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!)

My DIY Door Wreath

I continue to work on my front porch, front door, and entry room so this is another post regarding that transformation in the making.  I’ve already shared my new front door paint (which I’m totally in LOVE with!)  But, even as much as I love the newly painted door I wanted to give it some pizazz too.  I’ve seen tons of beautiful door wreaths around the Internet and Pinterest so I took a few of the designs I’ve seen and liked and combined them into my own creation for my front door.  Behold…

I started with a green floral foam wreath from Hobby Lobby.  Simple and relatively inexpensive…

The 14” wreath was $7.99 and I’m sure it will most likely go on sale at some point so if you want to copy my idea (which I’m totally cool with by the way!) you might keep checking to see if they put it on sale anytime.  I didn’t want to wait so I paid full price for it.

The next step was to cover the wreath form with burlap.  I used these potato sacks that I had purchased online for this part.  It took almost 2 of the sacks and I had bought 3 of them for a total cost of $2.99 so the total cost of the burlap was less than $3.00.  I just cut the back of the sack off and then cut it into strips.  Then I wrapped the strips around the wreath form, overlapping the end of one strip with the beginning of the next until it was completely covered.

Once the wreath was covered, it was time to work on the décor part.  My first step was to cover the letter “F” (for our last name) in the sheet moss from Hobby Lobby.  I bought the wooden letter from Hobby Lobby as well.  I think it was a couple of dollars and the sheet moss is $4.99.  So, being all clever like I am I carefully laid out the F on the moss sheet and cut out the F leaving a fairly wide margin so I could wrap it around the edge.  Behold…

Um, does anyone see what I did here?  I made a HUGE mistake…epic fail even!  Do you see it yet?  Well, if I covered the letter like I show it here what would I have?  A backwards F that’s what!  Silly me!  I needed to turn the F upside down and then cut it out!  Duh!!!!  OK, redo!  Luckily there was just enough fabric left to do it the second time.  There are some parts that are kind of skimpy because it was so tight a fit but I did manage to get it covered…correctly this time!  (see we all make mistakes from time to time, so you are not alone if you think you are the only one that makes mistakes like this!)

I started wrapping the moss around the letter and stapling it with my staple gun as I went along until it was completely covered.

OK, the F is complete now.  It is going in the center of the wreath.  Around the edges I wanted to add some flowers and our address.  So, I bought 2 bunches of silk flowers from Hobby Lobby.  They WERE on sale!  50% off so they cost a total of $4.99 for both bunches.

I took off several of the flowers from the stems and tried to attach them to the wreath.  I tried a couple of different ideas, hot glue, sticking them into the foam, trying to slip them into the burlap…but none of that worked.  So, instead I got out my hemp twine and I just tied them all to the wreath with the knots in the back.

OK, so the flowers are done, now to work on the address.  I had a hard time finding the numbers I wanted to use for this part.  All of the wooden letters at Hobby Lobby were either too big or too small for what I envisioned.  So, on to plan B.  I went to the Scrapbooking section and I bought a box of chipboard letters that also came with numbers.  Since I’m a scrapbooker I didn’t mind buying the entire box because I will most definitely use them eventually.  The numbers were the perfect size!  The first step was to paint them.  I just used a brush and my scrapbook paint which is just basically the same thing as acrylic paint you buy in the art department at Hobby Lobby. 

One note of advice here, I used the wooden stick to gently move the numbers after I painted them so they wouldn’t get stuck to the cardboard underneath them.  I wanted to make sure they would be easily removed and if I left them as is the paint would dry and most likely stick the letters to the surface under them. 

Once the paint was dry I wanted to give them a coat of clear covering.  I used Stampin’ Up’s Crystal Effects for this.  I just squeezed it on each number covering it completely with the Crystal Effects.  Then I let them dry.

After they dried completely (this part I let dry for several hours to make sure they were set firmly) I attached them to the wreath also tying them on using the hemp twine.

I took a black magic marker and just colored the twine on the parts that were covering parts of the numbers.  Then I took a simple grosgrain black ribbon and tied the F in place.  The F actually fits pretty snug in the center of the wreath but I still wanted it tied on.  I contemplated adding a big bow but decided against it.  I like the simple bow instead.

So, that is my wreath!  Here it is on the front door…

I really love how it turned out.  What I don’t love though is the unevenness of it.  I think I need another wreath on the other door.  I’m going to do a second one but instead of the address and the initial, I’m just going to do the flowers on 2 sides of the wreath and call it done.  What do you think?  Do you think that will look ok?  Or should I do another F in it?  Should I just leave the one wreath? 

Busy Busy Busy

Sorry for the lack of posting, I really do promise a very long post coming soon. But, this is a hint as to what's been taking up all my time when I'm not at work. The good news? They are finally done and ready to address and mail. Hopefully I'll get all my cards ready to go this weekend and can then finish my epic long Christmas decorating post. In the meantime...enjoy my Christmas cards. I had something else entirely in mind when I ordered my supplies this year for my Christmas cards, but my idea just didn't work out. So, on to Plan B. I got this idea from the Stampin Up catalog and just modified it a little to fit what I had. I really love the way they came out. There are 6 special ones for my kids, my parents, my in-laws, and my sisters. Everyone else gets the other one. I think they are both really cute though. I started making my own cards about 5 or so years ago and I love it. I just think my cards are a little extra special because they are truly hand made. Enjoy!