Boosting my Boots

One day last week, I was getting dressed and thought the perfect addition to my outfit were a pair of brown boots which I haven't worn much this winter.  I pulled the boots out of my closet and they looks so dry and cracked. They looked like my dry skin on a cold winter day when I forget to lotion.

Dried out boots

Since I typically wear sneakers to and from work, I threw the boots in my tote bag to bring to work thinking maybe I could find a fix.  A block from my office, I stopped into a Shoe Repair store hole in the wall.  I approached the counter containing a variety of bottles of shoe stuff and asked for "leather conditioner," partially thinking that I was making that term up.  I'm probably the last to know that this stuff exists.  The guy told me they had a few, and I asked for the one that he recommended.  For $10 I left with a 8oz bottle of Lexol Leather Conditioner.

When I got to work, I spent five minutes in the bathroom, following the directions on the bottle.  Basically, rubbed the lotion all over the boots.  Just like putting good lotion on your hands, after about three minutes the lotion seeps into the skin and leaves no yucky residue.  Also, the conditioner is white, so I didn't have to worry about it rubbing off on my beige pants.  In case you can't tell how much better the boots look after this treatment, from the picture on the left, the picture on the right shows one boot with, and the other without the conditioner.  Amazing!  And a week later, they are still looking good.

  I will Shariously be using this on all my dried out leather stuff!

Seashell Memory Box (DIY Tuesday)

Lately, since I now have the space, I've been feeling crafty.  A few weeks ago, we were in Bed Bath and Beyond looking for some items for the house, when I came across this decorative wall hanging:

I thought, that would look nice in our beach-themed yellow guest room.  Then thought, that it was probably about $30 and looked like something I could make myself.  I have a huge collection of seashells and paints, all I needed was a frame.  While in AC Moore I found a set of three white memory box frames on sale for $10.

Supplies:

Paint
Rust-oleum spray paint
9 Seashells
Memory box frame
Cardboard (cut to frame size)*

Steps:

1. Choose your 9 seashells - I chose to use a variety of shapes, textures and sizes, with the center shell being the "coolest" looking one.  Use a spray paint to coat them.  Lighter colors will help retain the texture.
2. Mix a paint color to use for background.  I decided on turquoise to be reminiscent of the ocean as well as to match our yellow wall color.  Paint your backdrop.
3. Use hot glue to glue the shells to the background.
4. Place in frame!

Here is my final product:

The best part of this endeavor, when I was done, I looked the item up on BBB's website, and found out the retail price is $59.99!  This basically cost me $3.33, the price of the frame, since I had all the other materials.

I Shariously love being crafty and look forward to sharing more of my creations with you.

*I bought some canvas to paint on for the background, but the middle seashell was too deep and I had to repaint the background on cardboard in order to make it fit.