Dried Wedding Flower Ornament

Posted in diy, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

Happy Holidays everyone! I have a really easy but special DIY for this Season. And of course they don’t have to be from a wedding bouquet but these are from my wedding which was last June.

I wanted to preserve a bit of my flowers but I don’t want them in a shadow box because I had hydrangeas and things with tiny parts that would just fall apart anyway.

I don’t know how many years they will keep but they should last at least a few years.

All you need is some clear glass ornaments and dried petals and leaves. Be careful when placing everything in the ornaments because they are very thin glass and you don’t want it to break and cut you. It’s that easy! If you don’t celebrate Christmas and/or have a tree they would look great handing from ribbon in a window or from a shelf also.

I added some of my wedding pictures also, since I realized I never shared them on here last summer.

Have an amazing holiday season!

15Oct2015

Pumpkin Terrarium

Posted in craft, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

When I was in elementary school I always secretly loved projects where I got to make dioramas. I’ve always loved miniatures and love making little scenes. So when I found some pictures on Pinterest here and here that combined my love of dioramas with my love for Halloween I knew what I had to do! I found the foam pumpkin at Goodwill. Someone had tried to carve what sort of looked like a castle and gave up so I buggy it and just cut a big hole out where they had started carving. Of course you can just by a new foam pumpkin from any craft store in the fall. Just make sure it’s the hallow carve-able kind!

I chose to spray paint the inside black as shown below but it’s totally up to you what you want the inside to look like.

I used rocks, sticks and different kinds of moss for the terrarium. The moon and stars are glow-in-the-dark stickers and the fox is a little figurine from Joann’s. Finding things to put in is half the fun! I’m still on the hunt for very tiny battery powered led string lights that I can attach the the top inside to shine light down on my scene. It’ll be fun to switch things around every year. Now get to crafting!

9Jul2015

I joined the Air plant club

Posted in Gardening, home by peppermintsandhoneybees

I’ve actually been wanting an air plant for a while after seeing them all over Pinterest. One of my friends bought some at the Renegade Craft Show in Chicago last summer and while one died she said the other one was pretty easy to care for after she got the knack for it.

According to articles I’ve read the best way to care for them is to submerge the actual plant in a glass of filtered water for a couple hours and let dry on a paper towel after that. Do this once a week or so. I’ve had mine for a couple weeks now and this seems to work so far.

If you are new to air plants they don’t need soil because they don’t have roots. They get their nutrients from the air. (hence the name) They like bright but filtered light best so as long as you keep this in mind they are extremely easy and fun to display. The possibilities. Are endless and here are some fun examples I found on Pinterest from Centrogarden, Buzzfeed, and Decoist.

I put mine in a little terrarium with some sphagnum moss and fish rocks. The glass ornament is from Joann’s. I bought it last winter after Christmas on sale. I’m going to hang it with jute and hang it up somewhere.

25Mar2015

Concrete Easter Eggs

Posted in diy, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

Hey everyone, it’s Wednesday, woohoo! We’re half way to the weekend and even though we just got about 4″ of snow here on Monday, (not cool Mother Nature) I’m excited for Spring and Easter. My family never did a whole lot to celebrate Easter other than Easter egg hunts and and getting together to eat too much food, but its always been one of my favorite holidays to decorate for. I think its because I love rabbits and animals in general along with anything Spring/Summer related. I found this diy on Pinterest by Camille Styles for making concrete eggs with real egg shells. I’ve actually been working on this for a while because I needed to get enough egg shells to fill. When I would use an egg to cook with I would just break out the bottom with a knife of my finger. You want to take the bottom out so that you can fill it from there and then when the concrete is dry they can stand up. Below are the supplies I used; the cup and knife were for the concrete mix and make sure to have paper towels handy. You can usually find concrete mix at any craft or hardware store, it’s pretty fun to work with! If you’ve never mixed concrete, plaster, or anything similar, I use the mound method which is where you fill the cup up with about 1/3 water and slowly add the mix until there is a little mountain on top that doesn’t sink down immediately into the water. Stir it up until there are no clumps or bubbles. it should be about the consistency of pancake mix. I have to admit I got some of mine a little too thick and some didn’t quite turn out perfect but I like some imperfections in mine.

I got a little messy and broke one, whoops! 😉

After your eggs are filled let them dry outside for at least 24 hours. Use an exact-o knife to help peel the shell of and that’s all! If you’d like you can paint or stamp you eggs or anything else you can think of. I might do something with mine but I’m not sure what yet. If I do change them I’ll give an update.

My Easter Table

P.S. the adorable basket and grass cloth are from my good friends at Glory Days Mercantile, check them out they have tons of cute Easter decor!

19Jan2015

Valentine’s Day Garland

Posted in craft, diy, Holiday, home by peppermintsandhoneybees

Hola peeps! I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging, not really on purpose but more because I was too busy to start/work on new projects and before I knew it January was half over! I am totally scared by the way time works and wish things would slow down just a bit. Now its that time of year that I just want to bypass to warmer days but I’m trying to enjoy the here and now and find the good, even in this frozen wasteland, because one day I’ll look back and miss these times!

I’ve never really decorated too much for Valentines day but since I have a craft blog now I figured I’d see what I could come up with, and love the results. I’m really starting to get in that heart everything spirit now and even though I don’t do frilly decorations (unless they’re vintage of course!) I made some simple nature inspired pieces. The arrows are inspired by similar ones I found on Pinterest. I used sticks for mine though and used paint and marker for the feathers. the heart tips are cardstock. I also made some of the feathers into earrings for my Etsy shop Peppermint Emporium. The garland is straight from my noggin and is just sticks, coffee filters dyed with watered down craft paint and twine. grab your glue gun and there ya go! Ben buys the unbleached coffee filters so I was a little disappointed that they weren’t white, but afterward I decided I liked the brown color better, it lends itself to the natural rustic vibe I was going for.

20Dec2014

Bleaching and Dyeing Bottle Brush Trees

Posted in diy, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

I’ve been seeing lots of bottle brush trees all over Pinterest this Christmas season and love all of the different colors. I love the vintage-looking scenes that can be set up with bottle brush trees and I’ve always preferred to decorate with pastels and bright colors instead of the usual red and green themes. I had some bottle brush trees left over from the snow globes I made last year and also bough a bag of small bleached trees from Michaels.

I bleached the trees I had that were green with the intention of dyeing them after I was done but was pleasantly surprised when the trees I had from last year turned light pink before bleaching completely and the one green tree I had bought this year turned a light mint bluish-green. Since this was the colors I wanted to dye them I left them this color and then fully bleached a few.

I used my hurricane glass vase to bleach because I wanted something that was tall and narrow to stick the trees is, normally I wouldn’t use my good glass but ya know, use what you have! I used 1/3 bleach to 2/3 water in the glass and used tongs to dip them in. It really didn’t take long for them to start bleaching and I swished them around in the bleach water to help with the tongs, just wear rubber gloves and be careful. After I bleached the trees I soaked them in soapy water to get the bleach off.

Most of the tutorials I read said to use Rit dye to dye, or food coloring or cool-aid would also probably work, but I used this spray on dye by SEI Tumble Dye that I already had. I love this because it is already made and you can just spray it on, it’s perfect for small dye jobs and comes it tons of colors. You can find it at craft stores or online at www.shopsei.com.

I also touched up the happy accident trees a bit with the spray dye and mixed a bit with water in a spray bottle to get different shades. On the biggest tree I sprayed a couple different colors for an airbrushed ombre effect. That was another reason I used the spray, for the ombre effect, but if you’re going for one solid color, I’d recommend the dip dye method.

I love how they turned out, and I also sprayed a bottle brush wreath I found at Joanne Fabric! Show me yours on Instagram with the hashtag #peppermintsandhoneybees.

Happy Holidays!

13Dec2014

DIY Snow Globes

Posted in diy, Holiday by peppermintsandhoneybees

Hello, I’ve been busy trying to get all of my Christmas shopping done and make the presents that I am hand-making. This was actually something I made last Christmas as presents for everyone and silly me I didn’t take any pictures of all of them before I gifted them, probably because I didn’t have a blog yet, but I do have one left. I kept this little guy for myself to put out.

I had looked at quite a few different blogs to see how they made theirs and after reading about how the ones containing water and glycerin had made the green of the bottle brush trees bleed after a year, I decided to go without liquid. I was worried it wouldn’t look as cool but I was pretty happy with how they turned out, as I was going for more of a terrarium scene than actual snow globe I guess. Plus I didn’t have to buy glycerine!

I used:

Old glass jars with lids
Bottle brush trees
Tiny winter animals, cars, people, houses, ect.
fake snow (mine is from Michaels where the miniature Christmas village houses and stuff is)
glass beads to glue on tree for ornaments (optional)
I used bakers string for the jar, you could also use ribbon or nothing at all
Spray-paint (again optional) I spray-painted all of my jar lids silver because they were from food jars
Glue, I used my trusty E-6000 but hot glue would also work

I glued the tree and animal to the inside of the lid and put the desired amount of snow in the jar. I then screwed the lid on after everything was dry and voila, It’s that easy! I’d love to see what yours look like so put them on Instagram and hashtag them #peppermintsandhoneybees.

30Oct2014

Dresser Makeover

Posted in diy, home by peppermintsandhoneybees

Happy Halloween everyone! So this post has nothing to do with Halloween but I plan on posting my Halloween costume on my next post. But for today I have some photos of the dresser I just changed up. This dresser is older than me and also looks it. I could just get a new one but I like how sturdy this one is and hey it’s practically a family heirloom. It was my mom’s when she was growing up. I could have painted it but I like the look of the wood even if it is a little banged up so I decided some new drawer knobs would jazz it up. The only problem is that knobs are expensive if you buy them all at once and I couldn’t decide what I wanted. What to do? Get all different ones and mix and match. My style is usually all over the place so why shouldn’t my dresser be too!

Have a happy and safe Halloween tomorrow!

20Oct2014

Halloween part 2

Posted in diy, Holiday, home by peppermintsandhoneybees

Here is a little bit of my Halloween decorations for this year. This month has been crazy busy and I didn’t get to make all of the things that I had planned to decorate for the holiday but here’s what I did put up.

The Bats are just made from cardstock. I traced a plastic bat and taped them to the wall. The cat is a few years old from Michaels, and the crows and pumpkin LED lights are from Dollar Tree. The glass owl is an antique bank that was given to me as a gift and the skull candy dish was given to me by my mom last year from Hallmark. Happy October!

6Apr2014

How to make an old apartment a little less ugly

Posted in Uncategorized by peppermintsandhoneybees

I’ve lived in quite a few apartments now in my 26 years, ever since college I’ve pretty much moved every year or so at the end of my lease, and have not been lucky enough to own my own home, but I believe in making the best of what you have. We spent all of last summer looking for a house or townhouse to rent and after getting no where, (we live in a very expensive area where nothing stays available for long) we settled on our current apartment. It has lots of space and two patios, but is older and not as nice as our last that was tiny and had no outdoor space at all. I wasn’t thrilled but after I got my own stuff in and started to find what worked where I began to change my mind. I’ve learned a few tricks over the year, and here are a couple.

…and my owl collection

I’ve lived in apartments before that have the phone jack right up on the wall which I will never use. Ben and I just have cell phones and most people I know don’t have land lines either. My solution to this ugly thing on the wall is to put up a vintage phone. It is a phone jack after all! I was lucky enough to acquire a box of old phones when my uncle moved into a house that had been abandoned for quite a while, but they can also be found at antique stores or on Etsy.

Another thing I didn’t like about the apartment was the huge intercom and ancient thermostat. My solution to this was to hide them a little with lots of small frames around them, so they don’t stick out like a sore thumb quite as bad.

White walls are boring but I don’t always mind because then I can add whatever colors to a room that I want. Decorating should be fun and I’m still getting things to look how I want. I’ll probably never be done, but that’s half the fun!

Let me know if you have more ideas, cheers!