Chalkboard Gift Caddy {Fun Holiday Gift Ideas}…

 

 

For a couple of years now, I have had a regular craft/DIY column in a local magazine called “Charm Magazine“.  Charm is created and distributed by Lufkin Daily News, which is the newspaper in my hometown. For the Christmas edition of Charm, my friend Denise {Charm’s super talented editor} asked if I would be interested in a “craft wars” type project for my Christmas column. She told me that she wanted to give me some random trash items that would otherwise be discarded and challenge me to do something fun and holiday-ish with the items. I said sure! Why not?  Send over your trash Denise!

Denise’s bag of trash arrived and as I looked through the bag, all of the items had great potential but I choose to work with two items in the bag.  I picked the carrier of empty ice coffee jars and a bag of broken jewelry:

 

 

 

So I decided that I wanted to spray the cardboard drink caddy with spray chalkboard paint and make a chalkboard gift caddies for fill with fun smaller gifts.  I really wasn’t sure what would happen when I sprayed it but was so excited to see that the paint covered the cardboard caddy perfectly!  I used Krylon Chalkboard spray paint and I didn’t even have to spray it with primer.  Oh yea, it doesn’t get any easier than this!

I sprayed a thin layer but just enough to completely cover.  I probably sprayed less than 30 seconds!:

 

 

While the caddy was drying (takes about an hour), I ran the empty glass jars through the dishwasher to sterilize.  Once they were dry, I attached pieces of the broken jewelry to the front of each jar:

 

 

For attaching the the jewelry to the jars, I cleaned the glass with alcohol and brushed on E6000 glue with a tooth pick on the flush back side of the jewelry and I also brush on just a tad amount of E6000 on the jar. I then dabbed hot glue on the jar but not where I had brushed on the E6000. E6000 takes 12 hours to set so the hot glue helps by holding the jewelry in place instantly until the E6000 can set.  I then painted the lids with Testor’s enamel paint (found in the model car section of the craft store):

 

I then filled the jars with nice bath salts and bubble bath that I picked up from Walmart.  I added a pretty patterned wash cloth and a narrow $1.00 candle that I tied with some jute. I also wrote “Merry Bubble” on the front of the caddy with chalk:

 

So you might be wondering what I did with the other two jars?? I did the same thing I did with the other two jars and filled them with bath salts and bubble bath and I glued on a piece of jewelry to one of the jars. For the last jar, I simply wrapped part of a broken necklace around the neck of the jar:

 

 

I had so much fun making these gift caddies that I filled them with some other gifts like this one full of crafting goodies for a child:

 

 

I did another one full of mani-pedi goodies:

 

 

I was thinking it would be fun to one for a guy filled with poker chips, playing cards, beer nuts and maybe a couple of beers and call it “Merry Poker”?

This was such a fun and easy project that I am so glad that Denise challenged me to do.  You just never know what treasures are in the trash! I now know what I’m going to do for teacher gifts this year!  Merry Bubbles for everyone!!  Do you have any other ideas of gifts that we could do with these caddies?  I would love for us to get a list going in the comment section!! I know you guys will have some good ones!

I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend and thank you to all of you who have purchased the tree cone templates!  There is a lot of cone making going on right now and I am just loving all your pictures.  Please keep the pics coming!  I promise, I will get the tree cone gallery up this week so you guys can see everyone’s finished cones.  When you send me a picture, please make sure to note in your email that you give me permission to share on my site.  Thanks!!

Cheers!

Cyndy

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