fabulous coincidence (fantastic stationery)

I picked out a bunch of blank cards from Fabulous Stationery so I'd have some on hand to send to family overseas. While I was at it, I picked up a few more for family members' birthdays and summer holidays. Here are a few . . .

Things I like: they have a really large selection. Even the dollar card shop, where I chose these, had pages and pages of modern, abstract, fun designs to choose. From ordering to receiving only took a few days, and my order was spot on. The print quality is good, too, and the colors match well to the on-screen colors on the website.

On the downside, the dollar card cardstock is a little flimsy, but since the the cards I chose were only a buck apiece, I can't complain too much. I'd bet the prices of their more expensive lines and personalized stationery are reflected by thicker, nicer stock.


Now for the fun coincidence: this pretty chandelier card perfectly matches a project of mine from a little while back . . .

. . . this wax paper faux capiz shell chandelier I finished up back in March.

As a bonus, the olive green in the background of the card is a nice match for the olive green accents on some of the pillows in the guest room (where the chandelier also hangs).

So I'm probably keeping this one to frame.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of inexpensive, attractive cards, so I'm really pleased to have found this resource. Do you have any favorite places to buy stationery? Or do you make it all yourself? I'd love to know!

the fanciest thing in my house

This is the fanciest thing in my house.

Similar projects have been all over Pinterest for awhile, based on a $300 West Elm version (which I've read is based on a $1500 version by designer Vernor Panton). And I really liked them.

Most of all, as usual, I like the idea of making something over with inexpensive materials. In my case, I spent $2 on an old lampshade, $2 on a spool of steel wire, and $1.50 on a roll of wax paper.

I wish I knew who to credit with the innovation of using an upside down lampshade, because I think it's pretty darn smart. I've seen similar versions made with hanging fruit baskets, Ikea picture frames, and wreath forms, but I don't know the evolution of this project (which came first, and who spun off their project from the original?).

Here are a couple of the inspiration pins for this project: this one from Design Sponge (made with a hanging planter basket, ribbon, and hot glue); this one, from Make House a Home (made with a lampshade and stitched strands); and this one, from A Happy Place Called Home (Ikea frame and jump rings).

I did what I usually do; I picked the elements I liked from different versions of the chandelier (the upside down lampshade, the wire instead of stitching) and filtered out the ideas I didn't like, or that I thought made the project too complicated or expensive. And then I added in some of my own spin.

But let's start at the beginning. With an ordinary boob light.

I blogged last summer about my guest room make-over, but though a bunch of things have been changed or modified since that last update, I hadn't touched the light fixture. In fact, I shot around it when I wrote that post. And then, in August, I saw a couple of faux capiz chandeliers on the Young House Love blog's Pinterest Challenge (see numbers 6 & 184). I did a little bit of research and turned up a bunch more versions (as mentioned and pinned above). Then I gathered my materials. In addition to a roll of wax paper and a spool of 20 gauge steel wire, I turned up a tapered lamp shade at the thrift store on a 50% off day (I paid $2 after discount).

Tear off all the fabric and add an extra row of wrapped wire, and you end up with this:

I ironed three layers of wax paper together to make the "shell" material. And to a couple of spots, I added a very, very few crayon shavings between the layers to make a very small amount of tie-in to the room colors. Rather than punch circles out of the waxed paper, I cut mine into varying sizes of rectangles. And rather than stitching the shells together, I punched holes in either end with a teensy hole punch and hooked trains of the pieces together with jump rings made from the steel wire.

(Making jump rings with wire and pliers is way cheaper than buying jump rings ready-made, but is also more time consuming. Plan your own project accordingly.)

As is my pattern, I got only partway through with one tier, and retired the chandelier to the closet for a little while, to get it off the table. And then I got sidetracked working on Halloween costumes, Christmas presents, hallway painting, and birthday party stuff.

Earlier this month, when I finally pulled it out of the closet and went to hang it up (because a partially-finished chandelier is harder to ignore when it's hanging right in your face), it looked like this:

I buckled down, and put in some good, solid blocks of time to getting it finished. It took approximately 72 chains of 5 shells for the top-most tier, 56 chains of 4 for the middle tier, and 48 chains of 3 for the bottom tier.

It took a bit of time. And when it was finished, it looked a little like this in the room (flash on, with Photoshop filters added).

Here's how it hangs from the ceiling, with two cup hooks (the chandelier is super-light, but I may add two additional cup hooks, just in case).

And here it is, done . . .

. . . glowing . . .

. . . and in daylight . . .

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Have you made one of these yet? Isn't it amazing what you can do with paper?

Hey, you can link to your paper projects in the comments below. Thanks for dropping by!


Edited to add: The original UL-rated fixture is still in place, with low-wattage compact fluorescent bulbs. The wax paper structure sits a little below the ceiling, and a couple of inches away from the glass shade. Plus, it's in the guest room, which means the light's not on very often. We're pretty safe from any fire danger, but I'm definitely on the alert!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


Linking up to:

I Am Momma Hear Me Roar blog

rupee crayon party favors

As part of the upcoming birthday party for Baby P, we made some crayons shaped like rupees (the gems used for money in the Zelda game series for Nintendo) for the kids to hunt for in the tall grass . . . and maybe inside some conspicuous clay pots.




This required a bit of planning. First came the rupee hunt idea, then the search for a jewel-shaped mold (I was willing to settle for anything vaguely jewel-shaped, and large enough not to be a choking hazard, but not so large as to use thousands of crayons). No luck. I thought about using cookie cutters, but couldn't find one the right shape, and in the end, wasn't sure that a cookie cutter would cut crayon wax well enough to warrant investing in a make-it-yourself cookie cutter kit.

I searched around a bit and finally happened across this silicone mold-making kit. i bought a one-pound box for this project, carved a rupee the desired shape and size from a bar of glycerin soap, then cast it in the silicone compound that my husband mixed up using the kit.




Note: there is a very short cure time on the silicone compound, and several people had posted product reviews mentioning that they couldn't get larger amounts of compound mixed before the cure time ran out, so their molds failed. My husband's trick is to pre-knead each part of the two-part compound separately to get them warm and pliable before kneading the two parts together. It extends cure time and I'm happy to say it worked like a charm.

We ended up with four molds made from one box of compound, and three were useable for casting crayons (the fourth ended up with some unfortunate air bubbles).

We sat down to peel a few hundred recycled (thrift store) and new crayons. Part way through the process, I discovered soaking them in a solution of warm water and dish soap serves the dual purpose of cleaning the recycled crayons and loosening the paper wrappers; give it a try!




The crayons were sorted by color to match rupee colors, then broken to bits and loaded into the cured molds.




With the oven temp set to 230 F, the molds were loaded into the oven atop a wax-papered cookie sheet and cooked for about 20 minutes until nice and melty.




Cooled, popped out, burnished with a spoon, and ready to be discovered by a bunch of little adventure kids. So fun!




The molds held up pretty well through the casting, cooling, and extracting process of close to a hundred crayons (hopefully enough for each kid to take home a full set!). In the end, a couple of molds had small tears at either end, but still held melted wax.

Thanks to this Flickr image, discovered via Pinterest, for the pinspiration!

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(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)