Mercury Glass Pumpkins

Look closely. No, even more closely.  Have you ever grown a pumpkin with a metal stem?

'Looking glass' spray can transform pumpkins into these gorgeous centerpieces! Use a white spray first to get the best effect. Oh, I'm soooo doing this!!! I'll use fake pumpkins from the craft store so they'll last longer

designs that inspire to create your perfect home: 20 Halloween pumpkin craft idea: Easy last minute!!

Things Crafty Mixed-Media art crafts sewing journalling Videos Podcast Make Your Own Mercury Glass Item | Things Crafty crafting videos tutorials reviews books products demos and Podcast

These are all great.  One of the pins quoted above came from Ruffles and Such, where she wrote, "But how is this for a DIY project? Spray paint (or silver leaf) those pumpkins and look how glamorous they can look! I could really get into that kind of pumpkin."

I'm not sure what kind of farmer's markets or pumpkin patches these people are going to, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the pumpkins in that picture are not real pumpkins that have been spray painted or covered in silver leaf.  Nor are they Dollar Store pumpkins.  And they definitely are not someone's homemade Mercury Glass pumpkins.  These are Pottery Barn pumpkins.  The only way this is an "easy last minute" pumpkin craft idea is if your idea of a craft is running to Pottery Barn.  And you know, if that's your thing, I'm not gonna judge.

For the rest of you who want a little more "Do It Yourself" in your pumpkin craft project, you have a few options.

You can try to use Dollar Store pumpkins:

It's a fairly inexpensive way to go, but I think we can all agree that this is not the look most people are going for.

You can use looking glass spraypaint on the inside of a glass pumpkin, and you'll get something like this:

Not bad!  A little more expensive than the Dollar Store route, but closer to the original desired look.

Or you could break all the rules of looking glass paint, and use it on the OUTSIDE of a ceramic pumpkin:

Folks, I think we have a winner!  It may not be shabby-chic enough for some, but I think that's a really nice effect and a lovely addition to anyone's Fall decor.

Fairies in a Jar

What is diamond glitter, anyway?

How To Make Fairies In A Jar This is something everyone will love you can just imagine the look on your childs face when they see this and its something they will never forget so its worth a little work on this one. FAIRIES IN A JAR DIRECTIONS: 1. Cut a glow stick and shake the contents into a jar. Add diamond glitter 2. Seal the top diy

I love so many things about this one.  The misspellings on the picture, the poor punctuation in the description, the instructions to shake hard. . .It's all comedy gold.

It's kind of strange how this very specific description shows up all over the web.  Try it; Google "something they will never forget so its worth a little work on this one."  It comes up in all sorts of places.

The earliest mention I could find was from May 2012 on KWNR.  Who knows where it came from before that.

Something worth mentioning: Diamond glitter is a specific type of glitter.  Most of the people who have tried to recreate this pin have been using regular glitter.  Diamond glitter is ground glass rather than normal glitter.  Theoretically, ground up pieces of glass would give you more of a sparkly prismatic effect, where the people using regular glitter have wound up with dark spots where their glitter blocks the glowing light.

This may be why the instructions say to "seal" the top of the jar, rather than just "put the lid on."  Yes, glitter is the herpes of the craft world and you don't want it getting out, but if you're doing this with children, probably the last thing you want is a bunch of teeny glass shards and probably-toxic glow stick fluid getting loose on your kids.

Back to the pin.  No matter what kind of glitter you use, you're not getting the result in that picture.  It's a beautiful piece of work, but it's not something you can replicate in real life with a glow stick and some glass dust.

The good news is, there IS a way to make a jar that has little glowing spots in it.  To do it, you need to use glow in the dark paint (and no, not the kind you make by using the liquid from a highlighter - that is not "glow in the dark," that is "fluorescent").  

Check out this tutorial by Panka for a very nice illustration of how this can work.  

Make Your Own Sea Glass

Do in your kitchen in minutes what takes years in nature!

make your own sea glass. Glass in jar with sand and shake.

This pin is one of those special ones that goes right to the original source of the picture (yay!), but which then has a very misleading comment on the pin.  In this case, the poor flickr photographer resorted to putting up a comment on her picture:

"Update: Hello to anyone looking in from Pinterest - sorry to disappoint you but my photo has been linked wrong - this is not where you find out how to make it, this is REAL seaglass I found myself as I am lucky to live near a beach where it washed ashore. If you wish to make it - look elsewhere, as I don't have the instructions all I can imagine as it is very labour intensive to do it. Thanks for liking my picture though :-) lisaluvz"

I feel sorry for Lisaluvz.  Someone linked to her picture, put on that bit about making it yourself, and then Lisa got to deal with the fallout of not living up to those other pinners' expectations.  

Real sea glass is the result of both a chemical and a physical process - yes, the particulates in seawater rub against the glass, causing tiny scrapes that help "frost" the glass and take away its glossiness, but there is also a chemical component (like frosted glass).  

You might be able to approximate sea glass with a rock tumbler, but I'm not sure how well it would work.  Or you could just try mixing Elmer's Glue with food coloring and see how that works out for you (that should probably be its own post!).

Lace Light Bulbs

Now that our lightbulbs don't burn out every few weeks of course everyone is coming up with ways to use old bulbs in crafts

spray paint through lace on a bulb.

DIY light bulb decor. Just put lace over the bulb and spraypaint

Spray paint through lace over a light bulb or clear Christmas ornaments.

This is one of those things that looks like it should work, but if you take a closer look, you realize that the logistics of spray painting through a doily that is laid over the round and variable shape of a light bulb would probably not look this great.

And you'd be right - despite what most of the pins say, this picture is not the result of spray painting a light bulb through a doily.  These are called Arquette lamps and they are (or were) for sale on Plumo.  It looks like they're gone now, but that's the original source of this image.

In addition to the probable failure if you tried to recreate this pin due to the picture not truly portraying a light bulb that has been spray painted through lace, the idea of using spray paint on a light bulb and then still using that light bulb for lighting is probably a bad idea.  Per a commenter on Polyvore:

"Don't you need a special kind of paint to do this to make sure that there isn't a fire hazard? I did something similar to this once with regular spray paint and it almost burned a hole in my ceiling...."

Words to live by. Don't burn your house down in the name of style.

Bridesmaids Shirts With the Number of Years You've Been Friends

Because it's all about publicly ranking your bridesmaids, amirite?

Bridesmaids shirts with the number of years you've been friends. This is awesome!

Okay.  Don't click through the original pin, as it seems to go somewhere you don't want to go.  It looks like a suspicious redirect.

Now that that's out of the way, can I get an answer as to why showing the number of years you've been friends is "awesome?"  Because someone with a one or a zero has got to be feeling awesome about this idea.  "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but I need bridesmaids, so putonthisembarrassingshirt maybe."

No, I am not a lyrical genius.  We cannot all be Kanye.

Moving on.  If you saw this pin and your first thought was "OMG PERFECT!" then you are bad and you should feel bad.

I tracked down the source of this image and thankfully, that's not what's going on (as you have probably already figured out).  Those numbers are the date of the wedding, which is actually very cute, as long as everyone can remember what order to stand in every time there is a picture from the rear.

Also, these shirts are much better than matching bikinis that have rhinestones on the tushie spelling out "maids,"  I am definitely Team Shirt.

Thrifted Dresser With Wallpaper Inside

Just tear out some drawers, add some shelves, wallpaper the back, and voilà!

Thrifted dresser with missing drawers, add shelves, wall paper inside. Very cute!

First of all, let me point out that this pin commits that cardinal sin of Not Linking To The Right Blog Post.  The URL is for the main blog itself, which means if you're hoping to find the entry for this project, you must figure out how to search that blog (or you could just go page by page forever).  Please.  PLEASE!  When you're out on the web and you see something cool to pin, make sure you click to the exact entry you're looking at, not a landing page or even a page from a search.  Those will be frustrating pins for those who come after you.

Aside from that faux pas, what else is wrong with this pin?  Pretty much everything.  I tracked down the correct post, and found that this is not a thrifted dresser; it was a hutch.  There was no need to add shelves because they were original to the piece.  I mean, who has a dresser or chest of drawers that tall anyway?  Or a dresser with that kind of molding around the top?  

Also, that's fabric, not wallpaper.

Not that finding an old dresser and giving it a similar makeover with shelves and wallpaper (and crown molding, base molding, etc) might not work, but that's not what this picture is showing.  If you're looking to replicate this pin, best to start with a hutch; it'll be a lot less work.

Listerine Foot Soak

Good for those with "foot in mouth" problems?

This is crazy. Mix 1/4 c Listerine (any kind but I like the blue), 1/4 c vinegar and 1/2 c of warm water. Soak feet for 10 minutes and when you take them out the dead skin will practically wipe off.

This one has been getting repinned a lot.  Sometimes the pinner puts the entire recipe in the pin, and sometimes they leave out the Listerine, which is interesting because on all of the source sites, that's one of the main ingredients.  The other main ingredient being that perennial favorite for practically everything, vinegar.

There are a few things going on here.  First, the recipe itself is odd.  If you mix 1/4 cup of Listerine, 1/4 cup of vinegar, and 1/2 cup of warm water, you have one cup of liquid.  That's not remotely enough for a foot soak.  Not even if you're doing one foot at a time.  So there's that.  

Then there is the note from the recipe saying that they prefer using the "blue" Listerine.  Well, that's giving some folks unintended consequences, like dyeing their feet blue.  Others had better luck with the soak, claiming their feet did feel softer, but that the dead skin did not wipe off as advertised.

The part that the pin gets correct is the very first sentence.  "This is crazy."  Yes, yes it is.