Letter Writer

Cute stationary I've bought in Japan (From the Daiso).

Before I joined the military I honestly can't think of when I wrote a letter. With social media, e-mail, text messaging and so on there was never a need. I mean, most teens probably keep blogs now instead of diaries.
But when I joined I spent three months in Boot Camp. The only contact with the outside world we were allowed to have was letters.
And so it began. I wrote religiously in Boot Camp, to everyone I knew, pretty much. I would write on anything I could find, and during whatever time I could sneak and do so.
Once I graduated and I moved onto Combat training, and from there I went to my first duty station in North Carolina I continued to write. I found I enjoyed it. Taking time out of my day to sit and really think about what I wanted to say to my family, reflect on recent happenings in my life. Granted getting my family to write back only happened occasionally, except for when it came to my Grandparents, and my elderly neighbor whom I've known forever (and then later on my mother-in-law). I would say that I keep in touch with my Grandma, Mother in-law and neighbor now more than I do my parents.
Recently even one of my old friends from high school has even started writing me. We went over five years without talking to each other, in person or online. And now we write several times a month. It's amazing.
My mother in-law, Evelyn, is big int arts and crafts. She makes me cards that are incredible.

 Here is just a sample of some of the cards she's made me, that I still have. They're so nice, and pretty much works of art. She custom makes them all for her friends and family.

It definitely gives me the motivation to keep writing, because to receive these and not use them would be a crime.

Her and I write a lot, and she'll send me post cards from places she's at when her and her husband travel. My Husband never writes, and a lot of family doesn't either, so she's always stoked that I do. It's touching. :)









Well, eventually I started accumulating tons of mail, because what do you do with letters after you've read and replied to them? I'd hate to throw them away. So I went to Micheal's and bought a sweet box that looks like a suit case, and I keep all my handmaid cards, stationary, and received letters in it now. It's gotten quite full. Not sure what I'll do when it fills up. I can't just have boxes and boxes of letters sitting around.
I need to come up with a crafts idea for all these...

Well, sometimes I decide I want to do some mail-art as well. I'll occasionally make my own crappy cards, and decorate the envelopes.

Example of most recent envelope decorating here. This is for one of my friends who adores Attack on Titan as much as I do (If not more).
I've definitely gotten out of the habit of drawing as much as I used to. It takes a lot of time, and patience, and doing and re-doing. I don't feel as if I have any of those things much. But sometimes I create pictures and find myself pleased with them. :)

This is one of those times.

I crack myself up. Quite a bit.

The top part of this envelope was inspired by the cards below that I received in the mail recently. 

I received four cards in the mail from a site called Eggpress as part of their Write_On campaign to bring letter writing back. Unfortunately I discovered the campaign at the end of the month. So I didn't participate in it the whole month. But they still sent me some free stationary. I used two of them already. The pink one had an orange version as well, and the blue one had a green version.
The design is simple and the idea behind the campaign is simple, but simple can go a long way.

I've been adamantly writing letters for almost five years now. I've become closer with people more than I would have through simple social media, or writing e-mails weekly. Those things work well for some, but using Facebook all the time to talk to people you become detached from the fact you haven't seen these people in forever. It doesn't occur to you that you haven't actually talked to them personally.  You've posted a status, they posted a status. You then each commented and liked said status.
But if someone doesn't have that sort of media, do you just write them out of your life? Do you call them more often? Do you keep in touch at all?
I do through my letter writing.
I have times where writing can seem like a chore, but keeping in touch and putting thought into what you're doing does take time, and its easy to just put off for months at a time (And typing is so much faster and gives you less hand cramps than writing).
But I don't think letter writing should become a lost art.
So Write_On internet.
Keep in touch.
:)

Happiness Tracker

A while back I bought this case of Mason Jars from the Commissary. And I've hardly used them. It was a deal, and they had so many, and I couldn't resist. Mainly because I will use them. I promise.

Well, in my life I feel like I have a lot of negativity. Being in the Marine Corps can often make you feel that way. And I feel as if every year all I can focus on is the negative things, it becomes more difficult to remember the good times that happened throughout the year, because the bad days stick with me more vividly.

I saw a post on Pinterest (my #1 way of wasting time) about a Happiness Jar. Essentially when something good happens, or something that brightens you, whether it be an event, moment or conversation, you simply write it down and put it in the jar. At the end of the year you now have a whole jar full of all the good things that happened to you.
I saw this as a great opportunity to focus on the positive things that occur around me. So I set aside a jar, wrote down some positive things that already happened this year.
And....decided I wanted to decorate my jar.
I'm by no means any sort of decorating expert, but do have an abundance of random craft materials I've slowly collected throughout my time in the military. So I figured I could for sure find some stuff to glue onto this jar. 

 And I did.
This is fabric I found a while back at Tokai Heart, the cute ribbon is from the Daiso. I ironed the fabric, and hot glued it on. For the seams I just folded them under and ironed them.
The Ribbon is crocheted, but I don't know what else to call it than "Ribbon". I just glued a piece of it around the jar, and then glued a bow together and stuck it on.

I decided this was cute.

But I wanted to do more.

I have seen a lot of posts about putting glitter inside or on the outside of mason jars, and I agree, they look fabulous. However, all these DIY's call for mod podge, or something similar that I do not own, and I wasn't going to make a special trip to see if maybe I could find it somewhere near where I live.

Sooo....I used clear fingernail polish. (I'm not joking)
I just dumped enough to almost cover the bottom of the jar, and then I indiscriminately dumped a bunch of brown glitter, and some gold glitter in it. I sacrificed a sponge that I had so I could mix it and smear it around the bottom of the jar and up the sides below the cloth.
I also smeared some around the top of the jar above the cloth, but not nearly as much.

 So I sat that under a fan and decided to paint the lid. I just wiped down the outside to remove any dust of dirt, and took some brown acrylic paint, mixed it with a random amount of silver and painted the lid.


So I wanted to add some bling onto my jar, instead of keeping it just the simple design.




 This is a necklace I've had for around 5 years, maybe. I don't wear it anymore because it's reached the point in its lifespan where it turns my skin green if I sweat while wearing it (I also think the toddler who slobbered on it multiple times while babysitting didn't help either. XD). 
So I glued the bling portion just under the bow, and the rest of the chain I decided to glue around the lid, and leave the excess hanging down.
THAT WAS SUCH A PAIN!
Hot glue is not meant for everything, and honestly I forgot I had super glue (which I don't think would have worked well either) and rubber cement (not sure how that would have went)
But I managed to finally glue it on in a way that it stays, and it won't fall off every time I open the jar. Definitely a trail and error process.

Lastly, I wanted to add something to the top of the lid. I was at the point where if I saw something I wanted to glue on, I was considering just sticking it on. I mean, it's a happiness jar, it should contribute to my happiness, right? XD
So I have a ton of colored glass pebbles, (I use them to play a really nerdy game called Three Dragon Ante) and I have a TON of them. So I selected some and just arranged them in a way where the lid was mostly covered, and then I glued them on.

My jar is complete!! (For now~ >:D)

Hair Clip Crafter

Well, definitely been a minute or two...or weeks, since I've been on here. I could never find what I felt was a good enough reason to post. I've definitely done a lot in the past year, but I don't like just doing angry posts, and sadly most of my time when I have time to write I feel angry.


BUT!
Today is not that sort of day.
I set aside time to do crafts. I spent a month in Korea away from all my things, and spent all my time looking at other people's things on Pinterest.
So the project I decided to so is one I've been wanting to do FOREVER. It's pretty easy, but setting aside the time to do anything is a problem I have.
One day when I was out in Japan, shopping, I came across this:

It's a hair clip that looks like a bow! Genius! Well, I bought it, and I wear it most of the time. And I got to thinking to myself. I can make this...

So I went to a nearby Daiso (100 yen store, they're my favorite places to shop. Way better than $1 stores) and I bought a hair clip. I bought my fabric at the nearby crafts store, Tokai Heart. They have baskets of fabric that's left over, or meant for other projects. But works perfectly for me. :D

Other things I needed: 

Glue gun

scissors

clear nail polish

pins (cuz I'm lazy)

And now I'm ready to start!!

 I folded the fabric in half and laid the clip on it to determine the width I'd need, and I cut it slightly wider than the clip is on both sides. You also need to cut a piece to put over the top of the clip too. 

This fabric was already fraying just from me handling it, so I needed to do something about that. 

I don't have a sewing machine here with me, so I use any shortcuts I can. For fraying fabric clear nail polish works wonders.

I just paint around the edges of all my fabric pieces. It's dark fabric so I don't have to worry about it showing much. Lighter fabric you'd have to be more careful.

Measuring the size of the piece that goes over the top of the clip. If you don't want to add this piece I doubt it makes a difference. I've also seen clips where the bow was on top instead of the sides. Maybe I'll try that one day...

 So above is one of the bow I made. I took my fabric and I folded each side in so they met in the middle in the back. From there it is just a matter of bunching the fabric up so it has the look you want. I went with four folds in mine, makes gluing it easier that way.

Folding the pieces back in this way gives the bow some substance, so it's not thin feeling.

 I cut long strips to wrap around the bow. I folded the pieces slightly to get the width I wanted, and its a nice look. I would have done more folds, but I would have needed wider fabric strips. I played around with it for a bit before deciding on this. After that it's a matter of cutting it the length you need to wrap around the center of the bow. I didn't do mine tightly because I wanted my bow to flare out more.
After that I glued the ends of the strip together. So you have a ring, like below. Then sliding the bow through it is easy.

It's cute!

 So you make two bows in that manner.
Now it's time to clue everything to the clip.
I haven't used a glue gun in years, so I forgot how fast hot glue cools. It's a rush against time!

 I glued the center fabric on first. That was the easy part.

 Next I loaded on the glue to put the bow on. I looks all messy here, but I assure you it's not that bad. XD

Since I did four folds for my bow I was able to take the center crease and that's what I ended up pressing into the hot glue.

 Finished Product!
I'll probably buy a smaller clip next time and make smaller ones. But I have so much hair that for now I have to use larger clips.