Repurposed Books

I for one own three devices that allow me to read ebooks on the go and I use them with some regularity. However, I own many, many more physical books than ebooks and I hope that never changes. Any book lover will tell you that there is just something about reading an actual book that can't be replaced by an electronic. The biggest downside to books is that they can only take so much before they wear out and begin to lose pages. I have a few books that if I open, I'm pretty sure they will disintegrate. Too much of my love and time have gone into those well worn books and I can't bring myself to just throw them away. So I took to Google and Pinterest to find new lives for my friends and figured I share some with you.

Book Cover for Your Wireless Router from Apartment Therapy

The Modern Library Storage Bin from Able+Baker Etsy 

Book Lamp from HGTV

 Repurposed Book Purse from Amandita Designs

Book Safe from Art of Manliness 

I hope these ideas have given you inspiration on ways to bring new life to your old friends. Happy crafting!

Makeup Bags

As a crafty person I give a lot of handmade gifts for Christmas and birthdays. I’m pretty specific about the types of crafts I give as gifts though. If I’m going to go through the work of making something by hand I want the person receiving it to be able to use it and  not just put it somewhere to be forgotten about. This is why all the handmade gifts I give are all practical things that can be used regularly. This past Christmas I made all of my girlfriends a matching set of monogrammed makeup bags. I don’t know of anyone who can’t use another cute storage bag.

I love these bags because they are wider at the bottom, allowing them to stand up and hold more things. To make them extra awesome I used Vinyl Fuse on the lining of them. If you don’t know, Vinyl Fuse is a sheet of vinyl that you can iron on fabric to make it water repellent. It makes the perfect lining for a makeup because it makes it so much easier to clean up the surprise makeup spills we find occasionally. The larger bag also would be great as a bikini bag. The monograming is thanks to my embroidery machine, but you can buy precut fabric letters from most craft stores.

To make these bags I used this tutorial from Craftster. I used her measurements to make the smaller bag and the larger bag I made up my own measurements for.

Galactic Goblets

Birthday gifts aren't always easy to come up with. Sometimes you want something that is custom made for someone that fits their interests exactly. For that you want something like these etched cups.

Specially made for the Star Trek, and of course, drinking enthusiast, these cups boldly go where no cup has gone before. The cups have the uniform logo from the original series on one side and Star Trek in the shows special font going up the other side.

Nearly anything can be designed to be etched into a cup like this, so it makes a great gift to make nearly anyone happy.

To start you are going to want to find some good cups. You will want to find glasses with flat surfaces so the image you will be applying won’t be distorted.

Next you are going to want to find the image to put onto the glasses. Keep in mind the more complicated the image is to draw the harder it is going to be to cut out. After that you will want to size out the image so it will fit properly on the cup. After getting the image to size you will trace the image onto contact paper using carbon paper.

After cleaning the glass thoroughly, take the contact paper and place it onto the glass. Do your best to make sure it’s not at an odd angle. Use an x-acto, or similar craft knife, to cut the image out on the glass. Peel the cut areas from the glass.

 Apply masking tape around the glass to cover everywhere but the area where the graphic is going to be. Then apply etching compound to the graphic area. Follow the directions from your etching compound. Most will want to be left on for several minutes.

After the compound has done its job you just need to rinse off the compound thoroughly, remove the tape and contact paper, give the glass a thorough cleaning and then fix yourself a nice drink in your custom glass. Perhaps one of these Star Trek inspired drink recipes used at Quark’s Bar.