It's All In The Details - 5 Easy 5-10 Minute Projects For Your Home

I love crafty projects.  The only thing I love more, are quick and easy crafty projects.  While enhancing our "beachy" living room (check out my sand bowl tutorial for more), I created a few accents, that I wanted to share with you.

1.

The first is the twine wrapped jar.  It's exactly what the name implies.  I like to keep the jars of from Yankee candle-type candles.  They're really sturdy glass, and when you're paying $10 for a candle, you better believe I'm going to reuse whatever part I can.

So, here's what you'll need:

1 jar/bottle/container

twine

hot glue gun

Glue the tip of the twine to the side, at the very top (or wherever you want it to start), then just start twisting it up the jar.  

I put glue dabs in one line up the jar, creating a seam, just in case it looked really bad, that way I could just turn it out of sight.  I'm going to make a couple more, in different sizes to create a set.

Ta-da!

2.

My second creation is a cork coaster.  If you drink wine, this is a great way to reuse your corks, using ones that were from special wines or vintages.  If you don't drink wine, you can use ones from cooking wine, or if you don't use it for cooking, ask someone who does to save them for you.  

What you'll need:

8 corks/coaster

hot glue gun

Simply glue the corks in this pattern.  The hot glue doesn't adhere the corks SUPER strong, so make sure that wherever they're touching each other, that there's glue.  It's plenty sturdy to hold glass, but if you're gonna bend it, or if Bella gets a hold of it, it won't hold up to that.  We also made a cork cork board about a year ago, to which the link is here: serendipitous-discovery.blogspot.com/wine-cork-cork-board

 3. 

This one may be the simplest yet!

Just a cylindric vase, filled with some natural elements, plop a candle on top, and you have a mantle decoration.

You'll need:

3-4 natural elements (I used sand, brown rice and coffee beans)

Cylindric vase (or 2)

Candle (or 2)

Good eye-balling skills 

Always put things that are smaller pieces on the bottom, because otherwise the smaller pieces will seep through the cracks underneath them (like that story about the teacher that puts the rocks in the jar, then the pebbles, then the sand, and then the water).  So I started with the sand.  I used the same sand that I used to make the sand bowl (tutorial) from Atlantic Beach, here in Jacksonville.  It's more of a gray colored sand than a brown one, and although I like how it turned out, I think for this one I would've preferred a more brown one, but that's all up to you.  Then, I poured in the brown rice, and I tried to pour about the same amount as the sand.  Next came the coffee beans (it's very rare that there is a coffee shortage in our house, so there was no problem there).  This is where I stopped for a few days.

Then, my crafty-but-don't-tell-anyone husband took me to Michael's to pick up feet for our coffee table we were making, and we ended up buying a couple extra things, which weren't on the list.  Like two perfectly sized turquoise candles.

4.

I keep misplacing my keys, so I wanted somewhere I could put them, but I wanted it to look cute too.  In fact, I think that's how I would describe the things I make: functional shabby chic.  Dan had an antique frame (which was also neat, because we found an old family picture in it) that I found while unpacking.  That started me thinking... So for this:

You'll need this:

Wood frame

2 small hooks with screws at the end

Wall hook

Just measure out where you want your keys to hang, screw in small hooks, hang keys on, and hang on wall!

5.

The last project might take a little longer than 5-10 minutes, but it's cute, and I wanted to share it with you.  We had this old dumpster-dive shelf/coat hanger that I've wanted to put up, but didn't like the color.  So, we bought some turquoise spray paint,

 took off the hooks, painted it, 

waited for it to dry, screwed it all back together, hung it up - and another functional yet cute piece has been added to our room!

                                         

If you have any quick and easy updates you've done in your home, please share them!

ps:  I'm having difficulty with the comment settings, for some reason people aren't able to comment.  If you have a blog, and can think of anything I might do to fix it, please let me know at abigailgracza@gmail.com!