Monday, December 14, 2009

Create on a budget (aka the "I hate money" post)

Ok, so I don't actually hate money. I am frugal enough that we can live on one income and I shouldn't complain about that. Life is great and we are blessed. But I do whine {on occassion} about my lack of extra money for all of those yummy crafting supplies that call my name when I wander the aisles at several stores in town (oh who am I kidding...in town, out of town, online...). I mean come on...if you won the lottery {besides paying off your house} where is the first place you'd go for a huge splurge? Scrapbooking. Supplies. I actually get a little shiver even dreaming about it. So a lot of the time I have to settle for trying to repurpose what I already have. I am no crafting genius {I leave that to my friends!} but I was so super impressed with myself for this little gem I had to blog it. My oldest son wanted to decorate his room with popcorn strings which was great...I had several cups of stale popcorn kernels just waiting to be strung. But I thought...how can I make this cooler? And that started a journey that ended in a mess. And that's just how I like it! Start with air popping your kernels. Do not add butter (even if this does go against every fiber of your being) Try to stop the little fingers from eating it...go ahead, I dare ya. You just might lose an arm.

Use quilting thread so it won't break. Be careful not to poke yourself.

String popcorn until your back hurts and your fingers are numb. Then continue for just a few minutes more. Until it looks like this. Oooorrrr maybe until you get sick and tired of stabbing yourself and you cut the thread, deciding that that is long enough. Um yeah, it just may have happened like that at my house.

Ok, for this next part I have no photos because it was super SUPER {deliciously} messy and I didn't want to bring my camera anywhere near that. So you'll have to settle for a rather loose description. The background info being I thought it would look much cooler if the popcorn was coloured. So I went through my card catalogue brain on all the possible ways to colour it without making it melt. Because popcorn does that. Wet+popcorn=goopy mess. I finally settled on Glimmer Mist! GENIUS! So I laid out a towel on my work surface, put plastic bags on top of that and sprayed to my little hearts content. It was grand. At the end though...there was a huge puddle of glimmer mist floating on the bags. And I absolutely could not waste it. {Refer to the opening of this post} so I took care of another thing on my holiday to do list by dipping a whole bunch of tagsinto the puddles. (the ones you can pick up at Staples for less than $5 for a box of 100) They came out beautifully and now I have some holly jolly red tags to attach to every single gift we are giving this year. I'm going to stamp the recipient's name on it in black ink and handwrite on the back who is from. Oh, and the popcorn strings turned out great too, don't you think? It looks like cinnamon popcorn. Oh shoot...making that is on my holiday list too. Must get on that!

You can make it as light or as dark as you want just make sure you spray it and don't dip it. I found that I had to keep moving the string on the table so it didn't soak in the puddle or it became so saturated it just looked black. If you were really energetic, you could pre-spray the popcorn in old bowls, lay it out to dry and then string it with alternating colours. Maybe next year. xox


9 comments:

Sheryl said...

Great idea Kate!!! That looks and sounds like so much fun. Too bad Glimmer Mist wasn't edible, how much fun would sparkly multicolored popcorn be to eat??

Cheryl said...

That was a great idea Kate! However, I must ask because I looked in Staples yesterday, all I could find were #5 tags, I couldn't find any#8s anywhere, so is it the #5's that you use?

coRinne not connie said...

trust Kate to figure out how to bling it up! YOU RAWK chickie! what a cool idea!

Leica Forrest said...

cool. cheryl, I asked Staples to bring in like hundreds and they told me that size wasn't popular so they were discontinuing carrying the large size. (this was last week. so if you see them, buy them out!

Kate said...

Yes Cheryl...I use the #5 (I think that's the size anyway). Maybe if we ALL go bug Staples they will bring them in??? What about Office Depot? I've actually never ever been in there. I can see the headlines now "Scrapbookers storm Office Supply stores for "unpopular" tags"

Cheryl said...

Kate, I actually found some on-line for about .06 apiece plus shipping. If we can get enough people onboard, I will order some cuz they only sell them in 1000 tag bunches!! Leica said she would probably take lots as she uses them for make and takes. So let's see if we have any takers.

Kate said...

I am IN Cheryl!!! I will take at least 100...more if I can. But if lots of people are participating I won't be greedy! LOL I know Sheryl Schmidt would want some too.

Cheryl said...

I posted a comment on facebook and Ralna contacted me saying she got in 2000 of the tags and is selling them at .10/tag. She has them bunched in 50 tag bundles. I figure that's about what it would have cost me with the shipping so I was in there this afternoon and bought me some. It must be fate!

Kate said...

I just got some too! Thanks for the heads up!