"Love Note" Plaque

Happy Valentine's Day!

I was feeling the love making this fun plaque for my sweet husband. I love the way it turned out - a little rustic without looking too rough. :) I had originally intended to write a line from a favorite song inside the heart like I saw over at Tatertots & Jello, but after I did it, I decided I liked mine better without the words and I painted over them! ;)

I started by taking a couple of kind of ratty 1x3s and cut them down to 21" each.

I inspected each to find the least rough-looking side and laid them up on the work bench with the nicer sides facing down.

Then I took a couple of long-enough-for-the-job scraps (hence the mis-match) to attach to the back. So happy to use my Ryobi Air Nailer for this job - I seriously love this thing, and they're not paying me to say that! I put a couple of nails into each plank and I was done! I still get giddy when I use pneumatic tools just like I did the first time Ben showed me how to use one. Thanks, Ben. Love always.

To make it easy to hang on the wall, I set my Circular Saw to 45 degrees and mitered the edge of a smaller scrap 1x3 and nailed between the supports. I purposely attached it to two planks in the hopes of making the whole thing a little more secure.

Next it was time to sand. And sand, and sand, and sand. Fortunately, I got a new random orbital sander for Christmas and I got Brad a corner cat sander, so I tried both of them out on this project. I was impressed with what they could do on even such rough planks.

Time to paint! I started by painting the whole thing gray, then sketched a large heart with pencil (as lightly as I could - and could hear Ben shaking his head at me. Tsk, Tsk.) I taped off lines with painter's tape and then used an off-white to paint between the tape. I removed the tape, erased what I could of the pencil lines, and let it all dry before touching up with both the gray and white.

Ta-da! All done! I LOVE IT! And so did Brad, so that's good, since it was technically for him - but I sure did have fun with this one, so I guess it was a little for me too. ;)

I've finally decided to open an Etsy shop for some of my smaller pieces (I have very convincing friends!) and I think I'll add this one to the shop! Fun to do, and I love how it looks hanging up! And I can just picture it leaning on the mantle as part of someone's pretty, seasonal decor! :)

read more

Feature Friday - Woven Angels

It's Feature Friday again!

Today I'm featuring the lovely and talented Janet, a.k.a. The Basket Fairy!

Her weaving skills are so impressive and she has made many baskets for friends and family (including me! YAY!) and has been known to show up in markets and craft fairs with her lovely baskets for sale! She's so talented - I mean LOOK at these baskets!

Amazing.

If you're interested in trying your hand at weaving baskets, Janet says the baskets are made from reed, which she dyes by hand, then figures out dimensions and patterns. She gets her materials and patterns online. Good resources are V.I. Reed and Cane and basketweaving.com.

She sticks mostly to crafting for pleasure these days and was kind enough to share her super adorable woven angels with us for today, just in time for Christmas crafting!  (and she even made my job super easy by creating images with each step right there for me! ha!)

Check out these sweet angels!

Ohmygoodness, so cute! Don't you love them?!

Thanks for letting me feature your great work, Janet! Love you!

read more

Felt Christmas Tree

Did you know that felt sticks to felt?!

I learned this little tidbit only about 4 years ago and decided to test it out by making this Christmas tree for my girls to play with during the Christmas season. We have used it each year since and it still works great!

To do it, I just bought a large piece of felt from Joanns, folded it in half (because symmetry is unnaturally important to me!) and cut out a Christmas tree shape.

Next, I cut out random ornament shapes from different colored felt and decorated them with different glitter glues and acrylic paints. I pinned a brown paper lunch bag (after folding a cuff to make it more stable) to the bottom to look like a tree trunk. This gives the kids a place to store the ornaments they're not using!

They love decorating and redecorating the tree throughout the month and it was actually my 7 year old that was most excited to put it back up this year!

Tip: I figured out this year that the ornaments stick better if the tree shape isn't pulled super tight.

read more

Feature Friday - Burlap Monogram Flag

FEATURE FRIDAY #1!!!

I'm so honored and excited that my lovely and talented friend Julia agreed to be spotlighted in my first Feature Friday!! She has such great style and is way craftier than she gives herself credit for!

Check out her No-Sew Burlap Monogram Flag!

She tells me that she cut the burlap, folded the edges over and "hemmed" with hot glue. (We share a deep love of the hot glue gun!)

For the pretty "R", she just found a font she liked on Microsoft Word and printed it out the size she needed! Then she traced it from behind with a Sharpie and colored it in on the front with a paint marker! GENIUS!

More hot glue for the cute bow, more hot glue to attach a dowel to the top for shape, and done!

Look how pretty it looks hanging outside!

LOVE IT! And LOVE HER!

Oh, and she made that great wreath on her front door too. You know, no big deal. Not crafty at all, see?! Ahem. ;)

Thanks for sharing, Julia!

read more

Save your corks!

I have a strict rule about decorating for Christmas - we absolutely must wait until after Thanksgiving. Granted, we break open the storage boxes first thing Friday morning, but still...

Of course, there need to be exceptions to the rules... and creating Christmas crafts is sometimes one of those exceptions. Crafting can take time and if we want to use the crafts as decorations or gifts, well, we have to start early! :)

One of my favorite crafts from last year was this wine cork wreath.

I made it as a last-minute hostess gift for a Christmas party I was heading to, and I loved it so much I had to make another for myself!

We tend to save our corks thinking that someday we'll do something fun with them - I certainly went through quite a few making these wreaths!

But, now it's another year later, we have amassed a lot more corks (ahem), and I started making wreaths tonight!

If you want to make your own, here's how I did it!

I picked up these simple wreath forms at Michaels. I hit up the artificial flowers section to find the berries and grabbed some ribbon on my way out.

I grabbed some corks, my hot glue gun, and I was off!

I try to use corks that are about the same length and try to vary wineries as I go around (which sounds easier than it is - we drink the same wine over and over! Time to branch out!)

I attached some ribbon, faked my way through some bow tying, and voilà!

So many color combination possibilities! (I'm planning to make one with white berries and red ribbon next!) And it would be especially nice to collect corks from special occasions over the year to use for the wreath!

Then again, sometimes it's also nice to just do something and be done and not worry too much about making it as special as possible - good enough is good enough!

Have fun! And if you want a wreath like this but don't want to make your own, let me know! I now have a couple of extras - maybe we can work out a deal! ;)

read more

Cube End Table

It's hard to believe that, with all of the furniture and accessories I've bought at Ikea over the years, this is my first "Ikea Hack." And it's made from Lack tables - so I get to call it a "Lack Hack" ... and that's just fun.

Lack Hack.

 ... Sometimes it's the small things that amuse me.

Anyway, I saw versions of this table one day when I was looking around on Pinterest. Apparently it's a hack of a West Elm table that they used to sell for $150!

I love the modern look of the table and I like the way it works in our living room.

And it was so easy!

I only needed:
   2 Ikea Lack tables
   A little bit of Liquid Nails glue
   15 minutes
   A little bit of patience

Want to make one too? Here's all I did:

1. Unpack the Lack tables and assemble one of them according to the quintessential wordless directions.

2. Lay the other table top on the ground so that the colored side is facing up.

3. Flip the assembled table and apply some Liquid Nails. It's probably best if you apply it in fun patterns, obviously.

4. Carefully flip the table and position squarely on the other table top. Don't worry about getting it perfect right away. The benefit of the Liquid Nails over super glue is that it doesn't adhere immediately. You can slide the legs around a bit to get them in the right places and then just wipe up the excess glue within 20 minutes.

5. Apply some weight on the table to keep the legs in place while the glue sets.

That's it! And now I have 4 more pretty table legs to do something with. I love this color and am excited to find something fun do do with the legs! Any ideas? 

read more

Whale Painting - Kids Craft!

We spent a wonderful few days in Maine this summer with Brad's parents - what a beautiful place!
As a gift and special souvenir, one of Brad's parents' friends made the girls solid wood whales! He left them unfinished so that the girls could paint them themselves. It was such a special gift and the girls have been looking forward to painting them. What kid doesn't love a chance to paint?!

We finally started them today and had lots of fun! The kids love to create too!

I painted a base coat of light blue acrylic wall paint to seal the wood and because experience has shown me that they tend to jump right into cool designs and so would end up leaving some bare wood, which they said they didn't actually want. Plus, I wanted to play too! ;) 

Once again, I forgot to take "before" pictures, but at least I remembered before both sides were painted! 

I cut some small wood blocks to prop the whales up so that the girls could paint the edges without making them stick to the paper. Otherwise just some papers from the recycle bin and a paper plate for the paints - nothing fancy needed here!

As tempting as it is sometimes to offer advice or ideas, I generally try to stay out of their way once I put crafty stuff in front of them. Both girls decided to mostly stick to blues on the first side of the whales. 

Proof - I wasn't lying about the dirty dishes in the sink, ha! Keeping it real, here... 

Pretty! They say the other side is going to be more varied - can't wait to see what they decide to do!

They finished the other sides - 

read more

Fall is my favorite!

It's officially fall! And even though we've had temperatures in the 80s here in Northern Virginia, we're trying to get into the fall spirt.

I LOVE FALL!

My youngest (4 year old) daughter and I worked on this project together to transform or summer wreath into a fall wreath. We actually use the same twig wreath from Michael's for Spring, Summer, and Fall - we just change out the flowers to match the season! Here are our spring and summer wreaths from this year:
Spring:

Summer:

And here's the fall wreath for this year - my daughter took the picture. It's interesting to see the world from her perspective. ;)

read more