My Attempt at Green Mercury Glass

This is my attempt at green mercury glass.It looks really pretty in the dark with a lit candle inside of it.

Supplies

Glassware - I found mine around the house
Silver and green spray paint - stashbust
Tape and plastic bags
Spray bottle with water

Instructions

Use tape and plastic bags to protect the outside of the jar.

Spray the inside of the jar with water so that it beads up.

Spray paint the inside of the jar with the silver paint.

After it dries (about an hour) rub the inside of the jar with a soft cloth to pop the paint bubbles and smooth away loose paint

Wait for twenty-four hours.

Spray the inside of the jar with water again and spray with green spray paint this time.

After it dries (about an hour) rub the inside of the jar with a soft cloth to pop the paint bubbles and smooth away loose paint

Let the jar completely dry and put a candle in it and watch the candle light flicker through the distressed silver and green. (I really wanted to do red mercury glass but I don't have any red spray paint and I am stashbusting right now).

I will be sharing this at:

Crystal Mikasa Clock Refashion

I bought this clock at the thrift store years ago because I really, really liked the shape but it isn't my style at all. I considered making a picture frame out of it but I couldn't figure out how to pry the clock face apart. so when I found out how to use spray paint for faux mercury glass I knew what I wanted to do.

Supplies

Glassware - I found mine around the house
Silver and gold spray paint - stashbust
Tape
Spray bottle with water

Instructions

Use tape to protect the front of the clock.

Spray the back side of the clock so that it beads up then spray paint over the water with silver paint.

After it dries (about an hour) rub the back of the clock face with a soft cloth to pop the paint bubbles and smooth away loose paint


Wait for twenty-four hours.

Spray paint the back of the clock face with gold paint.

I embellished a the lid of a can of juice concentrate and hot glued it over the hole where the clock face had been.

I will be sharing this with:

Lap Books, Math Manipulatives, and Weaving Crafts

One of the suggestions for enrichment this week was weaving. Mrs. C our teacher called me and asked if I had any weaving suggestions. I told her no. The next day I got a Family Fun Magazine with a cute woven tree in it. Since then I've found the same tree on the that artist woman blog so if you want instructions I would suggest visiting her excellent instructions.

Here is C with her tree.

The first thing that drew me to the that artist woman blog were her adorable woven baskets using yogurt containers. Here is K with her basket.

This weekend I spoke with one of my dearest friends on the planet. She homeschooled her (now grown) children and now is a homeschool examiner in Florida. She told me all about this phenomena called lapbooks. I looked them up and knew they would be perfect for my very tactile youngest and my born journaler oldest.

I put the elements of this together for K to do yesterday. I did it very quickly because I wanted to show this to the parents so they can see what the potential of this is. C is jealous and wants to do her own. Mrs. C has asked I gather elements so that the kindergartener's can do some next week.

Here is K's book.

When I gather the elements for the kindergarteners I will share more about lapbooks and how I did it.

K is my tactile and kinesthetic child. Last year she absolutely struggled in kindergarten when it came to counting. I would talk to her teacher and she would tell me how they tried and tried and K couldn't do it.

I would come home and give K a jar of buttons and she was fine.

Now K is doing addition. It has been a struggle. Yesterday she was working on a work sheet where the kids are given a sum and then are give a series of six problems and they are supposed to indicate which prolbems yield the sum.

I was frustrated and so was she.

I remembered buttons.

I grabbed three applesauce cups (I never throw out apple sauce cups. I have three towers of them next to the microwave and four or five in my craft room) and the marbles I keep in the living room for decoration (yes, I am odd).

I told her to count the first addend in one cup and the second addend into in another cup and then to count them as she moved them into a third cup. It worked like a charm. I was proud of myself and called to tell my husband. While I was on the phone with him, K comes up to me and tells me "Mom, this is weird. I have five plus zero. See, I have five in this cup and the other cup is empty so the answer is five."  She was excited and I was thrilled. We had not been able to get her to understand that a digit plus zero remains the digit.

The only problem is that if my highly distractable daughter looks away when counting the sum she might forget which cup is which. So yesterday I spray painted a ton of applesauce cups, with the idea that she could use two of one color for addends and the third for the sum. I did lots of cups because I figured it could be used for long addition too.

Here is K working a simple sum as an example.

Gold Mercury Glass Jar

I had read several different ways of faking mercury glass - one was using silver leaf like I did with the bowling ball and finial. Then I found this spray paint version by Domestically Speaking. I tried three variations. Here is the first one:

I photographed it outside so I could give you a better idea of the detail. I wanted to try gold mercury glass so I googled gold mercury glass and studied the images before I started this. Here is what I did for this one (the instructions at Domestically Speaking didn't work for this one because the mouth was so narrow - but I still like how it turned out).


Supplies

Glassware - I found mine around the house
Silver and gold spray paint - stashbust
Tape and plastic bags
Spray bottle with water

Instructions

Use tape and plastic bags to protect the outside of the jar.

Spray the inside of the bottle with water so that it beads up - this was the first step from Domestically Speaking - it doesn't do what she shows but it will in a couple other projects I plan to show you. Anyhow, you still need water in the jar.

Spray paint the inside of the jar with the silver paint. Because of the narrow neck I over-sprayed so that it pooled up in the bottom of the jar - this is not a problem.

Wait for twenty-four hours.

Dump most of the residual water and paint out.

Here is a step I am unsure of because I can't remember what I did. I can't recall if I spritzed with water again or not.

Spray the inside of the jar with gold spray paint (over-spray again).

Let the gold paint dry for an hour. Then you will spend an hour or two with the bottle near wherever you happen to be (I was making supper) because you will be rotating the paint around in the jar. Some of the silver will be completely dry as will some of the gold but some will not.

You will need to rotate the jar periodically so that the paint doesn't pool in one spot. Occasionally you will want to tip the jar over and let excess paint run out.

After an hour or so of doing this, tip your jar over in a container that will let it hang suspended (you don't want paint to dry in pools on the lip of the jar) and let the jar drip out. You will still want to check it periodically and rotate if necessary.

Details of the effect.

I've rearranged the bowling ball/finial/lard bucket arrangement and now this sits on the old lard bucket and the finial sits next to it and of course the bowling ball towers over all.

I really, really like how it looks. I am not sure if it looks authentic but I do love it. You will be seeing at least one more project in this vein soon.

I will be sharing this at:

An Insanely Long Photo Essay and A Very Funny Story

The Very Funny Story

On Friday, I heard the familiar sound of the scrabbling of little clawed feet on the dryer vent pipe. I didn't know who was the owner of the clawed feet but I knew the noise (last time I got a new dryer as a result of a visitor). So on Friday night, when hubby came home we set about removing our unwanted guest.

Because of the limited space, I volunteered to be the one to crawl behind the dryer and pull the vent pipe from the dryer. I pulled the pipe away carefully and swiftly covering the end of the pipe with a bag. Nothing. It didn't surprise me. I figured the little creature was hiding in the pipe terrified. Then I put some gloves on and put my hand in the dryer to see if he was perhaps in the dryer. Nothing.

So my husband turned the dryer on. It is too bad we weren't video-taping. Dryer lint flew into my face and everywhere else and out leaped a terrified chipmunk. We chased him around the laundry room for close to half an hour. I got my hands on him twice and one time he lost all the fur on his tail, while escaping me.

Then he managed to squeeze into our crawl space which is adjacent to the laundry room. There was no finding him in the piles of junk in the crawl space so I left the house (it was now nearly eight) and went to the hardware store and bought two peanut scented sticky rat traps.

We stuck one in the laundry room and one in the crawl space. About 10:30 at night I could hear him scrabbling around near the door of the crawl space. Hubby and I opened the door (with great care) and found the poor chipmunk sprawled out on the sticky trap - all four paws were stuck and his chin was glued down.

Hubby drove down to the creek with him and removed him from the trap. I asked him if the poor thing ran away. Hubby said "No." Hubby said that it was really hard to remove him from the sticky trap and he wasn't sure he didn't dislocate something. He said the poor thing staggered away through the leaves and had leaves sticking to him.

I am not sure if he will live or not but hubby and I don't have the stomach for killing things even rodents. Hubs says at least he has a chance.

The Insanely Long Photo Essay

This weekend we took C and her best friend G to MOA to celebrate C's birthday which was earlier this month.

K waits in line with Daddy for the carousel ride.

G and C on the carousel. They look thrilled, don't they?

Waiting for bumper cars.

K and Dad are after someone.

G is getting the hang of the cars.

G takes K and Daddy head-on.

Daddy and K make a get-away.

C blocks Daddy and K.

Checking out how high the ride goes.

Worried?

Ready to buckle-up.

Second thoughts?

Coming down.

G and I waited for a long time while C went on a ride by herself (G didn't want to ride it). I love street photography and when I saw this old guy it got my juices going. His shirt says "Mills Fleet Farm - A Man's Mall" and he pairs his 'masculine' ensemble with his wife's bag.

A closer look.

Because the American Girl store is part of the park, you see a lot of this. 

G kept wondering what I was taking a picture of. I guess she hasn't spent enough time around me.

While we were waiting for the girls to get on the Great Balloon Race, I saw this little guy with his grandpa's large hands protectively around him. 

Big brother did not think it was necessary for grandpa to hold hands with little brother.

G and C riding the balloons (K was with them but you can't see her).

C road the roller coaster again so K and G decided to go on the frogger. They loved it they just kept getting off and getting right back on.

Kids are amazing. You go to the zoo and their favorite animal is the chipmunk and their favorite bird is the sparrow. You go to a park and they have as much fun hanging on the railing as they do riding the rides.

I caught some shots of other people while the girls went on the frogger over and over again. This little girl was adorable!! 

This little girl was beautiful.

G and C wanted their face painted. K chose to go into Butterfly Cove instead. Dad went with her and I stayed with the older girls.

C is the child who will scream bloody murder and act as if you are going to pluck her eye out if you try to help her with a loose eyelash or put eye-drops in. She had no problem with this lady painting her eye-lids. The power of wanting something...

The last photos I took were because I love shadows. Poor G didn't understand why I was taking these photos. 

A look and G and C in color so you can see the colors they chose for their paint job.