Curtain Rod Photo Display

Have you ever had a project that never. seems. to. end!  I have been updating our bedroom decor for what feels like centuries.  It all started with a beautiful quilt that my sister made for me and my husband as a wedding present.  It had been sitting in a closet for years, and I really wanted to showcase it!  Unfortunately, nothing in my existing decor matched, so I had to start from square one.  It's been fun, but I am so happy to be getting to the end!  It's taken me so long to finish everything that I am probably going to want to switch things up again soon.  Ha!  Life and where you live it is a constant project.


This is actually one of my favorite projects that I have completed for our bedroom, and by far the cheapest.  All of the supplies that I used I found around our house.  I am a big believer in shopping for supplies from your own home.  We all have so many things lying around that we could transform into something useful.  All it takes is a little creativity!

This frame was originally one of those frames that has the multiple picture windows in the mat border.  I took out the mat and replaced it with some foam board  and mod podged some scrapbook paper onto it.  I am not fancy enough to have a Silhouette, or similar cutting machine, so each of these letters were cut out by hand!  Just using my boring old printer, and my trusty scissors.  It took some serious patience cutting each word out, but when you are too cheep to buy stickers... you gotta figure out another way.  I am such a cheap-o!

 These curtain rods were just lying around our house collecting dust, and my husband likes to "de-clutter" our house occasionally weekly.  So, it was either use them, or they were getting booted to the curb.  In the same box as the curtain rod, there were also some cheap plastic frames that were screaming to be used.  By simply attaching the frames to the curtain rod with a little ribbon, the drap-boring-old-rod was transformed into an incredible photo display!

I love it!  And it looks amazing above our beautiful quilt!  


Have you completed a project by using only supplies found at your own home?  Send me your photos!  I'd love to see some awesome creativity in action.

Thanks for stopping by!

Faux Metal Wall Art

I have had tons of toilet paper and paper towel rolls laying around my house in the hopes that someday I would make some awesome craft with them.  Somehow over months and months they have reproduced like bunnies!  It's out of control.  I needed to find something that I could make using my quickly multiplying little cardboard rolls.  And find something I did!  I am so proud of this decoration that I found, and I just had to share it with you!  I wish that I could say that I was awesome enough to figure out how to do something like this from my own brain, but I'm not.  This beautiful craft is the brainchild of Suzy at Suzy's Artsy Crafty Sitcom.  Here is the original tutorial on her page.  She is a genius!

Here are the supplies that you need for this project:
- toilet paper rolls (I used about 15 total rolls for all 3 of my designs)
- paper towel rolls (I only used 2...)
- 3/8" balsa wood strips (found at craft stores, don't waste your time at a hardware store...)
- tacky glue
- metal looking spray paint
- scissors, pen, paintbrush


How to:
(Sorry there aren't pictures to help show the steps.  You can find photos to help you in the original tutorial.)

1.  Cut the balsa wood strips to your desired length.  The original length of strips that I found were 24", so I just cut them in half making them all 12".  Glue them together to form a square.

2.  The paper towel rolls are used to make the straight parts of each design.  Simply cut along the length of the tube, flatten it out and use one of the balsa strips to measure 3/8″ strips cut lengthwise from the tube.  Then cut out each strip.

3.  The toilet paper tubes were cut in 3/8″ strips across the width of the tube to keep the curl.  Simply cut along the length of the tube, flatten out and mark 3/8″ strips across the width.  This will result in 3/8″ curls.

4.  I started each square by dividing them into 4 equal sections using the longer (and straight) paper towel strips.  Then in each section I created the same pattern.  I used a few of the free patterns posted in the original tutorial as a starting point for each design.  But because my squares were larger, the patterns didn't work perfectly.  I had to fill in empty spaces with other curls and designs.  It was actually kind of fun putting my own personal spin on each design!

5.  I glued all of the straight pieces first, then laid out the pattern with the curly ones.  Once the pattern looks the way you want, glue each curly piece in.  You achieve the curl by curling the cardboard around the end of a paintbrush.  Super easy!

6.  Once your designs are complete and dry, spray paint them using metal looking paint, and voila!  You have your very own metal wall art, but much lighter, and much cheaper then the real thing!

The entire cost of this project was under $10!  I love them!  

     

Have you completed this project?  Let me know how it went!

Yarn Wrapped Letter

Today is a repeat tutorial day!  I love when I am able to re-use an old project idea and make something fun and new with it.

Here is the link to the original tutorial, where I made a 1.5 foot tall twine wrapped letter.  I followed the exact same steps, only changing the size of the letter and the material I used to wrap it in.  Still so easy, and so inexpensive!  The best of both worlds, if you ask me.      

Each letter has been made completely out of scrap cardboard that I had lying around the house.  So the only cost that went into making this letter was for the yarn and felt piece for the flower (totaling about $4!).  I'm in love.  Plus, I found these adorable canvases from Goodwill (yay cheap!) that just add to the overall cuteness.

  

  If you're curious about how I made the simple felt flower, here is a link to the tutorial that I found on Pinterest.

Have you completed this project (or something similar)?  Let me know how it went!

  

Personalized Family ABC Book

Now that the holidays are over, I am kind of in a crafting slump...  I hope I'm not the only one suffering from a crafting/baking/sugar hangover.  That would be embarrassing!  What do you do to try and bounce back after the holidays are over?  I'd love to hear any ideas.



Before Christmas, I was working on multiple projects in the hopes that I completed them before Santa arrived Christmas Eve.  I'll probably share most of them with you sometime in the future, but for now I just wanted to share with you my daughter's favorite.  

We live far away from many of our family members and don't get to see them as often as we would like, but I still wanted our little munchkin to know the names and faces of all her aunts/uncles/cousins, etc.  And what toddler doesn't love letters and books?!  So I decided to combine all three ideas into our very own Family ABC book.  Genius!  

In an attempt to make it more educational, I included items that started with each letter.  (My parents are both teachers, I gotta do my part :) 

 The total cost for this entire book was under $7 in supplies!  All you need is a cheap photo album (with at least 12 pages in it), then the photos for each letter.  Easy peezy!  I found my blank photo album at Wal-mart for $1, and each photo cost about $.20 to print, making a grand total of about $6.50.  Not too shabby.

And let's be honest, I would have loved to create one of those cute hardbound books that you see all over the place.  But with those you can't change out the pictures when people grow up, or more family members join the family.  This is the perfect solution to that dilemma!  I love when you can make special gifts without breaking the bank!    

As an added bonus, my daughter LOVES this little book!  It is a borderline obsession.  She insists that we read it before every nap and before she goes to bed.  She even likes to snuggle with it while she falls asleep.  I'm pretty sure that that's not the most comfortable option, but who am I to complain.

If you are interested in creating your own family ABC book, send me a message and I can help you get started!

Quick and Easy Lampshade Makeover

For the past 5 years I have had the most boring lamp shades staring at me while I sleep, and they are one of the first things that I see in the morning.  Kind of sounds like a bad horror movie, huh?  Obviously, something has been needing to change.

I have slowly been chipping away at some bedroom re-do projects, and this one has by far been the easiest!  All you need is an old lampshade, glue gun, and some ruffled trim.  Yup, that's it!

For these smaller sized lamp shades I needed about 4.5 yards of ruffled trim for each, but obviously depending on the size of your lamp shade you may need more or less.


How to:

Step 1:  Take your not so pretty lampshade and make marks with a pencil from the top to the bottom, one inch apart.  I did this a total of 4 times on each quarter of the lampshade.

Step 2:  Starting at the bottom mark, begin hot gluing your trim around the lamp shade one small section at a time.

Step 3:  Once you have returned to your starting point, cut the trim so that it slightly overlaps.  Then begin again on the next mark up.  Repeat process all the way up to the top of the lamp shade


You can be done at this point, or you could add some fabric flowers or any other embellishment of your choice.  My husband isn't a fan of lots of flowery stuff, so I decided to not add any flowers.  I still think it is a major improvement over the original!

Have you completed this project?  Let me know how it went!

DIY Large Letter Stencils

            I had some left over paint from my nightstand project, and I have wanted to make some artwork that matched.  I have seen this kind of artwork all of the place, and I wanted to create my own, but of course without paying a large price tag.  Thanks to an amazing sale on canvases at Michael's, I was able to get all the supplies I needed for this project for under $10!  Sweet!  Keep your eye out for sales and coupons.  I live by them!  For only the price of the four canvases I was able to make this artwork for my bedroom that perfectly matches my nightstands.  I love it! 

            In order to create the letter stencils I had to get a little creative, but in the end they were so easy!  And you can use any font that you want.  All you need is wax paper, a thin marker, and masking tape.  Everyone has those lying around their house, right?  Let's get started!

1.  Trace your letters using any font and size that you want onto separate pieces of wax paper.  (**hint** Make sure you don't make the lines too thick, because you don't want anything to accidentally transfer onto your canvas.  Or you could just cover the opposite side with tape...)

2.  Cover and fill in the letters with masking tape.  I had to clean up some of the edges by simply cutting them with scissors.  The nice thing was was that I didn't have to do anything to any of the long straight edges.  The curvier your font the more cutting you will have to do...

3.  Carefully peel the letters from the wax paper and place on the surface of your choice.  I placed mine directly onto my unpainted canvases.  

4.  Paint.  (**hint** Make sure before you paint that you rub down the edges really well to insure that no paint sneaks under the tape.)(**another hint** Paint in many small layers instead of laying the paint on really thick.)(**hint #3** He he, just kidding.  Paint away!)

5.  Let dry.

6.  Peel off stencil.  

It's that easy!

Have you completed this project?  Let me know how it went!

DIY 3-D Decorative Letter

 I hate spending money on decorations!  I don't know how many times I have mentioned that, but I just cringe when I look at the prices on many home decorating items.  

Now, don't get me wrong, if I had unlimited funds, I would probably go out and buy everything Micheal's, Hobby Lobby, and that beautiful boutique down the street have to offer, but who has access to that kind of money, huh?  Ok, I can think of a few people, but that's not the point.  

For us little people, what are we supposed to do to make our homes feel like home?  Three simple little words:  Do. It. Yourself.  Yeah baby!  I love DIY projects.  

We had all these random boxes lying around, and I was having a hard time justifying throwing such nice boxes away (can you say "Hoarders!").  Lucky for me, lightning struck my brain, and I came up with this craft idea.  I have been wanting a big "R" for our wall, but have had the hardest time finding one that was big enough.  And then if I did, it was WAY more expensive than I wanted it to be.  So, I decided to make one... and here's what I did.

All you need for this project is:

cardboard boxes
razor blade
glue
jute twine


Step-By-Step Process

-  Free hand or print off any letter of your choice and transfer it to a piece of cardboard.  Make sure it is the size that you want.  Mine was about 1.5 feet tall, and completely free handed.

-  Cut out letter.  Using cut out letter as a stencil, trace additional letters on your cardboard boxes.

Here is my stencil, and some of the tracing. 

-  Cut out each additional letter.  *Be careful not to cut your carpet, or table...!*

-  Stack letters and glue together.  Clamp or place some heavy books on the letters while they dry.

After lots of cutting (and lots of mess in my living room), here are all the layers glues together.  It took 9 letters to get to my desired thickness of just over 1 inch.

-  When glue is dry, wrap with jute twine until entire letter is covered.  This step may take some time, so put on your favorite movie and wrap away!  

  
The final cost for this entire project was about $7, and that includes the silk flowers.  Not too shabby for a custom 1 1/2 foot tall 3D letter.



Have you completed this project?  Let me know how it went!  

DIY Vintage Crates

I have been wanting some vintage looking crates that I could use for photography props.  I looked and looked everywhere online, and I couldn't find anything that was in my price range ($10-$20).  I am a cheapskate, so I HATE spending money.  I wasn't willing to fork over $40 for a crate, just because it said "Coca-Cola" on the side.  So lame!  So, what was a girl like me to do?  Create my own!

I found these really cute and simple crates at a couple of local craft stores.  Thanks to coupons, I was able to get them for screaming deals!  The smaller one I got at Michael's with my 40% off coupon for $4.59 (after coupon).  The larger one I got at Joanne's with a 50% off coupon for $6.54 (after coupon).  That's just over $11 for two wooden crates!!  Saaweeeett!!  Good news for a frugal girl like me.

Now to the problem of staining them.  I was afraid that if I used real wood stain that the finish would not look as vintage as I wanted.  Plus I didn't want to buy a large can of it, if I was only going to be using it to stain two small crates (I am such a cheap-o).  I had heard of people using coffee grounds to stain wood, so I thought I would give that a try...

Here are the ingredients for the do-it-yourself-homemade-all natural-wood-stain:  vinegar, coffee grounds, and steel wool.  Surprised?  I sure was.  Honestly, I was a little skeptical going into this, but thought in my head "coffee is dark, so I guess I could see why that might work."  You should have seen the look on the hubs face when I told him what I was doing.  Priceless!  He thought I was crazy.

Two of the ingredients were easy to come by in my house: vinegar and steel wool.  But for a non-coffee drinker like myself, where was I going to get some coffee grounds?  Well, what's the first place you think of when you think of a good ol' cup a joe?  Yup.  Starbucks!!!  So away I went.  I think that the ladies behind the counter thought that I was crazy when I asked them for their used coffee grounds.  A few years ago I would have been so embarrassed, but now I just think its funny.  Think what you want, people!  (Maybe I am slightly crazy...)

 I mixed up about a quarter cup of coffee grounds, an apple cider/regular vinegar combination, and the steel wool pad (cut in half) in a regular sized mason jar.  After about 10 hours of letting it rest, my patience ran out and I decided it was time to stain (leaving it overnight might have been better...)

 Here is what the crate looked like after only one coat of the stain.  The crate on the left is the original wood, and the one on the right has the stain.  I was a little worried at this point.  How many coats was I going to need to put on in order for it to be as dark as I wanted?

Here is the same crate after a second coat.  Not tons darker, but getting there.  After this, I decided to stop and just see if they got any darker as they dried.  

 Here's a helpful hint: you can use the steel wool as a paintbrush, and just rub the stain on with that.  It worked great!  Unfortunately, I don't think my brain was properly attached, and I didn't wear cloves.  If you ever decide to stain wood this way, I have a couple words of advice:  WEAR GLOVES!!  My hands were stained like this for days.

I let the crates sit outside overnight to dry, and the next morning, to my surprise the crates had darkened up considerably!  I had to do a little patch work over some spots that I missed the first time around, but in the end they turned out beautifully!!  Don't you think? 

 It helps that there is the cutest toddler in the world playing Vanna White for me :)

The grand total for this project (drum role please...):  $11.13!!!!  Awesome!

Who knew that coffee, vinegar, and steel wool could create these beauties!  I am so excited to use them! 

DIY 3-D Star

I have been wanting one of those really-cool-vintage looking-3D-stars for such a long time!  But $25 is way too much for me to spend on one of them (I am such a cheap-o).  I looked all over the internet (and when I say internet, what I really mean is Pinterest :-), and I could not find any instructions for a big star.  There were tons of ideas on how to create the little teeny tiny ones, but I wanted a BIG one!  I finally decided that I needed to get off my lazy bum and just figure out how to make one myself.  Now, I get to share my new found knowledge with you!  Lucky.

Here's what you'll need:

3 Cereal Boxes
Scissors
Ruler
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue
Paint (I used the cheapest I could find - surprised?)


Here's what you do:
These first few steps (1-5) are what you need to do to make the stencil.  They only have to be done once!

Step 1-  Open each of the cereal boxes so that they lie flat.  The face and back of each of my boxes was about 11.75" x 7.5" (not including the sides), but really you could use any size that you want.

Step 2-  On one of the boxes, measure half-way across the top and the bottom (on mine it was 3.75" in).  Make a mark at each half-way point.  Now draw a line from mark to mark.

Step 3-  From the bottom of the box measure up 4 inches on each side and create another mark.  Connect those two new dots.  You should now have a cross drawn on your box.

Step 4-  On that shorter line that you just drew, measure in towards the center of the box 1" from each side.  Again, make a mark at each of those spots.

Step 5-  Draw four new lines connecting the top and bottom marks to each of these new marks.  Now it should look like you have a kite drawn on your box.

Have I lost you yet?  Here's a photo to help.  (Sorry about the poor quality, it was taken with my phone...)  

Phew!  Are you still with me?  Don't worry, the rest of the process is easy peazy!

Step 6-  Cut out the "kite" shape along the last lines you made (labeled step 5 in the photo above).

Step 7-  Using this kite shape as a guide, trace 5 more of the same shape, using both the front and back of each of your cereal boxes.

Step 8-  *Make sure you read this entire step before you begin cutting*.  Cut out each of the shapes, making sure that you leave between a quarter inch or half inch "seam allowance" along the shorter lines.  Unlike in step 6 you will NOT be cutting directly on those shorter lines.  You will be cutting a quarter of an inch outside the lines.  This buffer will be where you will be gluing, so it is super important.  The longer lines, however, you will be cutting directly on (the outer points of the star).

Here is what the completed cutouts should look like:

Step 9-  Now take your ruler and scissors, and score each piece right in the center from top to bottom (on the line labeled "step 2").  Make sure you do not cut all the way through the cereal box, you're just making a shallow cut.  *Hint* Score the side of the cereal box that you want to be on the BACK of the star (the side you don't want to paint).  

Step 10-  Take each piece and slightly bend in along the line you scored.  You will be bending it so that the cut is on the inside of the bend.  In the same direction you bent the scored line, also bend along the shorter lines that you traced (next to the "seam allowance").  These shorter pieces you want to bend 90 degrees.

Step 11-  Now, glue each piece together - seam allowance to seam allowance.  Don't freak out when you have all of them glued together and you star looks like this:

I may or may not have had a minor freak out moment, just saying.   Take a deep breath and just glue the final seams together.  Voila!  You have a beautiful 3D star, ready for paint!

Step 12-  Paint using any paint of your choice.  I first painted the entire star a light brown.  And once that dried the real fun began.  I wanted a little bit of an antique look, so I used glue as a second base coat.  Then after it had dried a little bit (not too much though) I painted on the acrylic paint.  The glue kind of makes the top coat of paint crackle.  In short, glue became a cheap substitute for crackle paint.  Sweet!!!!  And it looks great!  If you have any questions about this painting process, just send me a message, and I'll help you out.  

Metalic paint would probably look pretty cool too.  Use your imagination!  Make the star your own! 

Step 13-  In order to get the star hang-able I glued a popsicle stick on the back, then looped a rubber band around the stick.  You could probably come up with better ways than that, that's just what I did.  Worked like a charm though!  

Here is the final price breakdown.  The only thing that I had to buy in order to complete this project was paint.  I bought three small bottles of acrylic paint for a total of $2.11!  That's it!  The cost may even be lower for you, if you already have paint lying around the house!  Way better then spending $24.99 on Ebay, am I right?

Have you completed this project?  Let me know how it went!