DIY

Craft Stick Bracelets Craft

When I was in junior high school, the thing everyone was making and wearing was toothbrush bracelets. I didn’t think to buy some cheap toothbrushes to do those as well with my kids, but I wish I had. Maybe in the future. But, we did make craft stick bracelets like I mention as a craft during in our DIY Summer Camp series.

Craft Stick Bracelets - bracelet on wrist

Craft Stick Bracelets Craft

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You can find more fun crafts to do with your kids in our Backyard Summer Camp: Craft Theme. Have some fun at home with your kids this summer as we all try to find a new normal.

What you need:

a pot of water – boiling
jumbo craft sticks
drinking glasses
washi tape, markers, other crafts supplies

How to make Craft Stick Bracelets

You need a pot, large enough for your craft sticks to fit in it.

Make use you have use more crafts sticks than you want to use for bracelets, you may have some break later on.

You need to boil your sticks for 30 minutes. And then, you are going to let them sit in the hot water for another 15 minutes.

Leave the sticks in the water as you do this next part, only taking them out one at a time. Use tongs to remove them from the hot water.

The craft sticks are not hot, I easily handled them with my bare hands. I bend them in a circle, molding them inside of a drinking glass.

This is where having extras comes in handy, I had one snap as I bent it. And after they dried I noticed one of the end had split a little bit.

These are going to take awhile to dry. Now, I read a number of different posts from Pinterest on how to make these and they all said they would be dry overnight. Ours were not. I was mad, and all I could think was, “I spent an hour doing this for nothing?!”.

I left them in the glasses even after thinking that because I was mad. BUT it didn’t occur to me until later that we have high humidity here. It can take things later to dry. By the afternoon they were hard. Time not wasted after all.

So, if they do not dry overnight, give them more time. Do not get cranky like me.

Decorate Your Craft Stick Bracelets

Now, you and your kids get to decorate them, this is the fun part.

Markers will run along the grain of the wood. Just, you know, a heads up.

The ways you can decorate these are endless. You can take another jumbo craft stick, trace it on cardstock and then use mod podge to “glue” it on, and then add another coat to keep it on and to give it some shine. You could also do this some thing with a photo. I think that could be very special and fun for some best friends to do together.

Use can use washi tape to decorate them as well, whether you use a long piece over the front of your bracelet or wrap different tapes of tape around it.

Each craft stick bracelet is going to be unique and speical.

Craft Stick Bracelets

Active Time: 1 hour

Additional Time: 12 hours

Total Time: 13 hours

Difficulty: Easy

A fun way to make unique bracelets with your kids.

Materials

a pot of water - boiling
jumbo craft sticks
washi tape, markers, other crafts supplies

Tools

drinking glasses
large pot

Instructions

You need a pot, large enough for your craft sticks to fit in it.
Make use you have use more crafts sticks than you want to use for bracelets, you may have some break later on.
You need to boil your sticks for 30 minutes. And then, you are going to let them sit in the hot water for another 15 minutes.
Leave the sticks in the water as you do this next part, only taking them out one at a time. Use tongs to remove them from the hot water.
The craft sticks are not hot, I easily handled them with my bare hands. I bend them in a circle, molding them inside of a drinking glass.
These are going to need to dry for at the very least, 12 hours. Mine took longer due to out humidity.
Remove from the glasses, and decorate.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies You’ll Love

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

We are in the middle of a kitchen reno after moving and everything is getting a face lift, including my table box that my husband made me a few years ago. Now instead of beat up painted jars that were catch all jars, I have pretty painted jars that are storage for homeschool supplies.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies You’ll Love

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

This was a simple up-cycle, reuse project. We have an eat-in kitchen and the dining room table is where we do the majority of our lessons. I have a warm, inviting pale pale yellow with white wainscot on the walls, with grey cupboards. I wanted to use more grey at the eat-in side of the kitchen and this was the perfect place to do it.

What I used:

old jars – I used tall salsa jars
paint – color of your choice
twine

What you need:

hot glue gun
hot glue gun sticks
paint brush
plastic flowers of you choice – I got mine from the Dollarama.

What I did to make these decorative storage jars:

I painted my jars outside because the day was perfect, nice and sunny warm, making the paint dry fast. Painting on glass, in my experience, is not easy. I did I quick coat over each of the four jars and let it dry. I did not paint the very top where I was going to be gluing the twine.

The next coat I cheated a bit on, I only painted down as far as I needed, to where the box would hide the rest. I just did a quick and let it dry until the next day.

Using my hot glue gun I wrapped and glued the twine around the top of jar. My finger tips were sore by the time I finished all four jars.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies

I knew I wanted to use these jars to store our school supplies. Things like pencils, scissors, glue sticks, erasers, etc. But I didn’t want it to look ugly so I picked up fluffy, plastic flowers that would cover that covered the tops of the jars.

We cut them down to size so they fit perfectly in the jars. The pencils are holding one flower up, but that is because they are new and my kids haven’t had a chance to use them all yet. That flower will be sitting right in no time.

Updating a Fridge on A Budget – Painting Our Fridge

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

I think homeschoolers know how to make a budget work pretty well, and how to make things work on that budget. Often homeschoolers are one-income families, and one a budget. That one income budget is why our fridge got an updated, painted look instead of buying a new one, or even newer one. Updating a fridge on a budget is the easiest update I’ve done in our house yet.

Updating a Fridge on A Budget

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After almost eight years away from our house, renting it during that time, we moved back. I did not want to move back but I knew it was right for our family at this time. It’s a small three bedroom bungalow, not big enough for us, and a tiny home in comparison to our last two houses.

I could have cried when I walked in. People did not respect it (or us) in the time we were gone. With the elbow grease cleaning done, most of the unpacking done, it was time to start getting stuff done.

Fridge Update Instead of Buying New

Why did I choose to do this instead of buying new? Two reasons. My budget said I could buy a new dishwasher (which I didn’t know didn’t work) or a new fridge. The fridge still works, and inside, looks great. the dishwasher even with a new part was going to need more parts to make it usable everyday.

I could have left it rusted, but, I don’t love this house, and having one big ugly thing sitting in my kitchen which normally my favorite room of a house, was not helping. It just felt unclean even though I knew it was clean.

The Before:

Updating a Fridge on A Budget - Painting Our Fridge before

I spent a total of $20 on supplies, but I definitely could have gotten away with a much smaller can of paint had I had more options and wanted to, or could have, shopped around. But $17 for a can of paint that can be be used on other projects is still about $500-700 less than a new fridge. I will say if I could do this over, I would have bought a small roller instead of using a paint brush.

I followed the directions on the can of rust paint, and lightly sanded the surfaces. It looked better and cleaner with just that.

The first coat made it look so good. I could have left it at that to be honest but wanted to make sure the rust was completely covered.

The second coat followed 3 days later, because I forgot to go back to it.

I also used some old black paint I had bought for a different project forever ago and did a quick coat of paint over the brown handles.

The After:

Updating a Fridge on A Budget - Painting Our Fridge after - clean white fridge

Is it perfect? Nope. But I feel a lot better with it now. It looks as good on the outside as it does on the inside. Someday we’ll upgrade, but for now I’m happy with this. I never thought I’d be painting an appliance.

Washi Tape School Supplies for Your Homeschool

by Ashley Mullen

Washi tape is a fun way to make your school supplies unique and reflect your own personality. Which is exactly what I wanted my kids to do. It’s a great perk of homeschooling, getting to be unique and embrace their personality. Washi tape school supplies is just one way to do that.

Washi Tape School Supplies

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Washi isn’t really all the expensive. I have seen it at the dollar store before, though do you think I could find it there when I actually wanted to buy lots of it? No. But that just seems to be the way things go though I guess.

School Supplies you can Washi Tape

I sat down and made a list of the school supplies that we could personalize with washi tape. I’m sure this list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

pencils
glue sticks
notebooks
tablet charger
binder clips
ruler
clipboards
binders
dividers
paperclips – use to make inexpensive bookmarks
phone/tablet case

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On the first day of school we decorated our notebooks with washi tape. They got to make each of their notebook unique to them. It was a simple, relativiely inexpensive way for them to express their personalities. . . . #homeschooling #homeschoolart #artsandcrafts #secularhomeschool #homeschoolfreedom
A post shared by Ashley (@forgetfulmomma) on Sep 8, 2019 at 8:21am PDT

One the first day of school, I thought it might be a good idea to just give them their new composition notebooks and a pile of washi tape, and let them make their notebooks their own. We lucked out that I found some space tape and my oldest was super eager to use that one on her space notebook.

How I like using Washi tape

I like using my Washi tape in my Happy Planner. It’s a fun, easy, way to add a splash of color to my pages. Plus, honestly, it is cheaper than buying Happy Planner stickers which can get pricey.

The paper clip (shown below) is the easiest, most inexpensive bookmark I have ever made. Because it is a paper clip, it’s not sliding off the page loosing my spot which drives me crazy. My kids didn’t make any, probably too practical for them, so I think I’ll be making a few more for their books, both homeschool books and their casual, relaxed reading books.

With my kids having decorated their notebooks, it is super easy to tell which one belongs to who. Their personalities literally shine off them with the shiny, and glitter tape that some of them used.

DIY Bath Bombs Without Citric Acid

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Science can be full of fun reactions in the kitchen, or in this case in the bathtub! We all love relaxing in the tub, or in the case of my younger children, playing in the tub. What could be more fun that fizzing color in the bath tub that smell good too? We love making and using these bath bombs.

How to Make Bath Bombs Without Citric Acid

*This post contains affiliate links, see out disclosure policy for more information.*

We spent some time last week making bath bombs without citric acid, just using what we had in the house already.

We tried out four different bath bombs recipes, all four are without citric acid because trying to find it in our small town lead to very high prices that I didn’t want to pay.

The internet was full of ideas that we took and ran with, making our own. There are four of us that made bath bombs, each of us using and making a different recipe to test and enjoy.

The first two recipes used cream of tartar, which is suppose to be a good substitute for citric acid, but at least in Canada, can be a little more pricey than you might want to spend, and not everyone has it in their cupboard.

Coconut Bath Bombs

What you need:

1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup epsom salt – we used coconut scented
1 cup baking soda
4 tbsp cream of tartar
2 1/2 tbsp coconut oil
water (in a spray bottle)
essential oil – optional

How to make them:

Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix in coconut oil. Spritz with the water, making sure to mix well in between sprays.

Pack as tightly as possible, and let sit for at least 5 hours before removing from your mold or mini muffin tins.

Let sit for a few days before putting into a jar for storage or before wrapping to gift.

This recipe was the only one that didn’t fizz a lot, it dissolved nicely in the water, and I enjoyed it. This one might be more for the moms.

Small Batch Bath Bombs

What you need:

2 tbsp baking soda
1/2 tbsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp lavender epsom salts
1/2 tsp almond oil
3/4 tsp water
food color – optional

How to make them:

Mix dry ingredients together in one bowl, mix wet ingredients together in another bowl.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry, making sure to continuously whisk to prevent a reaction in the bowl.

Pack as tightly as possible, and let sit for at least 5 hours before removing from your mold or mini muffin tins.

Let sit for a few days before putting into a jar for storage or before wrapping to gift.

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Lemon Juice Bath Bombs

What you need:

1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
food color – optional
essential oils – optional

How to make them:

Mix together the baking soda and coconut oil, if adding essential oils, do so now.

Put your lemon juice into a small spray bottle.

Spray the baking soda mixture once, stir, spray once, stir until you get a clumpy mixture that is slightly wet.

Pack as tightly as possible, and let sit for at least 5 hours before removing from your mold or mini muffin tins.

Let sit for a few days before putting into a jar for storage or before wrapping to gift.

DIY bath bomb recipes - 2 bath bombs sitting on tub edge

Epsom Salt Bath Bombs

What you need:

1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup epsom salt – we used coconut scented
equal parts water and lemon juice
food color – optional

How to make them:

Mix together your Epsom salt and baking soda, and spray equal parts lemon juice and (colored) water into your mixture, making sure to mix well in between each spray.

Stirring while we sprayed the liquid in helped to prevent a reaction.

Pack as tightly as possible, and let sit for at least 5 hours before removing from your mold or mini muffin tins.

Let sit for a few days before putting into a jar for storage or before wrapping to gift.

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Amazon Moms Bath Bomb Options

I know that we aren’t all into making things such as bath bombs, and normally I’m not, I want to be, but I tend to worry about the mess, about the cost and such. I tried, and we all had fun doing it, and enjoying the end product.

There is the option to buy them premade:

Or maybe you want to try making them, but want to have everything need in one kit:

DIY

Craft Stick Bracelets Craft

Craft Stick Bracelets Craft

How to make Craft Stick Bracelets

Decorate Your Craft Stick Bracelets