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DIY is a way of life. A lot of people have seem to forgotten that instead of purchasing something ready-made, or having somebody fix something for you, you can do it yourself. Take me for example. Recently I purchased one of those cheap remote controlled drones for sale. Not for me of course, it's for my son. In an unfortunate accident one of the plastics of the bracket where camera is supposed to be ended up being damaged. Despite never fixing something like that, I used my hot glue gun and not only did I fix it, but I made it better because the camera on the drone now shakes less during flight.

My kids are pretty clumsy and if I asked others to have things fixed for me in a very short amount of time nobody would answer my calls or texts. I'm not saying that you go out and fix things like the water heater or electric wiring. Those things are something that you SHOULD leave to the professionals. Smaller issues, like damaged toys, cabinet door hinges, office chairs, desk legs, etc. can all be fixed by inexperienced DIY repairman. I'm sure that I'll be fixing broken wheels off my other sons electric skateboard or buffing up scoffs from my daughters hoverboard. We were lucky to find HoverboardPrince and their best off road hoverboards buying guide. We're a pretty high tech family, that, combined with my kids clumsiness, means that there are a lot of repairs.

What this website is going to be about however is creating things from the group up. I'll still be sharing some of my DIY repairs, bragging about them to be more precise, but creating things from nothing is what my love is. DIY arts and crafts are my main agenda and love. Creating jewelery, jewelery boxes, decorative pieces, floral bouquets and more, that's my jazz. And who am I? Well my name is Violet, but my friends call me Lolly. You can find a bit more info on me by visiting the "About" page. LollyChops will sort of be a diary of mine where I'll post DIY project ideas, DIY tutorials, do reviews of DIY works of other etc. What you'll be able to see on this website can be broken down to:

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Jewelery

Jewelery is a way for us to express out creativity. That is why I prefer arts and crafts jewelery instead of the over the counter type that can be bought in jewelery stores. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the monetary value that jewelery from a jewelery store has and that giving such an expensive gift to someone you care about is a good way of showing affection. But you can't deny that creating your own necklace, the way you like it, will show off more of your creativity than just wearing one that someone else made and someone else picked out for you.
Arts and crafts jewelery has been a love of mine ever since I was a little girl. When creating a bracelet, necklace, earrings and even rings I try to put as much uniqueness as I can into the pieces that I create. This does make the process somewhat slower, but it also makes the jewelery that I create look very interesting. Not to toot my own horn, but I think that over the 20 years now that I've been in the arts and crafts as a hobby that I've gotten pretty good at what I do. So much so that I'm thinking about opening an Etsy shop, but first want to see what kind of feedback I get from people here.

Jewelry boxes

Next obvious step after creating a bunch of jewelery was to figure out where to put it all away. I could do it the easy way, drive down to a store, buy a jewelery box, but I decided to opt out for a DIY approach instead. My husband is a construction worker, so he has all kind of construction material laying around the house. After seeing a piece of plywood leftover from a job of his laying around in his shop, I knew what I had to do. I rolled up my sleeves and got busy making drawings first, and then handing them to my husband so that he can saw the pieces that I needed.
OK, I cheated a bit and I got my husband to do the sawing for me, but it was only that. I'm not experienced enough with a saw to have done it myself, sue me. Everything else however I did on my own. From putting the pieces together, decorating it, you know, the hard part. Ever since that first box I've created about a dozen more, not just for me, but also for my girlfriends. As I got more experienced the designs got more complex. I don't I'd ever be able to find in a store a jewelery box that looks like the one that I create on my own, the arts and crafts way.

Floral arrangements

A wedding of a friend of mine got me interested in making floral bouquets. Me and my girlfriends are a tightly knit group and so when one us was lucky enough to walk down the aisle, it was all hands on deck. To help keep the cost of the wedding down, each of us decided to help out in a way with the wedding. My job ended up being taking care of the floral arrangements for the tables. I'll try to make a post that features my first attempt at floral arrangement. Wedding DVD exists somewhere on my shelves. Photographer had one them GoPro FPV drones, it was quite fancy. This was almost 3 years ago now and I've been doing it ever since.
It's not really that difficult of a hobby, but a great creative release, if you a want it to be that of course. Over the years I've gotten experimental and now I create entire scenes with flowers, hence the reason for my departure from the expressions "floral bouquet" to floral arrangements. They've grown in complexity over the years. I'm even setting up different scenes now, incorporating my floral craftiness in other DIY works of mine. You'll see what I mean in the upcoming posts that I'll be making.

Decorative pieces

You're probably wondering what exactly do I mean when I say decorative pieces, well sometimes I'm not even sure what I'll end up creating when I start working on a project. Seasonal arts and crafts are a given with me. Halloween, Christmas, Easter are three big ones where I'm most active. Around that time you can definitely expect an increase in the number of projects that I post. Other decorative projects that I do can be pretty much anything. It's a spur of the moment kind of thing.
Right now I'm into decorating candles. Day before yesterday I was in Wall-Mart and there I spotted these weirdly shaped flower pots. They were spherical. Check them out on the image above, only these are already decorated. Immediately after seeing them I said to myself that with a little modification these are perfect for creating candle holders. Like I said, my creativity is a spur of the moment kinda thing. After purchasing the pots and coming home I started painting, adding decorations, playing around basically.

Furniture restore

There is no greater satisfaction of a DIY arts and crafts enthusiast than bringing back to life an old piece of furniture. I'm speaking from personal experience. Just recently I got my hand on a set of two chairs and a table, rocking chairs for outdoors, like a deck. They were in quite bad shape. Again I rolled up my sleeves and went to town on them. After about a weeks worth of afternoons after work, I was finished and here is the end product:
It's quite something to look at, don't you agree? Had I gone to a professional to have these restored I would have spent hundreds of dollars, probably more. By doing it myself I saved money, burned calories and I learned a new skill that will come in handy later on for sure. Now for my next project I have a sofa chair with a busted arm rest lined up. My husband will probably have to help me out on this one. I'll soon post a before post to show you what exactly it is that's wrong and then of course an after post, to show you the end once the restore is finished.

DIY repair

With three kids around 10 years of age and a house full of toys, there's bound to be broken toys, and pretty much broken everything else. Nothing is sacred to these little monsters, 🙂 . My husband is the one that usually fixes after the kids, but sometimes they cannot wait for his to come home from a job. He does construction on oil rigs, so he can be away for weeks at a time doing gigs all over the country.
Everything you need in order to fix small electronics, household items and the likes is a good set of screwdrivers, some glue and some patience. That's my motto, although it's kinda long and doesn't make a lot of sense. What I'm trying to say that DIY repair posts are something that you can definitely expect to see from me. All in all I'm planning on posting a lot of interesting projects that I'm working on, at least interesting to me, so make sure to stick around and get in touch with me if you have any kind of questions of requests. I would like nothing more than to hear from my readers. They are the reason why I do this whole thing, after all, at least in part, 😉 . Cheers for now.