In the meantime, here’s how this little project came together.

I started out with two blank canvases (18″ x 24″), some acrylic craft paint and 2 inch vinyl adhesive letters.

I painted each canvas in a light coat of paint.

Starting at the edge, I affixed the letters to each canvas.

Then I gave each canvas another coat of paint in the corresponding color.

After allowing them a few days to dry, I slowly peeled off the letters…and here they are. Super easy and super cute!

I’m really excited to have a guest blogger this week! Michelle Pino works at Skana spa in New York and has some really awesome DIY spa treatments that we all can make at home to feel a sense of luxury for a fraction of the cost. Who doesn’t love that?? Check it out!

DIY Facial Treatments: All Natural Ingredients For All Skin Types
By Michelle Pino

DIY, or do-it-yourself, has been very popular recently from plumbing to remodeling the kitchen. Cosmetic products have not been left behind in the trend. Facials, face and body scrubs, even shampoos and conditioners have gotten in on the DIY bandwagon. However, there is one important difference in DIY cosmetics.

Unlike plumbing or construction, DIY cosmetics do much more than just save money. The ingredients in homemade cosmetics are pure, and the user of the cosmetics can rest assured that they are safe to use.  Additionally, modern food and drug research points to the fact that certain fruits, vegetables and other natural products can benefit the skin from the outside as well as from within.

This is not to say it is OK to scrimp on the fruits and veggies we put inside our bodies. The benefits of applying vitamins and minerals topically are not the same as consuming them. Do both! Eat your fruits and veggies and wear them too. The key is in knowing which products are right for the skin you are in. Below are recipes for DIY facial cosmetics for dry or oily skin.

DIY Facial for Dry Skin
Avocados contain vitamin E and natural oils, making them great for  moisturizing. Combined with yogurt, this DIY face treatment will both soften and exfoliate, or help slough off dead skin cells that can dull the complexion.

Ingredients for Avocado-Yogurt Moisturizing Facial Mask:
1 ripe avocado
4 TBS plain yogurt

Method:
Peel and seed the avocado. Put into a blender and add the plain yogurt. Blend until smooth. Avoiding the eye area, apply the mask and leave it on for 15 minutes. Rinse with warm water.

DIY Facial Mask for Oily Skin
An astringent is an agent that shrinks body tissue. Honey, a natural astringent along with green apple, another astringent,  makes a great facial mask for oily skin. However, you should only use a facial mask for oily skin once or twice monthly. Oily skin needs exfoliating too. Adding nutmeg will accomplish this.

Ingredients for Honey & Green Apple Facial Mask
-1 TBS honey
-1 tsp nutmeg
-2 TBS grated green apple

Method:
Peel, seed and grate the apple. Put the apple and the other ingredients in a blender. Blend the mixture well. Apply and leave on for 15 minutes. Rinse off with warm water.

Michelle Pino wrote this article. Michelle currently works at Skana Spa at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino, where she learns tips and tricks to share. Michelle enjoys writing, cooking, crafting and blogging of course!

I got a juicer for my birthday last year and I quickly became addicted to trying new fruit and vegetable juices. I’ve tried countless recipes and I think I’ve perfected what I’m calling the best recipe of them all. Bold, I know. But I stand by my claim. This stuff is pure GOLD.

On the weekends, I hit the farmer’s market and stock up  so I can make a big batch that we live off of for a few days. While I wash everything thoroughly, I’m very mindful of the fact that it’s not meant to have a shelf life, so I try to drink it within 3-4 days. I juice complimentary items together and reserve the pulp to make carrot cake, baby food and pasta sauce.

Okay, so here’s the recipe and some additions/substitutions. Let me know what you think!

e.Claire’s Super Delicious Juice Recipe
Makes about a gallon

1 five lb. bag of carrots, peeled
1 small head of celery*
4 organic red apples, cored and sliced
4 organic green apples, cored and sliced
3-4 pears, cored and sliced
3 oranges or 6 tangerines, peeled
2 bags of organic spinach
2 cucumbers, chopped (lots of nutrients in the skin, so don’t peel these)
1 red bell pepper, cored and sliced
1 green bell pepper, cored and sliced
1 lemon, peeled
1 quart of blueberries
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled

*Celery has a really strong flavor, which I don’t mind, but you might want to start with 1/2 half a head and go from there.

Seasonal additions:

In the winter, I’ll toss some sliced beets or beet greens into the mix, which I LOVE and are so amazingly good for you, but they totally, totally dominate the flavor so be conservative at first.

In the summer, I’ll add a few peaches to the recipe…but it could be argued that fresh summer peaches are meant to enjoy all by their delicious selves. So, I only juice them if I have an abundance on hand.

Just make sure to wash everything really well. I also core, seed and slice everything so as not to overwork my juicer. Shake or stir before pouring each glass as it will settle and separate in the fridge. Hope you enjoy!

I got a head start last month and searched a few thrift stores for wool sweaters. Any type of wool will felt (lambswool, angora, etc.) as long as it’s 100% wool. I lucked out and found a few sweaters pretty quickly, but I knew I needed more, so I asked my sister to join in on the search and she scored big time. Thanks Anna!

Felting is really quite easy, but it’s time consuming, so I allowed myself a few days to complete the process. The key to felting is a hot wash, lots of agitation, a cold rinse, and a hot dry cycle. Some people do it by hand, but I really needed to expedite the process, so I used my washer & dryer. When doing this, the most important thing is to protect the machine from all the lint that felting creates. So, I put each sweater in an old pillow case and secured the ends tightly with a rubber band. We have a front loading washer, so I added some old towels to the load to help with the agitation. Using the longest wash cycle and hot water, I let the machine do its job. After a cold rinse, I took the sweaters out of the pillowcases and tossed them in the dryer to dry on high heat. Then I repeated that process a few times. Super easy and it worked like a charm! My sweaters felted perfectly and shrunk to about 1/4 of their original size. After the last dry cycle, I laid them out flat to cool and to prevent any wrinkles from setting.

Felted and ready to go!

I grabbed my hearty sewing scissors and cut the sweaters into 1 1/2 inch strips and then cut the strips into 1 1/2 inch squares.

Sweater strips.

1 1/2 inch squares

Armed with a pile of wool squares and some thin wire that I grabbed from my jewelry supplies, I started threading the wire with the wool.

Here we go!

Threading the wool onto the wire.

Thirty-two pieces of wool will make a wreath about 4 inches in diameter. I thought that was a good size for ornaments, so I twisted the ends of the wire to secure them, snipped off the extra wire, tied some ribbon around the wreath and ta-da!

Finished wreath!

Up-close look at the felt.

Little cuties.

The perfect little ornaments! I’m really happy with how they turned out…and just in time for Christmas. Whew!

Wishing everyone a very festive holiday season! See you all in the New Year!

She recently reached out to me to share a gift she had made for her brother’s wedding. I was completely floored by her ingenuity, creativity, and the sweet personalization of the gift. I was really happy when she said I could share it with all of you. I think this is the perfect gift for a wedding or anniversary.

Here are the details and some photos.

A year of monthly date nights – she made themed envelopes and cards for each month explaining what the date night consisted of and sewed pockets on the cards to slide tickets and gift cards inside. For example, for December’s gift, “buy some hot cocoa and drive around to look at Christmas lights”, she included  a Starbucks gift card. Another month’s theme is “go for a bike ride and have a picnic” and she included a map of a biking trail near their house. September will be their first anniversary and she told them to “recreate their first date” at the zoo and included zoo tickets.

Totally awesome, right?

Here are all of the monthly date night themes:

How amazingly sweet and creative is this gift? It has inspired me to think outside the box and invest the time into making personal gifts for a few weddings that are coming up. Hope it inspired you too!
I’d love to share a creation you’re proud of! Email me at emily@eclairecreations.com.
Till next time,

And as much as I hate to let some of them go, I really want to be able to say that someone in Seattle or Savannah or San Francisco is wearing one of my creations. So, I’ve listed a few of them for sale in my Etsy store! I hope you’ll check them out.

Here they are: http://www.etsy.com/shop/eClaireCreationsShop

Until next time, stay inspired!

~e.Claire

I hardly ever wear bracelets because I have the teeny tiniest of wrists. Before buying anything, I have to make sure I can make some adjustments to shorten the clasp, remove some beads, etc. It’s just too much work to justify the expense, so typically my wrists are naked. And a little sad.

After having fun making the karma bracelets recently, I decided to dig out my supplies and see if I could make any magic. I have a ton of beads and stones, twine and clasps…so why not try to turn them into something?

You know what happened? I fell in love! It’s like I tapped into a passion I didn’t even know I had. I got into such a rhythm that I was making several bracelets in one sitting. Here are a few photos:

I decided to do something that, looking back, seems WAY overdue….and I’m super excited to announce that I’ve opened up my very own Etsy shop! Yep, eClaireCreationsShop is open for business!!

I’m totally addicted to making these little bracelets, and I’m starting to explore other types of jewelry, too. I’ll also be adding some knitted hats & scarves, decoupage projects, wine cork crafts, etc. so I hope you’ll stop by often to see what new little gems are available!

Over the weekend I prepared him for his first day of “school” and packed up diapers, clothing, pacifiers, etc. Everything had to be labeled, which brought me to a slight conundrum. How do you label a pacifier? We never bought cute little pacifiers with his name on them and even though there are endless options on Etsy, I knew I didn’t have time for anything to be shipped. So, I decided to just work with what I had on hand and get a little resourceful. I made personalized clips that attach the pacifier to his shirt using materials I happened to have around the house. This included random ribbon from my gift wrap supplies, a couple of  hair ties, and a Sharpie marker. I know…classy!

*Please note: I wasn’t even going to post this little project since it’s hardly my finest work, but I decided to since it shows that you really can create something out of nothing.

Here’s a quick rundown on how I made them.

I promise I won’t be one of those moms who sends my kid to school in anything that warrants getting picked on. But in this case, I was pretty desperate and it doesn’t seem like Sam minds all that much.

I recently spotted “karma bracelets” on Etsy and I love the concept. Chic friendship bracelets with some good karma woven in…right up my alley. It’s been more than a year since I dug out all my jewelry supplies, but my last experiment was a success, so I decided to dust off my jewelry kit and make some karma bracelets using the knots I learned when I was younger.

I found a few old necklaces that had the type of rings I was looking for, so I took them apart in the name of recycling. I found some dyed hemp twine at my local art store and thought it would work perfectly. Guess I’m still a hippie at heart.

Once I got into a rhythm I was able to make them pretty quickly. The end result? The cutest little things you’ve ever seen! Here’s how I did it.

I started with the hemp twine and some salvaged bits of old necklaces.

I cut four pieces of twine – two 30 inches long and two 20 inches long. I folded the 20 inch pieces in half, looped them thru the ring and pulled the ends thru the loop.  

 I folded the 30 inch piece in half and centered it under the two middle strands. I folded the right piece over the middle strands and under the left piece. Then I pulled the left piece under the right and middle strands and through the loop on the right side.

I then folded the left piece over the middle strands and under the right piece. Then I pulled the right piece under the left and middle strands and through the loop on the left side.

I repeated the steps – left, right, left, right . . .

Once I reached the right length, I flipped it over and started on the other side.

Then I tied a simple knot on each end.

Normally, the bracelets just tie to the wrist, but I thought I’d experiment with clasps so they could be mixed and matched easily.

And here they are! They turned out really well and were so super easy.

So, I think I’ll make a bunch and give them away as little gifts of friendship. Just doing my part to spread some good karma!

I’ve decided to be proactive this year and get a head start on holiday gifts. I don’t know about you, but the holiday season always sneaks up on me and I find myself in a rush to turn my various ideas into gifts. So, with a few weeks left of maternity leave, I’m getting started early. I’ll probably make some fabric and fleece wreaths again this year. I also have a few scarves and hats to get to work on…and yes, it’s quite strange to knit in the middle of the summer. Since I still have a lot of corks left over from my bath mat project, I thought I’d put them to good use and make wreaths out of them.

Oh yea….spoiler alert!! If you know me personally, you may find one of these under your Christmas tree…so, just act surprised or something.

It’s a pretty simple process, only involving corks, my hot glue gun and a straw wreath that I picked up from my local craft store. But, since I was only able to work on it while the little one napped, it took me a couple of days. Guess it’s a good thing I’m getting started early.

Here are some pics of the process…more posts to come!

starting supplies

I glued the corks onto the wreath in a random pattern.

*I found that leaving the plastic wrapping on the wreath helps the glue stick easier and makes for less clean-up. Tiny pieces of straw tend to fall off when the wreath is unwrapped and handled.

slowly making progress...

Once I had covered the wreath in corks, I grabbed some ribbon from my stash and tied a big bow at the top. I wrapped the ribbon a few times at the top creating a loop that the wreath can hang from.

And here it is:

ta-da!

side view

While it’s a little strange to tap into the holiday spirit in the middle of the summer, it feels great to have some time on my hands to use in an industrious manner. I have quite a few projects that I want to complete before going back to work, so stay tuned!