Life Hack: How To Remove Jar Labels

Hey guys! Do you ever find yourselves going crazy trying to remove a jar label? I like to save and reuse glass jars, but sometimes, I have a very hard time removing the jar labels and the remaining glue residue from the surface of my jars. Luckily, I've found a safe and natural way to remove jar labels!

All you will be needing for this project will be some vinegar, cotton pads or paper towels, and your jar. For this life-hack, I used rice vinegar, but I'm sure any other type of vinegar will work just fine.

Try your best to remove as much as the label as you can and then soak a cotton pad or paper towel in vinegar and dab it over the label. Let the vinegar soak into the label for a few minutes. If you feel that the vinegar starts to dry up, just dab more vinegar onto the label to keep it wet and then start rubbing at the label until it starts peeling.

There might be some left over glue residue stuck to the jar, but you can dab more vinegar over the residue and keep rubbing until you're able to remove all of the remaining residue.

Now, you should be left with a smooth and clean surface!

If you aren't worried about chemicals, acetone (nail polish remover) also works just as well in removing jar labels from glass jars; however, from personal experience, I would not advice you use acetone on plastic surfaces because it may slightly dissolve the surface depending on what type of plastic it is.

This was just a neat little trick that I picked up from from a friend that I thought I would share.

As always I hope this post was useful to you in some shape or form and please let me know what you guys think of this "Life-Hack" in the comments below!  Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! ♥

Until next time~ 

DIY Cake Stand Jewelry Organizer

Hey guys! I'm finally finished with my second year of college and now that I'm on summer break, I finally have some time to do another DIY post! A few months ago, I became inspired by Lisa Pullano's DIY jewely cupcake stand tutorial on YouTube. The resulting product was so beautiful and affordable that I felt this was a project that I HAD TO try out myself and share with you guys! This project is perfect for anyone looking to get organized in a stylish way!

All you will be needing are two plates of varying sizes (one big and one smaller plate), one candlestick holder, and a strong glue of your choice. In my case, I chose to use my hot glue gun because my cake stand is relatively small and I'm not going to be putting anything heavy on it, so I don't have to worry too much about the cake stand falling apart. However, in the case that you decide to use larger and/or heavier plates, I would advice that you use a glue that is more heavy duty (e.g. e6000). Also, if you do not have a candlestick, you can purchase one from the dollar store or other objects like wine glasses or small vases.

First, wipe down your plates and make sure they are clean and dust free. On the underside of the smaller plate, find the center of the plate and glue the candlestick holder to the center. The diameter of the base of the candlestick is much larger than the top part and I decided to glue the base of the candle holder to the underside of the smaller plate because the base would take up more space on the larger plate if you glue the base to the larger plate.

Next, on the top of the larger plate, find and mark the center of the plate. Then glue the whole top tier of the cake stand to the center of the larger plate. Follow the instructions on your glue of choice for drying/curing time. Since I'm used a hot glue gun, I only left it alone for about 10 minutes. After that, your new cake stand jewelry organizer is ready to go!

I love this project so much! There are various ways that you could go about doing this project. You could spray paint the dishes and candlestick, you could add more tiers to your cake stand, you could use items besides the candle stick to hold up the tiers.....the list goes on and on! This project only cost me one dollar for the candlestick since I repurposed some old plates I found in my garage. I loved this project so much, that I made two more cake stand type displays for my room!

For the above cake stand display, I had to use a stronger glue (i.e. e6000) instead of my glue gun. The plates I used were much larger and heavier and I also stacked 2 candlesticks on top of each other to make the second tier higher, so I used a stronger glue to prevent the display from falling apart.

 This display was made from an old ash tray I found and a candle stick from the dollar store.

Overall, I think this is a great way to repurpose old plates that you may have lying around. It makes for a great decoration and is also an affordable project! Have fun getting creative with putting together your cake stand organizer!

As always I hope this post was useful to you in some shape or form and please let me know what you guys think of this project in the comments below! 
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! ♥

Until next time~ 

Life Hack: Flats keep slipping off?

Hey guys! It's been a LONG while hasn't it? I will go into more about my long two month absence later on, but first I'd like to talk about a problem that some of you may or may not have encountered. As you can tell from the title, I will be talking about flats that slip off.

I can never seem to take a couple of steps without my flats slipping off sometimes, especially with my flat-forms (pictured above). Thankfully, I came up with a solution for this! All you need are some thin rubber shoe inserts for the balls of your feet and your pair of flats.
NOTE: I think this project only works for shoes that fit your feet pretty well. This may not  work as well if the gap in between the heel of your shoe and your foot is too big. Your heel should touch the heels of your shoes somewhat, or fit normally.

The clear inserts here, have a thickness of about 1mm (1/10th of a centimeter)

I purchased my shoe inserts for $1.50 from Daiso (Japanese dollar store). They were supposed to be for open toed "flip-flop" typed sandals to keep your foot from sliding around in your sandal. This type of insert is ideal for this life-hack, but it's ok if you can't find inserts exactly like these. You can cut a small slit at the top of the inserts you have or you can find, just make sure that they are thin inserts so they don't take up too much space in the back of your shoes.

Place this little corner you've create at the heel of your flats and try them out. Similarly to how some strapless dresses have a rubber strip around the neckline of the dress to keep the dress adhered to your skin to prevent it from falling down, the rubber inserts should help hold your shoe to your heels a little better and keep them from slipping off. That rubber strip that is attached to the neckline of strapless dresses is also what inspired me to come up with this idea.

Another advantage is that you can always reuse them for your other shoes. Just wash the inserts when you feel that they've become too dusty. This is a simple way to save your shoes and keep them functional. I found my flat-forms at a local thrift store in my neighborhood and the person that donated them probably did so because the shoe would just slip off with every step that you would try to take.

I would also advice that if you plan on wearing tights or socks with your flats, the rubber shoe inserts are going tug on your tights and your foot may still slip out. This works best if you go barefoot. I'm not sure if any if that made sense, so you may want to test this out on your own.

I'm not sure if I can categorize this post this a DIY project, so I'll be starting a series of short blog posts titled, "Life Hacks." The general idea of what a "life-hack" is meant to be is when you use different items or techniques in varying ways than they are meant to be used in a more efficient or effective way. I'm terrible at giving concise explanations sometimes, so I apologize if that explanation made no sense at all. With that, this is a series of short blog posts I want to start making in place of some of my usual longer DIY tutorial posts once in a while. These posts will include some of my tips, tricks, and  simple ways that I bypass some of the common problems that I find people encounter in their daily lives from time to time. 

PERSONAL UPDATE:
Before anyone says anything, I know I promised I would try my best to post at least once or twice a month, and I totally failed you guys on that. (Cue the boo-ing) It has been about two months since I last posted, and I apologize for that. I've recently taken up a part time job and I've also been struggling with school work, so I unfortunately have not had the time to write and edit any posts. Until I finish my spring semester, I may not be able to post as frequently until my summer vacation. We'll see how everything pans out.

As always I hope this post was useful to you in some shape or form and please let me know if this "life-hack" worked for you in the comments below! 

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! ♥

Until next time~

DIY Totoro Wineglass Pen Holder

Hey guys! Have you missed me? It’s been about a month since I’ve last posted, but I’m finally back! I hope you guys had a great holiday season and a happy new year! I find it kind of hard writing another blog post after taking such a long break, so please forgive me if this blog post is not up to par with my previous posts. Anyways, let’s jump into the new year with an easy DIY project! We’re going to be making a トトロ(Totoro) pen holder out of a wine glass! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Totoro, he is a character from a popular Japanese animation titled, 「となりのトトロ」(Tonari no Totoro/My Neighbor Totoro).

As you can see from the above photo, we will only need a few items for this project. You can upcycle some old wine glasses from home or find some cheap ones at a thrift shop or Dollar Store. I suggest you use a wine glass with a shorter stem, so that the bowl sits closer to the surface of your desk and will have a lesser chance of tipping over. I would say that the paint primer and gloss can be optional; however, I highly recommend that you use both if you can. I will go into more detail about primer and gloss later on in this post.

STEP 1: Prep Wine Glasses

 This step is optional and you can skip this if you choose. I decided to cover the rim of the wine glass because, personally, I feel that leaving the rim clear makes the wine glass look better. Also, the reason why I stuffed some toilet paper inside the wine glass is because I don’t want the spray on primer to get inside the wine glass, so you can also skip that if you’re not going to be using any type of spray on products or you don’t care.

STEP 2: Priming & Painting

Here, I used a Krylon primer in the color grey. After applying the paint primer onto the glass, you should wait at least one hour for it to dry (or follow the instructions on the back or your can if you aren't using Krylon). Also, do your brain a favor and make sure you coat the object in a well-ventilated area or outside to avoid inhaling the toxic fumes from the spray (or wear a mask).
Tip: If you're using spray on primer like I am (or any type of spray on product), don't hold the can so close to the object you're spraying because the paint primer will come out looking really streaky and it will start to drip (won't have an even coat).

Make sure to coat the wine glasses evenly. I first sprayed the top of the wine glass bowl and the foot and waited for that coat to dry before flipping the wine glasses upside-down to coat the bottom of the wine glass bowl.

 As I had mentioned earlier, you don’t have to use paint primer if you don’t want to, but I highly suggest you use primer on slippery surfaces like glass because it helps improve the adhesion of paint to the glass as mentioned here by Krylon. It also helps to create the ideal surface texture that allows for your paint to go on more smoothly. As you can see from my picture, if you just apply your paint directly to the surface of slippery glass, your paint job may come out looking a bit “streaky,” as opposed to if you had applied primer to help create a smoother paint job.

Before you start painting your wine glass, I think it’s best to sketch out your ideas ahead of time. It really helps to sketch it out because it’s a good way to see how your mental visualization of your design may look when you paint it onto your glass, so I messily sketched out some ideas I had on a piece of scratch paper.

After painting on your base color, if you’re not too good at painting free-handed like I am, I suggest that you lightly sketch out your design onto the wine glass so you can have guidelines to follow as you paint. Leave out the smaller details.

Finish off by sketching on the remaining details and paint them onto the glass. For the smaller details, I like to cheat and use permanent markers. I used a silver Sharpie to draw on the little boomerang/upside-down V shapes on Totoro’s belly, and I used a black Sharpie to draw on his whiskers and his little nose. For the pupils, I dipped the end of my paint brush in black paint and used it like a dotting tool to create the perfect circular pupils.

 STEP 3: Finishing Wine Glasses

Earlier, just like the primer, I had mentioned that the gloss is optional. You can, of course, leave your wine glass as it is, and just start using it after you finish painting it, but gloss really helps to protect the paint. I find that when I leave the wine glass as it is without the gloss, the paint catches dust and gets scratched really easily because the paint makes the surfaces of the glass rougher. The gloss creates a smoother surface that makes the wine glasses much easier to clean and keeps the paint from getting damaged.

Once you are done, you can start using your new pen holder!

These are a couple of other wine glasses that I painted.

You can also do this project with other types of containers, jars, pots, etc. When painting Totoro on the surface of any type of container, I prefer to stick to containers that resemble his original shape, which is big and round. Other things you can do with the wine glasses are that you could go for a more minimalistic look and just place piece of lacey ribbon on the inside of the wine glass as pictured above and call it a day.

There are so many simple ways in which you can decorate your wine glasses to turn them into pen holders. Your options are endless! This goes for any other containers you have lying around your house. You could decorate them and reuse them for something else, which really helps recycle old items around the house. Maybe you guys could pick some items you have at home that you want to repurpose and leave them in the comments below and I'll pick some to think of ways to repurpose them.

Before I go, I'd like to update you guys on a few things regarding the frequency in which I upload to this blog.  I'm going to be starting school next Monday (1/27/14) and I will most likely be posting infrequently, but I've decided to try to post at least once or twice a month or try to post more often but have shorter posts. What do you guys think?

Anyways, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and I’m probably going to be the last one to say this to you, but Happy New Year! :)

Until next time!

Art by Me