Last minute gift idea for your creative friends and family

DIY last minute gift tag idea from Popcorn & ChI’m sure you guys are all super on top of your holiday shopping, and I’m sure none of you have any last minute gifts to buy. But if you’re like me, you’ve finally remembered how to Christmas shop and finally (one week before Christmas) you’re getting into the groove of it!

DIY last minute gift tag presentDIY last minute holiday gift tags from Popcorn & Chocolate

I find that one of the most fun things to give is something you made. Every year, I like to make my presents unique in one way. I like to make unique gift tags every year. One year I used paint chips and made small snowy chalk drawings on each one. It’s fun because you can make each one different. This is what I made last year. I thought they came out great! And I may just have to make more of our ugly sweater gift tags this year.

DIY last minute holiday gift tag present idea from Popcorn & Chocolate

If you’re like me and have friends and family who also like to be crafty and creative with their gifts this DIY is sure to be a hit for the holidays. I came up with this holiday gift tag gift based on what I gave my mom last year as a gift. And mom, if you’re reading this, just send me a quick text if you want me to gift you the DIY from this post!

DIY Last minute holiday gift tags from Popcorn & ChocolateDIY last minute holiday gift tags from Popcorn & Chocolate

Since gift tags are so fun for everyone, I thought why not grab a bunch of craft paper in fun prints for birthdays and holidays and neutral or solid prints and cut it into the classic gift tag shape.

What you’ll need:

  • fun printed craft paper
  • a single hole punch
  • string (I particularly like baker’s twine, but we didn’t have any)
  • optional: washi tape, stamps

 

After you’ve cut out the gift tag shape, punch a hole in the top, and stick on hole reinforces if you like. Tie a cute string through the hole by doubling the string over and sticking the looped end through the hole. Then feed the two loose ends through the loop so that your present receiver can tie the loose ends of the string to their gift. If you’re feeling really inspired, you could make a few of our ugly sweater to add to the gift as well :). Use some washi to outline some of the tags if you want! Also, if you have stamps, you could stamp “to / from” on some or whatever you want, but personally, I think blank will get the most use out of it. Package that up in a cute box with tissue paper, throw in a few rolls of washi tape and maybe a cute jell pen or two, and there’s the perfect gift! My mom would love it (right mom?) and I’m sure your friends and family would too!

IMG_9153

Tell us – are you all set for the holidays are do you have some last minute scrambling to do like us? Do you put gift tags on your presents?

DIY last minute gift tags | Popcorn & Chocolate

Washi Tape Jar Lids

Mason Jar Lids 1

It is no secret that we like our jars here in the Popcorn and Chocolate household. It all started with a big box of mason jars that we got at Walmart our junior year in college. We used these jars for everything from holding food to craft supplies; they always were handy. However, somewhere between our junior year and our senior year of college we lost a few of those mason jars. We started out with 12 and ended up with 2, one of which I use everyday to make my overnight oats.

Stacked jarsAlmond Mason Jar

The past few years we have accumulated some miss-matched jars from old salsa containers and pasta sauce, which have been decent but they just didn’t compare to the good ol’ mason jars. We would go to the grocery store and see that they were on sale and stare longingly at them as we slowly pushed our cart away, thinking no we don’t need those.. not right now..

All lids and almond jarSkip ahead to the present day where our nut cabinet (yes, this is a cabinet dedicated to nut butters and nuts and seeds and pretty much everything I love to eat) is overflowing to the brim with loose bags all shoved into the corners. This cabinet has become an unorganized mess of nuts! Something had to change, and quickly because I can’t stop buying nuts and making new nut butters.

Lid View

Then one fine weekend we were strolling past the mason jars in the grocery store and we decided it was time to buy a new set. This time we got the size smaller as we have constantly needed that size to put sauces and spice mixes in. Once we were home I quickly dumped all the bagged nuts into these clean new jars and organization existed again! However, there was still something missing, something that wasn’t quite right. And then it came to us: Lids!

Jars with washi

The lids on the mason jar needed to be spiced up. We grabbed our pile of washi and set to work. First we traced the inside lid onto white paper and then cut out the circles. Next we took the washi tape and covered the white circle with it, making sure to line up the pattern with each row. And that’s it! That’s all it took to spruce up the old nut butter cabinet: just some handy dandy jars and washi tape, my favorite things.

Polka dot lidall mason jar lids

We would also recommend either laminating the paper or just mod-podging the top of it to make sure they last through many of refills, because we all know that these jars are bound to be used a lot. This craft was super easy and really transforms the look of the jar and our whole cabinet in general. We hope you liked this simple DIY!

Almond jar

Halloween Washi Magnets & Hair Barrettes

IMG_3236

We are continuing along with our Halloween series. This craft is super easy and so cute that you’ll want to leave the magnets up all year round!

IMG_3309 IMG_3244

The supplies you need are Washi, a magnet strip, and some paper. For our magnets we chose these two cute Halloween Washi tapes that we picked up at Target. All the Halloween decor always kills me at Target; it was a huge restraint not to buy half the store. This is the Washi we chose, but you don’t have to stick to Halloween Washi — also you could use fun paper instead.

IMG_3298

Take the Washi and tape a strip to a piece of paper. The Washi is a thin so the color paper will show through a little bit, keep that in mind when you chose what paper you want to use. I liked the look of a plain off-white beneath to brighten up the Washi.

IMG_3292 IMG_3313

Next, cut-out the strip of Washi on the paper. Also, cut off a small piece of the magnet and peel off the protective paper so the sticky side is exposed. Stick the Washi paper to the magnet and voila you are done!

IMG_3316 IMG_3318

IMG_3321

For the hair clip, do the same thing except instead of sticking the it to a magnet, hot glue it to a barrette!

photo 4 photo 1 photo 2

See, wasn’t that easy? Now you have some cute fridge magnets for Halloween, and a good excuse to go buy that Halloween Washi you have been coveting – we sure did!

IMG_3261

IMG_3235

Clothespin DIY

IMG_1474Hello!

Today we are going to share a DIY with you all! We thought we would deviate a bit from all the food posts we have started out with. This is a fun and simple DIY that you can do mindlessly do while you watch TV or listen to music. We desperately needed chip clips in the Popcorn and Chocolate household, but whenever we went out in hopes to buy some, none of them were pretty enough for our liking. So instead we scoured pinterest (as per usual) and found some fun ways to make your own chip clips. We went out and bought a box of clothespins and then used what supplies we had at home. Now since we are a crafting household, we already had many of these supplies on hand, but you might need to make a trip to your local craft store to pick some goodies up!

IMG_1473 IMG_1481This craft is a lot of fun and you can decorate your clothespins in a variety of ways. We are going to show you two different methods we enjoyed by using washi tape and stamps. We also have several pictures of how we decorated using paint and nail polish, the possibilities are endless!

IMG_1483

Supplies:
– Wooden clothespins

– Washi tape

– Small stamps and an ink pad

Other supplies you could use: stencils, sharpies, paint, nail polish, craft paper, etc!

IMG_1478For the washi tape clothespins: start at the top of the clothespins and wrap a piece of washi around it so all the sides are covered. Trim any excess tape you have with scissors and make sure everything is securely taped down. Do this same thing on the next section, overlapping the first just a tiny bit. Keep doing this all the way down the clothespin. Some places can get tricky due to the wire, sometimes it is helpful to trim off small pieces of washi and put them around the wire edges. Or, if you are like us and get frustrated easily, it’s best to just cover what you can and move on. If the tape is not sticking very well, or if you just want to make sure it will last for a while, we would suggest to modge podge the whole thing with a light layer. This really helped on the tricky places to get the tape to stick better.

IMG_1490 IMG_1491 IMG_1492 IMG_1493

For the stamp clothespins: This one is pretty self explanatory. All you need to do is figure out what design you want and then start stamping! We used these little letter stamps we bought at A.C. Moore. They work perfectly if you want to write something sweet. We also recently purchased this set of stamps from Papersource, that although were a bit expensive for what they are, they work nicely on these clothespins because they are so tiny.

IMG_1485 IMG_1487 IMG_1488Other ways to decorate:

– Use a stencil and paint or sharpie a fun design

– Marble nail polish in water and run the clothespin through it (DIY on marbling to come!)

– Take some craft paper or any paper you enjoy and Modge Podge it to the clothespin and cut off any excess. You can also do the same with ribbon.

IMG_1475

We hope you enjoyed our DIY clothespin post! It is a deviation away from the food, but hopefully it was a good deviation. We certainly love our crafts as well as food. We would love to hear what you guys decided to try out with your clothespins!

IMG_1489