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Friday, December 28, 2012

Homemade Gardener's hand scrub




Hi everyone! I hope you had a magical hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, (did I cover my bases?)...and that you're looking forward to a fantastic 2013! Apologies for being absent for quite awhile - the holidays and associated travel (and planning) took me away from the blog for a few weeks. But, I'm back with lots of BiddleBits project ideas for the coming year!

Today's project was a holiday gift I've been wanting to make for awhile - and it would make an ideal Valentine's day or Mother's Day gift for friends, neighbors, you Mom, or teachers. It's a pretty light-pink color AND, it's easy-peasy.


Ingredients:
  • Dawn "hand-renewal" liquid dishwashing detergent
  • sugar
  • plastic or glass container with a tight-seal top
Instructions:

Step #1: Take each of your empty plastic/glass containers and fill them a little more than 3/4 of the way with sugar. Then, dump the sugar into a larger bowl.

Step #2: Add the liquid detergent to the bowl of sugar, a bit at a time, mixing with a spatula. The amount you use will depend on the amount of hand scrub you're making. Keep adding the liquid detergent until all the sugar is covered, mixed well, and is a little wetter than a paste.


 
Step #3: Using your spatula, spoon into your container and seal tightly
Step #4: Tie with an optional ribbon, if you'd like!
Step #5: (optional) You may want to include instructions:
  • Scoop a small handful into your hands, and rub all over your hands and between fingers
  • Rinse with water
Your hands will be super-soft, and if you've been gardening, the scrub is tough-enough to get the dirt from under your fingernails and from between your fingers!




Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Holiday decor using a recycled cabinet door

 
 
My sweet hubby went to the Raleigh Habitat for Humanity ReStore earlier this year, and brought home a trunk-load of various sized cabinet doors for $1-$2 each. I can't remember how we originally intended to use them (not as cabinet doors...), but as I was looking through our stash of wood scraps, an idea hit me. I could use one as a "large wood scrap" for a holiday sign I'd been wanting to make.

Sadly, I've *somehow* misplaced most of my "in-progress" pictures, so please forgive me as I describe the process, for the first time, with out many pictures!!

The previous owners of our home left several paint gallons in our garage - one color was Sherwin Williams "Poinsettia", which is about the reddest-red I've ever seen! It said "living room" on top of the never-opened lid, which means that I *think* they had intended to paint our living room Christmas red! (holy smokes...I'm glad they didn't...this paint is SO red!)

What you need for this project:
  • cabinet door
  • paint  - your color choice - I chose red
  • 1.5-2" paint brush
  • Small paintbrush - like the kind you did "paint-by-number" with as a child
  • white acrylic paint - or your color choice
  • black sharpie market
  • medium grit-sandpaper (optional - to give it a more rustic look)
  • polyurethane (optional)
How-to instructions:

Step #1: Take a wet washcloth and (in my case) clean the garage-grime off the door, then wipe it dry. Paint the whole cabinet face and edges with the red paint. Let it dry, then paint a second coat. Let dry.

Step #2: While the paint is drying, decide what word you want to print on your sign. I chose "joy". In Microsoft Word, I typed JOY into a word doc (font = Cambria), then enlarged the font to 770. Each letter took up *most* of an 8.5x11" piece of paper. Print it out. (Note that if you're working with a smaller cabinet door, you'll need to adjust the size of your letters to make them fit).

Step #3: Using an Exacto knife (or scissors), cut out each letter.

Step #4: Make sure the red paint is dry, then lay your letters out on the cabinet door to make sure they fit. Making sure they're spaced evenly apart and centered, trace the letters onto the door using a pencil or pen.

Step #5: Using white acrylic paint and a small paint brush, begin outlining and filling in each letter, being careful to keep your edges as neat as possible. Let dry. Do a second coat of white paint. Let dry.

Step #6: Once the white paint is completely dry, take a black sharpie marker and outline your letters. This is optional, but gives a nice definition to your letters, and cleans up any not-so-perfect letters you may have.

Step #7: Taking medium-grit sandpaper (I used 120), rough up the edges of the cabinet door. I also chose to rough up the letters a little - to make it look more rustic and authentic. *Just be sure the paint is completely dry...otherwise the sandpaper will smudge the wet paint = not pretty. (I tried the orbital sander, as seen in the picture below - it was too powerful for the look I was going for, but if you want a *really* distressed look, try a similar sander!)

Using the orbital sander...

Roughing up the letters...

Look how rustic and charming it turned out!
 
Step #8: You may choose to spray a coat of polyurethane as a finishing touch, especially if you want to display this outdoors. We're only displaying ours indoors, so I skipped the poly.

Step #9: Put your beautiful work on display! I think ours will live above our mantel this Christmas season.

 


Who's ready to make one??