Nail Polish Painted Utensils

     Jazz up plain cutlery with nail polish.  I just brushed polish over the handle, but if you're skilled at nail polish designs, you could do all sorts of neat decorations.

Caution: do not paint the whole utensil.  You only want to paint parts that people will not eat off of.  If your partygoers are at an age where it's likely they will try chewing on the handle, it's best to save this craft until they're a little older.

Materials:
*Plastic cutlery
*Nail polish

Directions:
*Paint the handle of your cutlery with nail polish.  You can always add glitter or small sequins too for some extra sparkle.

Here's my original design for the party.  I thought those stat sequins might get in the way too much or be uncomfortable to hold, so that's why ultimately I went with the other design.  With smaller star sequins, though, this might work well for a slumber party or star/space party.

Glitter "Dipped" Cups

     Give your next party some extra sparkle with these easy to make glitter cups.

Materials:
*Paper cups
*Glitter
*Mod podge
*Sponge paintbrush

Directions:
*Cover your workstation with newspaper or something that will similarly protect it from stray glitter and glue.
*Dip your paintbrush in Mod Podge and carefully move the brush around the cup, marking out where you want the glitter to end.
*Fill in the area below this line with a thin layer of Mod Podge as well.
*Pour glitter over the cup.  Set aside to dry.
*Once dry, shake off excess glitter and then pour the excess glitter back into its container.

DIY Starry Sky Streamers and Garland

     Starry streamers are a perfect decorations for sleepovers (or un-slumber parties), space themed parties, and many more.  They are inexpensive to make, but a bit time consuming (it took me hours to glue on all those stars), so be aware of the time investment before you get started.

Starry Sky Streamers

Materials:
*Black streamers
*Silver star sequins
*All purpose adhesive
*Scissors
*Tape measure
*Tape

Directions:
*Measure the width of your door and the width of your streamers and divide the width of the door by the width of the streamers to figure out how many streamers you'll need.
*Measure the height of your entryway and cut out streamers that are approximately this height.
*Glue on stars.  Originally I was gluing on diagonal stripes of three, one star at one side, the next higher up and in the middle, and the last still further up and at the other side.  However, this proved to be very time consuming, so I switched to alternating stars from one side to the other spaced as far apart as I thought I could get away with.
*Let dry.  Tape finished streamers above the entryway.

Star Garland

Materials:
*Silver glitter cardstock
*Pencil
*Scissors
*Black ribbon

Directions:
*Find a star template online, resize to the desired size, print, and cut out.
*Trace the template onto the back of the glitter cardstock to create as many stars as you'd like for your garland.
*Glue the stars to the ribbon.  Let dry.

DIY Slumber Party Photo Booth Props

     Photo booth props make most any event more fun and DIY ones cost little to make.  With sleep masks and nail polish bottles, plus fun favorites like crowns and star glasses, these props are bound to be a hit at your next slumber party.  If you have a Silhouette CAMEO, load the templates into Silhouette Studio and you'll finish these props in a flash.

Materials:
*Cardstock in various colors
*Bamboo skewers or wooden dowels
*Scissors
*X-acto knife
*Rhinestones
*Duct tape
*Pencil
*All purpose adhesive

Directions:

*Resize and print out the templates given below:

*Cut out the templates and trace onto colors of cardstock of your choosing.

*Cut out and glue together the pieces of each prop.

*For the crown, once you've cut out the crown shape, glue on some rhinestones.

*Attach the bamboo skewer using duct tape.

Nail Polish Roulette Slumber Party Game

     Here's a fun sleepover party (or un-slumber party) game.  If you already have a collection of nail polish, you have the bulk of what you'll need to make the game (and if you don't, you can pick up bottles at Dollar Tree for $1 each or buy multi-packs after Halloween and Christmas at steep discounts).  If you're buying new bottles rather than digging into your personal collection, you could even give away some of the bottles as party favors.
     My version of the game requires 20 different nail polish colors, but you could easily play with fewer bottles by using a six-sided die instead of a 20 sided one or using a game spinner (Brian suggested using a spinner from the game of Life and matching nail polish colors to the colors on the spinners.  I've also seen several variations of this Spin the (Nail Polish) Bottle game, which generally use 8 colors but which could be modified to use more or fewer).  Also, although I thought my game board was a nice touch, you can easily make a variation of this game using only nail polish, a die, and some way of numbering your nail polish bottles.

Materials:

*20 bottles of nail polish
*20 sided die
*Painter's or masking tape
*Marker
*12x12 sheet of cardstock
*Number and letter stickers (or cutouts; I used my CAMEO for the lettering/numbering)

Directions:

*For making the game board, add a title like "Nail Polish Roulette" to the top of a 12x12 sheet of paper and then place numbers 1-20 along the board.

*Write numbers 1-20 on painter's or masking tape and stick them to the backs of the nail polish bottles.

*Place the nail polish bottles along the board at their designated spots.

Game Play

 *Players sit in a circle around the game board taking turns rolling the die.

*The number a player rolls corresponds to the nail polish color a player will have to paint one of their nails.

*The game concludes when each player has painted all of their fingernails (or toenails).

Birthday Un-Slumber Party

     As far as parties go, it's hard to beat a sleepover party.  My sister and I used to have friends over whenever possible growing up, and I have fond memories of those days (some of which you'll find at the end of this post).  Living in a one bedroom apartment with no couch, hosting an overnight party is out of the question.  However, there was nothing keeping me from offering the games, activities, and food of a slumber party during the day, and I decided to throw an un-slumber party.
     Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing the details of how I made the various crafts for this party.  For now, though, here's an overview of the decorations, activities, games, and food I had at my party, plus some memories of sleepovers past.

     While in years past I've thrown some elaborately decorated parties, this year I focused a lot more on the games and activities than I did on aesthetics.  As far as themes go, an un-slumber party doesn't have an obvious decorating scheme.  I chose a black and silver color scheme because that reminds me of stars in the nighttime sky.  I made this curtain of streamers to cover the entryway.

     Here are the plates, cups, utensils, etc.  All of the tableware came from Dollar Tree.  I bought plain black party supplies and then decorated the cups and utensils so that things weren't so dark.

     Here's the tablescape.  I bought a plain black tablecloth from Dollar Tree and scattered silver stars across it.  On the table you'll see two of our party activities.  One is a nail polish roulette game I made.  The other is coloring page photo frames which I designed, although you can't really see what's on the pages in this picture.  My plan was to have people color the photo frames and then send them home with the photo frames and a group photo to put in one of the frames as a souvenir.  However, we ended up spending a lot of time on the other activities, so I gave people plain pages to color at home.

     Brian made homemade pizza.  Pictured above are the pickle and cheese pizzas, but he also made Alfredo pizza (cheese pizza with Alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce) and his "heart attack pizza" (pizza loaded with hamburger and pepperoni).

     Playing nail polish roulette . . .

     . . . and the aftermath of our game.  Some of the colors kind of worked together, and some really didn't.

     Here we are taking a group photo with some of the photo booth props I made.  It's hard to see from this picture, but dad and I tried to give Katie bunny ears simultaneously.  Also, you can see Katie's lovely Stephen King book artwork on the fridge.

     For my cake this year, we I didn't do a lot of decorating.  I just made that Little Owl cake "topper."  Brian added some icing decorations.  I found the black candles with silver glitter at Party City.
     While eating cake and ice cream, we also played Mad Libs.  There is a free Mad Libs app that you can download for your phone or tablet.  It comes with a handful of free stories, but if you need more than what they offer, you can also buy whole Mad Libs books through the app.

     Aren't these slippers adorable?  They have the cutest little faces.  Brian got them for me for Christmas.  If you're throwing a party for a younger audience (I think the size I have is about the largest they offer) and you can afford to spend some money, these could make for great party favors.

     Dad always gives awesome birthday cards.

     It wouldn't be a Hathaway family function without an attempted murder!

     Failing to give dad bunny ears.  I always underestimate how high I'll have to lift my arm to make bunny ears visible.
     Well, that wraps up another birthday party.  What are your favorite sleepover activities?  Snacks?  Any favorite sleepover memories?  Here are some of the sleepovers that stick with me.  

     Katie, Becky, and I decided to camp out on Becky's porch swing.  We draped sleeping bags over the swing to seal it off from the bugs, but the bugs still got in and had a feast.  Plus it was really cold.
    Another time, we camped out in a tent in Becky's front yard.  Katie had seen one of those true crime shows in which a man cut a hole in the wall of a tent and abducted and murdered a little girl.  Katie was worried that someone was going to cut a hole in our tent and kidnap her, so I had to sleep near the wall of the tent.

     One final memory.  When my mom bought a shed for our house, Katie and I decided that before she started filling it up with boxes, we were going to have a sleepover in it.  She, Breanna, and I grabbed our bedding and junk food and camped out.  One of our neighbors heard about our plan and started banging on the shed.  We were sure we were about to be murdered.

     I can't remember if we barred the door before or after the knocking, but we were not letting any murderers in if we could help it!

DIY Denim Cutoffs, with Tips for Getting Bloodstains out of Clothes

Warning: if period talk makes you uncomfortable, turn back now.  I have 298 non-period related posts that you might enjoy more.  Also, there are pictures of bloodstained clothes, so if the sight of (dried) blood bothers you, this is not the post for you.

Warning: The bloodstain removal tips are intended to remove visible blood from periods and minor accidents like scraped knees.  It is not intended to be a method to remove all traces of DNA from clothing.  If you have murdered someone and are looking for ways to get their blood out of your clothes, leave this page and turn yourself into the police immediately.

     I was initially hesitant to write this post because I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that even though I've been  dealing with periods for fifteen years, I still bleed through from time to time.  This most recent incident was particularly messy because it began as I was about to teach a two hour lab section, so I didn't have the opportunity to clean up until I was back at home.  Usually I'll throw a little OxyClean into the wash and it'll come right out, but this time it didn't work.  I didn't bother to check them until the jeans were already dry because OxyClean is usually effective, and by then it was too late.  I had set-in bloodstains not just on the crotch of my jeans, but also by the knee?

     I'd been wanting to try making rainbow cutoffs, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.  I cut the legs off my jeans to make them into cutoffs.  I know you can sand them and whatnot to make them fray more and give them more of a worn look, but I figured that if I wear them a few times, they'll eventually fray on their own, so I literally just cut the legs off and wound up with this:

     My next step was bleaching the shorts.  I put them in some water and Brian threw in some bleach.  Bleach is a harsh base which can damage fabrics and Brian was insistent that we err on the side of caution, so we started out with only two capfuls of bleach mixed in with the water.  We let the shorts sit and nothing happened.  We added more bleach and a little more, eventually reaching a concentration of maybe 1 part bleach to 3 or 4 parts water.  I let that sit for half an hour.  I still wasn't seeing any changes, but I decided to put them through the wash to see if maybe the washing process would remove some of the color.  The dye did not come out, but the bloodstain did, leaving me with a nice pair of denim cutoffs.

Bloodstain Removal Tools

*Hydrogen peroxide - works well for fresh bloodstains.  Put stained clothes in a tub of cold water (hot water helps set the stains) and add a few capfuls of hydrogen peroxide.  Alternately, you could put the clothes in the wash and throw a little peroxide in with them.

*OxyClean - works well for fresh bloodstains.  The active ingredient in OxyClean is hydrogen peroxide, but I've had better luck removing stains with OxyClean than with hydrogen peroxide on its own.  Add some to the wash and your clothes will most likely come out clean, as long as the blood is fresh and there isn't too much of it.

*Bleach - works for set in stains.  Bleach really should be used as a last resort because of the potential it has to damage your clothes.  Start out using only a small concentration of bleach, probably no more than 1 part bleach to 4 parts water.  Let set for half an hour and then wash immediately.  Denim is a fairly rugged material, so if you're cleaning something less robust, start with even more dilute concentrations of bleach and keep them in the bleach water for an even shorter amount of time.  No matter how cautious you are, you are risking bleaching out the fabric and perhaps even damaging the fibers of the item, so be aware of that.