Even though I made my vintage map blinds in 2004, (oh, how time flies!) I still have a bit of leftover material. And who knows why, but I decided to get crafty and cover the boys' light switch plates. All I did was to cut rectangles, which I glued onto the covers, trimming the excess with a very sharp pair of scissors. I then cut an "X" over the center hole and glued those triangular parts onto the back side. This project was super easy and took maybe 15 minutes to complete. The cool thing is that you can use any paper which catches your fancy, so they're not just for kids.
Here's a second light switch plate, which is in my older son's room.
And since I was on a roll, (A.K.A., my hands were already all glue-y) I decided to try a fabric covered light switch plate for our spare bedroom. I think I used a less than ideal glue, (Aleen's Original Tacky Glue) as I had a *very* hard time getting the fabric to stick properly. I do not own any Mod Podge, but am going to add some to my arsenal of crafty crap supplies in the near future. In the end though, I think it turned out pretty good. Sure, it borrows from the "fussy grandma" aesthetic, but I'm going with it.
See? It matches the curtain/door that I just made for the closet in our spare bedroom.
Remember the Goodwill lamp that I've been wanting to paint? Well I finally went ahead and bought a can of automotive chrome spray paint for the project.
But when I took the lamp apart, I discovered that I am not the first person with the clever idea to paint this mid-century lamp. I absolutely love that I am only one in a hopefully long line of home decor lamp transformers. So perfect!
I cheaped out and bought a bag of pretty much inedible rice a few months back. (Many of the grains were broken, which meant it cooked up all mushy.) However, my son dropped his cell phone outside, and it spent an entire night out in the rain. Luckily, I remembered a trick where you disconnect all electronic components and put them in a bed of dry rice to absorb the moisture. Being the person I am, I had saved the offending rice, which was then put to efficient non-gastronomical use. I consider this to be the ultimate pinnacle of food waste avoidance. Because, seriously, this rice was N-A-S-T-Y!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Your “crafty crap supply” reminds me of a store I saw somewhere – Atlanta maybe? – with a memorable name – “Crap-tastic”. Thanks for the smile-inducing reminder!
In the words of Liz Lemon:
“I want to go to there.”
Katy
Katy – are you in Alaska? I recognize the topography on your lightswitch map covers! Just curious.
Nope. I’m in Oregon. My maps are from all over. 🙂
Katy
i wonder what kind of glow a lamp shade wrapped in a map would look like?
That would depend on the colors and thickness of the paper. These old classroom maps have a fabric backing, so they’re super thick and don’t let much light through.
Katy
LOVE the light switch plate idea and cannot believe I have never thought of it myself with my love of paper crafting and all the wonderful scraps I have hanging around from paper collections that I really like and didn’t want to part with!
I think this will be my Sunday project 🙂
Yay!
Katy
Love the map look for a boy’s room! I did a covered light switch plate in my kitchen years ago with a beautiful sunflower card I had found. Something I did that helped to make it a little more durable was I covered the paper with a self adhesive laminating sheet before I glued it to the switch plate. It made it easy to wipe clean and gave it a beautiful glossy finish that looked almost like porcelain tile. It seemed to deepen the colours a little too. …When I moved out of that house I was SO tempted to take the switch plate with me but my new home had different switches and there was nowhere for me to install it. Oh well…I leave my creative genius in my wake 😉
“crafty crap supply” – LOL! Love it!
I think second-rate rice is fine if you use it in soup. But it would take a long time to go through that much.
How did the phone recovery work out?
http://doityourselfdivas.blogspot.com/2011/09/diy-mod-podge.html — just one of many homemade decoupage recipes.
That link won’t go through for me, but my friend Lise was saying to just use gesso. I’ll have to look into that.
Katy
Equal parts Elmer’s glue and water in a jar. Shake like crazy. According to the comments, it’s not waterproof, but neither is Mod Podge.
Even I should be able to do this!
Another great use for substandard rice is to make heating pads… an 8″ wide strip of muslin folded over to make a long rectangle, a tiny bit of sewing, and 5 cups of rice sewn inside – and TADA! 2.5 min in the microwave gives you over an hour of warm toastiness!! If you change dimensions or quantities, test out how much time in YOUR microwave to get warm rice but not scorched rice. Rice doesn’t burst into flames the way buckwheat hulls do – safe and wonderful! A friend of mine has used hers daily for over 10 years, it never gets less effective!
A fleece or flannel cover also works really well on it, but put that over the muslin so that you can take it off and wash the cover. Seriously. Wonderful. AND runs through a LOT of cheap-and-nasty rice.
I had one of those that I received as a gift a long time ago. I’m not sure what was in it, (buckwheat?) and I call it my “bag of garbage.” My husband hates the smell of it, so maybe I should use the nasty rice to make a new, not-stinky replacement. I could even just take out a few stitches and use a funnel to fill it back up with rice. (After cleaning the fabric, of course!)
Katy
There you go! I don’t notice my rice bag smelling like anything in particular – and it holds heat for a LONG time. Your other one might have herbs in it too. I have allergies, and tend to shy away from smelly stuff in general. I love that you can repurpose something else and minimize the sewing! 🙂
The first time I tried the rice-in-the-microwave, I used a sock. I opened the rice, stuck the open in down in the sock, and pulled the plastic out, leaving the rice–no pouring, no chance of spilling.
My rice sock was stinky and not a sock-stink. It smelled like I took food, stinky food to bed. I finally threw the whole thing away since it smelled foul even when cold!
That does not sound appealing. 🙁
Katy
I used to do quite a bit of wallpapering and always covered the light switch plates and electrical outlet covers. A heavy duty wallpaper paste works pretty well. And a sharp exacto knife.
So did the rice work?? My husband’s iPhone is currently resting in a bed of rice (I don’t want to talk about it) and I’m praying it works!
I made light switch covers with used book pages a while back! (http://librarianhousewife.blogspot.com/2011/12/book-light-switch-covers.html) I love the look of your maps though!
The rice worked. Because my son’s phone is not an iPhone, I was able to take the battery out and wipe everything down.
I assume your husband dumped his phone in the toilet. 😉
You book page light switch covers look cute!
Katy
Um, no, he forgot it was in his bathing suit pocket and went into the Pacific Ocean.
Yeah.
So far, no go. I think it’s gone 🙁 We’re debating buying a refurbished one on ebay or reactivating his blackberry. Buying another one isn’t frugal (though used!) but…we’re spoiled.
Thanks for your compliment on my switch plates! 🙂
People love their Blackberries, did he get hooked on the iPhone?
Katy
Yup. He’s kinda willing to use his blackberry, but if it were me I’d want a new phone so I can’t make him use his. But! They sell for about $60 on ebay (the blackberries) and I might be able to sell the damaged iphone online too, for parts, so that’ll make up some of the money spent.
Plus, we’re on our way home from our Hawaii vacation and managed to spend just over $1,000 out of our budgeted $3,000! Most will be put to family traveling around the holidays, but we will have the extra cash for the phone too. That was another reason I’m kinda OK with getting a new (refurbished) phone.
I did that light switch thing once at my old house! I got this super super cute card with an awesome drawing of a farm on it. I loved looking at it every day and then I realized we had a light switch that was a clear cover that you could put something under, so I cut out the card to go under it! It was awesome! I guess I forgot that light switch cover and card when we moved out of that house though.. whoops.
It’s amazing what you can do with a bit of glue. I’m loving the (in particular) fabric light-switch covers, less cleaning as finger marks won’t show (bonus!). I’ve just finished a decoupage model of Chichen Itza (apparently my daughter had a homework project to make a megastructure – but guess who got bored after about 3 minutes?)… Cereal boxes and old brown paper, oh and lot’s of my time!
The wet cell phone in rice trick is brilliant! I’ll have to remember that.
And when you take the nasty Thai food to whoever you know with chickens, you can take them the nasty rice, too!
In exchange all that tasty chicken chow, maybe they will give you some eggs.
Another great use for the rice is to make a “sensory table” for a toddler/preschooler. I did that recently for my son when we were going to be home-bound for a few days, and he LOVED it. He spent about 4 hours the first day playing in it. (I buried 15 small, plastic farm animals in it for him to dig out, and he just kept reburying them. The next day I buried change that I had washed so he could put it in his bank after he found it all.
Since you don’t have a preschooler you could always donate it to a nearby preschool or a friend with a young one.
Here is a lovely example I found through Pinterest. Although I used a smaller container and just threw in some tools from the kitchen. The funnel was a hit!
http://shareandremember.blogspot.com/2011/06/rainbow-rice-garden-sensory-play.html
That rainbow rice is so cute! I’m afraid that my teenage sons might balk at a “touch table,” but you never know! 😉 I remember fondly the time when they would have grooved out on a rice touch table though.
Katy
Sort of off topic, but sort of not…
The re-purposing of mushy rice reminded me that bad coffee can be re-purposed as a very useful deodorant!
By coffee, I don’t mean liquid, of course, or the used grounds – I mean the dry grounds BEFORE you use them. Of course, nobody wants to waste good ground coffee! But if you come across a stash of stale or low-quality coffee for free – if you’re cleaning out someone’s house, say, or if you find an unopened but past-expiration can in the trash – take it! Or if you accidentally by some coffee that just isn’t very good, you can use that. I one deodorized a vintage wooden bowl that had been sitting in a mildewy basement by immersing it for a few days in (cheap, stale) ground coffee I got from someone who moved. Worked like a charm!
Katy’s use of the “mushy rice” rice reminded me of the use for “bad coffee”, so I thought I’d pass that one on – you never know when it might come in handy!
That is an awesome tip, thanks for sharing!
Katy
Your switch plate looks good. A few years ago I did all of mine because I didn’t like the look of the plain covers and I didn’t want to pay for fancy ones. After thinking on it I decided it was like small pieces of art, I even put frames around a couple of them. I used posters, cards, magazine pages, and calendar. Just found the look I wanted and folded and duct taped the back. I just had to replace the kitchen one, was sad to see the Tabasco pick go but I found a small poster of our city scape and used it.