September Playlist

My September Playlist (: *Not in any specific order -- Enjoy!

Tee Shirt - Birdy

Superheroes - The Script

My Heart Is Open - Maroon 5 ft. Gwen Stefani

All Of The Stars - Ed Sheeran

Alien Bashment - Rudimental

Undone - Haley Reinhart

Words - Skylar Grey

Not About Angels - Birdy

Die For You - Lawson

Use Somebody - Boyce Avenue ft. Hannah Trigwell (cover)

Apocolade - George Barnett

- Xam

August Playlist

So I've decided that I am going to try and start posting monthly playlists. They'll basically be the songs I have been obsessed with during that month. I'm not sure how long this is going to last before I start getting lazy and forget to do it but heyyyy, its worth a shot! So here's my playlist for the month of August (: *This is not in any specific order. Enjoy!

Kodaline - High Hopes

Maroon 5 - Maps

Sam Smith - Stay With Me 

Sia - Chandelier

P!nk - Chaos & Piss

Iko - Heart Of Stone

5 Seconds of Summer - She Looks So Perfect

Sia - Breathe Me 

Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

David Guetta - Lovers On The Sun

Stay With Me

You know that mood when you just feel like being all tumblry? Well that's how I feel right now and so I decided to make a little lyrics poster to Sam Smith's song, Stay With Me, which BTW, I am SUPER in love with at the moment. If you haven't heard this song yet, stop whatever you're doing and youtube it. Or click on the link down below(: Other than that, Hope You Like It!

Stay With Me - Sam Smith

DIY Harry Potter Wand

An event that my school loves to organize are Dress Up days. Character day is coming up and so I thought i'd be Hermione from Harry Potter! I got my whole outfit together and that's when I realized that I didn't have a wand to go with it... 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Materials Needed: 

• A Pencil
• Piece of Paper
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Hot Glue Gun
• Brown Paint
• Paintbrush

Step One:

Place your pencil on one of the corners of the paper like the picture below, and roll until it covers the whole pencil, leaving a little bit unwrapped at the end. Keep the paper in place with masking tape, then cut off the excess paper, leaving about 1 1/2 inch (4cm) from the eraser of the top of the pencil. 

Step Two:

Fill in the hole with hot glue and leave it out to dry and harden. 

Step Three:

Once the glue has hardened, use the hot glue gun to create squiggles on the top half of the pencil. These are meant to look like vines. 

Step Four:
To finish up, use some brown paint to go over the entire wand, making sure you get right in between the vines.

 You now have a Harry Potter Wand that doubles as a pencil!

This was the rest of my outfit. I also had on black leggings with black and white Keds. 

I hope you all enjoyed this super simple and super easy DIY! 

If you try this DIY at home or have any questions, concerns or requests, feel free to put them in the comments below. 

                      With Love,

                                                          Handy Dandy Xam <3

DIY Chalkboard Paint & Notebook

Every year I make it my goal to decorate all my school notebooks with a certain theme. Last year I painted on different characters from popular animated movies. As school was approaching, I couldn't think of anything to do for this year and so I Googled for some ideas. I found a picture of a chalkboard notebook and thought "HEYY that is a really good idea!" So, I went and started my hunt for Chalkboard Paint...  As some of you might know, I am an expat living in Jakarta, Indonesia and finding specific craft items can be a bit challenging. I drove all around town with my mom, going into different hardware stores and paint shops and when I asked if they had chalkboard paint they all had the same answer. "Kosong." Which in English basically means SOLD OUT. It was either that or they just had no idea what I was talking about... After weeks of my parents hearing me ramble on about chalkboard paint and how I couldn't find it anywhere, my dad suggested I just make my own. Hmmm......*LIGHT BULB*
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Materials Needed:

• Acrylic paint (any color)
• Baby powder
• A container to mix the paint
• Sponge
• Mixing stick or back of paintbrush
• Newspaper 
• Notebook

Step One:

Squirt a medium sized blob of paint into your container. *The great thing about this recipe is that your measurements do not need to be exact. There basically just has to be about slightly less than double the amount of paint to baby powder. 

Step Two:

Shake some baby powder into your paint mixture (about 4-6 shakes) and mix them together using your mixing stick. I just used the back of a paint brush because the stick was fat enough.

The consistency of the paint should be just slightly thicker and gooeyer than before. The color shouldn't have changed. If you feel you put too much powder into the paint then just squirt some more paint in and vice versa. Like I said just now, your measurements don't have to be exact for this recipe to work.

 And there you have it! Your very own homemade Chalkboard Paint! Wasn't that just sooo easy? You can experiment using all different types of colors from pink to blue to green and basically to any color you want. 

Now, if you would like to see how I painted it onto my notebook and some tips while doing it, continue reading...

The Notebook

Step One:

Pull out your notebook and lay it out on the newspaper. Make sure you flip all the pages to the side that you're not painting so that you don't get the paint onto the pages. *e.g. All the pages in the picture below are flipped to the left side of the book as i will be painting on the right side. 

Step Two:

Scoop up some Chalkboard Paint using your mixing stick and place the blob of paint onto the notebook. Do about 2-3 coats. Use a sponge to spread the paint around. I find that using a sponge is a lot easier than using a brush because its bigger and goes on very smoothly. 

If your notebook cover starts to curl up like in the picture below, don't worry. Simple just start pulling the sponge horizontally from the rings, out. 

TA DA! All flat again! 

To ensure you get neat and clean margins, put a little bit of paint on the edge of the sponge and go as close to the rings as possible, not touching it. From there, just swipe down in one straight line. 

 Step Three:
Once you are done painting, leave the notebook to dry for about 15-20 minutes. 

It should look something like this once you're done...

Wipe off the chalk simply by using a piece of tissue.

I used some chalkboard paint on another container I had lying around to store all my chalk in.

I hope you all enjoyed this super simple and super easy DIY! 

If you try this DIY at home or have any questions, concerns or requests, feel free to put them in the comments below. 

                      With Love,

                                                          Handy Dandy Xam <3

.