DIY – How I Can Do That

Rosemary The New Christmas Scent

There’s something about the scent of fresh rosemary. I’m not talking about the dried needles that you find in the herb aisle. Those over priced dried herbs have nothing on the fresh branches you can harvest from the bush.

If you haven’t handled fresh rosemary, I encourage your to get you hands on some.

The first thing I noticed was that there was the classic rosemary scent, but there’s also a spruce/pine under note that surprised me.

For many years we’ve sported an artificial tree. That started because there was a season where my husband and I were going through a financially rough. I had an artificial tree that I used in the past for a Christmas tree decorating competition. But we took over into using that tree for our family in order to free up money that would otherwise be spent on a fresh tree. As much as we prefer fresh trees, it’s just made more sense to use the one time fresh tree money and put it toward a fake tree and reallocate that money each year toward some other area in our budget. (This by no means negates how the trees are made and that they just don’t disappear–but this is a whole other conversation for another day.)

I mention this not to enter the tree debate, but to highlight the point that when I first smelt fresh rosemary, it completely brought back all the childhood memories of having fresh Christmas trees in the house. And once I found this out, I’ve started taking some rosemary inside during Christmas time just for that scent during this time of year. And also because of the amazing health benefits that rosemary has for our bodies, especially during known cold and flu season.

Advertisements

Growing Rosemary

The first picture that I started with was taken last year when I attempted to root some rosemary sprigs for some free rosemary plants. I wasn’t successful with those sprigs. But as I look back at this picture I see that 4 of the 5 sprigs are wood growth instead of green growth. And just like lavender, there’s a difference in cloning these plants depending on if you’re using new/green growth or wood/brown growth. Once I’m successful in propagation of rosemary, I’ll make a new post on how to do it and eliminate the guesswork.

Until then…

The rosemary on the left is a spraling variety. The plant on the right is an upright bush.

I found two plants at a local produce stand, at an amazing price, over the summer. One rosemary plant is more than enough for a family, with enough left over to share with friends, neighbors, and whoever else you can give it to. If you’ve seen the memes about zucchini season, warning people to lock their car doors before neighbors deposit excess zucchini in your vehicle, then you have an idea of how prolific that rosemary can be. I bought two plants because I’m a sucker for variety (thus the reason why I got a sprawling and an upright bush varieties). But rosemary is one of my favorite ingredients that I love putting into hair and skincare products and soaps that I’ve been making.

As you can see above, I’m in the process of making a new flower/garden bed. It wasn’t ready as all when I got the rosemary so I improvised. And I’m sharing this unfinished project because I want you to know that you don’t have to be finished with a build before you can get a plant “in the ground” and start establishing itself. I’ll come back to this in the future, when I have the build completed.

In the mean time… note that I used cylinder pipes and filled it with soil. When I planted these rosemary, the root ball literally fit in my hand, so the 12″ cylinder, that stand about 10″ tall were more than enough to set up these starts. There’s more than enough room for the root structure to grow over the winter. And in the spring, which I plan on having this bed finished, I can remove these pipes once the soil has been laid. In the mean time I need to lay some woodchips down to help insulate these plants before we get our expected snow in about a month or so. We live in a temperate area, so I’m not concerned about killing off the root system. I would be more concerned if we lived in an area with subzero winter weather.

One thing that I love about rosemary is that it is a drought resistant plant, as it is originally from the Mediterranean area. Once rosemary is established, it’s a plant that all you have to do is keep an eye on it to make sure that is free from pest and disease. One valuable resource for that information can be found here at Farmer’s Almanac. But this plant will be here for you for many years.

Advertisements

Health Benefits

This is absolutely one herb that you want to keep ready in your kitchen for not just maintaining your health, but also for food medicine.

Food medicine is alternative pharmaceuticals. If you are trying to reduce the amounts of chemical medicine (because of side effects or other complications), medicine from herbs and other foods are great for giving your body the building blocks it needs to maintain your health or boost your immune system to do the work it was designed to do.

Some of the benefits of rosemary are:

Contains antioxidants
Boosts mental alertness
Active studies on combating Alzheimers
Stimulate hair growth
Antimicrobial properties
Relieve indegestion
Promote metabolic health
Anti-Inflamatory
Studies in protecting against brain damage of stroke victims
Studies in slowing the spread of cancer cells
Relieve muscle and joint pain related to arthritis
Insect repelent
Increase circulation
Boost immune system
and so much more!

It was not so long ago that the pharmaceutical industry was created. Before then, families would treat themselves with food and herbs. This is not to say that pharmaceuticals don’t have their place. But what we are not told is that drug companies cannot patent plants, found in nature. So there is a huge industry in modifying plants. If a plant can be modified so that it cannot be grown in nature, then that plant can be patented and then be purchased at a premium price. The same goes with pharmaseudicals. They started out with plants found in nature and then the natural compounds are extracted and manipulated until they are at a point where they cannot be found naturally. These compounds can then be patented and sold at a premium price. These compounds are manipulated to be “fast acting”. So when you see “fast acting” on packaging on over the counter drugs, it is in comparison to natural compounds.

Advertisements

There is a large conversation that can be had on this subject. I bring it up because most people are not aware that the natural compounds are available in common plants and are just as effective if not more effective than some drugs because the natural compounds are not subject to being ineffective (drug resistance) by our immune system, as our body starts to recognize that these “medicines” are not natural/found in nature. So our bodies are not able to break the compounds down and fuel our immune systems to combat the situation we’re dealing with.

Again, this is not to negate or berate necesary pharmaceuticals. I just want to draw awareness of where drugs actually start from and why they might not be effective or stop being effective. And if this happens, it’s not the end all that causes you to stop having hope of being treated for whatever it is that you’re facing. So please do your own research and have conversations with your healthcare provider. There are always scientific studies on natural plants, like rosemary, and big health issues. It’s just that they aren’t publicized in commercials and the media because these natural plants are not and cannot be patented. So there’s not as much money that can be made from treatments from natural plants in comparison to what can be made off of patented medicines.

Identifying Rosemary

This past week I was at a party where the table decor was pine branches and rosemary sprigs were used on one of the appetizers. One of my friends happened to have one of the pine branches shed it’s needles on her plate and she couldn’t identify the rosemary to the pine needles.

If you remember what I mentioned above, about how rosemary smells like Christmas to me, smelling a pine and rosemary needle side by side may not help you decide which needle you want to eat. So I pointed out this one unique identification feature to my friend.

The underside of rosemary leaves have a white stripe down the middle.

In this case the misidentification of a pine or rosemary needle is not going to be a life threatening moment. Pine is known to have Vitamin C. In fact, during the spring I look for the new growth tips (bright yellow/green) of pine and spruce trees. The amount of Vitamin C found in this tips put citrus fruits to shame. So depending on what health needs you have, making tea from the tips of new growth pine and spruce trees, will give you far more vitamin C than eating citrus fruit or taking Vitamin C supplements/chewable.

With that little tid bit of information aside, another feature that you might want to know is the difference between the new growth of rosemary and the woody part.

With new plants, like what I have, it’s a little harder to differentiate between the two parts in comparison to an older plant. But as you see above, the new growth is white and the woody portion is a reddish brown. With a young plant like this, the woody part of the stem is still flexible. But in an older plant, the woody portion is very rigid like a tree branch.

The higher concentration of nutrients, and valuable compounds, are going to be found in these new growth portions of the branch. This is where the plant is sending all of its energy to. So if you’re looking to use your rosemary as a food medicine, this is the part of the plant that you are going to want to harvest and use.

That doesn’t mean that the rest of the leaves, lower on the branch are not useful. They still have the rosemary flavor that you want when you’re cooking with rosemary. They just don’t have as much of the active compounds that are found in the new growth region of the plant.

Advertisements

Useful Preparation of Rosemary

There are two ways that I preserve rosemary the most; dehydrating and infusing in oil.

For dehydration I’ve tried two different ways. I’ve left the leaves on the branch and dehydrated the branch with the leaves. And I’ve also removed the leaves. Dehydration time is the same either way, in my experience. But it’s easier to remove the rosemary from the dehydrator on the branch then collecting the individual leaves. So I’ve just left them on the branch and then when processing is down, I run my fingers down the limb, over a bowl, and quickly strip off the leaves. From there I save some leaves as is, which promotes the longevity of the healing compounds. Then I take some and grind it up into a powder in my herb grinder. In powder form, the compounds start to break down and become weaker around 6 months. So I only grind what I’m going to use in the near future. Otherwise I leave the leaves whole, where they retain their compound integrity for a year, upwards of two years (depending on who you talk to).

But I don’t use rosemary just for when I make my meals. I use them in the lotions and soaps that I make. In fact, the shampoo bar that I make for my hair has increased my hair health so much so that I cannot remember when my hair was this thick and healthy. It’s more healthy then even when I was pregnant with my children (which are one of the things that most pregnant women notice is that their hair health is improved). I use the leaves in the soap, but more importantly I use rosemary infused oil.

I use rosemary infused oil for everything; food and skin/health care products. So I use rosemary oil more than every other preparation. But one thing to note is that if you have more rosemary than you can process (either drying or infusing) rosemary freezes beautifully. Just leave the leaves on the branch, bag it and put it in your freezer. It will stay fresh and will not break down or wilt when you’re ready to use it.

Advertisements

Making Infused Oil

The first thing that you want to do after you cut the rosemary you will use is to rinse the branches off. Even though my plants are only a couple months old and I grow them organically, you can see below how much came off of my branches and they looked clean. All of this debris would have compromised my infusion and caused problems that are common when you read about mold and other issues people have when infusing herbs in oil.

Another problem that people have when infusing is that they put wet herbs into oil. Please remember that oil and water do not mix. What happens with water is that it becomes the medium for mold to grow (which is usually jump started by the debris that’s not washed off).

The three components that cause organic materials to break down and spoil are water, heat, and light. These three things are what feed and promote bacterial and mold growth. So whether you’re preserving food or making infusions, you want to keep these things in mind.

After rinsing off the rosemary, I air dry off the water.

There is a whole other conversation around whether to use fresh or dried herbs for making an infusion. I won’t go into that conversation here, but for delicate leaves I dehydrate them first. Plants like rosemary and lavender I go ahead and infuse fresh because of these are drought resistant plants, have thicker branches and leaves that are designed to not release the water that they have stored up inside of them. That’s not to say that I haven’t had mold grown on an infusion with these hardier plants. The times that I have, it was when the branches were above oil level (access to oxygen) and I didn’t remove the branches 6 months after the infusion was supposed to end. (It took that long for a mold colony to grow where I noticed it.)

There are also two different type of infusion you can do: stovetop or solar. Both use heat as the extraction method of the plant compounds into the oil (which I use olive oil. This is a great universal oil for cooking and soap making.)

For stovetop (or crock pot/slow cooker) the important thing to remember is to keep the temperature on your lowest setting and let it process for a few hours. I don’t do this method, but if I did I would let it run for 6-8 hours.

I prefer using the solar method because I love how it looks. And more importantly I describe myself as a busy mom. Nothing is better, in my opinion, than to spend less than 15 minutes setting something up and letting it do it’s thing over a longer period of time that absolutely does not involve me.

So after my rinsed rosemary is dried, I put the sprigs (stems and leaves) into a jar. Tightly fitting in the plant material is great because it prevents parts from floating to the top, keeping everything fully submerged when you add the oil.

On the subject of oil, not all oils are made alike. And this is another one of those points that people have failed infusions. They chose inferior oils. When you pick your oil, keep in mind what material you are using. Olive oil, grape seed oil, and a few others come from plants that are not known to be modified and with less processing. Vegetable and Canola oils are both produced from crops that are known for being genetically modified and are heavily processed (an indication that their natural plant compounds have been changed and have less natural benefits). But when you also look into the history of their origin, you will realize that they were never created for human consumption. Canola oil was formulated for World War engine lubricant. After the war, the oil was then marketed as a cooking ingredient in order to make a return on investment and because it’s cheap to produce. (For a short history of Canola, and some comparisons to other oils, can be found in the article Rapeseed to Canola: Rags to Riches by R. Keith Downey.)

For today, I used smaller mason jars. And to keep most of the rosemary stems submerged for this solar infusion, I coiled the stems into a ring shape and placed them in the bottom of the jars.

Next I poured my olive oil to the top of the jars. Then I capped them with a lid and ring. (I prefer lids and rings because you can tighten the lids tight enough so that when you shake the jars, there won’t be a leaking of the oil.)

For the next 6-8 weeks I will shake the jars and make sure the rosemary stays submersed in the oil. During the summer, I leave them in a window sill. During winter, I put the jars on my south facing windows during the day and then move them to a warm space during the dark hours. Sunlight is what causes the heat that opens up the leaves to extract the compounds and oils from the leaves.

Solar infusion takes longer than a stove top or slow cooker method because the heat temperatures do not go as high or stay sustained like a controlled heat. But the one thing that I haven’t been able to find is an article that talks about the effect that the sun has on the oil compounds themselves. (For example we know that the sun has a bleaching effect on laundry. So what else is the sun capable of doing when using it a part of the oil infusion process?)

At the end of the infusion process, no matter which method you choose, you will want to strain out the rosemary. Store it in a clean glass jar and lid. And then keep it in a cool dark place.

As with all herbs, medicinal compounds start to break down 6-12 months. This doesn’t mean that they are empty of any good. It means that they lose their effectiveness. The flavor can still be there. So as long as rosemary (and other herbs) is properly stored, they are good to be used.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Advertisements

Crayon vs. Mom

(I’m going to pepper the pictures of results through this post. So this time the pictures are not directly linked to what I’m sharing with you in that immediate space.)

Nothing causes disruption in a family more than sitting down to the laundry and finding that someone went through the wash that shouldn’t have.

This past week, my disruption was a caused when a blue crayon high jacked a tumble in my drier!

My whole load of laundry was affected. And what made me cry the most was a sweater that was gifted to me and this was its first washing.

Did I mention it was a large load of laundry?

Cotton napkins: the tags were removed so if I remember right these napkins are 100% cotton. Later on I’ll talk more about why this may be important.

Fortunately my husband was brilliant and immediately started a quick search to see if there was a possible remedy… even a small chance of not having to throw out so many clothes to the scrap bin.

He never did tell me what he found out. But two days later (when enough time had passed), I ran my own search. The videos I found were either from other housewives (and one preschool teacher) who used items they found in their homes or ken using chemicals that may or may not eat your clothes if you used it (maybe a slight exaggeration but not far off).

The teacher used a toothbrush. And I wasn’t going to go through with a toothbrush on 50+ pieces of clothes and linens. And with the options remaining… you guessed it! I chose the house wife remedies.

The ingredients that were used by all videos were vinegar and Dawn dish soap. Half also added washing soda.

This is one of my kids’ shirts. This is a blend of cotton and polyester. The tag is worn out so I can’t give the percentages.

Advertisements

Why Dawn Dish Soap?

If you think about what makes up a crayon, you find that it’s in the wax/fat or oil based. Dawn is known for being aggressive with breaking down oils and fats.

Will any dish soap work?

Absolutely not! There are a lot of cheap dish soaps out there that doesn’t break down fats and oils. If you’ve ever used cheap dish soap where you have to scrub an oily dish with the soap and absolutely no water to dilute it, you know what I’m talking about.

However, for my experiment, I used Kirkland (store brand) dish soap that is marketed as having four times the grease fighting power. This is something that Dawn is always advertising in their marketing. So I have reason to believe that this is Dawn just relabeled as the Costco store brand. Even if I’m wrong, it’s this degreasing action that I’m going for because wax is oil based, whether natural or synthetic.

Out of the three ingredients the dawn dish soap is, initially, the one ingredient that I wouldn’t skimp on. My hypothesis is that this is the ingredient that is the make or break item for this science experiment to work.

Here is another one of the kids’ shirts. This athletic shirt is also a poly blend with less cotton content than the previous shirt.

What about Washing Soda and Vinegar?

These two ingredients I’m not picky on brand and I use them interchangeable. So by all means if you have an opinion, please drop it below in the comments.

I am a homeschooling mom, but here is where my scientific knowledge is going to be lacking. We haven’t gotten to the lessons yet to understand why bicarbonates or vinegars do what they do in the laundry.

But for generations vinegar has been used when washing clothes to freshen them up (in the days before fabric softeners or laundry crystals) and give your laundry a little fluff. And that’s not even mentioning that vinegar is amazing for giving your washing machine a good little wash to break down laundry build up in the wash barrel.

This sweater I wanted to include to show what happens with a woven texture.

I suspect that vinegar is a key component in this laundry remedy because it loosens and opens the fibers up from compression. So the vinegar works in concert with the dish soap by getting in there a opening up the space for the soap to get all around the crayon wax and break it up.

In my experience there’s been no noticeable difference between a 5% acidity vinegar and the vinegar I make from apple scraps or orange when it comes to how it behaves in my laundry. Of course there is the difference of scent that comes from the apples or the oranges. But other than that, both types of vinegar (commercial vs. home ferment) behave the same.

I’m not sure how the videos with only Dawn dish soap and vinegar works supposedly as well as the videos that use dish soap, vinegar, and washing soda. The reason for this is because I know that there is a chemical reaction that happens between the vinegar and washing soda. But I’ll come back to this point when I get down to what I found when I played with the measurements of these two ingredients. The combination of the vinegar and washing soda DID have direct correlation to how much of the crayon got removed from my laundry.

These athletic pants are a poly blend that includes rayon.

Advertisements

First Things First

Before you can go back and rewash everything, the first thing that has to happen is checking to make sure that your drier is clean from residual wax.

The drier pictures I wanted to keep with this section of text.

As you can see from the pictures that I took of my drier barrel, my load was so large that the clothes kept the barrel from being covered in the crayon wax. I did have one spot next to my lint trap.

So on the one hand, this is what you want your drier to look like. And on the other hand, here is what you’re looking for. I didn’t have to go through the hassle of running my drier empty to warm the barrel up and then wipe out the crayon wax. If I did have to I favored the video where people wiped the hot drier barrel with a drier sheet. I don’t use drier sheets with my laundry, so if I had to clean out my drier this time I would have warmed up my drier barrel and then use a rag sprayed so that it became damp with vinegar.

When you’ve verified that your drier is clean, you can then move forward with treating your clothes.

This is a pajama shirt is another example of a cotton poly blend.

What’s the Recipe?

That is the real question because no one tells you the measurements of what they use for their results. They eye ball it and tell you to be generous with the ingredients.

I’m telling you that there is a difference with the amount you use and the results you will see!

Without knowing the measurements that they used, you cannot truly recreate the results that they got. So I followed the eyeballing method that I saw in all the videos. BUT I also measured what it was that I was putting in.

Full disclosure, my washing machine has a larger barrel than the standard machine. So depending on the size of your washing machine you may need to adjust the amount of ingredients that you use when this issue happens to you.

This is a 100% cotton wash cloth with a waffle weave pattern.

I split my ruined load in half to run two different batches.

For the first run of treatment (which you see the before and after two picture sets above and below) I used the following:

1 Cup Washing Soda
1 Cup Vinegar
3/4 Cup Dish Soap

Before I put the clothes back into the washing machine I started running the water into my machine. It’s important to make sure that you run the water as hot as your machine will allow. The heat is what softens the wax and makes it easier for the cleaning agents work. I also put my machine on the setting that allowed for a deep clean (where the clothes can soak for a few minutes). With the water running, here is the order that I did everything else:

Add the clothes
Pour the washing soda evenly across the top of the load
Pour the vinegar directly over the washing soda (you will see the washing soda start to foam)
Pour the dish soap as evenly as you can on the top of everything
Close the lid and let the machine run its wash cycle

This washcloth is a blend with a nap weave.

All of the pictures that you have seen above have been the worst of the worst of what got hit by the melted crayon. Everything else came out of the treatment with the wax removed.

Below this point you’ll see what the second run, with a modified measurement of ingredients. Please note that I did not run these clothes through the drier unless I was happy that they were free from was (or as you will soon see that I gave up and just accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to get the wax out).

For the second run of treatment I put in the second half of the laundry for its first laundry/treatment run PLUS the articles from the previous attempt that I wasn’t happy with. This second test, in the end, was run with a 3/4 load instead of a 1/2 load that I previously ran.

The second run of this athletic shirt removed minimal amounts of crayon wax that was left on after the first run. I resolved that I wasn’t going to be able to get any more out.

I followed the same procedure above.

Here is the change of ingredient measurements.

2 Cups Washing Soda
2 Cups Vinegar
3/4 Cups Dish Soap

Advertisements

The Results

From the second load, there was nothing that I needed to rewash a second time (like I had to do with the first treatment load). And you see the results of the first treatment load that went through the second treatment.

I hope there’s not a second time where a crayon goes through my laundry. But let’s be honest. I still have young kids so there’s still a chance.

There was an improvement on this t-shirt. However I was unable to get everything out. But my kids have worse stains from pens and paint that this was livable.

Should I need to deal with crayon damage, this is the recipe that I’m going to use and why.

2 Cups Washing Soda
2 Cups Vinegar
1/2 Cup Dish Soap

For treating the crayon damage, the washing soda and vinegar proved to be the combined more active ingredient over the dish soap. The increased dish soap amount made the clothes crispy in clothing feel when I pulled everything out of the washing machine. This is classic for when you’ve used too much soap/detergent on your clothes.

More does not necessarily mean better. And in this instance, my initial thoughts, expectations, and hypothesis were wrong.

I was most happy that this sweater had all the crayon wax removed. After all, this was the gift that I spoke about at the beginning of the post.

With the dish soap, even with the first load the fragrance was so strong that even a half cup was either already too much or at the top end of how much I should have used for the size of my washing machine. And if you’ve ever washed dishes by hand, you are aware of how little of a good soap that you need to use in your sink. I’m going to say that the same is true with using it as a treatment for your clothes in a washing machine.

Advertisements

Does the fiber content of your clothes make a difference???

I literally had no idea that I was even going to be answering this question when I set out to fix my laundry. But I did notice a difference.

What I found extremely noteworthy is that crayon wax does not want to let go of natural fibers!

The athletic pants was the most synthetic of the clothes that were most damaged by the crayon. And even with the first treatment, it pretty much came out. The cotton shirts did not want to release all of the wax. And one item I didn’t document (because I didn’t catch them until after I was done and folding all the laundry after being dried) was my bamboo socks. The socks were 100% bamboo and did not let go of any of the wax that it got from blue crayon.

I don’t have the answer for different fiber content of your affected clothes. But I did want to mention that this one fact will play in how easy or difficult it is get crayon wax out of your clothes. Synthetic fibers appear to let the wax go the easiest. Natural fibers appear to need more aggressive modes of getting the wax out, if you’re looking to fully remove it.

Advertisements

Other Options

There are other options out there that people say work for removing crayon wax from your clothes. They seem to mostly comprise of using chemicals to remove them. I’ve seen people use industrial strength degreasing cleansers (primarily used on clothes usually being cleaned from automotive oils stains) and acetone nail polish.

For me, I’m not willing to test these ones out on my clothes because I don’t want to accidentally burn a chemical hole in my clothes. And I’ve been in the process of trying to remove any chemicals from my clothes and skincare products because our world is inundated with chemicals that bombard our skin and health.

I know that not everyone shares this sentiment. So I wanted to put out the other options out there for those who do not have those issues with using those products and want to try to fully remove crayon wax. Or maybe you do share the same sentiment, but a beloved heirloom table cloth or baby clothes got damaged by crayon. Sometimes there are just instances where the personal risk is justified over your everyday choices.

What are you go to remedies for damages done in the laundry?

Paint, pen, grease, wax, etc.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Advertisements

Fill Up On The Fillings

The holidays are all coming up. And this can bring many feelings to different feelings. When adulting, the hardest part of the holidays are when finances are tight.

To help lighten the mood and bring a little cheer with the gift of flowers.

I’m going to show a simple and easy to make arrangement that you can personalize any way you want because it’s a blank slate. The beauty of it is that I reused some items and others were given to me. I had no out of pocket expenses to share this post with you.

So let’s start with the materials.

Vase

What inspired this post was the vase that my mom had sent me some flowers in.

Fall is my season. I love pumpkin everything. In fact I grow and purchase pumpkins to have all my pumpkin goodness that I can preserve for the rest of the year. And yes, I make pumpkin scones year round because their deliciousness transcends what is in season.

Unfortunately I can’t send you a picture of what the floral arrangement was that my mom sent. Mostly because I want to keep the blank slate in your mind and spark your creativity.

What I like about this white pumpkin is that if you remove all the floral it is literally a cookie jar. So feel free to use this idea any time of year and use cookie jars, old tea pots, water pitchers, even a shoe box (hello baby shower with baby shoe boxes!) Literally, use what you have on hand that brings you inspiration.

If you’re using a cookie jar or anything else with a lid, let me show you the parts of this vase and how it works.

This lid stand/holder is very specific for floral. I’m sure with today’s online offerings, you could find these. But you’re going to have to know what your lid size is and go from there. I have one other cookie jar, but the lid is smaller and this stand/holder definitely will not fit in it.

However I do have two options off the top of my head that I could use from items I have in my house.

I have porcelain dolls from my childhood, and this stand/holder immediately reminded me of the doll stands I have that go around my dolls’ waist. The tension part is too small to fill the lid like in this pumpkin vase, but with two or three I could position them in the smaller lid to make the tension and platform to raise the lid.

Another option is making one from a thick gauge wire. If your local store has a DIY floral department or aisle, you will find wire thick enough to hold its shape and hold the weight of a lid. If you want to price comparison shop, go to an automotive shop or aisle. You’ll often find that you will get a better price in that department, but also walk out with a larger quantity of wire.

Once you have the wire, you can make your own custom holder/stand by leaving several inches of one leg sticking out as you then go in and create a loop of wire inside the lip of your cookie jar lid. I would make a few loops inside that lid to ensure that when you move and manipulate the legs that you don’t shrink your loop and allow your lid to fall. Once you’re confident in you loop, bring out a second leg and then use wire cutters to cut the wire. You can always add more than two legs if you feel like you need to add more stability.

Advertisements

Inner Stability

For lid placement, you will need something to anchor the stand into.

I’m choosing to reuse the oasis that came with the flowers my mom sent me. This is an amazing product because it not only allows you to place flowers like a pin in a pin cushion. It also allow absorbs and holds water, keeping your flowers in water much longer than free standing in just a vase of water.

If you want to use silk flowers that you have on hand, feel free to use a Styrofoam ball or block. (I don’t recommend styrofoam for fresh flowers because the plastic will kill your flowers and won’t allow them to be properly hydrated.

Once you’ve decided what you’re using as a structure (of if you’re even using a structure), you may find that you need to piece bits together to keep them from falling into your cookie jar and becoming lost. Flower stems are enough to keep bits together. However if you need everything to be in place before you get started on your flowers, know that toothpicks or a couple inches of wire are your best friend.

As you can see here, a single toothpick is all that was needed to hold up a water logged piece of oasis.

This is a beneficial trick if you only have a small sliver of oasis that doesn’t touch the bottom of your vase. Or even if you find that your oasis fell apart on you. Or maybe some oasis you salvaged was a different size than the vase you are working with. You can certainly make your oasis fit the vessel you choose to use.

TIP: Please note that placing a toothpick or wire in a 90° angle is going to cause frustration. The weight of wet oasis and flowers are going to collapse. So instead, angle the toothpick at a 45° angle. That way when gravity starts to work against you, the toothpick will hold its place. This will be further reinforced by the flowers that you soon add.

Advertisements

Flowers

The Flowers that I was gifted after an event I attended was baby’s breath and eucalyptus. Often we look at these as just fillers to make an arrangement look larger than the more desired stems.

I wanted to use these fillers specifically because they are often overlooked for being used as flowers on their own. Maybe you have a lot of fillers left over from other arrangements that you made. Or maybe your budget is tight and these are the only flowers that are in your price range.

There are so many other fillers that you can find in your grocery store. So please keep your eyes open. And not all stores offer the same offerings. The grocery stores don’t supply very many filling options. However, stores like Trader Joe’s offer the best selection of filler flowers in my area. And their prices are quite affordable.

TIP: If your local store doesn’t offer many choices for filler flowers take a look at what is available for discounted flowers. They’re the ones that have the more delicate flowers that are wilted. These discounted bouquets are often cheaper than just fillers flowers, but the fillers used in these bouquets still have a long life to them. There are a huge number of flowers that will last weeks without even having water available to them. So know that even all that you can afford is a heavily discounted, on its last leg bouquet, if there’s a decent amount of fillers included, you can make a decent arrangement even if you have to throw out the wilted roses, lilies, and other delicate petal flowers.

Advertisements

Arranging

When looking at using long stems of filler, like eucalyptus, you will be happier in how these stems lie when you hold them up and see which direction they are naturally bending. (See the right picture below.) If you want the stem to cascade down, angle the bend down and also put it in the oasis by entering from the bottom and putting the stem upward. This can be seen in the picture on the left.

See the difference between placing firm eucalyptus stems. Using the left picture (above) the stems you see in the bottom right corner are the stems that I angled from the bottom of the oasis and pushed upward. The one stem that is in the upper left corner is the one that I pushed from the top and downward. But this stem I also used a second trick. Even with the curve of this stem, it had the tendency to stand upright. So I curved the stem in a C shape and kind of hooked the stem in the oasis. Then I put the pumpkin lid over this stem to weigh it down. Even with this trick, the stem never gave a cascading down effect like you see with the bottom right corner stems.

How you place the stems is everything about how it stands up or lays down.

The baby’s breath is much easier to shape the way that you want. For this cookie jar I used about four stems of baby’s breath and snipped them down into smaller branches. And with an arrangement like this, there’s no need for long pieces. All you need are the “scrap” pieces or bits that are the size of your hand or smaller.

If you “scrap” pieces or the bits that you cut down are too small, it just means that you need more of them to fill larger spaces.

One work around for filling empty spaces quicker is to take larger pieces like this. In the below picture on the left is a stem that is about the length of my elbow to my wrist. It could have been trimmed down into four smaller stems, but I wanted to fill a large hole with just this one piece.

To close up the gap spacing between these branches, slide your fingers up the main stem, gathering all the stems up the main stem. That gathering bunches all the stems up to achieve what you see in the right picture. You will have to hold you stem in this position until you push it into the oasis. At that point, the foam holds bunching in place.

Before you place your first gathered stem, I want to draw your attention to a stem feature that has the potential of causing you some up front frustration.

The weakest part of the baby’s breath stem is the joint where all the branches merge. The times that stems snap, when placing them in oasis, is when I try to push these joints in without giving them assistance.

If you have an arrow tip like you see above, it’s easiest if you just snip that off. It causes resistance, when pushed in the oasis, that you don’t need, because those stem numbs have no flowers.

Look further up on the stem and you see what it looks like when you have attached flowering stems. When I don’t need the height from the stem, I snip it right there at the base of where all the stems merge. Then I slide my fingers down to make more of an arrow point instead of a tear drop. That fat end of the tear drop is difficult to push into oasis. However, if you make a sharper point, or a smaller surface area to push in, the stem slides right into the oasis.

If there are any other merges in the stem, it’s easiest if you pinch it smaller to get it to go into the foam. Depending on how large of a cluster you have, there may be a few of these joints that you have to manipulate into the foam.

Advertisements

Final Adjustments

Once you’ve filled in all your empty space, there’s a few decisions to make.

Do you add more of one filler or the other?
Was there too much and some needs to be removed?
Does placement need to be adjusted?
Is something missing?

I looked at the final arrangement here and went through these same questions. All the holes I filled with baby’s breath as that’s what I chose to be primary flower out of these two fillers.

The thought crossed my mind to add more eucalyptus. But I opted with the creative decision of having less leaves on my pumpkin “vines”. So that meant instead of removing branches of eucalyptus I chose to weave the branches through the clusters of baby’s breath.

As far as “am I missing anything?” that is the question that is always there when you have a blank canvas for an arrangement.

Right now this is how my pumpkin sits in my living room. But it also allows me to keep this long lasting arrangement in season through the rest of the year. For Thanksgiving, I could add fall leaves or any other fall accent pieces. For December all the fall accent pieces can be pulled out of the oasis and winter pieces added. For example, I would put in snowflakes or mini presents. In fact, I’m eye balling some mini glitter snowflakes while writing this. The question is if I want to keep with the white color and add silver glitter snowflakes. Or do I want to add a splash of color and put in gold snowflakes?

But that’s the beauty of making a simple arrangement like this. I can dress it up and change it.

In fact, I could keep this up for the New Year and put in foil clusters that look like fireworks.

For now I’m just going to have to contain myself and not entertain my kids. It’s so easy to grab their small stuffies and other toys and use them as props to make little scenes. We don’t do Elf on the Self in our house, but just like there’s millions of Pinterest posts on Elf on the Shelf ideas, there’s just as many possibilities for arrangements like this. It doesn’t matter if you have a pumpkin cookie jar like vase (like I used here) or a teapot or coffee cup. No matter what you are using as a unique vase, you have just as many options to accessorize and decorate without limits.

How would you dress up a pumpkin arrangement like this?

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Advertisements

Ombre Fun

While I made a component for last weekend’s Maker’s Market I played with glitter. I slowed down my mass production to share an easy way of creating an ombre effect that’s nearly effortless and will take every time for me.

The secret is all about your glue choice.

Growing up I always used Elmer’s Glue for sticking power. For ombre work, I find it’s the worst glue. There’s a few reasons for this, but for me the biggest problems I had was holes between two colors, awful looking clumping, and stark lines that just looked weird.

I’ve switched to using cheap watery glue instead.

Have you ever watched a professional cookie maker flood the icing to get that smooth design? Using watery glue has the same effect for creating glitter ombre!

So whether you’re new to crafting with glitter or use glitter on everything, more fluid glue is going to be your best friend. You can glue the sections you want to use one color glitter. Or you can lay down all your glue at once. The fluid movement of this type of glue is going to cause the glitter to drift a little and cause a natural blend. Not only that but if you have to go back in and add more glue because a spot was unexpectedly dry, a single drop will fill that hole and spread into the already laid glitter with no gaps.

Advertisements

Laying Down the Glue All at Once

This is my favorite way of doing ombre, particularly because I want to move quickly and optimize my production time.

First I get my glitter selection lined up. This is what allows me to lay a handful of colors while the glue is still wet.

Before I lay down the glue, I also decide which direction I want my colors to run; horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

With that all prepped, that’s when I go ahead and lay the glue. I start at one end of my element and shake the glitter side to side to make a straight line. (Or a zig zag if I want peaks and valleys.)

If I’m going to make my own color blend, I’ll go ahead and shake out all the colors at once, without stopping between colors to put them back in their containers.

However, if I’m keeping my colors true, then I’ll lay that first edge color. Then shake off the excess with the glitter side down. Put the glitter away. Then grab the next color, shake out that next line. Shake off the excess with glitter side down. And repeat the whole process until all my glitter is put away.

Just so that you can go into this with confidence, I want to share with you the colors that I used here in Welcome Fall. The first color I used was a pale gold (as opposed to the bright and bold gold you usually see during Christmas). I followed that up with a bright pumpkin orange. And the final was a cherry red. I didn’t have concerns with the gold and orange because they had a similar base color that matched perfectly. The red doesn’t look bad here. I pulled it off in the final project that this was going on. However if you ever find that you’re questioning your color choices before you glue, I highly recommend taking some of the neighboring color and adding it in with the color you are hesitant with. This will tone down, and help bring the color into the family.

OR… another option, which you’ll see in the second picture above, let your middle color slide down on the glue and creates a drip effect. This will help from creating a stark line that can potentially form with colors of glitter that compete with each other.

Advertisements

Making Your Own Blend

As I mentioned above, you can blend your colors together. This green that I made is a perfect example of what happens when you blend.

The only green glitter I had on hand was a lime green that I bought from a spring line of glitter. There was no way that I could make that Easter egg green work in a fall theme. So I grabbed my blue and purple glitters to blend a darker green. If you look closely at this picture, you might be able to pick up the different colors. Around the middle, you’ll see some grains of blue that has a turquoise to it. And then around the perimeter you see the darkness of the purple glitter.

Maybe, you don’t want to make your own darker shade of green. Maybe you want a different color. How do you mix it?

Think about mixing paint and how when you use primary colors (red, yellow, blue) you make secondary colors (orange, green, purple). Glitter is going to work in the same manner. The big difference is that you’re not changing the individual grains of glitter to a new color. You’re creating the illusion of a new color by mixing different colors.

For the green that I made, I used the blue to take away the brightness of the lime. These two colors still have a fresh spring green color, so the addition of a darker color, like purple, makes the green dark. I didn’t use precise measurements. I added a little bit at a time so I don’t use my whole glitter stash and run out of colors to make corrections. Over all, it came down to the ratio of the lime taking up 50-60%, blue 30-40%, and purple 10-20%

The cherry red that I mentioned earlier, I partnered it with maroon that I absolutely love. The thought crossed my mind that I might need to make more of it because I bought it last fall and haven’t seen it since. My plan was to take the cherry red, mix a little bit of navy blue glitter (bright reds have an orange base and rich reds have a blue base–my reason for adding blue), and then black to get the red darker without changing the base color of the read. Brown would be an option if I wanted a lighter maroon. But for this dark maroon, black is the go to glitter.

The added bonus of mixing your own glitter blend is that you add dimension and something dimension to look at. Don’t get me wrong, glitter is enticing enough on its own. But the next time you play with glitter, mix a small batch of a color and look at it in comparison to the original flat color. You’ll understand what I’m talking about when it gives you something a little more.

Other Ideas

Before I close this post, I want to offer one more idea of what you can do to give your glitter work some dimension and adding a little “extra” to your work.

Take a look at “Give Thanks” in the picture above.

This one is a bit more subtle than the striped ombre, so you may need to get a closer look at this wooden tag. The picture doesn’t do it justice in comparison to what it looks like in person. But this is two different shades of gold. The darker (and more orange) gold is applied as a shadow on the left hand side of each of the letters.

Earlier I mentioned shaking glitter in a v or w shape to create a chevron pattern.

You can easily make poke a dots by dropping spots in one color and then surrounding the dots with a different color.

Feel free to not just play with colors, but also experiment with shapes and patterns. Depending on what pattern you’re making, you may need to be specific with how you lay down your glue. But there is no reason why you can’t make leaves, plaids, or anything else in glitter. If it becomes difficult to maintain shapes, take breaks between your layers. This will keep the glue from running and distorting the shape/pattern you make.

Advertisements

A Finishing Tip

The one disadvantage to working with fluid glue is that your glue might shed glitter because it doesn’t have the stick to keep the glitter in place. There are a couple of options that you have to seal in your glitter to minimize or eliminate shedding.

The first thing that I used, many many many years ago, was hair spray. This has the least about of stick out of the options I’ll share. It’s great if you’re in a pinch and don’t have any other products on hand. But the only shedding this is going to stop is contact shedding when you tap it. There will be some transfer if you run your finger in the glitter.

I love using clear acrylic spray! This is a great sealant that dries in a couple of minutes. The disadvantage is the fumes. But those disappear when the spray paint cures. I really don’t notice glitter loss through touch or contact/tapping. The finish is also the best option. However, you might see a dulling of the glitter’s sparkle depending on which brand you use.

If you have the time, polycrylic paint is the best as far as it goes to completely seal in all the glitter. This can be the determining factor if someone in your house, or the person you’re gifting too, hates glitter with a passion. This is completely sealed and there is no glitter loss. Just be aware that the fumes are strong and curing can take 24-48 hours. But the fumes will dissipate. I highly recommend that you dab polycrylic on. If you try to brush it on, you will get streaks, glitter will clump on your brush, and there will be brush tracks in your glitter.

How do you like using glitter?

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Advertisements

Reverse That Frame

While getting ready for an upcoming Maker’s Market, I’m reminded of a time I was in a crafting group. A couple of times a year the group would do a special session of crafting binges. One of the first things I made with this group was a reverse canvas. It’s one of the simplest crafting transformations that is so satisfying.

If you haven’t heard of a reverse canvas, or have yet to make one yourself, grab a framed canvas, screw driver or staple remover, paint, exacto knife, and stapler or staple gun. This is all you need to make your own reverse canvas.

At any of your craft stores, or even dollar store, you can find two types of canvases: frames canvas and canvas flat. The flat looks like canvas that has been glued to a piece of cardboard. (You can make this in a similar fashion as you’ll see with this reverse canvas.) A canvas frame is the one where you see the canvas stretched over a wooden frame.

First, you want to flip your canvas frame over and remove the staples from the back. I’ve had some frames where this was easy. And there have been a few frames where I had to work to get those staples off. If you find that the staples don’t want to release from the wood, grab a piece of needle nose pliers. This will give you enough leverage where you can wiggle the staples out.

Don’t worry if your prying scars this side of the frame. With all the holes and splintering, this side of the frame will remain the backside that no one will see.

I’ve heard many crafters recommend using the exacto knife and cutting the canvas free from the frame by cutting on the side of the staple between the staple and the outside edge of the frame. If you don’t want to spend the time removing the staples, this is the method that you will love. The down side of this option is that the finished back of your reverse canvas is not going to be smooth as it could be But as I mentioned before, no one is going to see the back of the frame once it’s on the wall.

The rest of this walk through is under the assumption that you remove the staples. There are also other ways of reapplying the canvas, such as using hot glue, but I’m going to show you how to stretch the canvas. This is going to give you the best quality and make it look less DIY and more professional in finish.

Paint to Dress It Up

Of course you have the option to paint your frame and canvas at any point in time. My timing of choice is to paint the frame and canvas once they are separated from each other.

As you can see here, for one of my Market products, when you paint them separately, you are free to personalize and customize your project anyway that you want.

If you want to spray paint, you can. You can use glitter or other crafting medium. When the pieces are separated, you will never have the accidental over spray or find the need to tape off to protect one element while you’re working with the other. And if you want to try your hand at free hand painting one element, you can work absolute certainty of the work that you’re doing.

Once canvas and frame are dry, you are ready to put your canvas back on your frame.

TIP: If you wanted a pattern on the canvas (like I did above), make sure you take a look at your frame on top of your canvas. Make sure your lines, design, landscape or portrait are lined up like you want them in the frame. You may find that what you painted on the canvas doesn’t line up inside the frame like it did when you were just looking at the canvas.

Advertisements

It’s Time to Stretch

If you pre-lined up your canvas and frame (as described in the tip above), you will need to hold on to both pieces and carefully flip it over. Make sure that the canvas doesn’t slip. If it does, you may need to reposition it.

If you have a solid canvas, or one that doesn’t need positioned, start of by putting your frame front side down on your table or work surface. The staple holes side should be up. Next, place your canvas down with paint side down.

Find the center of the long side of your frame and staple your canvas to that spot.

Next, find the center of the other side of your frame and pull the canvas tight to that spot. You may need to use both hands. This will give you control in how tight you will make the canvas in the end. Once you feel the tension, staple the canvas, tight, to the center of that frame arm.

Find the center of the short end of your frame. Pull the canvas tight to that point. You should notice that you can pull it more than you did with the first pull you made. Staple it in place.

Find the center of the last side of the frame and pull the canvas tight. At this point, I start pulling the canvas to the outside edge of the frame and using the frame edge as leverage to keep the canvas tight as you staple.

As you look at these pictures you are going to really see the warping in the canvas just from these initial 4 staples. This is normal and in no way reflects the final product. In fact, the more that I pull the canvas, the more tension that I add. I find that if I gradually add more tension as I go the least likely I am of ripping my canvas from pulling too hard.

After these initial staples are in place, the next step is to aim your stapler about 2 inches to the side of center staple. Pull and stretch the canvas toward the nearest corner, in a diagonal pull. The original pulls were in an up/down directional pull. But after you place the first 4 staples, you want to pull diagonally to prevent bubble like ripples from forming around already set staples.

Another benefit to diagonal pulls is that this is how I get my canvas to keep tight like the skin stretched on top of a bongo.

Another truck to keeping a tight canvas is that as you start pulling diagonally, you want to alternate directions that you’re pulling in.

For example, if your frame (after the 4 initial staples) is orientated in front of you with the long frame size on the top and the short on the sides, keep your frame in this orientation. Start with a staple 2 inches to the right of the staple on you top long side. Then drop to the bottom long side and pull the canvas to the bottom left corner with adding a staple 2 inches to the left of the the bottom long frame side center staple. Then for the short frame side on your right hand side, pull the canvas toward that right bottom corner and place your staple 2 inches below the center staple. Finally move to the left hand side short frame side, pull the canvas toward the upper corner , and place the staple 2 inches above the center staple.

Advertisements

With these four staples in place, we’re now going to staple on the other side of the center staple to balance out the tension that we’re putting in the canvas.

The last pull was toward the upper left corner (on the short side). So now we’re going to go to the bottom right corner (on the long side). Pull to the lower right corner and staple to the right of the bottom center staple. Next, pull to the upper left corner and staple to the left of the upper center staple. Then pull to the upper right corner and staple above the right center staple. Finally pull to the lower left corner and staple bellow the left center staple.

At this point the canvas has an even pull and it’s a good time to check the front to see if any adjustments need to be made. If there is no design to the canvas you can keep stretching and stapling in opposite directions until the canvas is fully attached to the frame.

If you have a design, now is a great time to check to make sure that you are stretching with enough balanced tension that the design is still straight.

Is the design pulling or warping toward a short/long side of the frame? Then you pull the canvas tighter in the opposite direction. This will take pulling toward the two corners opposite of where it was gravitating toward.

If the design is gravitating toward a corner, you want to pull tightest on the opposite corner to bring the design back to its original orientation.

Once you’ve made the corrections that needed to be made (keep checking back to the front after each set of 4 staples to keep an eye on what you need to do), continue with the stretching and stapling until the canvas is reattached to the frame.

Time for a Trim

As you see here, all of the original funkiness from the 4 original staples has worked itself out. The center is smooth and tight. On the outside edges of the canvas you can still see bunches and creases of where I pulled tight against the frame (using it as leverage to pull the canvas tighter). None of this matters because we will trim off the excess canvas.

Flip the canvas over so you can see the front face. Grab your exacto knife. You are going to cut into the canvas at about a 45° angle behind the frame. This will cut enough of the canvas back so that you won’t see the edges from the front of the frame. The benefit of the exacto knife is that you can run the flat edge of the knife against the edge of the frame and cut a straight line.

It is possible to cut away the excess canvas with a pair of scissors. You will want to pay a little extra attention to where you are cutting. You will want to get the scissors in there so that you are cutting behind the frame. But at the same time you want to make sure that you aren’t cutting too close to or between the staples. Just like any taunt fabric, canvas will rip along the grain. This is particularly true when you have the tension that we built in with stretching the canvas.

And now you see the final product with the excess canvas cut away!

This particular canvas is ready for the next step in the product that I’m making, which is a 3D wall art.

But you can consider this as a crafting blank that you can add anything to it. You can stencil paint a design on it. Maybe you want to mod podge a photograph or note from a loved one. Or there could be a decal that you want to attach to this canvas. You could also have an early childhood stick figure drawing from your child or grand child that you want to frame in a unique way. This may be what you’re looking for.

There are so many different things that you can do with a reverse frame. You are only limited by your imagination.

One last thing I want to mention, before you add your favorite decorations to this canvas, think about how you want to hang this reverse canvas. The frame can stand by itself on a counter or table top as long as what you add is very light. Otherwise, like in my case of 3D art, you will want to add a mode of hanging.

Some options for hanging your art are:

drill a couple of holes into the back of the frame where finishing nails can hold up your frame on a wall
staple a long bit of ribbon to the two top corners of your frame
nail a portrait anchor on the back

You’re not limited to these ideas. But they are a few of the most common ones.

How do you use reverse frames?

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Advertisements