Category: Life Hack

Coloring sheets

On By CarynIn Craft, Life Hack

My youngest loves coloring books, but it is difficult for her to find uncolored pages in the bound books after a while. I took my heavy duty guillotine paper cutter and cut off the spine of the coloring book, freeing the pages so they could be sorted into colored and uncolored.

Photo description: 400 page capacity guillotine paper cutter with a deconstructed coloring book, with a colored page and uncolored page pulled out of the stack

My youngest was pleasantly surprised with the fresh stack of ready-to-color sheets, and I was pleased with how fast and clean the cutter worked. Tearing sheets out of a book is often messy and frustrating. By cutting a 1/4 inch off the spine, the pages are freed from the glue easily.

Once my concept was proved, my youngest agreed to let me process the rest of the books. Any book that only had one or two colored pages I left alone, but the books that were mostly colored were cut and sorted.

Photo description: hanging organizer with coloring books at the top and individual coloring sheets at the bottom

I now also have a stack of colored sheets that can be displayed and scanned easily for posterity.

Rewrapping a cat post

On By CarynIn Cats, Craft, Life Hack

The favorite scratching post in the house needed a fix-up.

Photo description: cat scratching post with the jute rope broken and falling off

When I last rewrapped this post, I took some of the carpet off the top to provide a higher area for scratching since I have longer cats. From the picture, it really wasn’t necessary, even the big cats scratch the middle of the post. To rewrap this time, I purchased 160 feet of 1/4 inch jute rope.

Photo description: bundle of jute rope, pliers, and a staple gun for the rewrap project

My future self is not going to be pleased with me, because as I wrapped the rope, I stapled it down on the back every few inches. Last time, I only stapled the top and bottom, which made it easy to remove, but I believe shortened the time of use. The last wrap lasted slightly less than a year.

The most helpful thing this time around was that my eldest held the rope above the scratching post, so it was easier for me to wrap the post from the bottom up smoothly.

Photo description: freshly jute rope wrapped cat scratching post

The new rope, while marketed as 1/4 inch, has a smaller diameter than the old rope, and a tighter twist. It will be interesting to see if it holds up better.

Wrinkled leather

On By CarynIn Craft, Life Hack

In my stash I have some nice thin goat skin leather. Unfortunately, it was wrinkled and was starting to feel a little dry.

Photo description: wrinkled goat skin leather

I used a generous application of Weiman’s leather conditioner to ease the wrinkles and return the suppleness.

Photo description: restored leather and a bottle of Weiman’s leather conditioner

Other leather conditioners, such as mink oil, would have also worked to add oils back into the leather.

A little water proofing

On By CarynIn Life Hack

The heated cat house behind the coop had been used as a scratching post, compromising its weather proofing. I bought some outdoor canvas and applied it to the roof with hot glue, just to give it a modicum of extra protection.

Photo description: new canvas hot glued onto the top of a heated cat house sitting on an outdoor table

It isn’t my neatest job, but it fixed the issue. It will also be a test of the hot glue to fabric bond as the weather changes.

Sprucing up signs

On By CarynIn art, Craft, Life Hack

My chorus had a couple old signs in storage that had old versions of logos and were in need of some TLC. The flexible vinyl sign had been stored folded and had some tape residue.

Photo description: tape residue on a vinyl sign
Photo description: sticky residue removed with Goo Gone

Goo gone removed the glue spots and some time with a hot hair dryer smoothed out some of the creases. We are now going to store it rolled up, rather than folded.

Photo description: masking tape outlining a star shape inside the existing star

We updated our main logo recently to add a white star inside the two gray stars, which gives it a nice pop. My Cricut cutter can’t cut quite big enough to make a white sticker star, so I masked off the star and painted it with four layers of white acrylic paint. My cutter could do the new Sweet Adelines International logo and our website address.

Photo description: vinyl sign updated with web site address, SAI logo, and white center star

We also had a rigid plastic sign that had an old SAI logo and slogan. I used white adhesive vinyl to go over the whole top of the sign, and used my Cricut cutter to cut out the new version of the logo.

Photo description: old plastic corrugated board sign
Photo description: large plastic corrugated board sign with updated SAI logo and white center star