A quick & easy holiday gift – felt coasters

A very short post to show you one of the gifts I made for my family this Christmas – felt coasters. I came across a blog post about geometric coasters by Ciera Design on Pinterest that inspired me. However, cutting all of the individual hexagons she uses became overwhelming right away so I created my own larger designs.

I used my paper cutter to cut 4″ x  4″ squares out of a stiff felt fabric. I then created paper patterns that I traced with marker onto the softer contrasting felt pieces so that I could cut them out by hand. I used a fabric glue to glue down the contrasting pieces on the stiff coaster bottom.  Below you can see a sampling of the coasters I made. I created 6 sets in all. Still have to make myself a set!

Coasters-1

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Wine bottle lights – a gift for you, a gift for them

Wine bottle lights are a gift that can be given any time of year really. Especially if you want to give yourself the gift of drinking a few bottles of wine so that you have some nice looking bottles to start with.

I saw this idea in a number of places and can’t even really point to a source.

Supplies:

  • Empty wine bottle (colored ones are nicer than clear)
  • Indoor/outdoor christmas lights. I used a clear strand with 20 bulbs and a plug only on one end
  • Corded drill (cordless will run out of batteries)
  • 1/2″ Glass drill bit (like this one at home depot)
  • Wire and beads if you want to make a “necklace” for the bottle

Instructions:

  • Wear safety glasses and gloves while drilling through the bottles. None of mine broke during drilling, but make sure to be safe.
  • I used a piece of styrofoam to cradle the bottle while drilling it
  • Use the label to start the hole. If the bottle doesn’t have a label, put a piece of masking tape on the bottle.
  • Start drilling. The whole process takes 20 – 30 minutes. I would start and stop quite often because my hand got tired.
  • Drill until the drill bit fits through the hole
  • Soak the bottle in hot water with a bit of oxyclean until the label is easy to get off. A razor blade will help. I also used a brillo pad to take off the glue. After that was done, I used a bottle brush to clean out the glass dust left in the bottle.
  • Feed the lights one by one through the hole
  • Using some wire and vintage beads from Etsy I made a necklace for the bottle

I’d like to think I’ll make a whole army of these to decorate my yard, perhaps under the bottle tree but we’ll see how that goes. For now though, the bottles have been a hit with the recipients!

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Beer cap ornaments

I have a HUGE collection of beer caps because not only do we drink a lot of beer in our house, our friends also save their caps and give them to me. Because we have a beer theme going on in our house, I got the idea to make Christmas ornaments with beer caps. Here’s how I did it – make some of your own!

Supplies:

  • Ornament hooks (I found some fancy ones at World Market last year)
  • Beer caps (preferably holiday themed or colored)
  • A drill
  • Some easy to bend wire
  • Scissors
  • Small pliers (I have some jewelry pliers)

Process:

First, I sorted my caps. I made each ornament from 3 matching caps. Here you can see my supplies:

Next, I drilled holes in the caps. For each set of three caps, I drilled two holes in two caps and one hole in the third cap. The third cap is the bottom cap so it only needs one hole.

Then I used the wire to attach the caps together. I just twisted the wire together on the back side of the caps and cut off any excess. I made sure to point the wire ends toward the cap so it wouldn’t scratch anyone. For the top cap, I used a longer piece of wire so that I could make a few twists before attaching the ornament hook. That way, the directions that the caps faced could also be adjusted relative to the hook direction.

The finished product!