The Second

Before I found Pinterest, I found ETSY. I have a hard time getting through the site b/c there is so much, but I did find some really cool jewelry holders on there. So thought I would try to make those. I am including these on this blog b/c I have pinned it on my craft board on Pinterest...that counts right?

Here is my inspiration.


I showed the pictures to my dad and asked if he had any ideas on how I could make them. He suggested locust tree branches. They have HUGE thorns that would be good to hang the earrings from. Luckily they are plentiful in the upstate so we were able to get quite a few from my cousin's farm.

After getting them back to my dad's house, we put them in his shop to dry out for a few weeks. Meanwhile, I went to Goodwill and found a frame that I thought would work. I wish I had gotten a picture of it before I started (it had this really ugly picture of a horse on it circa 1985) but oh well. I took the back off the frame and took out the glass. Then I spray painted it white. Once it dried, I took some sandpaper and "roughed" it up a little bit. I wanted it to look weathered. I did get a picture of this. What do you think? Does it look old?

Now it is time to put the locust branches on there. I tried to pick the interesting ones that had some shape to them. Oh, WARNING! If you do this project and you use locust branches, be really careful. The thorns are REALLY sharp. Before working with them, I made sure and cut the tips off. Well, my dad helped me cut the tips off. He is crafty in his own right! (But don't tell him I said that-doesn't sound that manly.)
After positioning the branches on the frame the way I wanted them, we cut off the extra thorns (there were way more than I needed and some made the branches lay wrong) and hot glued the branches into place. Then we hammered a picture hanger on the back. Here is my final product, hanging up in my dad's house.


I think it turned out neat!
Here it is when I got it back to my house. Oh, I did have to re-glue the branches on after getting back home. Riding in the car didn't work too well for them. But I have had it on the wall with quite a bit of jewelry on it and they have held up well.



I think they will make cool Christmas presents, so I am now working on my next frame. I'll post more pics when I get it finished.

The First...step by step

I did take pictures while working on the melted crayon art project.

Here are the directions on how I did it.

First, bought crayons in the big box...I wanted pretty colors, and I knew I wanted to make more, so I bought a couple of boxes.

The pin on the board and an "a" on it but through following the blog it was posted from, I found how to do the one without it.


First I lined up all my colors the way I wanted them on the board. Yes, I am anal but I tried to stick with the ROY G BIV rainbow spectrum. Not sure it worked but at least I tried.

I then hot glued the crayons onto the board. Since they were going to be melted, I didn't worry about drawing a line and lining them up correctly. I did later for a different project but I'll talk about it in a bit. Oh and yes, my students did help me with the project, but they did not work with this part. Middle schoolers with a hot glue gun?? No thank you!

After they were all glued and I made sure they weren't coming off, I used a heat gun (had a few at my house since I do embossing) to start the melting. You can also use a hair dryer but I have heard it takes longer.

Once the melting started and I got the hang of it, I got my students to help. They were sitting next to me so I could make sure the gun was used correctly and that the melting went okay. It did smoke some, which worried me since we were in a school and I didn't want the fire alarms to go off, but it was minimal.

Once we were finished, I had the students sign the back of the board. I also included the date. We then presented the art to the art teacher, who absolutely loved it. She has it hanging in her art room and gets a lot of comments on it. My principal has mentioned that we may be able to make a bunch of smaller ones and sell them when we have board meetings at our school. They would be a great fund raiser!


The next crayon art I made, I tried having the letter on it. Using painters tape and a stencil, I cut out the letter "e" and put it on the board.

After melting the crayons, I pulled off the painters tape. Mine did not look anything like picture. There was tape left on the board and the crayon had run into the "e" space. I was disappointed in the turn out, so I bought a smaller board and tried again. (I did not get any pictures of that first one.)

I did measure the board this time when gluing the crayons on b/c I didn't want to use enough crayons to go across the whole board. Didn't really work well since I didn't have a ruler at home but it wasn't too off, so I was okay with it.

After melting the crayons this time, I pulled off the tape and saw that although it wasn't as bad as the first time, there was still crayon on the "e". So, I used a white crayon and melted it along the letter to make it stand out more.

The directions say to make sure and take the tape off before it cools completely, so I think that was my problem.

I gave this one to my god daughter for her 3rd birthday. She loves the color blue, so that is why I chose those crayons. I think she liked it. I am going to keep working and trying to make it better. I want it to look like these!

When I get really good, I want to make this one found here.

The First

I have found a ton of neat projects that I want to try on Pinterest. The first to catch my eye that I thought I could do pretty easily was the melted crayon art picture. My original inspiration is located here.

Here is the finished product. My students (I teach middle school special education) helped me melt the crayons and we ended up giving the board to the art teacher at my school as a gift to say thanks for helping the students and teaching them adaptive art.

My Pinterest boards

If you want to follow me, I am aprilmgarrett on Pinterest. I have boards on crafts, photography, simply me, books, quotes and more!

The beginning

First and foremost, I am not a writer, so please excuse the horrible grammar and uninteresting writing. The main point of this blog is to show off the crafts, not the writing! :)

Okay, how many of you out there have heard of Pinterest? A few months ago, I kept reading things about Pinterest on Facebook. People kept talking about pinning things and for some reason, I thought of maps. Like people were pinning locations on maps that they either visited or wanted to visit. I finally broke down about a month ago and Goggled Pinterest. And the rest is history!

I AM SO ADDICTED! I now have Pinterest as one of my home page tabs and regularly check it out. I am obsessed with finding new pins and making new boards. I have told all my friends at school and now most of them are on Pinterest too!

My favorite boards are the ones with crafts and the DIY projects on them. Since I consider myself pretty crafty, I decided to create a blog with things I have created through inspiration from pins on Pinterest boards.

So here we go! If you like what you see, please comment and let me know. Try things out and post your own things. Also, if you are on Pinterest, please send me your name...I'd love to follow you!