Body Butter

Because it is winter lips chap, skin dries, and you are in need of lotion.  I have had a lot of lotion given to me over the years for birthdays and Christmas, but my favorite has always been Delcon+ Body Butter.  I received them last year for Christmas, all four of them, Vanilla, Mango, Olive, and Coconut plus two lip balms flavored Mango and Vanilla.  Usually I received lotion from bath and body works, and though they do smell good my skin feels dry within an hour of application.  I recommend this type of lotion because it smells amazing, and you can feel a difference when you first put it on.  The only issue i have had is when you first apply it, wait a little bit before putting a blanket over yourself or sitting down because it can rub off a bit (or avoid that just by using a little less lotion). These you can get at Ulta for only thirty dollars with an added strawberry and orange smelling lotion. On Ulta these lotions have a rating of four point seven. This can also just be a gift for someone, or even multiple gifts if you split the lotions up!  The lotion is very creamy but firm in the bottle all of the lotion is white, with a tint of color relating to its smell. For example the olive body butter has a slight green tint to it and the mango an orange tint. For me out of the vanilla, mango, olive, and coconut the coconut smells best, but all together they solve problems of dry skin while keeping you smelling great!

Glitter Jar

I noticed that there has been a lot of tutorials on glitter jars, so looking around I found a small glass jar and decided to do a tutorial too!  Normally you can find a jar around your house, and since it probably contained some food at one point it will have a label on it.  I've always had a hard time trying to get labels off jars, but I found a fairly easy way to completely remove the label!

First fill the jar with the hottest water that you can get, but if your jar is cold because it might have been outside, wait until it warms up a bit before you put steaming hot water into the jar, otherwise it will break. After you have left the water in the jar for about ten minutes, try and peel off the label, while this won't completely remove the label it helps the adhesive turn into a liquid. After this, to get rid of the rest of the label take a paper towel or cotton ball, put some nail polish remover on it and rub off the rest of the label, it should come off pretty fast! If this method still doesn't work, heat your glass jar in a microwave for about thirty seconds, then pull out the jar with a hot pad and wipe the adhesive off with a paper towel, guaranteed to work!
For glue I used a cheap brand called Mod Podge, found at Walmart, and gold sparkles that were also found at Walmart.  In your jar pour in two parts glitter, one part glue, there aren't any specific measurements, just eyeball it and add more if when you turn your jar upside down (a couple steps later) the glue and glitter mix doesn't reach the top of the jar.  Adding more is very easy, just make sure that when you do, you still have the two to one glitter to glue ratio and you still mix it up until the sparkles aren't so sparkly any more that they have been smothered in glue.
After mixing together your glue and glitter, turn your jar upside down allowing the mix to run all over the inside of the jar, make sure you put your bottle over a plastic plate and lift it up every once and a while so it doesn't stick. Wait twenty four to forty eight hours for your jar to dry.
When you are done turn your jar upside down over a trash bin and shake it a little bit, allowing loose bits of sparkles to fall out before you place objects inside your jar. You may have a couple "bald spots" on your jar where the glue did not reach, if that occurs you can dab a little glue inside the jar on the bald spot and put sparkle in the jar once more, shaking them to make sure they reach the glue. After this you will have to wait another twenty for hours insuring that the glue has dried. Now that your jar is finished you can give it to someone as a gift (since Christmas is right around the corner), or use it your self as a pencil holder, or a makeup brush holder.
Happy Holidays!

Crayon Art

For a fun, crafty blog I decided to explore the art of crayons. 
I started out by laying a large, plastic mat on my floor, then taped a regular piece of paper onto the mat.  Make sure to tape under the paper not on top of it, otherwise the crayon will come off with the tape.  I found a large number of crayons, but you really just need one crayon for each color you want to include on your paper, (I used roygbiv).  Using a small blow dryer I took a red crayon, peeled off the paper, and held it over the corner of the paper.  Angle the blow dryer at about forty-five degrees and wait for the crayon to start melting. Make sure you spread the crayon's splatter all across the paper. 
When adding colors hold the new color over the splatter of the last color.  Do this because the crayon won't drip exactly where you place it, so to avoid white spots account for this difference. 
This only takes about twenty minutes, and for my first attempt, it turned out well! There are many ways to experiment with crayon art, every time you do crayon art the results will be different, so keep making art!

Bobby Pin Pearls

Instead of using regular bobby pins for an up-do it can be a lot more interesting and unique if you use pearls! It can be very easy to attach a pearl (fake of course) to a bobby pin. 
All you need are bobby pins, (which you can find at any drugstore), beads meant to resemble pearls, and wire (both of which can be found at Micheal's for a reasonable price). It is very important that you get the right kind of wire for this. It can't be too flexible or it won't stay, and you also don't want too thick of a wire. I use The Bead Smith, Craft Wire tarnish resistant, but you can use multiple types of wire, just remember, not too thin, but just enough to hold a shape on its own.
First cut about two inches of wire, and string it through the pearl.  Make the pearl stay in the middle of the wire and place the pearl on top of the bobby pin's end, then going underneath the top bobby pin wire, put each wire under the bobby pin until the wire runs out.  A little confusing, but if you try to wrap the wire around the end curve of the bobby pin the pearl will stay in the same place.
 If you are using a lot of bobby pins, using different sizes of pearls on your bobby pins looks a lot more interesting in your up-do. If you are having trouble with looping the wire through the bobby pin continuously you can buy jewelry pliers which make it a lot easier! This will add some interest to your hair, and once you get the hang of it, they are pretty easy to make!
Good Luck!

Easy French Manicure

An extremely popular nail style, the french manicure, is hard to create yourself, and expensive to buy.  I have used various methods trying to create a clean french manicure, and most have either taken too long or have turned out sloppy and unpolished. Finally I have a successful method.  For a small price, and about forty minutes of your time you too can create an easy, clean french manicure.
I found these circular stickers at Walmart for about two dollars. I cut three of them in half, one for each nail, so I left the extra half on the sticker sheet. I then placed the half circle in the middle of my nail, making sure they were all completely flat. The sticker on my thumb wasn't wide enough to cover the whole nail, but I will talk about how that can be fixed later.
Now with all circles firmly on your nails, choose whatever color, (usually white is used), and paint the top half of your nail.  Apply at least two coats, make sure they are even, not too thick/heavy.
Wait at least fifteen minutes before you peel off the half circles so that you don't accidentally take some nail polish off too.

To clean up your nail use acetone. Pour a little bit of acetone into a small container, (I use a shot glass, it works perfectly), and use a small nail brush. I purchased the MAC nail brush kit which has every kind of brush I need! Dip the brush into the acetone and run it under the white nail polish to make the manicure more clean, I do this for my thumb nail since the sticker doesn't cover the whole nail, I have to shape the edges of the manicure.
To finish off the manicure I used Orly's "Won't Chip" top coat nail polish, your nails will last longer and look a lot better with a bit of shine!

Christmas Bracelet

Starting with a “Lobster clasp” from Michael’s, attach it to a medium curb, Beadalon silver chain, also found at Michaels’s.  Measure the chain by wrapping it around your wrist, leaving a little extra to make a looser bracelet (for me that’s about seven and a half inches).

You may also attach the single hoop at the end of the bracelet, or simply use one of the chains for the clasp instead.

Next take two strings of three different colors, (I used green, red, and white because it’s Christmas).  I didn’t know how much string I would need so I measured thirty inches just in case. Tie each string to the first link in the chain with a simple half knot, twice.  To make sure that the string didn’t slip use Aleene’s Jewelry and Metal glue and apply a small amount to the ends of each string tied onto the first link.  The glue takes a couple of minutes to dry and be very careful to not get any glue on your skin!

Taking the six strands of string, braid a regular braid away from the chain. Stop every couple twists make sure that the bottom of the strings remain untangled, otherwise you will end up with a huge knot, (speaking from personal experience).

Continue the braid until you reach the end of at least one of the strings, at that point; cut the ends of all the strings so they are all the same length.  Glue all of these ends together carefully.  Now taking the chain and your string braid, wrap them around each other until you reach the end of the chain, once you have done this go back up the chain with the braid, covering large spots of silver chaine that you may have missed going down the silver chain with the string braid.

Now that you have wrapped the braid around the chain down and up use the glue to secure the string braid on the silver chain. When you finally attach the string to the chain use more glue then before, if it becomes unraveled it ruins the whole bracelet.

Looking at the finished product, I would still recommend a thirty inch string length in order to go down and up the chain, though if you want more of the silver chain to show, just use fifteen inches.

Happy Holidays!

Red and Gold Christmas Nails

Since Christmas is only a few weeks away, I decided to do a blog on Christmas themed nails.  I will do a variety of patterns using an OPI red color, and another OPI nail polish, a sparkly gold with a pink hue in it.  I also used NYC nail polish for a top coat of clear sparkles.

I started with the red OPI color on my thumb, the first coat dried in two minutes so I applied a second coat. When that coat dried I used the NYC clear sparkles top coat.

I used the red OPI nail polish again for my next nail.  Applying two coats and letting them dry before making a polka dot pattern. Taking a pin and a regular pencil with some of the eraser left on the top I stuck the pin through the eraser to make a dotting tool. This creates little dots and allows me to reach farther into the nail polish bottle.  I arranged the dots in a diagonal pattern on the nail rather than in a random order.

For the next nail I did a diagonal stripe pattern using strips of scotch tape. I cut three small strips of tape, (trying to all of them the same size), and placed them diagonally across my nail. I then used the OPI red nail polish and painted the entire nail. I waited ten minutes to make sure the polish was completely dry before carefully taking off the tape. Using the pin on top of the pencil I filled in the strips with the gold nail polish, carefully dotting and trying to fill in the strips as best as possible without running onto the red.

For my ring finger I used the OPI gold sparkles, applying two coats to the whole nail, let it dry, then used the red nail polish and the dotter to make one line at the top of the nail of small dots.

For my last nail I did half and half.  I used the scotch tape to cover half the nail diagonally, and then painted the red nail polish on the bottom half of the nail. I didn’t use the dotter, only the nail polish brush to paint on the gold polish on the top half of the nail.

This only took me about forty minutes, though this is just for one hand so the process of painting all my nails would probably take over an hour. If I did it over again I would forget about using the NYC sparkles on my thumb nail, but it doesn’t look so bad.

Merry Christmas!