Handmade Monday - Honeymoons and Cocktails

Hello there!

I'm back from my honeymoon - and missing it already. We had an amazing time in Las Vegas and Hawaii, ate too much, drank too much and definitely spent too much, but it was well worth it - and lovely to see my husband relaxed for once!

Can you guess what I found particularly inspiring from our trip?

Cocktails! Oh my goodness they were rather incredible. So I've come home and ordered lots of cocktail glasses and having fun painting them. Nothing finished to show as yet, but here's a little look at the work in progress:

For those of you who wondered how I paint on a curved surface - now you know! It's all in the propping. 

Finally would love your opinion on this glass:

The idea is to name your own pina colada. I think the base needs something, my husband says to leave it plain. So would love to know if you like the idea and also if you think as I do about the base. Did try adding another butterfly but it was too much. 

Please check out handmade monday if you haven't already. 

Thanks for reading - I'm off to dream of Hawaii *sigh*

xxx

Butterfly Lantern

Butterfly Lantern

What you need:

A paper lantern (this one was £1 from Wilko)

Scrap booking paper - 2 or more colours

Mod Podge (or another strong craft glue) + brush

A template for 2 different sized butterflies - I took mine from some wrapping paper

Pencil + scissors

1. Open up your paper lamp shade using the expander, and have a think about how many butterflies you want to cover it. I used 20. 10 big, 10 small. But I could have easily used alot more if I had wanted to. I wanted mine scattered ramdomly, but you may wish to create more of a pattern.

Choose your paper. I used scrap booking paper because it's alot thicker than say wrapping paper, and I wanted the butterflies to hold their shape. 

This is from Tea Time by Dovecraft

And my second paper was by Nit Wit ( I forgot to take a picture of this one before it was cut up, but this is the same pattern)

 3. Using a template, cut out your butterflies. I made two different sized templates by cutting out some butterflies from wrapping paper.

4. Bend the wings towards you, with the pattern facing you, leaving the body flat. Apply your glue to the flat body, and gently press onto the lantern.

5. Make sure you put plenty of butterflies on the bottom, so that you can see them when it's up high.

6.  You can hang it as soon as you have finished. Bare in mind these usually require a 60W bulb - you don't want it to burn! I would recommend leaving the light off if possible for 24hours to let the glue fully dry. 

Thanks for reading!