Love, Hugs, and Coffee Mugs: Getting crafty!

I have never been very talented when it comes to artwork or crafts. My one skill is that I have excellent precision to stay in the lines of a coloring book. (And yes I still do this today as a stress-relief tactic.) When I do decide to take on a project I have an image in mind, a perfect image, of what the craft will look like and so I begin the project striving for perfection.

I know I am not perfect and that I cannot make anything perfect, but I strive none the less. For instance, I wanted to crochet my Momma a scarf for Christmas one year and I started it...and I worked on it a little bit....and then I didn't like how it looked because I had just learned to crochet and I was not an expert. So instead of giving her an imperfect and completely Annie-made scarf...I passed the project in progress over to a friend who is an excellent crochet-er and let her finish the scarf for my Momma. (I did in fact tell Momma that I had started this and that it is considered "home-made", just not all "Annie-made," she laughs and wears it all winter.)

Knowing my own style and my probably of giving up on a project half way through because there is no way it will turn out perfectly, I started a project that I wanted to leave in our Syracuse home for the many communities to come. (Side note, Elizabeth has painted a beautiful image of San Pasqual,who is the patron saint of cooks, that hangs in our kitchen and will stay in the house once we leave.) (Another side note, I am surrounded by very talented community members which does not help alleviate the pressure to make a perfect piece of artwork or craft...my own struggle, I know.) Lots of project ideas are floating around the interwebs these days and so I took an idea and made it my own. We have been saving bottle caps and wine corks this year in some vases on our windowsill so I decided to put them to use. I wanted to make "JVC" with bottle caps. Most bottle cap projects involve flattening the caps or flipping them over the use the inside for a magnet or fabric or button, etc. I figured that flattening the caps would be too difficult and therefore encourage me to give up quicker so I figured out a way to keep the caps in their form and still secure them. Here's my how-to and the finished project!

Bottle cap art
1. Find thick cardboard, spray paint the color you want the background to be.
2. Lay out the design on the cardboard and trace.
3. Cut out cardboard. We found that steak knives work pretty well.
4. Spray paint the edges of the cardboard. (You could do all of the spray painting at this point if you wanted to do it all at once in stead of in two parts.)
5. Lay the design back out onto the cut out/completely painted cardboard.
6. GLUE! We used a hot glue gun and did about three dots per bottle cap. We applied the glue directly to the cap and then laid the cap back down in the correct position on the cardboard.
7. Let dry and display!
8. Oh, do with a friend, it makes things much easier and way more fun! Shout out to Katrina for helping me create this project and believing in me to finish it!