DIY Life

By Anna Sattler

Little ones like to get in on the action when it comes to giving gifts. As much as they like to open a present, I always watch in delight when I see how happy a child is to give a grown-up a present, especially if they made the gift.

You can watch in delight too when your child makes the perfect Father's Day desk accessory for the special dad in their life. All you need is cardboard, craft sticks, acrylic paint, glue, and alphabet foam stamps, and of course, a willing child or two. This project is geared towards younger children, so you will have to help them cut out the cardboard that is used in making the letters, and also help them with the gluing of the letters.

Dad will love his new desk accessory, but if he doesn't have a desk, the cardboard decoration will sit perfectly among pictures of his loving family at home. Best of all, he'll get a charge out of knowing that his little DIYers made the Father's Day accessory themselves, just for him.

I saw some very nice trinket boxes at the thrift store the other day, but I let them go without a second thought. Too bad I did, because I now want to make over one for my daughter for a Christmas present, and maybe a few as gifts for other special people.

Using cleaned and broken white egg shells, decoupage and white paint, Jane Lake over on All Free Crafts, made over a plain trinket box. Jane put the eggshells into a plastic bag and used a rolling pin to crush them into fairly fine pieces. After removing the hardware, she then decoupaged the box lid, sans where the holes for the hardware were.

Jane alternated the decoupage and the broken egg shells, then allowed the box to dry overnight. After the box was dry, she used two layers of shimmery white paint, allowing one coat to dry before she applied another. She says you can apply pearl beads to the bottom of the box. Apply the hardware, and call the makeover finished!

Having previously used wallpaper to cover my kitchen cabinets, I'm ready to change them for a new look. Since I get bored fairly easily with my decor, I like to spruce things up about every six months, and I am so itching for newly decorated cabinets.

Thanks to help from Tipnut, I found the perfect kitchen cabinet makeover project over on Tres Chic Veronique. Using pretty fabric covered in bees and honeycombs, Veronique cut the fabric an extra inch on each side, then hammered in thumbtacks to secure the fabric to the cabinet door.

I read in the comment section of Veronique's post that Scotchgaurd was used to help eliminate grease and stains when the fabric is wiped down. If you, like me, are unsure of whether or not you want to use regular fabric on your cabinets, then maybe the best alternative would be to use oilcloth, since that can be wiped down easily.

I am in desperate need of a kitchen apron. I have been cooking since I was 8 years old, and I have always absentmindedly wiped my hands on my clothing, even though there is always a dish towel nearby. Yup, I need an apron.

DIY Maven on Curbly has written a fabulous tutorial, complete with awesome pictures, teaching us how to turn large cloth napkins into a kitchen apron using a sewing machine. You'll need several yards of ribbon for tie strings and for the apron collar, and of course, some basic sewing skills.

This apron is perfect, not just for the kitchen, but also for gardening. The pockets in the apron could hold your kitchen gadgets, or your gardening tools. Of course, I always absentmindedly wipe my dirty hands on my clothes when I am gardening too.

Check your local thrift stores for some awesome napkins. Mine always seem to have the prettiest sets of fabric napkins on hand, and for the price they sell at (6 for $1.00), there are plenty available to make as gifts for my gardening and cooking friends.

That decorative bowl of fruit on the end of the table has suddenly become a haven to a horde of ravenous fruit flies. You get rid of the over-ripe fruit that attracted them, you clean down the area, but you still have the little wretches. You can swat them, but wouldn't it be fun to trap them?

The people at Chow.com have a great tip for making a fruit fly trap, which involves a small dish of wine, a sploosh of water, and a drop of soap, stirred up with a finger. It would take about 10 seconds to put together.

One of the commenters suggests putting plastic wrap over the surface of the bowl, and making pin pricks in it -- apparently the flies can get in the holes, but are too stupid to get out again.

In fact, once you've watched the video, read the comments. There are a few more very creative fruit fly trap ideas there, too!

Has the summer bug bit you yet?

If it has, you may be itching to try a new outdoor activity. Hiking and biking may have become passe, so get yourself a skateboard and wheel off to enjoy the great outdoors.

Expert Village has created a skateboarding video series that will teach you the basics, like how to stand, push, and turn on your new board. When you are ready for the fancy moves, watch their videos on the Ollie tricks and how to skate on ramps.

Heck, as a self-proclaimed DIYer, you just may want to build yourself a skateboard ramp. There are lots of free ramp plans available on the internet, and wikiHow even gives you step-by-step instructions on how to build your ramp based on your own plans.

So fire up that enthusiasm for your new hobby and learn to skateboard in style!

Nothing perturbs me more than sitting in a chair and wobbling back and forth because the chair legs need fixing. I get perturbed because once again I spent my money on something cheap, or someone else did, and they just like to be annoying by rocking back and forth.

Over at the Indianapolis Star, our own extremely talented Shelly Leer learned how to fix annoying chair wobbles when a furniture builder showed her how to apply wood glue to the chair using a turkey basting syringe. Genius!

There's a little more to it: please join me after the break to learn how it's done.

Today's New York Times features an article about exhausted travelers catching sleep while stuck at airports. One enterprising gentleman, Frank Giotto, is even selling an airport camping kit. The "Mini Motel" includes a tiny one-person tent, air mattress, pillow, sheet, alarm clock and eye shades, plus some other extras.

So... how do you fall asleep in an airport? (Assuming the Mini Motel is nowhere to be found.) An awesome list of tips can be found at The Budget Traveller's [sic] Guide to Sleeping in Airports. Top tip: bring an inflatable pool raft so you can spread out on the floor in comfort... if security will allow it. It's cheaper and lighter than a regular air mattress.

What happens in the movies can't always be accomplished in real life. For instance, jumping out of a window in a movie looks easy, but if you try it for yourself, you might not walk away like that cute actor did.

If you have seen someone (whether in reality or not) open a door with a credit card, then you may want to keep that particular ability in the front of your memory, as it really can help you to get in your house if you have misplaced your key.

Keep in mind that you really have to work hard to make the credit card open the lock, so you may want to use an old beat up credit card or gift card that is no longer valid.

Little ones like to get in on the action when it comes to giving gifts. As much as they like to open a present, I always watch in delight when I see how happy a child is to give a grown-up a present, especially if they made the gift.

You can watch in delight too when your child makes the perfect Father's Day desk accessory for the special dad in their life. All you need is cardboard, craft sticks, acrylic paint, glue, and alphabet foam stamps, and of course, a willing child or two. This project is geared towards younger children, so you will have to help them cut out the cardboard that is used in making the letters, and also help them with the gluing of the letters.

Dad will love his new desk accessory, but if he doesn't have a desk, the cardboard decoration will sit perfectly among pictures of his loving family at home. Best of all, he'll get a charge out of knowing that his little DIYers made the Father's Day accessory themselves, just for him.

There's no doubt about it: Indiana Jones is cool. After waiting almost twenty years for the fourth installment of the Indy series, the buzz is beyond buzzing. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, although it is not my favorite of the series, has every ingredient you have come to expect and love about an Indy movie.

So what's this got to do with DIY-ing? You can capitalize on all the movie hype and make your own Indiana Jones costume. Will you be perceived as cool, too? With lots of leather items and some electrical tape, how could you be anything but?

You'll need brown and black electrical tape, rope, a light brown and a dark brown leather belt, jeans, a fedora, and just a few minutes of your time. There are details about how to make a Indy-style shoulder bag and a whip using rope and electrical tape. Add a few key clothing items and your costume is complete.

So wear it to the movie, don that costume on Halloween, or just put on those duds and venture to the grocery store. You'll be Indy-cool, and that much cooler because you made it yourself.

Making or finding inexpensive wall art is not always an easy task. Some people, me included, have to have just the perfect piece of decor, so we spend hours trying to make or find that perfect elusive item.

Sometimes inspiration hits full force. Such is the case for this amoeba-inspired biological clock that doubles as wall art. Shelly made the clock project for her local newspaper, and I just have to share the awesome tutorial with you, as well as the picture gallery showing how she makes the clock.

Shelly went to her local Goodwill store and bought a cheap clock for less than $2, then cut a piece of plywood into an interesting shape using a jigsaw. She spread Mod Podge on her fabric and on the clock, and glued the fabric onto the plywood. Check out her tutorial for the full directions.

If you have a friend who is counting down the years or days until their biological clock stops ticking, then this is the perfect gift for them. For guys, maybe just changing the shape of the design or color of your fabric will make it a perfect Father's Day gift.

Every time I move a piece of furniture, my carpet is left with indentations that I am not sure how to remove, especially if it happens to be a large piece of furniture. I try to fluff the carpet, but combing the area with my fingers or vacuuming doesn't always help.

When it comes time to move my heavy entertainment center, I will be left with a carpet indent that will have me shaking my head wondering how to fix it. Combing the carpet with my fingers sure won't work for that enormous piece of wood, but I bet using a steam iron or ice would work to remove the carpet dents.

The Frugal Life posted a question from Debbie, who asked how to remove carpet indents. The responses to her question varied, but the majority of answers were to (A) either use an ice cube on the dent, (B) wet a towel and use a steam iron to "iron" out the indents, or (C) use a blow dryer and a comb or brush to make the carpet appear new again.

I have tried the comb and brush method, and it doesn't work all that well for me. Using a hot iron with a wet towel makes the most sense to me, so I'll have to give that one a try. I will try the ice cube method too, but only on small indents. I don't want to be stuck with a gigantic indent in my carpet when I move that monstrous entertainment center, so feel free to leave a comment and tell me your best method for removing carpet indentations.

via: Craft

I have a secret: I've made elaborate crowns of silk flowers, but I've never in my life successfully made a real daisy chain, or understood how they were constructed. Do you tie the stems into loops? Cut the stems? Where do you cut the stem, and how? What connects them? I've clearly been missing out on all the summer fun.

Over at Bella Dia, recently, Cassi wrote a dual tutorial: it both teaches you how to make a daisy chain, and how to write a good online craft tutorial. All you need to make the chain is a number of flowers with strong stems, and your fingernails or something sharp: split the stems, and slide the stem of the next flower on the chain through the split. If I had known it was this easy, I would have been making them for years!

Incidentally, all of the instructions Cassi gives for writing a tutorial are things that the other writers and I try to do here at DIY Life (although I don't personally like to list the amount of time a project will take; I find that's variable based on who's doing the project, and think that it's best to try to work out the probable timing for yourself as you read the instructions).

If you use Cassi's suggestions to write a tutorial of your own, why not let us know about it in the comments?

There are so many dish towels out there with adorable prints. I collect Halloween-themed ones, but know lots of people that collect dish towels in general, or with unique prints. But what to do with them?

I happened upon this tutorial, and thought it would be the perfect thing to make for my twin two-year-old nieces, when helping their grandmother out in the kitchen.

The author of the tutorial says that the apron winds up fitting an eight to eleven year old, so if you are making these for toddlers, like me, you will need to make it shorter, and the neck hole a tad smaller.

For this project you'll only need one dish towel, one package of extra wide double fold bias tape, pins, thread, and ribbon or trim.

The project itself is pretty simple, (the hardest part is getting the bias tape right) and an experienced sewer can turn quite a few of these out in no time for gift giving.

Your little one will love this apron so much they will want one for every day of the week.