World Coin Magnets

 My latest Pinterest craft is pictured above!!! That's a cookie sheet from the dollar store with my coin collection magnets. I got a set of 50 magnets from Michael's and glued them to my coins. The hardest part was deciding which side to face up, since some of them are quite cool. I really wanted to display my coins from my travels, which have just been sitting around in a box. I am still deciding what to do with this exactly. I might just hang it up as a display. I also might paint or cover the magnet board (aka cookie sheet) and use the magnets to display other souvenirs. 

And this is my new adult bed! Yes, it's true, I've been sleeping in a twin bed the last couple of years since I moved back home. I always had the thought that I'd be moving out soon enough...yeah...but as that still hasn't happened yet, my mom bought my this Ikea bed. Which I thought was fair enough, since I have been sleeping in that daybed with a trundle since toddlerhood. I decided on this bedding, which matches my yellow walls with green and yellow flowers but also has that exotic, worldly look to it. And it was kind of ridiculous that my boyfriend, me, and Poe the kitten were all sleeping in that twin bed.

So I've been working on rearranging my room since I got my new bed. I found some cool trinkets in the target clearance section. A Morrocan-esque lantern and some multicolored candle holders were among the treasures.

For my next project....I bought an thesaurus and dictionary from the dollar store. I want to Modge Podge either my Sterilite drawers or the ugly little Target bookshelf I am now using as a nightstand...or both.

We'll see...I've been tired lately from the Starbucks shifts. The caffeine is not yet balancing the waking up at early hours.

Map Frames!

One of the Pinterest projects I pinned was a map wall with various frames that the crafter had spray painted:

I was pretty dang excited because one of my favorite souvenirs to bring home from my travels are MAPS. I travel low-budget backpacker style which means a lot of the memorabilia I bring home is stuff I can get for free or very cheap, like tickets and postcards. Maps are fantastic because they are available for free and they are totally useful.

So I have all these crinkly maps hoarded in my "souvenir bags." I have used them as decor in the past in temporary dorm type situations, taping or tacking them to the wall. I was looking for something a bit cooler and more adult to do with them.

First I grabbed a bunch of my maps and measured them. I seriously have lots of maps. Then I was off to Michael's looking for the cheapest way to do my project. I got 3 of their $1 frames, and a couple of larger plastic frames for pretty cheap on sale. I ended up getting Martha Stewart paint in several bright colors that promised to work on various materials, and a primer.

I painted in the hot Arizona sun on the patio, so the stuff dried like instantaneously. I did two coats of the white primer and two or more coats of color. I wasn't sure how to was going to turn out, but the frames ended up looking like wooden painted frames, I'd say. My version of this project is like the uber cheap, utterly untalented, very quick version of this craft. 

Here they are on my wall! I ended up using a map of Sydney, Australia, a map of the island of Bali, a map of Lembongan Island in Bali, a metro map from Taipei, and a little map of Southeast Asia that was part of another larger map. 

Yes, this is my wall, which includes the Snow White poster that has been there since I was born to my own decorations from my travel, which I've been trying to organize. The cool thing about this project is I already have more maps, and can definitely get more in my travels. So I can always add to it. And when I move out of my house (hopefully before I'm 40), I can take this with me as some more adult art to decorate with rather than tacking up posters- like I did with the other Sydney map on my wall.

I have a really cool map from Yangshuo, China- a hand-drawn style with lots of fun facts on it. It is much larger than these maps but I'd really love to add it to the collection.

I want to do some other travel/Pinterest-inspired crafts. The next one on my list is to do something with my foreign coin collection. I am thinking about making magnets out of them, but I will have to wait until my paychecks start rolling in again.

Plans

This weekend I am headed to NEW YORK CITY!/Princeton. My Bryn Mawr friends and I are finally reuniting. Our plans include a visit to Kleinfeld's and a Murder Mystery dinner theater. As a travel addict I have been going absolutely stir crazy so I'm pretty excited.

As for other plans, I actually have a goal, which is pretty crazy for me. I would like to get my Master's in Public Policy from ASU. It is a 2 year program that you can do while working full-time. Now I just have to get an application together and figure out when I want to start, among other things. It is on the Downtown Campus which is nice, because I'd really like to live in/around downtown Phoenix. A big reason to go to grad school, though, is networking. Getting a job is really all about who you know. And apparently I don't know enough people.

So far I've applied to about a gazillion government jobs and haven't gotten one yet. After this NYC trip, I'm going to hunker down and see which service/retail job I will hate least. I am indecisive about a few things though. The main thing is should I look for jobs close to home, or close to downtown? Since I want to live and go to school downtown, it would be nice to have a job I could carry on with while I'm in school, although it'd be a little bit of a commute from living at home. And work somewhere I've worked before, or somewhere new? I can't decided what is bet yet, so I will be mulling things over the next few days.

T-Shirt Pillow

So here I am, unemployed once again. Job applications get boring very fast, so I have been Pinterest obsessed. This project was inspired by ideas for t-shirt pillow crafts. The simplest seemed to be sewing the bottom, sleeves, and head hole closed.

I bought some batting, thinking I would make several of these. However, since I don't have a sewing machine, the hand-sewing took more time than I had anticipated. I haven't done anything crafty or sewed in a while though. 

I used a tee from my first China trip from the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe- a shirt I wanted to keep but that is now too small. Often when I was a teen I would buy child sizes to save money, but now I have a few too small shirts. 

I think this turned out really cute but I still have a ton o' tees and I don't know what to do with them all.  They are sentimental ones I want to keep. Maybe make a few more pillows, but that's only a few more shirts. I tried cutting up a big tee to make a tank but it didn't look all that great. I am thinking about doing some kind of wall art with a few of the shirts. What I'd really like to do is have a t-shirt quilt made of all of them to use as a picnic blanket, or couch blanket. I do not have a sewing machine, nor the skill I suspect. There are companies that do it but it is way out of my budget at the moment. So for now I'm just saving all my favorite tees I can't stand to part with (I must have around 20 at least).