Cheap but Chic Gift…DIY

I got the idea for this HERE, but I’m going to share how I did it because I did alter her design quite a bit to fit my own needs.  So, first of all, let’s start at the beginning.  I was invited to go to Girl’s Weekend last year.  Girl’s Weekend is a bunch of girls that get together and head to this wonderful woman’s house J in New Mexico at Lake Conchas.  There is quite a diverse group of people that go too.  I’m not sure how many years they’ve been doing this but I was invited for the first time last year along with my oldest daughter.  The woman who’s house it is has a daughter that is the same age as Brandi Bells and they went to school together.  So, yeah, they’ve known each other since Kindergarten which means I’ve known J all that time too.  So, the women that go are my age and my daughter’s age as well…just a great group of women actually.  We all head down there with 2 rules…No Men, No Makeup!  The rest of the weekend is just a lazy beer drinking, boating, floating, free for all.  We all sign up to bring food items so we eat great, have a great time and just hang out.  Well, this year I wanted to do something nice for everyone and decided to do this:

We always take a group photo and I thought it would be super cute to have this cute little picture hanger to display our photo for the year.  I decided against putting the year on it also so we could re-use it every year with the new year’s picture.  So, this is how I did it…

I bought the basic pieces at Hobby Lobby in the unpainted wood section. 

First I glued the candle stick piece down to the base just using the Gorilla Wood Glue.

Once that was done, my hubby took the 6’ 1”X6'” boards I bought at Lowes and cut them into 7” pieces.  Then he cut the dowel rod to fit the hole in the candle stick into 1”-2” pieces.

I marked holes on both sides of the boards and my hubby drilled holes in both sides.  They were different sized holes because the finial had a different size than the candle stick.  Once the holes were drilled, I sanded the boards fairly well so there were no rough edges.  Then I put glue in each of the candle holders and inserted one of the pieces of the dowel rods.

Then I put glue in the hole in the board and set it on top of the dowel rod.  I put glue in the top hole then and set the finial into place.  Then I just let them dry over night.

Next, I just spray painted them with Heirloom White spray paint and let them dry again.  Once that was done I set each one on it’s side and glued a spring clip to the center of each one using E6000 glue.

Now at this point they are basically done.  But, I wanted to bedazzle them a little so I got some stick on letters from Hobby Lobby and put “Girls Weekend” on them.  I chose all different colors of stickers and just let the ladies choose whichever one they wanted.  I think they all loved them!  Here is the final outcome one more time.  Overall, it was really inexpensive, really super easy, not time consuming but stinking cute at the same time!

A DIY “Art” Project for the Kitchen

I’m actually pretty excited about this project for the main reason that I actually thought of part of this all by myself.  You see people ask me all the time “how did you think of that?”  Most of the time I reply “I didn’t, I saw it online and copied it”.  Well, not this time!  Well, not entirely that is.  I did “borrow” part of this but the other part is mine all mine! 

So, I made this to hang in my kitchen. 

I started with a framed canvas painting that I purchased at Goodwill for $20.  The painting wasn’t even that bad but just wasn’t my taste.  I thought I had a picture of it but apparently I didn’t take one…yet again!  I’m going to MAKE myself take pictures of anything I buy after going to Goodwill, Savers, Salvation Army, Garage Sales, or Estate Sales the minute I walk in the door from now on!  But I digress…

The main reason I bought the picture though was the size of it.  I just knew it would be perfect for a large wall hanging and it would fill the big empty hole that I created in my kitchen (not a literal hole, just a hole in décor) when I moved the wire shelves out of my kitchen and into the storage room.  You can read all about that project here.  So, the first thing I did was take the canvas out of the frame.  Turns out that was a major ordeal.  The frame was actually physically nailed to the frame of the canvas and that was what was holding the frame together.  So, as soon as I took them apart, the frame fell apart. 

I’m not sure you can see it from this picture but this frame was actually just hideous!  It was white and then someone put silver glitter all over it.  I have no idea what look they were going for but my guess was 3rd grade craft project! 

I tried to glue it all back together and that pretty much worked, except for the last corner.  I just left it undone and started work on it.

My idea (the one that is all my own) was to cover the frame by mod podgeing something over it.  I didn’t want to use just anything to cover it either.  I wanted to use pages from a vintage cookbook.  So, I went to Savers one day and looked for an old cookbook and found the perfect one.  It was called Meats and it was printed in 1968…PERFECT!

The pictures were even better!

So, I tore out a bunch of the pages, mostly looking for some that had a cool picture or a recipe on them.  After I tore the pages out, I randomly tore the pages up. 

Next I distressed the edges of all the pages by rubbing a caramel ink on each edge.  (more on this later though).  I took all of my torn pages and just started applying them to the frame, also randomly, but making sure they were all in the same direction.

Once this was done I just let it dry and started working on what would be on the inside of the frame.  My plan was to just frame one of the coffee bags that I had bought online a few months ago.  I saw these after several other bloggers posted about getting this burlap coffee bags from this place online.  They were super cheap!  I think they are $2.99 for 3 of them.  I ended up buying 2 different kinds, sisal and burlap.  I liked them both so I asked my husband to decide which one he liked better.

These were his choices.  He chose the sisal one (the one on top here).  So, I cut off the back of the bag and then stapled the bag over the painting. 

I actually stapled it over the front of the painting too.  I wanted the back of the canvas to be open for easy hanging.  I was a little worried that the painting would show through the sisal but it really doesn’t.

So, now it was time to put it all together.  Unfortunately it didn’t look good AT ALL!  I was so disappointed.  The frame was just too black and white and it just didn’t look good with the natural colors in the coffee bag.  I was not going to admit defeat though.  I just started to think of how I could make it work and then it came to me, I just need to “color” the frame a little.  I didn’t want to completely cover it though because I really liked the recipes and art from the cookbook showing through.  I figured out that the edges that I had distressed by rubbing ink on them was almost the perfect color, but it was too late to ink the entire thing so I started to think of how I could achieve that same look but now while it was all together and decoupaged on the frame.  My solution was to stain it using a wood stain.

I tried to use a red walnut stain first and it didn’t look good at all, so then I grabbed a different color of dark mahogany and it was perfect!  I put on 2 coats and the end result was absolutely perfect and it matched the coffee bag very well!

Once the frame dried I just used my husbands nail gun and attached it to the canvas again.  It worked perfect and the end result was just what I pictured.

It looks great with my printer tray drawer too…

TaDa, it is done and hanging in the kitchen and I love it!  One more thing to do in the kitchen and then this wall will be complete.  I’m working on that next, it’s my thrift store plate wall….coming soon!

So, there you have it.  My very own idea added to a borrowed one and ending up a huge success!  (at least I think it is!)

DIY Mini Button Flower Bouquet Tutorial

As promised, here is the tutorial on how I created my mini button flower bouquet. To refresh your memory, here is the finished piece…

So, let’s gather what we will need. You are going to need:

1. A glass salt or pepper shaker. Preferably you are going to want to find one that just looks cool. I’ve been collecting these whenever I can find them, either at garage sales, estate sales, antique stores, or thrift stores.

2. A bag of pearl beads. I got mine at Hobby Lobby for $2.00 (priced $3.99 and then half off).

3. Buttons, you will need one button for every “flower” you are going to make. This is a personal preference, just pick whatever you want. I wanted mine to look vintagey and to stay in a black and white pallet so my buttons are all white.

4. Scrapbook paper or any other paper to cut your flowers out of. I chose a paper that is actually a print. You could even just use pages from an old book. If you want to do colors, just pick some paper you like.

5. A flower punch. I had mine from Stampin Up and it was the perfect size. It made 3 different sized flowers and I used 2 of them, the 2 larger ones.

6. Wire. The wire will need to be strong enough to stand upright, but flexible enough that you can bend it. I just used what I had which just happens to be 17 gauge wire for electric fencing…hey it worked!

7. Wire cutters and pliers.

8. A hole puncher.

OK, so you have it all gathered? Let’s get started. The first thing I did was just fill the salt shaker with the pearls.

Then, I just cut my flowers out of the paper using the punch. After I cut out the flowers, I punched a hole in the center of each one using my hole puncher.

Then I looked for some buttons to match up to the flowers. I actually love the ones I picked.

So, now it was time to assemble my flowers. I just guestimated at the length of the wire, but basically you want it a little longer than what the finished flower will need to be. Then I thread one end of the wire through one of the holes in the button. Bend the wire at the end and thread the end through the other hole in the button. Like this:

Then I took my pliers and clamped the wire together and thread both ends through the hole in the middle of the paper flower.

At this point I just kind of experimented with it and figured out a way to make everything stay secure. In the end I just took the wire and bent it straight across to basically hold up the paper flower. If there was any wire sticking outside of the flower I just trimmed it with the wire cutter.

The last step is to just put one flower through each hole in the salt shaker lid. Now I will admit that I wish this one has a few more holes so I could add a few more flowers, but this one just had the 6 holes so that is the number of flowers I could add. I’m super excited about some of the others I have because they have tons more holes to fill with flowers. I think it’s a judgment call though. You can either fill each hole with a flower or just fill it as much as you would like. So, let’s take a look at the finished piece again.

And, here she is in her new little cubby in my PB cubby wall hanging.

So, let’s sum up cost and time. Total cost of this was: $3.00. Now to be fair I already had the buttons, paper, punches, and wire so they didn’t cost me anything. All I had to buy was the salt shaker (which I got at an estate sale for $1.00 and the pearls which I already mentioned I got for $2.00). Total time from the start of gathering supplies to putting her in the cubby was about 30 minutes (which includes experimenting time figuring out how to secure the flowers on the wire.) Not bad for a cute little vase, is it?

Weekend Roundup

I can honestly say that I am extremely proud of myself over what all I accomplished over the weekend. It was a very productive weekend indeed!

To start with on Friday night my sister, our husbands, and myself helped a friend move. Someone at work asked me “doesn’t helping friends move end in your 20’s?” In most cases that would be true but in this case, she needed our help and we gave it. It was a good feeling to be able to help out a friend in need. You see we happen to have a very nice covered trailer we use to haul our motorcycles and it just happens to be quite handy to move other things as well. Since she didn’t have access to a truck she asked if we could help and we did. It was only one trip with just the big pieces of furniture that she was unable to fit in her SUV so it took an hour at the most.

On Saturday the hubs and I went to my parents and started the project of tiling their backsplash. My dad had just redone their kitchen (replaced counter tops, rebuilt some cabinets, rearranged a few things) but they had just the blank wall for the backsplash. I offered to pay for and install a tile one instead. So, a couple of weeks ago we went to the store and picked out the tile and this weekend we got it installed. The work wasn’t that hard actually to lay the tile. The prep work actually took the majority of the time. I did take a before picture but not on my camera so I don’t have that one handy. However, I did take a “middle of the road” picture (aka after the tile was laid but before we grouted) and then of course a final picture. I still need to go back and take a really final picture after my parents replace all the outlets and face plates and she puts her stuff all back. But, in the meantime, here are a couple of the pictures I did take. This is my mom making us a peanut butter and jelly sammy before we got started on the grouting. The tile is a recycled glass so not only does it match and is it super pretty and neutral, it’s eco-friendly to boot!

And, here is the tile after grouting (but before caulking, putting in the corner-round trim, and finishing up the outlets).

I told my parents I think we need to install a couple of under cabinet lights now too. With the dark counter tops and then the dark tile it is really dark in the corners. I think one of those small under cabinet lights would look so good and just really highlight the tile. Isn’t it really pretty though? I have to give my husband a huge grandiose shout-out too. He and I did all the work on this so he pretty much gave up his weekend to help out my parents and I sure do appreciate that. I married a winner!!!!!

Now, while just accomplishing the tile backsplash was really enough of an accomplishment for the weekend, that isn’t all I did actually! On Saturday after we got the tile up I went home and did a few more projects of my own. I hung up some more things on my entry room gallery wall and it is almost complete. It’s complete enough though to show you what it looks like. I have just a few more finishing touches to call it done and when it is, I will do an entire post on the gallery wall from start to finish…but in the meantime, here it is now:

The things I got done this weekend are the turquoise key plate hung in one of the frames at the top, the white curly frame hung inside the rectangular gold frame on the bottom, and the gold curly frame hung lengthwise on the far left by the chalk board. I have just 2 more empty frames to fill and then a few finishing touches and this puppy will be done!

After I hung those up, I finished yet another project as well. I’d seen these on Pinterest and other places and just had to have one. I’ve been collecting old salt and pepper shakers for awhile because I plan on making these not just for myself but for gifts for friends for Christmas too. This was a super easy, relatively inexpensive project. I made this “bouquet”:

I put this in my new cubby in the living room. Here she is in place now:

I have a full tutorial on that project that I will post later today or tomorrow with pictures on the entire process.

Then to finish out the projects I made myself an earring holder. If you are a Pinterest fan I’m sure you’ve seen these all over Pinterest so I didn’t take a whole slew of pictures throughout the process because I’m sure there are tons of tutorials on this project all over. I know they are super trendy right now but I just loved it so I decided to make my own. I just stapled pretty lace in strips in an empty frame and hung it up by my vanity to hold earrings. It looks so pretty and now I can see all my “non set matching earrings” at once. Earrings that match an entire set (earrings, necklace, and bracelet) are all stored differently but I had a bunch of earrings that are singles and I would constantly forget what I had so this is great. I used the lace trim from Stampin Up and a frame I got at a garage sale about a year ago for a $1.00.

So, those were all my Saturday projects…in addition to the tiling and 4 loads of laundry, watering my flowers and herbs, straightening up the house, watching a movie I hadn’t seen, and spending a lovely dinner at home with my hubby. On Sunday I was a lot more tired when we finished the grouting but I still did another 2 loads of laundry and one more project, but I didn’t finish it enough to take pictures, so that’s another post to come later. Hopefully I will finish it up tonight and can post about it later in the week.

So, what about you? Did you have a productive weekend? I am really happy with myself and I felt good this morning waking up and starting my work week over knowing I didn’t just stay on the couch all weekend. Yay me!

Entry Room Re-Do Part Five–China Cabinet Makeover

Whew, this china cabinet has been in the works for months it seems. It just kept getting pushed to the side to work on something else so it’s been sitting there being neglected for so long. It’s time has come finally! She’s been patient long enough!!!! So, I started with this:

You can see a reflection of me taking the picture in the glass if you look. I got this china cabinet many years ago. It was a hand me down from Hot Rod’s great aunt when she was being moved to the nursing home. It was originally a blonde wood (very 70’s!). It was much shorter than this with really squatty legs so I replaced the legs with these slightly taller ones and then painted it the hunter green about 10 years ago when that was the color I was going for in my living room/dining room. Needless to say it was tired and needed an update.

The first step was to empty it out, remove the glass, take the drawer out and then I flipped it over so it was sitting on the top. I wanted to work from the bottom up. So, once it was upside down, I was ready to get started.

I started first by painting the inside of the shelves. I went to Lowes and had them match the Rustoleum Painter’s Touch spray paint Heritage White and the Rustoleum Turquoise spray paints to a satin latex canned paint. I wanted to paint this using rollers and brushes instead of spray paint. My reason behind that is a couple of reasons actually. First of all, this is a rather large piece so if I used spray paint it would take A LOT of paint!!!! Also, it would be very hard to keep the spray paint where I wanted it and not where I didn’t want it since the inside and the outside were going to be 2 drastic different colors.

So, I started on the inside and painted the shelves the heritage white. Charlie had to supervise. ha ha ha

Once I finished the white, I let it dry and then moved on to the outside. I am painting it the same turquoise as the lamp on the table. I used a roller for most of this. I bought the roller for cabinet painting. It was perfect sized and worked great.

I did a couple of coats on both the white and the turquoise while it was upside down and let it dry completely. Then it was time to flip it over to right side up.

I painted all of the top surfaces, touched up a lot of the sides and then let it all dry. I didn’t paint the inside of the cabinets because they won’t be seen and hey…I’m lazy like that!

The next step was to age and distress it up a little. What I did first was grab my sander with 220 grit sand paper and just randomly started sanding things. I did sand the edges everywhere and then just touched the sander here and there on the flat surfaces. I only did this on the turquoise part. I left the white part alone. Then I rubbed a dark walnut stain over the entire piece (outside only, not the shelves) and then rubbed it mostly off. I ended up with a toned down turquoise, distressed piece. I love it!

I let it all dry over night (actually a couple of nights.) Then I decided to try and use a rub on wax to finish it up. Luckily I thought ahead here and decided to try it on the back of the piece first to see how it would look and if I liked the final look. Thank Goodness for small favors! Turns out the wax did not work at all. It was a total failure. I rubbed it on and all it did was completely remove the stain I had put on. I really don’t know what I did wrong here and I’m still trying to figure it out but needless to say the wax was not going to work. I just left it out. I’m just so glad I tried it on a small part of the back so there is only one small square on the back that is no longer stained.

So, if you happen to know what I did wrong here I’m dying to know. I know I’ve seen lots of projects that have been done exactly like this but apparently I just didn’t do something right.

So, now it was time to finish it up. I got the hardware for it at Hobby Lobby. I liked the look of it even though the white doesn’t really match the white of the shelves. I still think it’s ok.

Now it was time to put things back in the shelves and decorate it a little. I’ll admit this is still a work in progress. I’m not quite happy with everything yet but it’s coming along. Here are my first couple of tries…

OK…so I like the second shelf…sort of. I really don’t like the top or the bottom one and the top is really not right. Back to the drawing board…

OK, this is a little better on the top shelf. Still not feeling it completely though. Oh, you may have noticed it is now missing one of the bottom cabinet pulls. It just didn’t work, so I had to replace it. I waited until they put the knobs on sale at Hobby Lobby again so don’t worry, it is back in place now.

I finally decided that the blue Ball jars just weren’t going to work on the top, so once I took them down, everything else just sort of fell into place. I changed out the flowers in the vase at the top instead of my wedding bouquet I put some of the branches with blooms on them in it. I really like it so much better. So, what do you think? I’m still not feeling the large goblets on the bottom shelf. What do you think? Should I paint that middle one? It’s sort of an old gold which kind of goes with the maroon, gold, turquoise, and white color scheme but it just doesn’t seem to belong. What do you think I should do? Here is the final look (for now anyway). I do love “most” of it, but I’m still on the look out for some other things to put on display. My absolute favorite thing in the entire cabinet is the matching plate, cup, and saucer in the middle of the second shelf. I got those when my husband’s grandmother died. It was our only inheritance from her and I just love it so much. I found out later that there was an entire set and they split it all up and gave one place setting to each grand child. I wish I could just buy everyone’s from them but I bet many of them don’t even have it anymore. Not everyone loves old things as much as I do I think!

So, what do you think? Do you like how it turned out? I welcome any and all feedback, both positive and negative!