Friday Fascinations 4 and 5 Feature Party!

Ok, as I said in Friday Fascinations 6 - My Week last week was crazy busy. Because of that i didn't get the features up from Friday Fascinations 4 - Pizza Grilled Cheese. Since it is now time to post the Features from Friday Fascinations 5 - Vacation Update and Water Damage I have two choices 1) Write two separate feature posts and post them both the same day or one day apart, or 2) put all the features together and have one big feature post party! The second one sounds more fun to me so that is what I am going to do. Enjoy all of these fantabulous featured posts! Of course there are even more awesome posts linked up in both parties so go over and see them. And don't forget to link up your projects in this weeks party Friday Fascinations 6 - My Week.
Oh and I have to say I selected each of these features separately and based on the post. I didn't realize until I wrote this up that there are some posts from the same blog. I guess I found some new blogs to follow :)

For those who are featured get yourself a button!

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Friday Fascinations 4 Features

Favorite Building Projects

Call Me PMc linked up a DIY Shoe Rack that her husband made. It looks great and pretty easy!

 

With a Blast linked up a DIY Kitchen Storage that is completely awesome! This would be great for small kitchen with no pantry. We have a decent size pantry and I am still wishing I had this just because it looks so easy and convenient!

Favorite Sewing Project

And Who Says You Can't linked up a Scarflette that she made from a poncho. It is so cute!

 

Favorite Cooking Projects

Mommy's Sweet Confessions linked up some Homemade Caramel Apples that look absolutely scrumptious! She also shares how she learned that sugar and water can not necessarily substitute for corn syrup :)

Growing Up Gabel linked up some Homemade Blueberry Doughnuts that are absolutely adorable and also sound very yummy. I love how she uses the heart shaped pan. So cute!

Favorite Random/Other Post

One Creative Mommy linked up a DIY Watering Can made from a Milk Jug. What an awesome use for a milk jug!

Friday Fascinations 5 Features

Favorite Food/Recipe Posts

Mommy's Sweet Confessions linked up some Microwave Sweet Potato Chips that look yummy! I love sweet potato chips but I don't like how greasy homemade pan fried sweet potato chips are. This looks like it could be a good substitution.

Healthy Branscoms linked up Healthy Meals on a Budget. They have some great ideas to make healthier meals and still stay within a budget!

Favorite DIY Fix

One Creative Mommy linked up a great way to Repair Scuffed Shoes. This is a great idea to extend he life of a favorite pair of shoes!

Favorite Kid Posts

The Domesticated Princess linked up some Sidewalk Chalk Paint that looks like a lot of fun! Flinging sidewalk chalk paint would be a great way to spend an afternoon.

One Creative Mommy linked up some Splash Art inspired by Jackson Pollock. This looks like so much fun that I want to do it for me :)

Thanks for coming to the features party! Go on over and check out these great posts!

DIY Towel Cake Tutorial

I saw this absolutely adorable towel cake on pinterest. Unfortunately the pin was horribly done and the pinner pinned a picture that was not from the original site. The picture was from a round up, which would have been fine but the blogger doing the round up did not properly cite their source and the source just went to a picture. (For those of you on pinterest please please pin properly and pin the original site that the item was posted on, it is rude to the people looking at your pin as well as the original poster who doesn't get their credit) So I did a little more digging (looked really closely at the photo) and noticed that there was a website imprinted on the picture (which is actually a really good idea that I should probably start doing, anyone know how to do that?). So I visited the site and dug around there and finally found her post about her towel cake. Unfortunately the post did not have very many directions for how to do it so I still had to make it up on my own. She also did a diaper cake that did have some better directions, but it wasn't exactly what was needed so I thought I would post a tutorial on how I made this wonderful towel cake.

Towel Cake 

Materials:

• Cardboard
• Aluminum Foil
• Tape (both scotch and packing)
• 2 plastic containers (dollar tree, $1 for both)
• Towels (I think I used 13, depending on how thick your towels are you may need more or less)
• Utensils (I used several kitchen utensils, if you wanted to do a bath themed towel cake you  could do things like a loofah and such. You can get utensils at dollar tree for $1 each)
• Ribbons (I used a cute colorful tissue paper (dollar tree), tulle (dollar tree), and a cute ribbon I found in the dollar bin at Michael's)
• Filler decorations (I used tulle and raffia string from dollar tree)
• Flower decorations (I used soap flowers I found at dollar tree)

Directions:

Get a cardboard square to cut your circle out of. I used a car seat base box because it was wide enough to fit a towel cake in the size I wanted. To make sure that I was cutting a square I cut off the top flap and laid it along the side.

Cut the square into a circle.

Cut the aluminum foil long enough to cover the cardboard.

Use tape to adhere the aluminum foil to the back.

The tape in the middle was not a problem because it was covered by the cake. I wish I would have cut the second sheet of aluminum foil a little longer because I had to put tape on the outer edge and it did show.

Gather your towels. I used towels that I already owned because I had plenty extra and I knew my sister wouldn't mind. Also I considered this more of a decoration than a gift (although she did get to keep all the stuff :). If you are doing this as a present or something I would buy new towels. Last I checked Target had the best price for towels because you could get a group of them for 1 price (I had to look a little to find them, but they were there a couple years ago).

Tape the two containers to the base. I used the containers to give the bottom layer some bulk. It would have taken a lot of towels to fill in that area.

Fold 1 towel in fourths lengthwise and wrap around the containers. I used packing tape to stick the towels to the container and each other.

Fold the towels in half and continue wrapping around each other. I decided that I wanted the base color of the cake to be white so I used white towels on the outside of the roll. The bottom layer was a little wide for 1 towel to cover the whole outside so I made sure the last 2 towels were white and turned the area that looked less good toward the wall.

The second and third layers were all towels. Again tape the towels to each other. For the top layer in thirds to make it shorter.

Stick skewers through the middle to keep the layers together.

Before decorating

Use the ribbons to decorate the layers. I used tissue paper cut into strips, tulle, and brown sheer ribbon. Experiment a little until you find a good combination.

Choose a utensil to be the cake topper. Wrap some of the ribbon around it and tie a bow.

Decorate with utensils

Stuff tulle into the towels between the layers

Stuff in any other fillers you are using

Decorate with fake flowers

Up Close

Doesn't This look Great? I love how it turned out! It was the perfect decoration for the gift table!

Linked Up To:
Shaken Together, Serendipity and Spice, My Favorite Finds, Clean and Scentsible, Uncommon, Cornerstone Confessions, A Pinch of Joy, Nap Time Crafters, Frugal Girls, While He Was Napping,

Lap Chalkboard - DIY Chalkboard out of a Cookie Sheet

I participated in the Grow.Swap.Share Blog Swap last week and posted this fun craft on Create.Craft.Love. I thought I would share it with all of you, my wonderful readers this week. Enjoy!

First of all I want to to thank Jill for honoring me by allowing me to write a post for her wonderful blog Create.Craft.Love! I can see that she has many great ideas and I will definitely have to try some of her wonderful crafts!

I'm Randomly Fascinated from Domestic Randomness. I am a new mom to Little Man who is 6 months old. At Domestic Randomness you can find me sharing my thoughts on all sorts of domestic topics. I have recently been writing a series comparing major diaper brands. I also like to discuss Baby Topics, Recipes, Saving Money, Wedding Topics, Swagbucks, and other Random Thoughts. Please feel free to come visit me and let me know what you think of my random thoughts!

I have seen several projects floating around the web that use chalkboard paint and they have intrigued me. I have thought of several ideas including possibly making a small chalkboard on Little Man's wall (I love that idea, but it really doesn't match his decor) or making one out of a picture frame or mirror. So the idea of making something with chalkboard paint has been ruminating in the back of my mind for a while now. When I saw that my blog swap partner was Create.Craft.Love I knew it was time to whip up my first craft post. The idea of chalkboard paint came back to me again, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it. I wanted it to be something that my family would use, not just something that I made because I liked the idea. This idea came to me late one night as I was trying to fall asleep (Why do the best ideas always come to me then? Good thing I keep a pad of paper by my bed to write them down). I had also seen a cool idea for some fun picture magnets which I wanted to try so I decided to combine the two and make a small magnetic chalkboard. I had an old grungy gross cookie sheet that I thought would be perfect for this project. I was originally going to show you the fun picture magnets in this post too, but I discovered that that would be a massive post so I split it into two separate posts so keep an eye out on my blog for the Fun Photo Magnet Post!

Anyways here it is, how to make a Chalkboard Tray.

Materials

• Cookie Sheet (old and grungy works fine, new would work fine too, if you don't have one that you want to use, Dollar Tree has some for $1)

• Spray paint (any color, this is for the sides) I used rustoleum (mostly because it was free because my parents had it sitting around their garage, but also because I thought it would adhere well to my old grungy pan)

• Chalkboard paint (I used spray paint, they also have it in cans if you like to roll on paint) I had quite an adventure tying to find this paint. I had checked to see if they had it at Walmart around a month ago and they did, but I didn't buy it because I was trying to be good and not buy it when I didn't have a need for it right then. Well apparently sometime in the last month Walmart decided to stop carrying chalkboard paint. So I checked JoAnns, Hobby Lobby, Lowes and Michaels. I didn't see it at Hobby Lobby. I found it at the other 3 stores, but I wasn't willing to pay the $7.99 JoAnns was asking and Lowes only had it in cans and I didn't feel like dealing with a brush or roller. I ended up buying it at Michael's. They had it for $7.49 (I think) and I used a 40% off coupon from JoAnns (which I had forgotten about when I was at JoAnns or I would have used it there) which took $3 off so I got it for $4.49!

• Newspaper or tarp to put under the sheet while spray painting

Directions:

My old grungy pan

Prep your area, I suggest doing this outside because of fumes and mess

Spray on your base coat

The center does not need to be as well covered since we will be spraying the chalkboard paint there. Wait for a while for first coat to dry (at least 30-60 min)I did have some trouble with newspaper sticking to it, so if you are not time crunched I would wait a little longer, maybe do one side one day and the other side another day.

Flip over and spray the other side.
Wait while drying again.

I did 2 coats on the bottom and 3 coats on the top (it just looked like it needed it).




Let dry overnight.

Do the front side of the pan (the side that dips in) first!

Cover edges with painters tape. One thing I learned is that if you wrinkle the tape at all the paint will bleed down into it, so make sure you tear your strips small enough that you don't have to wrinkle them around the corners. Also make sure that you press down around the edges so they are tight against the pan, because again, the paint will bleed in any small crack.

Spray on chalkboard paint. Let dry for a while. Since this is just in the center, not around the edges, you only need to wait 30-60 min.

Spray again. I did 3 coats on each side (The Bottle said 2 was needed, but I did 3 just to be safe) Let it dry in between each coat.

Peel the tape off.

Flip over and do the other side.

 This is the front side done.

 This is the back side done

The bottle said to cover the whole chalkboard in chalk and then wipe it off to break it in.

The great thing about these chalkboards is that cleanup is easy, just rinse with water (no soap needed)!

 You can use it to write messages

It would be great for kids to play games in the car.

Or make a street for toy cars (look at my Fun Photo Magnets for some magnet car toys)



It would also be great for snacks and in the car because it has edges and super easy clean up. Very Versatile!

I plan to use it as a sign for my sister's coffee themed bridal shower

It could also be used to tell the family what is for dinner

Or as a try to distinguish what is in different dishes







What would you use it for?


Thank you again to Jill and to her wonderful readers! I am very grateful to you for allowing me to post my random thoughts on you blog! I can't wait to see what she has for us next!

I hope that you enjoyed my craft! I would love it if you would stop by and visit me at Domestic Randomness. If you want to stay a while you can subscribe by email, RSS feed, Google Friend Connect, pinterest, or facebook.


Linked Up To:
Clean and Scentsible, Uncommon, Nap Time Crafters, Frugal Girls, While He Was Napping, A Pinch of Joy, Serendipity and Spice, Cornerstone Confessions, Ready 4 Summer, Summer BBQ Party, Shaken Together, My Favorite Finds,