DIY Herringbone Canvas Art

Woo! It has been SO SO long since my last post. Time to dust off the keyboard and get back at it.

During my not so brief intermission, I have had a lot of life changes. I went through a divorce, moved to a new home, switched my children's schools, took on a new job, and I am still alive to tell about it!

As a newly single mom in a newly rented home, I don't exactly have a ton of cash for decorating.  Of course, this isn't a problem if you are sufficiently able to start where you are and use what you have. In this case, I had several bottles of acrylic paint, some painter's tape, a can of white spray paint, and a couple of canvases.

The fuse box in my rental home is located on the dining room wall, and is quite the lovely eyesore.  I wanted to cover it without purchasing a large piece of art.  Here is what I did in the wee hours of a sleepless night.

I started out by dragging paint in vertical lines using dry paper towels as paintbrushes. Now, of course if you have brushes, go for it, but I made do with what I had available.

I personally chose to start with my lighter colors and move gradually darker. Then, I rubbed a thin layer of silver metallic paint over the entire canvas for dimension.

The next part is probably the most tedious part of the whole process.  I started by cutting about 8 billion 3 inch strips of blue painter's tape and affixed them over the acrylics in a herringbone pattern.  You are more than welcome to measure these out and make your spacing perfect, but you know what I always say.....perfection ruins a good project.

Once I had all of my tape in place, I selected a few strips to remove for an added flair.  Everything not covered in tape will become white in the next step, so make sure if you remove some pieces, you still are able to maintain the lovely pattern you just so painstakingly created.

Once I had my tape strips just as I wanted them, I headed outside to spray paint white over the entire surface of the canvas. Please make sure that when you perform this step you are outdoors in a well ventilated area.  Spray paint is no joke!

As soon as I had coated the entire canvas in white spray paint, I peeled away all of my tape strips.  You want to do this step while the paint is still fresh and wet.  If you wait for it to dry, the tape will peel the paint away with it.

Voila!  A finished work of art.  Now to repeat all of those steps for my second canvas.  Of course, you can do one, two, or even more of these in the color variation that best suits your decor and style.  Right now, my entire home is done in quite random colors.  The kitchen has vibrant shades of so many colors that just about anything would fit.  Use your best judgement on what colors to select.

Once I finished, I hung both canvases on my dining room wall.  Care to guess which is hiding that big ole mess of a fuse panel??

I'll give you a hint: It's the one on the left.  I think that later I'll probably go back and add some vinyl wording above the canvases or some other pieces just to add to the look, but I am pretty pleased with how this project turned out considering it was a spur of the moment, midnight project. 

How do yours look?  I bet you did an awesome job!

Thank you so much for bearing with me during my extended break.  As a reward...here is a picture of my little crazy man when he first woke up this morning.  Imagine how fun this was to tame before school!

Happy crafting, and stay tuned. I'll be posting again soon....promise!

Stereo Cabinet Refinish

I naturally have a love for all things crafty, but as a mom I also have a love for all things thrifty.  I have been wanting desperately to refinish an older piece of furniture.  The problem...the only older pieces of furniture I already own are family heirlooms that I wouldn't sand or paint to save my life.  I couldn't bear the thought of sanding my grandmother's furniture.  If you have looked around for older furniture pieces, you know that people often ask way more than a piece is truly worth just because they can tag it with the word "antique" or "retro."  This drives me bonkers, but in a world where re-purposing is trending, what is a girl to do?  After a few days of scouring local yard sale pages I finally found an inexpensive piece that I fell in love with.

Sure, it didn't look like much, but for some reason this piece gave me vision.  I was immediately drawn to the geometric design of the cutouts around what used to be the speaker vents.  I just knew that I could give this piece a little love and new life.  When I picked the piece up, the furniture dealer who had posted the piece gave me a little background story on the cabinet.  Apparently the girl who had sold it had been given the piece by her father.  He had converted the top areas into a drawer and a cabinet and put the plaid inserts into the speaker vents in the early 80s for her to use the piece as a tv stand and have storage. Her father had told her at the time that she would have to live with the piece forever because of how much work he put into converting it for her.  I don't know why she got rid of the piece, but I was happy to carry on her father's "make it do" spirit.

The first thing you want to do when refinishing any piece of furniture is to go in and remove any hardware you don't want painted and in this case, any fabric panels that need removing and replacing.  You will see in later pictures that I left the hardware on the front of the piece attached.  While I would like to claim that this was a purposeful design choice, the fact is that the handles are attached with specialized furniture screws I don't have tools for.

The next step for any refinish project is of course to wipe down any debris from the piece and sand it down.  If  I were wanting to stain this piece a different shade, I would have needed to sand it down to the bare wood all over.  Since I was going to paint over it and distress it, I took the topper down to the bare wood grain, but just gave the rest of the piece a good sanding to remove the shiny finish so that the paint would stick. For this step, you want to use a coarse grain sandpaper or sanding block.  If you shop at a certain blue home improvement store, the sandpaper is sorted into strip, smooth, and finish.  You want to select a block from the strip section.  This is what the top of the cabinet looked like when I got it down to the bare wood.

Sanding can be a lot of hard work, but the fun part is coming.  For the paint color, I selected "Betsy Ross House" by Valspar.  I purchase the paint plus primer version in an interior semi-gloss.  The color is a very bright turquoise that leans more toward blue.  For this project I could have gotten away with a single quart and had some leftover, but I got two quarts just in case I needed to repaint the whole piece or in case I wanted to paint anything else to match later.  Better safe than sorry.

I popped my paint open and went to town, making sure I got down into each little cutout.  Design tip: if you are planning to distress a piece and want to do less distressing work, don't saturate your brush with paint in the same way you would to paint say a wall.  Using less paint on your brush will allow brush strokes to shine through and automatically give it that worn look.  I just painted over the hardware and am actually happy with the way that turned out.  If you don't want painted hardware, just remove it or tape over it before you start painting.

While I waited for the paint to dry so that I could distress the piece, I went ahead and recovered the fabric panels.  The fabric on these was TERRIBLE.  It was a really awful brown plaid upholstery fabric.  Think the most horrible late 70s couch EVER.  So what did I do?  I replaced it with the most horrible, putrid gold polyester suit fabric that was handed down to me from my great grandmother.  I have no idea what drew me to this fabric, but for the project at hand it just felt right.  At this point I was sending nervous text messages to my friends asking if it sounded like I was maybe losing my mind for choosing this fabric.

At any rate, I just popped the staples out to remove the old fabric.  Then I place the wood panels on top of the new fabric I selected and cut the fabric leaving enough margin to wrap it to the back of the panels and staple in place.

Once I had the fabric cut out, I stapled it all into place around the back of the panels making sure to tuck in the corners.  For this step you want to take note of how thick your plywood panels are as opposed to how long your staple legs are.  I would really hate for someone to do this project and staple wood panels down to their floors. (Not that I did that...ok I did, but the floors are vinyl plank, so the holes closed back up)

Once I had finished recovering the panels and the paint dried on the cabinet, I went back in with a fine grain sandpaper block to distress it a bit.  I don't usually like things to look super distressed, so the picture here is about the most distressed spot on the whole cabinet.  For this step you want to use a sanding block with a fine grain that is from the finish section of the sandpaper aisle.  Please excuse the little peep of finger in the bottom right corner.

Once I distressed the cabinet to the desired level, I reinstalled the fabric panels.  Then I stepped back to admire my handy work.

 At the end of the day, I am SO happy that I chose the fabric that I did.  I love the way the putrid gold polyester pops against the Betsy Ross House blue.  I can't say for certain, but I think the girl's dad would be happy to see the piece brought back to life to be loved for many more years.

Here is a before and after shot so that you get the whole effect.

Have you tried any restoration projects of your own?  Comment and let me know about it.

Happy Crafting

Mother's Day Gift for the Cooking Momma

I have been oh so blessed to have a family full of cooking women!  They have seasoned my life with their knowledge about God, life, family, and food. This mother's day, I wanted to give them kitchen gifts with a personal touch.

I started by picking up some good quality, inexpensive bamboo cutting boards and utensil sets.  I used this method from another post of mine to put each lady's initial and decorative flowers on each utensil and their name and flowers onto the cutting boards.

Ok, and maybe a heart for each, too.  After all, we do want them to know we love them.

 Mimi's cutting board is looking so sweet!

 Here is one of grammy's spoons!

Next, I grabbed some of the flour sack dish cloths left over from our Pin Tuck Dish Towels and got to work putting ruffles on each one.  Granny Carol got pink paisley ruffles, Mimi got white ruffles, and Grammy got green ruffles.  I am posting a separate tutorial for the ruffled cloths, so stay tuned!

This is Granny Carol's completed set. If I have a little extra time between now and then, I am going to embroider something cute onto each dish towel.

We are also throwing in some of these cute little bead suncatchers that the kids made more of recently.

We are also wrapping each present in a special wrapping paper we created, but that is another post for another day.

I think each of these special ladies are really going to love their box of kitchen happies.

Let me know if you tried any of this for your Mother or another special lady in your life!

Bathroom Step Stool for Under $2

For those of you who know me...I have a deep love for PROJECTS!  If I can tackle a new project or new hobby, I somehow feel so very accomplished.  My most recent hobby is carpentry....very light carpentry of course, but carpentry nonetheless.  I was browsing Ana White's website and found a building plan for this adorable little bathroom stepstool and couldn't resist.  This is just what I need at my house as I attempt to potty train one child and prepare to start potty training another.

Here is the link to her plans: http://ana-white.com/2012/01/plans/bathroom-helper-step

Here is what you will need: (I had everything on hand but the lumber)

2 1x2 boards @ 8 ft (94 cents a piece at my favorite blue store)
A power drill/screwdriver
1 1/2 inch wood screws
finish or paint of your choice
120 grit sandpaper

Even if you had to buy your sandpaper and screws, this would still cost you less than $10.

& if you are cutting your wood yourself...a saw, eye protection, and hearing protection

I had my boys at my favorite blue store cut my wood for me...they do it for free and it saves SO much time and cleanup.

Cut List:

5 @ 17 1/2 inches
2 @ 16 inches
4 @ 11 inches

Cut these in order for the best results.  I had a pretty nice sized scrap piece leftover.  You could use it for two additional 11 inch pieces if you wanted to make your stool a little taller, but I'll tell you where to do that as I tell you about the process.

Here's what you do:

Start by attaching two 11 inch pieces to the outside of your two 16 inch pieces, forming a rectangle frame.  Predrill all holes before attaching, and check for square after this step.

Attach your first slat to the top of the frame, predrilling holes.  There should be no overhang on the sides.

Next attach the slat on the complete opposite side in the same manner.  This will allow you to space the slats evenly between the two outside edges.

Install the remaining slats, evenly spacing them across your frame.  Then turn your work over.

Attach your remaining two 11 inch pieces as risers for the stool.  At this point, if you need for your stool to be higher, you would add an additional two pieces to the bottoms of these.  I felt this would be high enough for us.

Sand your project down and paint or stain as you choose.

VOILA!  You completed a bathroom step stool....and it cost you less than $2 to make!!

 My little man says no to pants much too often!  This stool is just the right size for him to get onto the potty or wash his little hands. 

Did you try this?  Post a pic or tell me about it!

                                                          

Bow Drawer to Bow-tique

For years, I have stored bows, headbands, head wraps, ponytail holders, and more in the top dresser drawer of my daughter's room.  Lately, with two girls, it has gotten to be quite a huge mess to dig through in the mornings.  As I was rearranging the girls' room this week, I decided it was finally time to do something about the mess.

I started by attaching three vertical ribbons to the left side of the dresser, which was a whiteboard.  I did this with a staple gun and staples, but your method may vary based on the material you are attaching to.

All of the bows on the two ribbons to the right are alligator clip bows.  The second from the left are barrette closures.  The far left are assorted, oddball closures along with snap clips and bobby pins.  Hanging from the far left ribbon is a ponytail holder with all of their claw clips clipped around it.

This is WAY more attractive than the giant mess the drawer was before.  I wish I had taken before pictures.  It was ROUGH.  Look again...I even color sorted each bow style.

That was great for the bows, but the girls still had a ton of headbands and head wraps to organize.  After a few minutes of scratching my head, I headed to the kitchen to grab a paper towel holder.

Perfection!  This worked great for all of their headbands and headwraps.  This may be a temporary solution depending on how well it works out, but so far it is amazing.

Last, but not least....I needed something to do with the 85 million ponytail holders.  You have no idea how serious I am...but you are about to.  Since I had already robbed the kitchen once, I headed in there again for a finishing touch on the girls' bow-tique.  A ROLLING PIN!  You can buy a cheap one if you don't have one in the kitchen to spare.  This is an antique one that was given to me as a gift. (I have five rolling pins)

This is probably my favorite solution out of this whole project.  It fits perfectly inside the front of the top drawer too! 

This made the bows much easier to see and access.  It also protects her headbands from getting all smooshed and broken like they have been getting lately.  The best part though....it freed up almost the entire top drawer for swim suits and accessories!  Every girl needs a little more storage space.

Let me know if you use any of these solutions for yourself or your daughter.  Keep crafting, and have fun!

Adorable Retro Kitchen Towels

Ever since Laney turned 8, I have been starting to pull things together for her hope chest.  As I was browsing the craft section in Walmart, I saw these awesome retro dish towels just begging for me to embroider them.

It didn't take me long to find these cute little iron on templates for hand embroidery.  Of course, you could always machine embroider them or use fabric paint or whatever method you choose.  I wanted the retro feel of hand embroidery, and fell in love with these retro kitchen designs.  These are pattern SR11 "Kitch'n Stitch'n" by Stitcher's Revolution.

Then, I set out to pick my thread colors.  There is a handy color guide inside of the pattern package, but I wanted to match the towels, so I just picked whatever I felt like matched.

In addition to these supplies, you will need an ironing board, and iron, an embroidery hoop, a few straight pins, and an embroidery needle.

Once you have picked out which of the designs you would like to use, cut those out.  Ironing will transfer everything on the paper, so be careful not to cut out any stray lines.

Now iron your dish towel to remove any wrinkles and prepare the surface for the transfer.  Transfers work best on freshly ironed fabric. (for best results, you need to wash and dry the dish towels before starting this project)

Pin the iron transfer into place in whatever location you choose.

Now iron the transfers on.  You will need to use a hot iron, but without steam.  Iron over the transfer for around 5-10 seconds, moving the iron constantly. When you remove the transfer, you will be left with a dark grey transferred design.

I'll be honest.  At this point, I seriously considered grabbing a permanent fabric marker, tracing these, and leaving it at that.  It would be absolutely precious left as is...BUT I really did want a finished embroidered piece.

It is important to remember not to use your iron's steam feature.  If you do, this is what will happen. As if my ironing board cover wasn't dirty enough.

Once you have your transferred designs, toss one of your towels into an embroidery ring and pull it tight.

Now begin working on your embroidered piece.  I like to do one color at a time for the entire work.  On this piece, I chose to use my green and yellow threads.  I selected a backstitch for the outline and a satin stitch for the floral designs on the bowls.

For the Cherries print, I used red for the cherries and words, blue for the circle, and green for leaves and stems.  For the Dab'll do ya, I used blue for the measuring spoons and yellow for the words.  You can select any colors you like.  These didn't turn out perfect, as I am not a fantastic embroiderer, but they turned out with the homespun, vintage feel that I was looking for, so I am SO excited about them.

I think the Mix it up is my favorite.  What about you??

Have fun crafting!

                                                                   

Melted Snowmen Ornaments

Every year, my mom and I have our friends over for what we call the Butts & Beaus Christmas....it is kind of an inside joke. At this gathering, I usually try to present each couple with some sort of happy.  Last year, I gave each couple a collection of jam, jelly, salsa, and preserves from my kitchen.  This year I wanted to do something that was equally as fun, but could be a keepsake.  I decided very early on that I would do a collection of ornaments.  The problem was deciding which ornaments to make first.  Really it just came to down what I had the items on hand to make.  This set of ornaments took me all of about ten minutes to make including gathering supplies.

I love the idea of the melted snowman.  After all, I do live in the deep south.  We don't get snow often, and when we do, our snowmen are dirty and pitiful.  These melty little guys are an adorable addition to any warmer climate Christmas tree.

Here is what you need:
Clear Glass Ornaments
Coarse Kosher Salt
Whole Peppercorns (five per ornament)
Scraps of Orange Paper
Ribbon of Your Choice
Funnel

The first thing you want to do is just to make sure the ornament is clean and free of any debri.  Then remove the silver or gold metal cap from the top.

Once you have removed the cap, you will use your funnel to put a good amount of the kosher salt into the ornament.  I filled mine probably about a quarter full.  Then you will place five whole peppercorns into each ornament.  Two for eyes and three for buttons.  Last, you will add a triangle shaped scrap piece of paper for a nose.

Repeat for the desired number of ornaments.

Then add a length of your choice of ribbon to finish.

You are finished!  Look how adorable these melty little guys are.

I LOVE THEM!  I absolutely love them!  I can't wait to present these to my friends.  They are going to have an absolute fit.  Even my hubs had to admit their obvious cuteness.

These are super easy to make and inexpensive (especially if you have everything you need already in your house).  Salt, pepper, ribbon, and scrap paper are easy to come by.  Add some clear glass ornaments and there ya have it.

I hope you have as much fun making these as I did.  Drop me a picture of how yours turned out or tell me about making them.  I love to hear from you!