Friday DIY- Spring Cleaning!

It's a beautiful spring day today in Brooklyn! : ) and it's my birthday! yay!

anyways, lately I'v been cleaning my apt like crazy, so I felt it was appropriate to to do a DIY cleaning blog. I've been trying out recipes for eco-friendly cleaning substances, because what good does a cleaning spree do ya if your house ends up smelling like clorox in the end? It just seems counter-productive to use something as unhealthy as bleach to "clean" up.

I found this website: http://www.ecocycle.org/hazwaste/recipes.cfm and it's full of recipes for eco-friendly cleaning stuff. Here's the recipes I've tried so far:


Drain Declogger
Pour together:
¼ c baking soda down the drain, followed by
½ c. vinegar
Cover drain and let sit for 15 minutes. Follow with 2 qts. boiling water.

Mildew Remover
Dissolve together: ½ c, vinegar
½ c. borax in warm water.
Apply with sponge or spray bottle.

I kept an eye out for borax and didn't happen to find any until I popped into a Met grocery store the other day.

I was most impressed with the the drain declogger. It worked just as well as regular draino and definately better than the CVS-brand rip off of draino I tried awhile ago.

The mildew remover recipe worked pretty well, I tried it on my shower curtain. I think I'll have to give it one more go for it to be really completely clean. On the plus side, it always takes awhile to scrub the whole curtain and I tend to get whatever cleaner I use for that all over myself and the entire bathroom, so it was a much pleasanter experience to be covered in vinegar, borax and water than the usual nasty chemicals.







...and now for something completely different. I cranked out a few new stud earrings, this time using a leftover netted fabric. I like how the yellow ones came out because the texture reminds me of honeycomb.

Friday DIY- Earrings Update

This week I tried the ol Fabric Covered Stud Earrings project out again. This time I used stetchy fabric and made smaller little fimo circles.






















I think they came out a lot better than the last ones. And I didn't even burn the fimo this time! ; )












Next Friday I'll post a how-to for making a cute gift box out of a mac & cheese box!

Friday DIY! a day late lol ; )

Ok, so I didn't get to it yesterday. maybe I should change it to "Sometime around Friday DIY" hahaha anyways, without further ado.....


This week I decided to try and make some of those cute little fabric covered stud earrings that you see on etsy lately. Here's an example of a really well done pair by Fluffington. They were on the front page the other day.




















I didn't succeed in making my pair as clean looking but they're still kinda cute.




First things first: materials.




stud earrings with flat front
scrap of cool fabric
fimo clay
super glue
scissors



I got the glue at a jewelry supply shop on 6th Ave. It's a multi-purpose super glue.













First I made little circular disks out of the fimo clay. I made mine just slightly bigger than the flat part of the earrings.











Next I baked them. Apparently too long because they burned! : 0 haha Fortunately that doesn't matter because they're just getting covered with fabric anyway. I think they were in for about 15min so I guess you should try 5min or so.




















After letting my poor burnt-beyond-recognition fimo disks cool I cut a little square of my fabric scrap that fit the whole fimo disk. I glued the front part first and let that dry by placing it face down on the table for a couple minutes. after the front was securely glued I started folding the rest of my little fabric square around the fimo clay disk. I continued gluing bit by bit, holding each fold in place for a couple minutes to let the glue set.

After the fimo clay disk was completely covered I glued the stud to the back. I held that in place for a few minutes too. I then let them sit overnight before I starte playing with them, just to make sure the glue was really strong.

And that's it!

I have some ideas for
improvements, so maybe next week I'll post an update on this one.