We've been meaning to post about the tiles shown in the header above, which were a featured project in our September issue. I was doing some experimenting with lace (which I have to admit I am pretty obsessed with for many reasons!) and I was so excited when I figured out this technique. It's kind of magical how fast it is and how beautifully it works. Once made, these tiles are permanently enameled and can be used for all sorts of projects.

Here's how it works: first spray one side of a piece of lace with spray adhesive (such as Super 77), then smooth it onto the surface of a ceramic tile. The glue will hold it firmly in place. Then spray quickly, (just enough to get an even color) with any spray paint or spray enamel—I like Montana colors and Krylon best. You don't even need to wait for the paint to dry, just carefully pull off the lace (even though the spray adhesive is "permanent,"it will come off easily.)

See below!

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1

2 An overview of the process.

3 A detail showing how fine the lace "stencil" is.

4 From our how-to, a tile spray-painted with metallic copper, before the lace is removed.

5 Ta-da!

6 I shot this in our studio—experimenting with lining up a continuous pattern...

7 This shot ran in the September issue. We made them into pretty trivets. With lace cookies, no less!

8 From a story I worked on years ago about printing with lace, sort of the opposite idea. Equally fine results, but I must admit—so much trickier than spray paint!

9 A printed lace box. I'm going to try something similar with our new technique.

In February we worked with the amazing Jessica Pigza of the New York Public Library to produce our story about our valentine-making Crafternoon. Many of the antique valentines that inspired us can be viewed online as part of the NYPL's vast (and growing!) digital collections. I love looking through these online archives and wanted to share a few more resources; there is so much available online now, its really incredible. Please let us know if you have favorites online databases, too. We are discovering new ones all the time.

The Cooper-Hewitt has amazing textile and wallcoverings collections online.

London's Victoria and Albert Museum has an astounding amount of material online.

An amazing collection of early-American antique textiles here.

Visual Arts Database, a database of many British collections, is may new favorite. The image above is from here.

Anyway, we reinterpreted this idea to create the dipped glassware below, which appears in the September issue.

A third, even simpler version of this process is to swirl the paint to only partially cover the interior of the glass, and leave an irregular painterly edge to the color. I love the results just as much! See below:

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1 Craft paint mixed with a medium for glass painting, about half and half...

2 Pour straight into a glass bottle, jar, or cylinder, holding vertically to so the paint hits the bottom.

3

4

5 It's nice to leave a wiggly irregular edge!

6 Some finished examples—the vase on the far right is embellished with spray-mounted foil. Another simple project, see link at the end of this post!

This paint is made permanent and washable two ways. For the bake method: After drying for 1 hour, place in cool oven. Set temp to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. (Glass must heat gradually.) After 30 minutes, turn off the oven. Let glass cool completely in oven. Don’t use for 72 hours. For the air-dry method: It will cure after 21 days and will be dishwasher top-shelf safe!

Shown in the album above is a cylinder embellished with really inexpensive foil—also cool!

We thought it would be cool to update the idea with photographs rather than illustrations—and develop something that people could make and give that would be a real keepsake and memento of their summer, sort of rare these days what with e-mail, etc. And who hasn't always wanted to send a message in a bottle...!

All the clip art is downloadable here.

When I went to pick up the crab the day of the shoot, it was a. alive and b. enormous, which made for an alarming trip back to the office. Our food editors took it from there... Below we are carefully styling our striped bass!

Just when I thought I'd had quite enough, thank you, of cupcake and candy papers, I was working on a story for our June issue and came up with these straws. And I must say, they are so cute! I love them. The very week we shot this story with photographer Sang An, I made them for a birthday dinner and it was a perfect instant table decoration. The how-to is very simple; it involves just making a small hole in each paper and sliding them onto the crimped part of a bendy straw. Below is a how-to for the more elaborate version, where the papers are folded and trimmed into petal shapes.

Happy summer everybody! For more simple entertaining ideas, have a look at our gallery.

On Martha's show last week, she showed how to decorate a clay pot.

I found all but one of the materials necessary to do it. I am having trouble finding Milk Paint. Do you have any suggestions as to where I can locate this? I have tried all the paint stores, craft stores, Home Depot, no one sells it.

The project is a lovely way to do over old clay pots, and I am anxious to start it.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Marilyn in Florida

Blake passed this reader question on to me because I happen to love milk paint and know a bit about it. Milk paint is a type of water-based paint sold in powdered form that is made using traditional techniques and pigments, without petrochemicals or toxic bases, so it is biodegradable and nontoxic. It is so "pure" in fact that once mixed it lasts only for a short time (overnight) and needs to be freshly mixed with each application. Once dry, however, it has a beautiful very long-lasting color and a distinctive velvety, or depending on the mixture, chalklike finish.

I buy it from a company called Old Fashioned Milk Paint, which sells 20 colors and provides detailed instructions for using it. It is often used in the restotration of historic interiors and furniture and for reproduction work. From its website, "Our Old Fashioned Milk Paint is a re-creation of the ancient milk paint formula used for centuries before the sale of commercially made paints." They also sell a beautiful hand-painted color card for reference, which I used to keep up on our wall in the crafts room but sadly could not be located at press time!

I used milk paint to paint the oval shaker boxes below for a story on making jewelry boxes a few years ago.

And here is a recipe for a type of homemade milk paint, which I've never tried but I'd like to!

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1 The buffet table with garlands hung above

2 Monofilament and bright-pink lanyard (really inexpensive from Home Depot), strung with taken-apart silk flowers and pieces of ribbon. The paper books are made with four creases that make a "spine"...

3 Here is the book how-to. We used old paperbacks for the "pages." The creases are really simple if you use this scoring tool.

4 The talented Anna Bond of Rifle Paper Co. designed this invitation. It includes a bookplate so that guests can inscribe their book for the new library.

5 Our food department made these Ring Around the Rose-Petal Fools. I was crazy for them! They taste like roses and raspberries, and Sarah put them on scalloped doilies folded in half to look like clouds. Adorable!

6 Here is a behind-the-scenes shot of trying out the garland in the crafts room.

7 And here is a mock-up of the cake decorations...in Styrofoam.

8 This was the real thing. Sugar and Spice Cake... because Elizabeth was having a baby girl!

Click here for the clip art and recipes from this story.  For more of Anna's work, see Rifle Paper Co.

I love the idea of sending a bouquet of handmade flowers in the mail. Make one for your mom! Or a mom you love!

Click here for a peek at the how-to video (on right column of your screen) from our digital issue for the iPad, and check out the rest of the May Issue for lots of other great Mother's Day projects.

The silk poppies are made with lengths of raw-edged dupioni silks, and bits of trim and colored buttons, intended to mimic the beautiful centers of the real flowers. You can see more of the story here—and the entire May issue is available on the iPad.

Below is a peek at the video, and you can download the entire app here at the iTunes store.