Tutorial: Succulents Planted In Teacups

One of the most beautiful things I can think of is mismatched china and glass used to house plants. For me there’s something incredibly magical about it, perfectly eclectic and obscure. My kind of style of guess.

When I saw a friend these pretty milk and sugar jugs in the op shop I knew they were destined for a spot on my window sill, full of succulents! Below is a tutorial on how to make these yourself.

You Will Need:

Teacup and saucer, or other china you’re planing in

Potting Mix

Dynamic Lifter (or alternate fertaliser)

Succulent plant to take a cutting from

Scissors or Knife

Process:

Before you start, you need to drill a hole in the bottom of your teacup. Plants need to have drainage so that the roots don’t rot. How you do this is up to you, but I used an electric drill, and drilled through a sandwich of wood, china, wood.

Fill your teacup 2/3 to the top with potting mix, and then add some dynamic lifter. Cover with a thin layer of potting mix.

Take your large succulent plant, and cut off (with your scissors or knife) an approximately 4 inch long piece. There’s no special way to do this, just make sure you have a reasonable length cutting.

If there are small succulents in the pot that have propgated themselves, use these. They’re easier to cut through, and have a much better chance of survival.

Take your succulent cutting and dig it into the teacup. Fill the teacup with the soil making sure you pat it down firmly. Water it.

Make sure you water the succulent every second day, as new cuttings like to have a fair amount of water to get their roots going.

Tutorial: How To Make Fabric Covered Button

In the first ‘series’ of iPhone cases I made, I used fabric covered buttons to close the cases. As Luke pointed out, buttons aren’t the quickest thing to open if your phone is ringing, so in this new series of cases I’ve made the buttons ornamental, and used either velcro or clips instead. It’s not quite as aesthetically pleasing, but it does make it easier to open…

Anyway, here’s a tutorial on how to make your own fabric covered buttons. In the tutorial you can see I’ve used a scrap of fabric which is in the case, so it matches, but you can also do some embroidery on them first, like I did for that swap ages ago…

Supplies:

Scrap of fabric
Birch button making kit (you can get these from Spotlight or Lincraft
Pencil (or any smallish blunt object you can push with)
Fabric Scissors

Process:

Before we go through the steps, make sure you have everything in the kit. You should have a red rubber base, and a yellow rubber ‘top’ which fits inside the red piece. You should also have a metal ‘cover’, and a white plastic piece (this is the main foundation of the button). Sometimes the metal casing will already be over the white plastic. If this is the case, just flick it off with your finger nails, or something thin an sharp (a nail file works well).

Step One: Take the red base, and place your scrap of fabric inside, right side DOWN. Push it down a bit with a pencil or something similar.

Step Two: Place your metal cover on top (the edges should face up), and using your pencil, again, push it down. Sometimes this won’t sit perfectly, and that’s where the pencil comes in handy.

Cut the excess fabric off from around the button. A good guide is that all the fabric should sit inside the button without overlapping, so the fabric you leave should be approximately equal to the radius of the button.

If you’re unsure of how much to leave, then be cautious, you can always cut more off later.

Step Three: Once you’ve securely tucked all your excess fabric into the button, place the white button piece on top (flat surface down). Place your yellow ‘top’ over it (flat bit should be on the top), and press down HARD. I am not strong enough sometimes, so I stand on them… :-/

Below is a photo (the one with me holding the button) where you can see the button has been pushed in hard enough. You should be able to see the edges of the fabric the entire way around the button.

Take the yellow piece off, and then take the button out (the red rubber is flexible, so you can squeeze the button out). Your button is finished!!

Keeping Holiday Memories: Flag Frame Tutorial

I am a scrapbooker, so all our holidays are dilligently scrapped into massive books. All the photos, brochures, tickets etc. are stored, displayed and all the stories are told. Luke and I really love our scrapbooks, and we invest a reasonable amount of money into recording these memories for ourselves, our children, and all the generations after us. It’s like a personalised inheritence we can give to the people we love. Hopefully these will be the people who will care about us enough to take care of them, and treasure them.

Scrapbooking is great, but when it comes to displaying photos of travels it’s not always the most practical thing. Scrapbooks need to be opened, and can’t really be looked at briefly. They require time. So a few weeks ago Luke and I started brainstorming about how we could display our travel photos in a way that was easy for people coming over to our house to see. We ended up with the idea of a photo wall.

The idea of the photo wall is that you display a selection of your travel photos in a big collage on the wall. We’re framing our photos, and to make it clearer which country a photo was from, we’re painting them into flags!

Here’s a tutorial on doing a simple flag (France). The principles are the same for a more complicated flag (Australia, UK etc).

You Will Need:

Frames (We used frames from IKEA- they’re 3 for $3)

Paint in the appropriate colour for your flag

Paint brush

Clean water in a bowl

Small bowl for making a watery paint

Lead pencil and ruler

Process:

Step One: Take the plastic/glass and backing out of your frame. Prepare your area (perhaps cover it with newspaper etc)

The french flag is three even sections of colour, so we measured the frame and divided it into 3. With a lead pencil and a ruler, lightly mark each third.

Step Two: Prepare your paints. Put some blue paint in the small bowl, and add smidges of water until you end up with a watery paint. Test it on the back of the frame to check that you can see the wood grain under it. It’s important that your paint isn’t TOO watery, or else it will bleed on the frame.

Put some of the regular, thick, paint onto your paint brush and paint a thin line to the left of the first third (do both the top section, and the bottom). Make sure you paint down each side of the line, not just the top.

Quickly take some of your watered down paint, and paint the left section. Paint up to the line of regular paint.

Step Three: While both your paints are still wet, take your brush and brush over the line of regular paint, and down into the watery paint. Imagine you are ‘rubbing out’ the line, and blending it into the rest of the paint.

Step Four: Once you’ve done the blue section, repeat the process for the red section.

Step Five: In the middle section we use a technique which is applicable any time you are painting up to a section that has already used the ‘thick paint line’ technique.

In this white section you can just paint using your watered down paint, up the blue and red lines. Be as neat as possible, going TO the line, but not over it.

I waited until both my blue and red sections were completely dry before I started on the white, this meant that I could hold onto those sides, and not risk smudging anything, or getting colours mixed.

Step Six: Let your frame dry competely. In the mean time, have your photo printed. If it’s an IKEA frame, or something similar, then you’ll need to take the protective plastic off the ‘glass’ plastic.

Step Seven: Put your photo in with the glass and backing, and it’s ready to display!

I haven’t finshed my wall yet, so I can’t show you them all together, but I’ll let you know when it’s done!