she's crafty

after watching craft wars and storage wars texas (there are 2 girls on there that refurbish old furniture and things) yesterday and looking at reuse connection's facebook page this morning, i just had to do something crafty, but what?

i started by getting out my bag o' recycables that were slated to go to my in-laws' house since we have no recycling at our apartment complex.

i chose 2 items: an old bath and body works (hereafter called bbw) soap dispenser and some olive cans. i started with the bbw soap dispenser. 

• first, i had to get the labels off. no easy task. apparently bbw doesn't want people making things out of their old bottles. not without some serious elbow grease anyway. however, yesterday, while trying to get some old stickers off a computer monitor, i learned that olive oil works. i peeled the stickers off and olive oiled the back of the bottle. by this point i had decided i was going to make a bud vase, so the sticky on the front didn't matter as i was just going to cover it up anyway.
• next i found a flower on some scrapbook paper that i knew i wanted to incorporate so i cut it out. i thought i would put a complimentary color of paper behind it but wasn't sure how to get the size right. i then realized i had peeled the front label off in one piece and could use that as a template. hurrah! i lightly taped it to the paper i wanted to use and cut it out.
• now it was a simple task of using some spray adhesive to adhere the paper to the bottle.

**a tip for using spray adhesive**

i like to keep an old magazine handy (martha stewart works great, cause it's a bit larger than others) so that i can open up a page, lay down my paper, spray it with the adhesive and then close the page. then, next time i want to use it, those pages will be glued together, so i open up to the next page and so on...

• i spray-glued it all together, ran some twine around the top with dabs of hot glue and finished it all off with a cute little brad. voila. bud vase:

next up were the olive cans. (trader joe's pitted green olives are the bomb! btw) the labels came off of these much easier. it also left a bit of sticky just at the seam, which actually turned out to be a nice way to temporarily hold the paper on to see if i liked how it all looked together.

• i chose some different papers, cut them to size and spray-adhered it all together.
• once i had the paper stuck on the can, i put ponytail holders around it to keep it all in place until the adhesive dried.

• i decided i wanted these to be able to hang, so i took the pull tab off the lid and attached it to the back of the can with hot glue and finished it all off with a bit of twine around the top. 

here i have them displayed on my bathroom wall with air plants in them. how cute! i love turning trash into treasure, it gives me happies. hopefully reading my blog gives you happies, too. :)