Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Goals

I've been taking a bit of a blog break.  I have refocused on trying to lose 30 pounds (7 pounds down so far!) and in the midst of that I had a pretty nasty cold and some long work days.  All of the above have not been too friendly to my crafting schedule.

Some things I've gotten done:

Made a "rewards" sheet to post in the house to help motivate me to lose weight

Put together a baby shower basket.  Included a painted letter with cute trains on it that I made, with a card that has the same trains to match.



Some things I'm planning to do:

• Gardening hopefully sooner rather than later.  The weather got very nice, then it got cold again.  Hoping to start our vegetable garden in the upcoming weeks and will share that with you.
• Have my wonderful husband hang some of the various things I have on the wall in the craft room, then do the full reveal.
• Create another cat bed for my princess so she can hang out in the craft room in a place made for her rather than getting hair all over the furniture!
• Start the couch upholstery project.  This one is big and scary to me, but I really want to do it!

Craft Room Curtains

I finished up the curtains for the craft room today, and I am thrilled with how they look!  The fabric was fabulous to work with, and is very dynamic.  I love how it looks with the rest of the room, and it changes character a bit from daytime (light permitting) to nighttime (patterned). Some pictures below.

Re-purposed music paper & fabric scraps

In the search for more crafts my mother-in-law and I stopped by a local thrift and antique store.  While there, I found a piano book that was for sale that had the nicely aged look to the pages.  I bought it and started turning the paper into some fun creations that I'm hoping to use in some shadowboxes for the craft room.  My mother-in-lay also created some dress forms from her scrap fabric that I could use for the shadowboxes as well.  Check out the results so far!

Felt Wreath

A few weeks ago I finished a fun (now that it's over) project of a felt wreath.

I started seeing felt wreaths all over the internet, and when I saw this wonderful tutorial and had to make one for our bedroom!  http://www.designsponge.com/2009/12/diy-project-kristens-ruffly-felt-wreath.html

Thankfully, the project started out pretty easy for me.  Emmy was a trooper and worked on cutting lots of felt circles for me while I did some pant mending for her.  Here's Emmy having some fun.

It took LOTS of felt circles to make this.  I adore the outcome, but I wanted to give fair warning that those circles are killer!  Here's a small stack of them.

Just look at all those circles in place, smooshed onto the wreath together!

The wreath hasn't found it's final resting place quite yet (there's an order of operations problem, we need to hang up a print that we just got back from the framer before we can figure out where to hang the wreath!), but I certain it is going to add a nice, homely touch to our bedroom.  I'll repost as it finds its final resting place!

Project Mashup

I've had a busy month, so I haven't posted much.  That doesn't mean I haven't been doing much though.  Here's an image of some things to come for upcoming posts.  Thanks to Emmy for being a fun subject and taking some photos for me!

Ikea Borje Chair Mod - Craft Room Update

To further track the progression of the craft room, I recently purchased two Borje chairs from Ikea that I wanted to change to meet the room's decor.  Here's the before and after (we intended to buy the pine wood ones which would have been a better base, but ended up with the brown wood ones by mistake!):

I'm very excited at how they turned out!

Here's some more shots of the process:

Scuff up wood

Spray paint white

Tape up to paint spindles blue

Spindles painted

Chair painted with original seat cover

Removed old seat cover and took apart to use as template for new cover

Cut, ironed, and stitched new seat cover

And the finished products!

Canvas negative space wall hangings

Hi all!  I did a fun craft today that I thought I would share.  I'm in the midst of trying to come up with a bunch of wall decor for the craft room.  I'm trying to make most of it myself in order to save money.  Today I made these - which I'm really excited about!

I'm not an artist, and definitely not a painter.  I was thrilled at how easy these were to do and make it seem like I could paint something!  This is a great project for anyone who feels intimidated by painting.

Want to make some for yourself?  Here's the step by step.

What you need:

• Canvas - I used 12x12x1 that came in a two pack
• Acrylic paint - Two colors worked nicely to give it some character without too much flare.  I used black and silver.
• Paint brush - I used a course 1" brush.  You could buy this from a craft store or from your local hardware store!  The brush doesn't need to be fancy for this.
• Something to put the paint on for mixing (I used a plastic plate)
• Sticker letters - purchased from a craft store, these letters are what you stick onto the fabric and pull off after painting.
• Paper towel - for putting the painted letters on after you've pulled them off.
• Toothpick & Tweezers (don't worry - they clean off easily) - for pulling off the letters.

How to do it:

1. Peel off your letter stickers to make the words you want, and stick them to the canvas.  I used a ruler across the canvas for when I wanted them to be straight - if your canvas is straight sometimes the grain is good enough for this too.
2. Once you have all your words on the canvas, use the dry brush to blot/brush the letters to make sure they are flat and really stuck to your canvas so the paint doesn't get under them.
3. Create a course mix (just swirl a couple of times) if you want a combined color, and have a separate pile of the individual paint colors you are using.  Brush over the canvas in whatever method suits your mood.  I tried to leave some globs of acrylic and some streaks of color on mine to give it some texture and character.
4. Lay out a piece of paper towel.  Use the toothpick to get under an edge of the letter you are going to peel.  Once you get it bumped up a little, use the tweezers to grab it and gently pull it off the canvas.  Rinse and repeat for all the letters on the canvas.

That's it!  You're done!  And now you have some cheap, fun wall paintings for your room.

Decorative stitches frame

I'm in the midst of furnishing and decorating our previously non-furnished guest bedroom to be my craft room.  After much discussion with my husband, he convinced me that furnishing this room to be a guest room for the 1% of the year that it is used as such when I clearly need some space and storage for my crafts was ridiculous.  After finally buying into his logic, I've been gathering furniture and decor ideas all around.  I'll share the final results as I finish getting the final furniture pieces and get some decor projects finished - it's coming along quite well!

In the meantime, here's one project I did today towards the room.  I used my sewing machine and a variety of colors to show the various decorative stitches the sewing machine has at my disposal.  I had an old frame that could show of these stitches in a fun way with many little picture areas, but it was a black painted frame.  I didn't like the black frame with the style of the room, so I spray-painted it silver with Krylon stainless steel spray paint.  Here's the results!

Clever techy t-shirt

I love the thought behind this T-shirt that has a microfiber strip built into it for cleaning your glasses, your iPhone, or whatever other gadget you have handy that has fingerprints and smudges on it!  I'm not sure how it would fare with the regular washing cycle, but thumbs up for the clever design!  However, at $89, I certainly wouldn't buy it.

(pictures sourced from http://www.betterlivingthroughdesign.com/personal/wipe-t-shirt.html)

In their rightful place

So excited at how these look in her apartment!

Curtain & Pillow set

The largest project I took on for Christmas was a curtain and pillow set for my sister-in-law.  She recently moved into a new place, and I get measurements for her windows to make custom curtains.  She wanted something with lace that was fairly neutral, so I set out to make something given that combination.  I ended up with two fabrics, a nice ivory lace and a neutral satin, that I wanted to put together to create a lace effect that would not be see-through so that the curtains could provide privacy when needed.

My mother-in-law suggested a tension-rod curtain that could pull together in the center since the walls in the apartment were not friendly to hanging curtain rods.  Here they are open and closed (in my doorway - hopefully they look more stylish in their rightful place!).

I made a ribbon with a button and button hole to pull together the circle, as shown below.

To attach the lace and create the tension rod sleeves, I used a tight and wide ziz-zag stitch to make sure it all held well.  This was the first project that required more than one thread spool for me!

After making two of these, I decided to make two pillows that would match for her room!  I bought some 14"x14" pillows and used the same materials to make pillowcases with zippers along the bottom.

This was definitely the most difficult project I have taken on yet, but I learned a lot and really enjoyed it.  I was really happy with the end product and I know I'll get to use what I learned in other projects.  Once I get some pictures of these in their rightful place I'll try to post again!