Homemade Face Cream

 
My youngest is 2 1/2 and likes to reference things as happening "last week". Sometimes he means yesterday, sometimes he means some other time in the past. It's super cute, but I might be biased.

Anyway, I was starting to tell you about my homemade face cream I referenced in my Crunchy post last week. I thought you'd like to see the way I make it.

 

First I gather all the ingredients on a tray and photograph it for posterity.

Just kidding, but these are the three ingredients I use: Olive oil, coconut oil and lavender essential oil. You also need a whisk or spoon or other stirring device and a jar with a lid.

My container is from an adorable little candle I found at the grocery store last fall. It's a mason jar that's probably only 3-4 ounces. I regret only buying two! I knew it was a seasonal item but thought they'd have more for Christmas or Valentine's but I haven't seen them again. Moving on.

I put a big scoop of coconut oil in the jar then microwave it for 30 seconds to soften the oil so it can be mixed with the other oils.

Next I pour in some olive oil.

For the record, I didn't decant the olive oil to be fancy for this post! I buy oil in the giant containers and prefer to keep them out of sight, so I use this green jar all the time. Not sure why I felt it necessary to clear that up, but whew!

I then add a few drops of lavender essential oil. I'm sure there are others you could use, but I like the smell and it's supposed to be quite fantastic for your skin.

Then whip it up! I've heard of some people blending it in the blender which might have really cool results. I imagine it is really smooth and creamy, but I just don't make enough at once to bother.

The last step I take is to stick the jar of newly mixed face cream in the fridge. I find it takes quite some time for the coconut oil to harden again, so I speed it up by chilling it. By the way, the purpose of mixing olive oil into your face cream is for the consistency. I've found that straight coconut oil is hard to work with, and I prefer the smell when olive oil and essential oil are added.

So there you have it! Super easy, super good for you! I use this every morning and sometimes at night. It only takes about the size of a pea to cover your whole face, so even though I slather it on my boys' faces in the winter too, a little container like this lasts a long time!

This recipe works great as a make-up remover as well. Just rub it on and wipe it off with a soft cloth. I sometimes do this but really don't prefer how it lingers around my eyes, although some people swear by it.

Are you going to try it? You probably have all the ingredients on hand already! What crunchy beauty recipes do you use?

Wedding Anniversary Sign {DIY Art}

Two of my closest friends from my life in Las Vegas got married this weekend. That's two weddings, two happy brides, and of course their happy husbands.

For one of the lucky-in-love ladies, I made an anniversary sign. I posted this sneakpeak on Facebook when I finished it and she swooned. Swooned!

I have to admit, I love how it turned out. Kinda awesome when that happens! 

I started by sanding my section of 1X6. It's about 10" long. No, the pen, chapstick and nail clippers are not the tools I used--ha! I was using those to put the font in perspective. It happened to be one of the only pictures I took of the sign, and with my cell phone late at night... It was such a busy week I completely neglected to take real pictures!

Anyway, after the sanding, I planned to paste down some pretty patterned paper. I had asked the bride what her wedding colors were and she said black, white and champagne. Fancy! I ended up not liking the plain paper, pattern and all, so I ripped it in strips and mod-podged it on. Then I sanded the edges of the paper to make everything nice and smooth.

Next, I cut out 5" letters of the couple's last name with my Cricut in white vinyl. This font is super skinny and really hard to get the letters to lay straight, but I think they ended up being pretty straight. I then cut the wedding anniversary date in 1 1/2" letters from black vinyl using a straighter font which was much easier to work with!  

 I'm so pleased with how this turned out that I listed it as an example of customized signs in my Etsy shop. You can order one if you don't have the inclination to make one yourself!

We might be 7 days into November, but it's Day 26 of my 31-Day Series for October. We'll get there!

Framed Drawing {DIY Art}

Today I want to share with you a different art medium: the colored pencil.

You first saw this room in July when I took you on a little tour of our younger boys' room in Ohio. The art dates back a few more years and I'm sure it's in other pictures of our boy's rooms as they've evolved. But at one point I didn't have this piece of art. In fact I had nothing where I needed something so I created it.

And you can too!

I knew I wanted a picture of an airplane and I knew I wanted to use certain colors to go with the rest of the room. I had shiny red paint, so I painted an old frame shiny red. Next, I googled images of biplanes. I found something similar to the above drawing and used it as an example for mine. It's wonky, the lines aren't straight, I did virtually know shadowing, but it looks like a biplane!

I still needed a mat for my frame, so I used diluted craft paint on the back of wrapping paper--use what you've got! I like how it didn't dry even; it kindof looks like clouds in the sky.

In a matter of one evening, I had exactly the look, colors and size of art that I needed for the original room, and this piece has been a star player in every room since then! Now I'm not exactly sold on the idea of doing more drawings and framing them around the house, but I like this one! If you don't want to frame your own sketches, you can always frame a masterpiece that one of your kids drew or colored or painted.

The sky is the limit! Biplane not included.

It's day 23! Hope you're inspired!

Simple Name Sign {DIY Art}

One of my favorite things to give new parents is a sign with their baby's name and birthdate. I made this one a few months ago and thought I'd share it again today in case you want to make your own.

I had a piece of wood--I look for things like this and save them. You'd be surprised where they pop up. If you don't have any, lumber is not expensive at Lowe's or similar stores. They'll even cut it to the size you want. This name sign is approximately 14" x 8". After sanding the wood by hand, I painted it pink. You could use a power sander and spend a fraction of the time, but the point here is to show you how anyone can do it!

As far as the paint goes, you can either use spray paint or acrylics for the most variety in colors. Again, Lowe's has a great selection of paints, but even Walmart has spray paint and lots of colors to choose from if you rather have acrylics from the crafts section. Of course you can use any leftover house paint you may have too!

I originally used a Sharpie to write the name on this sign. I wasn't thrilled with the saturation, so I bought a paint pen (from Walmart, also available at craft stores) and went over it again.

I then doodled butterflies and little dotted flight paths. You can make whatever designs you want, or use stickers. If you don't want to free-hand, you can use a stencil or glue on some wooden letters or small designs. Your imagination is the limit!

Of course if you don't want to make a sign yourself, you could commission someone else to make one for you! Signs like this are available in my Etsy store, Beauty4AshesEtsy.

Today is Day 21! This month is flying by!

Two Little Somethings {DIY Art}

Tonight I have two little ideas for you. They happen to live in our bathroom, but they would work in other places in your home. If you took our little bathroom tour earlier today, you already got a peak at them.

So let's start with the sign.

Awesome chippy piece of fencing + black paint pen + blue acrylic paint + paintbrush = beYOUtiful sign. It didn't end up being centered, but that's ok. It doesn't have to be perfect to be beYOUtiful, right?

Next up is the clock.

This was your average brown wooden clock. It wasn't expensive and in all our moving, the three had popped off. I glued him back on but there's a little residue you can see--somehow I'm feeling the need to justify why I painted a clock! So yeah, the wood tone just wasn't making my bathroom seem happy, so I painted it white, took some sandpaper to the edges and tacked a ribbon on the back. Now the clock hangs from a hook and that makes me and my bathroom happy!

So there you have it, two small, simple, easy things you can do to pretty up your place!

And because I felt like having some fun with PicMonkey, here's a collage of the last 10 days. If you've missed anything, just look at the sidebar with the posts from October.

Portrait Canvasses {DIY Art}

This is one of my favorite projects ever. I'm thrilled with how these canvasses turned out, and for super-cheap! It's not a new project and it's certainly not the only how-to out there, but I wanted to share it because I still puffy-heart love it. So here's my original post from a year and a half ago!

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I love the look of canvas portraits, don't you? 

Sometimes you can find pretty good deals, but even those good deals times three kids can really add up! I decided to find out a way to do it cheaper. 

$2.50 each, in fact! 

Here's how.

I started by taking a jump drive to Staples and asking for 8 1/2 x 11" color copies of my high resolution images on card stock for 98 cents each.

Then I went to Michael's and bought a 10-pack of 8 x 10 canvasses for $25 on sale for $20 plus my 20% off coupon which means I really paid $16. $1.60 each isn't bad!

Next I painted the canvasses with white paint to act as glue. Mod podge would be better, but I didn't have any. I knew the paint would work as glue because of this project. 

I had already trimmed the white edges off the pictures--don't bother! Just try to center the picture on the canvas because you'll have to trim it down and you don't want to cut off too much of your kiddo's head!

Press and smooth out the back side of the canvas.

I was worried about the card stock wrinkling, so I weighed it down with books in the middle and left it overnight. 

The next day I trimmed the edges off the card stock with a razor--I'm fancy like that! I'm sure an exacto knife would do the trick.

Then I went over the edges with a fine-grit sandpaper. You could paint the edges of your canvas if you want, but I like the white with the bright colors.

To really protect your canvasses, you could paint on another layer of mod podge over the top, or polycrylic. I haven't done that yet, but I plan to! 

Here you can see that it did wrinkle a little, but it's only noticeable from a certain angle.

I love my new canvas portraits, and coming in at $2.50 each, I made a copy for the grandparents too!

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Just in time for the holidays! Break out those cameras and get some shots of your kids in the pretty leaves, then make some portrait canvasses for the grandparents!

This is Day 17! Come back for another two weeks of awesome DIY art ideas!

Gallery Wall V {DIY Art}

While some may prefer gallery walls with little structure and lots of room for growth, others prefer a more planned-and-organized approach.

Such is the case in my in-law's living room. When my mother-in-law, Helen, asked me to create a gallery wall for her to hang portraits of her grandchildren, we sat down with my computer and looked at Pinterest. I'm glad I took that step with her, because I learned immediately that she preferred the measured, evenly spaced gallery walls over the more organic ones.

This took some planning! I laid everything out on the floor and arranged and rearranged for quite some time! Then of course, in the next few days of painting frames to match and finding a couple more frames at the store, the layout changed before I got it on the wall. 

We had the freedom in this space to have the display be as big as it needed to be. We were working with that heating/cooling vent, however, and aiming to ground the middle of the room with our collected art display. I think everyone was pretty pleased how it all turned out!

We liked it even more after we rearranged the furniture. The gallery wall really frames the couch! The only picture I had of the new arrangement was with my cell phone.

If you're considering hanging a collection of art, especially if putting them together would create a bigger impact on your walls or work to center your room or play off a large piece of furniture, I highly recommend spending a few minutes online to see what style you like. Take the time to plan a more structured look, or start with a large piece and work out. Don't forget to have fun! Holes in the wall can be fixed!

This is day 16 of my 31-Day series of DIY Art for your home! We're at the end of the gallery wall section, but there's still half of the series left! 

See you tomorrow!