DIY

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2018February 13, 2018by Elise GioveLeave a Comment

Happy [cheat on your diet] day! I hope you eat all the heart shaped things your [actual] heart desires. So, Valentine’s day for me is nothing special because my husband works noon to midnight… although I am making strawberry waffles [cut into hearts] It’s not gonna be the flowers & food I shouldn’t be eating dream it could be. There’s something about a romantic breakfast that isn’t that romantic.

If you’re single, YOU ARE NOT MISSING OUT. It’s just as lonely actually having a Valentine and they aren’t even around. Its not his fault or anything, but it still makes me feel lonely and abandoned. SO. Here I am, with you… my favorite company on earth.

Here’s a fun little DIY you can do for your BFF, your work wife, your spouse, your mom… you get where I’m going here.

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Buy [at your local grocery]:

4 different Valentine’s candies
Starbucks 4 pack of frappuccino bottles

Buy [at your local crafty store]:

Valentine Paper [to wrap the box]
Valentine Paper [different prints for lids]
Solid Red/White/Pink Cardstock
Glue stick
E6000 [also glue]
Heart stickers, beads, rhinestones etc.
Cute 1/4″ ribbon [4 kinds if you want each jar different like I did]
Glitter

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I’m not going to give too much instruction, because it’s a lot of measuring & cutting.. but I’ll give you a general idea on how to attack this project. ***[If you just want to give the single bottles to 4 different people & not the 4 pack to that special someone, then skip Steps 2, 3, & 4.]

Empty, rip off label, wash & dry coffee bottles. [If you aren’t in the mood for 4 frappes then just put them in a pitcher in the fridge, they’ll stay good a few days]
Cover your box with the Valentine Print Paper.
Cut out 4 hearts & put cute Valentine phrases on them. [one for all sides of the box]
Now, cutting the paper for the outside of the box is super wild & not that fun so I just covered it really well with glue & threw glitter on it.
Trace the lid of the jar for your perfect circle on your solid colored paper.
Trace 4 smaller circles on your Valentine print papers using something around the house [shot glasses make great circles]
Cut 4 small hearts for the lid.
If you found beads or rhinestones you’ll need to use the E6000 glue to put those on.
ASSEMBLE. Glue together your lid circle, smaller circle, hearts, & letters/beads/etc. onto the lid with E6000.
NEXT… which you cannot see pictured here is the paper on the bottle. You’ll measure the space you need and wrap a print or solid paper around where the label used to be. Decorate with your stickers, something similar to the top of the bottles [like circles & hearts], or make your version of conversation hearts & decorate the front of your new label.
Fill your bottles with candy!
Measure your ribbon so it fits around the bottle, you can tie a bow or just a nice knot, but you’ll also want to glue the ribbon with E6000 onto the lid of the bottle.

Good Luck! You can always use this idea and change it to any Holiday theme. Maybe do some nice rainbow, green & gold ones for St. Patrick’s Day! [Lots of] Kisses.

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DIY, Home Decor, Uncategorized

Think Spring – Faux Florals

January 23, 2018January 23, 2018by Elise GioveLeave a Comment

Here in Michigan we have about 6 months of cloudy darkness, aka… WINTER. & I’m starting to feel some spring fever. I decided to make a spring arrangement for my office to spruce this place up. I love the faux florals at hobby lobby, but you can also find really wonderful ones at your local home & garden stores. [shop local] I find really beautiful faux florals at a store called Warmbier Farms in Auburn, MI. Check out their website… HERE. If you’re ever in the area, its a MUST stop.

I found my vessels somewhere in my travels [sorry I can’t remember]

Today I’ll give you some tips on arrangements. You’ll want to follow a color story. I used coral & yellow for mine. Find things in this color story. You don’t want to get a blue here, and a orange there, and a red there. It will look more professional when you follow one or two colors.

You’ll also want to use the rule of ODDS. Whatever you choose to buy, you’ll want 3, 5, or 7 of. I typically buy 3 in the bigger flowers, and 5 in the filler flowers. And I will typically get 5 different ones with similar looks.

For this arrangement you’ll need:

Wire Cutters
Two Vessels
3 large flowers [ I used peonies ]
3 medium flowers [ I used riniculas ]
3 filler flowers [ use anything small & simple, not distracting from your large & med ]
5 filler pieces [ these are the small yellow buds ]
Florist Foam

Faux florals come in crazy long stems, so figure out how tall you’d like your arrangement to be, and cut the first stem to that length. You won’t want them all the same, but you will want them within two inches longer or shorter than each other. It’ll give a more cohesive appearance. Start putting your large flowers in first, then medium, and finally, filler. You can cut them, move the wires around so they fill certain areas, and adjust till you think it looks full and fabulous! Sometimes I figure out which sides of my arrangement will show, and puff those up with more, and less in the back. If my arrangement is going to sit on a table, and you’ll see it from all angles, turn your arrangement as you fill, so it looks evenly placed all around!

What color are you thinking for this spring? Coral, Yellow, Soft pink? Let me know! Tag #eliseinwonderland on instagram to show your work! Kisses.

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Art, Bullet Journal, DIY, Uncategorized

Bullet Journaling – Intro

January 8, 2018January 31, 2018by Elise Giove2 Comments

Well. The new year is here. Have you done well with your resolutions? Well, I can’t say I’ve been failing if I haven’t started. I have some goals this year to get back to my weight when I was 22 and a dime.. blog more, bullet journal more, share my creativity with the outside world, get a job to get some social interaction because my husband’s long hours are difficult & the cat doesn’t answer when I talk to her. Go figure.

I’m a bullet journal novice, so that’s kinda tight. You could learn with me? I am a great flower arranger, and baker extordinare? I think I need to try more things. I actually have a fear of change. Anything where there is change, is super scary. It takes me a million years to adjust to anything different. Anyway…

I guess I’ll share my first few bullet pages with you. It’s probably why you read this post anyway. Click bait at it’s finest. My very first page, I put my name, contact information, address, email, instagram, twitter, birthday, etc. I like the book to be, well.. mine. & if i were to lose it {I’D DIE} hopefully some nice citizen would call or email me & I could get it back. SO I’ll leave that page out, cause I don’t need ya’ll sending me hate mail, or showing up to my house uninvited. [sorry.]

I love using prism colored pencils vs. markers cause they never bleed through the paper and you can fade colors and blend colors and do fun things with them. They aren’t as precise as markers, but I kind of like that. I use micron archival pens in .35mm and .45mm [both are black.] I like to write down my goals at the beginning of the book so that I can look back. I kept the left page blank here to add notes and maybe an index later on. I usually don’t number my pages or care, but that is important to some people.

The next spread I put all my important birthday’s to remember [even my own cause celebrating it what I live for] lol. & the yearly calendar to reference. It’s pretty sloppy, but You & I will get better overtime. Don’t let the lack of perfectionism get to you.

I saw someone put a master grocery list in theirs, which.. now that its in there, I kinda hate it, but at least my fruits at the top are cute. lol. I want to track where I go, and when I go there to see how much I traveled and if I went anywhere new, and how great it was, so I’ll fill this in as the year goes. I kinda wish I made this a two page spread, because… adventure awaits.

This was by FAR my favorite page to draw and put together. I love to pick out books, I have a bookshelf in my bedroom with all the books I have yet to read, and all the books I’ve read organized on separate shelves. I’ll add more books on the shelf space as I find others I’d like to read, but I like to know the title before I draw them in, cause you have to write so tiny!

For those of us with a laundry list of issues [ugh, me] I wanted to keep track of how I was feeling day to day & my Dr. Appts & what we talked about. AKA if i was getting a flu shot, or if I was actually dying, or if I was mainly there for a medication check up, which seems far too often, but that’s life for ya.

I then go into a weather symbols page which I doodle the weather in my calendar, so I can see if it was sunny for 5 days and I felt great, or if it was cloudy and rainy for 3 & my mood was crummy at best. It helps figure out if its climate issues, or like, a real issue, or an issue I might think is real.

I’ll get into January monthly planning specifics in the next post. Stay Tuned. let me know if you are bullet journaling & how it’s going! Tag me in your instaposts if you show any pages to the world. Kisses.

Art, DIY, Fashion, Holiday

Soldered Glass Charms

November 22, 2017January 31, 2018by Elise GioveLeave a Comment

Maybe I never mentioned it [but I probably have] that I have an art degree. I love metal smithing & jewelry. A friend of mine had a piece similar to these that I made years ago [omg years like I’m 60 or something] & she works at a cute little shop near Petoskey, MI. THE NORTH. [which I love] & If you’re local, you can go there & you can buy my stuff. & then I can make more stuff. Exciting, isn’t it? Check out their insta @journeynorth141

COOL. I’m super awkward when I talk about my own stuff. I have this notion in my head that its never good enough, or cool enough, or like enough. SO. Check it out. Tell me I’m awesome [so maybe I’ll believe it]. Till next time…

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DIY, Home Decor

Wall Hanging – Filling Empty Space

October 30, 2017October 23, 2017by Elise GioveLeave a Comment

When we moved into our house we replaced carpet, put in a wood floor, demolition a whole wood paneled room & put up drywall & molding so our $ needed to go far when decorating. I had a vision when we bought our house, & since I’m a creative genius (I do have an art degree after all) I made it home.

After all this I didn’t have much wall art or things to hang because our apartment was small. So I got creative with what I was going to hang in our new house & fill walls that really needed a BIG something.

In our bedroom – above our dresser – we had a huge wall space. I wanted to keep this project affordable & about us. It was my husband & my first home together, & you can never have enough photos of great memories together – so I took that & ran with it.

I wanted this somewhat rustic something to hang pictures from a string. Essentially.
I found these three birch logs & they were THE perfect size, so I brought those suckers home and tied them together with twine. I had my dad hang them up on the wall so I could hang 5 ribbons. (odd numbers are more visually pleasing – so keep this in mind when you are doing, basically anything.) It should look something like this (below – excuse the mess). We put 2 nails in the wall about a foot from each end of the logs – tied twine around it, and hung the logs from a loop in the twine.

I went to hobby lobby on 50% off ribbon day & bought 3 spools of a neutral grey ribbon with a touch of ruffle on the sides. (below – This is basically the actual ribbon size in the image) (you’ll want to measure for how much ribbon you need length wise, but this particular ribbon I needed 3 spools) Next, I wrapped the ribbon around the hanging birch logs & let it hang almost to the dresser. (I cut it to length after I hung the pictures.)

I printed out a million of our favorite photos, and picked a few of the very best ones. I glued the favorites to black card stock & put a sticky pin back on each of them. I arranged & arranged until the colors looked nice (I didn’t put all the Christmas red ones on one side, or my husband’s favorite neon green Polo pictures all together.) I also arranged them so the vertical and horizontal ones fit nicely with the columns to the right & left of each other. Just play with the look, till you think its fab. (see image below)

Then you’ll pin the photos on the ribbon & enjoy your master piece. The greatest thing about using pin backs instead of gluing them on, is that you can change them always. If you’re feeling really ambitious you can change them for each season, do a black and white theme, do all of your Christmas photos together. Do one of all your pets. Get creative. In the end you should have something like this!

Supply list (purple items are optional. You can use scissors, but I cut straighter with an
X-acto & cutting mat.)

Black Card stock
Glue Stick
Sticky pin backs
Scissors to cut ribbon
Cutting mat to cut black card stock around pictures
X-acto knife
Ruler (to hold against picture while cutting black card stock on mat)
Ribbon color of your choice – (you’ll want it at least an inch thick.)
Twine to tie the wood together – & Tie to your wall hanging hooks
WOOD – birch logs, log from your backyard (mine were about an inch in diameter)
Hammer
Nails – or those screw on one end/loop on the other end work well.
Amazing photos of you & the fam

Let me know how it goes. Idk if I’m that great of a teacher over the internet – I’m a visual person, so if I think of something I can usually create it, if you need more directions or help, please comment and let me know! I want you to be successful!