The Epitome of Up-cycling

I have an old school iMac (well my parents do) that is seriously calling my name right now.... how hard do you think this would be to DIY?

Source: fab.com via Melissa on Pinterest

I'd totally get a cat if it would sleep in this!

Homemade Caramel Apples

This weekend my mom and I made super yummy caramel apples.

FROM SCRATCH!

I've recently re-discovered the amazingness that is a caramel apple and have fallen to temptation and picked one up every time I've gone to Safeway in the past month (it's only been 3 times... so I'm not too fat yet). So when mom decided to make some while I was home over the weekend, I was pumped.

I found this super cool way to make caramel by cooking a can of sweetened condensed milk on low for 8-10 hours in a slow cooker on Pinterest (my new favorite site). We decided to try this approach because it was less work than the sugar, lemon, cream, and butter recipe that she had found on Fine Cooking.

And frankly, we sort of didn't believe that it would actually work, so we had to try it out!

Before doing anything else (aside from cooking the caramel) we washed and dried the apples. Then we jammed popsicle sticks into the tops of the apples.

We actually ended up cooking our can for about 10 hours (dinner and Beauty and the Beast on ABC Family got in the way of our apple plans) and personally I think that was a little too long... whoops.

I think it would have been a bit more liquidy and a little less brown if we had taken it out sooner...

The caramel was a little stiff, so we decided to heat it in a sauce pan to liquify it a bit... I'm not sure that that worked, but the pan was more convenient for apple rolling.

 

What I didn't photograph was the rolling process, we just dipped the apple into the caramel in the pan and rolled it around until the apple was covered. Then because the caramel was super thick, we took a butter knife and used it to spread out and remove the excess caramel.

Then, I covered a few of them with SPRINKLES! I used the yummy waxy kind because they are the softest.

Don't they look delicious!

I Know The Suspense Is Killing You.

It's DONE! (I know, you're like what's done?) And it's been done for a few days now... I'm behind in my blogging... sorry about that!

I spent the bulk of Friday afternoon and basically the entire day Saturday PAINTING WALLPAPER onto my blue/aqua wall!

And I think it looks spectacular!

Here's how I did it...

Like I said last time, I got the idea by trolling through random people's pinterest pages and then googling "painted wall paper." I found out that it's pretty impossible to find any real useful websites that tell you how to do this, but thankfully I came across the Jones Design Company's website which was literally a godsend.

Jones Design Company has a tutorial (and free template!) for painting a medallion design that I really liked, so I settled on that.

Day One: Tracing!

The first step was to make the template. I printed out JDC's template on paper and then traced/cut out a cardboard version. I made a cardboard version of half the template too.

Then, I started tracing. And tracing. And tracing. I found (and it could be different for you) that it worked well to start at the top left corner of the wall and put the template flush with the ceiling and about 1/2 an inch from the edge of the wall. In hindsight, I would have spaced it a little farther over, because I'd have liked to have had room to do a double line on that side, but whatever.

After I traced the first medallion (put the very top flush with the ceiling), I measured 7.5 inches over and traced another one. Then, I measured 5 1/4 inches down from the ceiling and centered my template between the two medallions I had just drawn (you'll have about 1/2 an inch on either side of the top) and traced it again. From then on, I just kept tracing, referencing the medallions I'd already done for spacing (I put 1/2 an inch of space between each). It sounds super complicated, but it's really not once you get started.

I did not use a level, but trusted that by keeping with my 1/2 inch spacing and making sure that I always started my columns flush with the ceiling or 5 1/4 inches down, that things wouldn't get too wonky. It did get weird occasionally, but you can't really tell and I improvised while painting to make things look nice.

I kept tracing until I'd filled up the whole wall. When I'd done all I could do with the full sized template, I used the half template to fill in the holes at the top and bottom of the wall. It took me about 4 or 5 hours (including the time it took to figure out the spacing and stuff) to finish.

Then, I had a wall that looked like this. 

At this point, I was tired and so was my arm, so I went to bed.

Day Two: Painting! 

I did a practice run on cardboard to make sure I knew the right way to paint the lines... JDC does a great tutorial on this. To get the double line effect I was going for, you basically paint around the inside of each medallion (rather than painting in between each one). I used a #4 shader paintbrush I bought at Michaels and a gray paint (Mickey's Shadow from Home Depot) that I thought matched my gray wall pretty well. Instead of getting a whole quart of paint, I bought a sample, which is a small container of flat paint that they tint to your color. Genius!

Then, it was time to do the real thing. It was terrifying. I decided to start the process in the spot that the large picture over my TV lives, since the picture would hide any rookie mistakes I might make while getting the hang of the process.

I think it looks really cool watching the design materialize from afar. Since you can't see the pencil lines, it kind of looks like I was free-handing it!

At this point, I think I texted my mom a picture of my progress and naively told her that I thought I'd be done in a few hours... Boy was I wrong!

All told, I think it took around 10 hours to paint the entire wall. (This does not include the 4-5 hours from the day before).

I thought my arms were going to fall off by the end and was probs a little high from paint fumes... Oh. And, I had huge rash (read: wall burn) on my forearm from moving my arm across the wall while painting. (it's almost gone now)

But I think the end result was completely worth it!

My lease is up at the end of the month and I think that if I had any doubts at all about staying here, this wall has sealed the deal for me. I'm definitely resigning my lease... and probably never moving again.

Coming soon: Pics of THE WALL (put back together and with pictures) and lots and lots of other fun projects I have up my sleeve!

I'm Getting That Crafty Feeling Again.

Well I've done it again. I've decided to take on another moderately intense (in man hours, not necessarily skill) craft/home improvement project.

Actually I have a few planned, but more on that later...

Yesterday I discovered a super cool website called pinterest. Actually, I guess I more re-discovered it, since I have been on it before. Basically it's this website where people "pin" pictures they like from websites onto their galleries (or something like that) so it becomes this huge virtual corkboard filled with fun things. My last foray into the pinterest world was with that apple crate bookcase I posted about a few weeks ago. Anyway, yesterday I happened upon the site because I was looking at my blog's statistics (oddly enough a lot more people read this thing than I realized) and I saw that one of the referring websites was pinterest. So I clicked the referring link and saw that at some point someone had looked at my blog and liked my post with quotables card about everything being ok in the end (my personal fav so kudos to that person for his or her taste!).

But, that simple 30 second investigation turned into an almost hour long search through various people's DIY pins. And boy did I find some fun things to do! All of which I'm pretty sure will be of little or no cost to me (added bonus! and very key).

I was so excited about it that I couldn't sleep last night.

Literally.

I got so fed up with trying that I got up, got my laptop, turned on PBS (one of my only rabbit eared accessible stations in my room and go to late at night channel), and researched/planned my projects some more.

Until 3:30 a.m.

That excited.

And today I put the first one into motion.

Here's a sneak peek.

it involves this wall

and these materials (along with a few more) 

And it better be worth it because, as you can see, it's thrown
the rest of my life (or at least my apartment) in shambles. 

Stay tuned to see how it all turns out! Fingers crossed for a good result!

Mod Podge Makeover, Part 1

For the past few months I've been diligently searching Target for fun things to furnish my apartment... particularly things that were on clearance. I've found quite a few things, but this table (and more importantly what I did with it) is by far the coolest.

The first time I saw this table I thought it was incredibly ugly. I think it came in five super bright colors. It was also around $20. Way above my price line. Then, last weekend I found the hot pink version on major clearance for $4.00. Sold. (I needed one last end table.)

But it was still super ugly.

Yay for nighttime craft projects!

I thought that the table itself, and the shape and stuff looked pretty cool, it was the hot pink part that I couldn't quite come to terms with. So I decided that the best way to fix that, would be to re-cover the top.

A few weeks ago, I discovered this really cool store in Old Town called Paper Source. As the name suggests, it sells all kinds of paper products, including cards, calendars, and wrapping paper. Anyway, I went there looking for something to use to cover my light switches and outlet covers, when I found this amazing piece of paper. It was love at first sight. Unfortunately, the pattern on it was way to big to use on an (albeit slightly larger than normal) 3"x5" cover. But I was pretty sure that I would be able to use it somehow, so I bought it anyway. And I found some killer paper to use for my covers (you'll see that project soon!)

Fast forward to my table and craft night at Melissa's house.

To make my amazing table, I cut out a piece of paper to cover each part of the table top, making sure that there was about two inches of overlap on all the sides. Then I covered the top of each piece with mod podge and smoothed the paper over it.

Then, I folded the edges over on the two straight sides and glued them down. To negotiate the curved part of the table, I cut the edge into small sections (about an inch wide) so that when I folded it over, it molded to the curve without making any awkward creases. Then I covered the whole thing with mod podge.

I did that to each of the ugly hot pink sections and covered them with several more layers of mod podge.

When they were dry I attached them to the legs and....

This ☛   plus this ☛  

Equals this!

Ta Da! 

I still can't believe how well this turned out.

Give Peace A Chance.

Back about two months ago (although it honestly feels like it was about two years ago) you may remember that I gave a speech about Knits by Meliss at a convention. Cool, but not exactly the point.

Well, after I was done talking about myself, one of the participants approached me and asked if I could make her a peace sign hat. I agreed. I thought it would be kind of fun. And besides, how hard would it be to make a peace sign hat?

Very.

But this afternoon I think I've finally conquered peace — or at least the sign part!

It took three tries and a whole lot of patience...

For my first try, I couldn't find a pattern to make a peace sign that I liked, so I decided to knit a plain hat in the round and then make a peace sign applique to attach to the outside... It seemed like a great idea at the time, but unfortunately failed miserably....

The applique looks OK from the front, but when viewed from the side it looks pretty silly. Unfortunately, even if it hadn't popped out so much, I would have had to redo the peace sign part because I sewed it on too high on the hat, so it sits awkwardly high up on the forehead. Whoops!

Next time I try this technique, I'll use thinner yarn so that the effect isn't quite so 3D...

For my second try, I looked up peace sign cross-stitch patterns and found one that I could alter to work for the hat. This version totally would have worked but I miscalculated how many stitches to cast on and accidentally made the hat 4.5 inches wider than I meant too... I was going to try make it work, but when I started knitting in the pattern, it went all wonky, then I dropped a stitch, and things got awkward when I tried to fix it... so I decided to start over. Again.

Third time's a charm! This time I think I made it a good width (slightly larger than I would normally have made an adult hat, per her request) and I managed to knit in the pattern without doing anything strange or dropping any stitches.

I'm pretty sure it's a miracle!

Knits by Meliss

I did it! I made my very own website for "Knits by Meliss" which is the line hats that I created and have been knitting for the past two years for Grandma's. 

Well technically I made a blog... but "Knits by Meliss" looks like a website, so I'm satisfied.

I've been toying with the idea of making a site to display my hats ever since I made special labels in the fall,  and now my idea has become reality! I plan on posting pictures of different hats pretty regularly and I'm also going to try to post patterns for some of them so that any crafty readers can knit them for themselves. I think the hardest part of this endeavor is going to be naming each different hat... so far the only one I've posted a picture of is my flower petal hat which I've dubbed "Blossom" and coming soon (ie tomorrow afternoon) is my snowman hat or "Snowy." Those were easy... I'm going to have to start getting creative when it comes to the plainish ones.

But I digress. Knits by Meliss can be found at www.knitsbymeliss.blogspot.com.

Check it out!