant, yet manly. I tied some white curling ribbon around it, and totally didn't like the look. I tried tying a simple bow, instead of fluffy curls, and then it just looked cheap and boring.




I was going through my stationery box to find one of the plain red cards I knew I had, when I happened upon the sealing wax I hadn't used in years. I decided to seal the back of the envelope with gold wax, and decorate the gift with a matching red wax seal. A simple loop half-bow of curling ribbon, a nice big blob of wax, my fleur-de-lis seal, and there it is!

Happy Easter!

 It's almost too late, but I wanted to share a quick little Easter decoration I made last week. I had four eggs left over after putting a project together for work, and they were a nice light blue and white. I decided to make a little hanging for my living room bookcase--something to hang on the little Command hook I added at Christmas.

Step 1: Use a sanding block to rough up the edges. I was able to get a nice "eggshell" finish pretty quickly. I started with the rougher side, then used a smoother side to get any areas that still looked just like scratched-up shininess. In the picture, the eggs on the left are the originals, and the ones on the right are the sanded ones.

At first, I thought I would wrap ribbon around the seam of each egg, but they wound up looking fine without it. You don't even notice the seam! Now, you might if they were in a brighter room, or on the front door, but there's not usually very bright light in that area of the room, so I didn't worry about it.

Step 2: Hang the eggs on ribbon. The eggs I used had two holes in each end. I just looped the ribbon through, tied knots at the top, and tied ribbon bows around the top to hold it all together.  I'm proud of myself--I was able to use the remnants of two different spools of ribbon! Two down, twenty bazillion to go.

Here's the finished product. Isn't it nice?

Wedding Card

I'm trying to be better about actually remembering cards for events. For birthdays, I usually just write a little note on a small blank card, but for my friends' wedding, I wanted to make something special. The wedding colors are red and black, and after searching through my papers, I found a glittery cardstock that was cream, pink, and a funny color of red, and a striped paper with a similar shade of red. I also had some stickers and a cream envelope.

I trimmed the papers so the card would fit into the envelope, then used the scraps and some letter stickers to embellish the envelope. I cut some smaller plain pieces of paper to give me a solid background for the message sticker and my own handwritten message (that I'll add later), used some glue stick to put it all together, and wound up with this!