Bingo counter thumbtacks

One of the reasons I love reading blogs so much is the instant inspiration they provide! The other day I was reading The Felt Mouse and saw how Jennifer used a button to cover the end of a picture-hanging nail. Clever, right?

It was perfect timing for me, as I was in the middle of a picture-hanging dilemma of my own. Not actually a picture, if you want to get technical--more of a muffin-tin-hanging-dilemma, really. I needed a new way to hang my beloved Ovenex starburst muffin tin. My old method wasn't cutting it, so I attached a ribbon through the holes to act as a new hanger, but I didn't want to just pound a nail through it because it would be visible and U-G-L-Y.

Enter Jennifer's perfectly-timed blog post! I thought about using the same method of a nail & a button (I have plenty of cute vintage buttons) but I couldn't find a picture-hanging nail with a head big enough to attach a button. I did have a big box of thumbtacks, and a jar of old bingo pieces and a tube of E6000 glue, however, and about 30 minutes of drying time later, I had a cute new way to hang my muffin tin.

It's done, it's cute, it used what I had on hand and was virtually instant gratification. Hooray for Jennifer and hooray for Blogland! (and wouldn't these make the cutest thumbtacks for a bulletin board? Hmmmm...)

Easter egg swap & more estate sale goodies

This post comprises the extent of my Easter decorating this year. Pitiful, I know--especially since I adore my Easter decorations, so it's a shame not to be able to enjoy them. I'm going to blame the two weeks of chaos around Maren's birthday: by the time they were over, I was tired of messes and there was only a week left until Easter, which just wasn't enough time for me to get everything out.

Good thing I participated in Shara's Egg-stra Fun Swap, because they will have to stand in for the decorating I didn't do! I received my swap items yesterday and opening that box of goodies was most definitely the highlight of my day. Such lovely work from everyone! I'm just tickled. Now that boxes are being received, I think I can safely show my contribution to the swap:

I saw these beautiful golden eggs and remembered that I had some sheets of (imitation) gold leaf stashed away in my craft supplies. I covered papier mache eggs from Hobby Lobby with spray adhesive, then gently applied the gold leaf to each one. They're accented with a belt of white or cream velvet ribbon and one of my stash of pearly vintage earrings. The eggs turned out much simpler than I had initially envisioned them, but I think they're pretty. And using up the gold leaf that I've been toting around for oh, at least 10 years now yet again justified my tendencies toward pack-rattery.

I did manage to find two Easter decorations at the estate sale I posted about yesterday. I know there was more good stuff, but that's all I could manage to wrestle past Porter's grasping arms and get safely in my bag.

This basket came wrapped in its original cellophane wrapper with a tag from a place called Blum's in San Francisco. Googling (or Topeka-ing yesterday) turned up that Blum's was a bakery/restaurant in among the fancy department stores that closed in the mid-1970s.Why the owner never removed the cellophane (and petrified piece of candy I found inside) after 30+ years, we'll never know.

I bought this for the bunny pick that's tied to the basket. The basket itself is a bit much for my taste, so it may end up in the ol' etsy shop. Here's the bunny pick closer up:

What I will ever do with it, I have no idea. It's cute, though! The only other Easter item I bought at the sale was one lone pink Gurley bunny candle.

We're planning a low-key Easter weekend around here. Maren has been sick since early yesterday morning, The Mister has been late getting home every single night this week and I because Maren's off-track from school, I haven't had the opportunity to do any shopping or errands without the kids and I'm going a bit Mommy-crazy. The Easter Bunny visits our house tomorrow morning, the day before Easter, and I still need to find a basket for Maren and get the eggs filled. It may be a late night for this Bunny!

Coffee filter ruffle heart box 'wreath'

Last week at the commissary I happened to be in the coffee aisle (I say happened, because we don't drink it so I never go down that aisle) and saw the coffee filters on the shelf. I've seen them used in cute crafty endeavors all across blogland and they're CHEAP, so I threw both a large package of brown and white filters in my cart and knew I could figure out what to do with them later.Later in the week I came across this Coffee Filter Ruffled Heart Box Wreath with a fabulous video tutorial over at the House of 3 blog and I knew just what do with my coffee filters! I had some empty candy boxes in my Valentine decor so I used the bottom of one box as the base for my wreath. I followed Rhonda's tutorial pretty closely, except I didn't do the altered chandelier crystal and the piece I stuck on the front is different. For that I used a doily and an image cut out of Victoria magazine that I have been hanging onto for probably 15 years--no lie! Pack-rattery at its finest.

Now that my wreath is finished, I honestly can't say that I love it. In fact, it may not even make the cut to be held over until next year's Valentine decorations. However, it was nearly free (I might have used 50¢ worth of coffee filters; only a small portion of the package) and it provided several hours of mindless crafting enjoyment, so I'm counting it as a WIN.

Oh, and Valentine's Day around here was delightful! Major Hottie simply outdid himself this year: beautiful flowers, a sweet card, a handful of my favorite British candy bars, and he signed us up for DANCE LESSONS (shut up, I know)--did I win the lottery or what? He's amazing. Also, my cute brother proposed to his Lovely Girl atop the Empire State building and she said YES! I couldn't be happier for them and I'm so excited to have her as a sister-in-law. Good stuff, I tell you, good stuff indeed.

Valentine's craftiness

A few more peeks at my Valentine decor. Here's my muffin tin table, dressed for the holiday. I'm really tickled with how it turned out for Valentine's so I'm going to leave it this way for a while.
I'm a big sucker for tissue honeycomb decorations, so when I saw these at Michael's I knew I could do something fun:
The package included three honeycomb medallions and a plethora of glittery white hearts, which I gave to Maren.
For the centers I created pleated pinwheels from old dictionary pages and topped them with 4" doilies and glass-glittered hearts cut from vintage bingo cards. In the center of each heart is a K & Co scrapbook embellishment from a few years ago. Then I hot-glued the pinwheel to the center of each medallion.
I bought a package of cut dowels at Michael's as well and hot-glued one to the bottom of each pinwheel.
They're stuck into a piece of floral foam in a vase that held flowers from The Mister a few years ago. They were easy, inexpensive and fun to make!

Speaking of lollies, there's a great video tutorial over here at House of 3. Rhonna's lollies are made using paper rather than tissue honeycomb and there are some good techniques for making the pleated pinwheels that were new to me.

I'm still doing Valentine crafting--a little late to the game, I know. In process is this coffee filter ruffled heart 'wreath', also from House of 3. I've also started a project involving vintage prize ribbons. My hot glue gun is calling me....

Studio 5 from Salt Lake--craft inspiration

Utah is a crafting mecca. Perhaps it's the can-do, self-sufficient attitude brought by pioneer ancestors who carved a beautiful home out of a desert that has trickled down to the modern day. Whatever the cause, women there are crafting queens! For example, scrapbooking as we know it today began primarily in Utah. Every other person I talk to in Utah has an etsy shop selling some type of handmade goods. I grew up in Utah, lived in the seriously un-crafty South, and am now somewhere in the middle in Colorado: less crafty than Utah, but significantly more crafty than Georgia (although that doesn't take much).I miss my Utah crafting roots, however. On Monday my mom and I went to a local Utah craft store chain and it reminded me how crafting-deprived I feel here in Denver. Thank goodness for the internet, where I can get my inspiration fix any time of day or night! A fun source for crafting & home decor inspiration is Studio 5, a lifestyle show produced by the local NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City. And lucky for me, most segments of Studio 5 are available online! I check in a few times each week to see what's new. Today's show featured this cute segment with ideas on things to do with vintage games:

Some other favorite segments:

• Rolled fabric flowers
• Cute, simple embellished scarves & wraps
• Corsage t-shirts (this one is my FAVORITE! I'm dying to make some of these.)

Lately they've had quite a few segments on remaking home decor items from thrift stores and decorating on a dime, and they frequently have cute paper crafting projects as well. Studio 5 airs locally at 11:00 am Mountain time, and it usually takes a little while after the show ends for them to get the segments onto the website. Check it out and experience Utah's abundant craft mojo for yourself!

Vintage button thumbtacks for my Pottery Barn-inspired burlap cork board

Thank you all for the cork board love! I'm so happy with how it turned out. Once I got it hanging on the wall, I realized I only had boring old primary-colored thumbtacks, which just wouldn't work with my new neutral-colored board.To make my own cute tacks, I gathered a few supplies:
vintage buttons from my stash, a pair of wire cutters, E6000 glue and flat-backed thumbtacks.
I chose primarily plastic buttons that have shanks (that's that little piece sticking off the back that you use to sew the button on) so that the holes wouldn't show on the front. I used the wire cutters to clip off the plastic shank and leave a flat back (some I rubbed on a piece of coarse sandpaper just to flatten the nubs out a bit). Then it was just a matter of gluing the tacks to the backs of the buttons with the E6000 glue and waiting for the glue to dry.

I have zillions of black buttons, so I can easily make more as needed. Other ways to transform your tacks are to use bits of costume jewelery (old clip earrings are perfect) or even flat-backed glass marbles with a bit of patterned paper underneath. Who says we have to settle for boring office supplies?

My Pottery Barn-inspired burlap corkboard

In a fit of New Year-inspired organization last week, I purchased a corkboard with the intent to hang it in my office/craft room as a place where I could pin up pretty notes and bits of inspiration. I knew I wanted to decorate it somehow and first considered using fabric to make one like this barkcloth beauty from the T-Party, but I don't have any neat vintage fabric and I was too impatient to try to find barkcloth from an online source.

And then, inspiration struck (as it does for so many of us) in the form of my newly-delivered Pottery Barn catalog! There, on page 99 I found this:
Let's look at that close up:
Pottery Barn's pinboard is covered with burlap with a printed design re-created from vintage postmarks. I knew that I could easily get burlap, so that got me thinking how I could make the printed designs. I'm not a great decorative painter, so freehanding the design was out. I found some ink jet printer T-shirt transfers that I bought on clearance and stashed away, but they were only for white items, so that wouldn't work either. Then I remembered the cute sparrow stencil I bought a few years ago at Urban Outfitters that has been waiting, unused, for a project such as this one!

I bought my burlap at Wal-Mart. My corkboard (just under $9.00 from Target) was 25" x 32" so I only needed one yard of fabric, a cost of around $2.50. I ironed it to remove the creases, then laid it over my corkboard and trimmed it roughly to size.

I know that there's a way to get a straight line in burlap by pulling out one of the strings--I tried that, and I couldn't get it to work. Instead, I used my staple gun to attach the burlap at the edge of the wood frame
and then used a small pair of scissors to go back and trim off the excess fabric as close to the frame as I could. Not perfect, but it worked.

Next, I gathered my stencil and painting supplies. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to do the birds in black or in aqua blue to match the aqua blue-painted cabinet in the office.
I started out with the aqua blue, then did the second bird in black.
The painting was so easy that even my 4-year-old daughter helped! Remember that the texture of the burlap is rough, so a pattern without a lot of fine detail works best.

After the paint was dry, I needed to hide the rough cut edges of the fabric. I did that simply with a roll of black grosgrain ribbon and my hot glue gun.
After I had all the black ribbon on the board, I didn't like how the blue bird looked after all. I didn't have enough fabric to rip it all out and start over, so I ended up using a tiny paintbrush and more black paint and going over the blue paint by hand. That was seriously tedious, and in retrospect I could probably have taped the stencil back over the blue bird and gone over it with the black. The holey texture of the burlap made covering all the blue paint into a real challenge.

In the end you can't really tell and I think it still looks great. I hung it up right away and I can't wait to start filling it up with pretty pictures! The Pottery Barn pinboard was $149--mine was under $12 and I had it done in one evening.
Some additional thoughts I had while I was making this: I wonder if you could use a freezer paper stencil on burlap? I'm still trying to figure out a way to get those postmarks like the Pottery Barn version. Also, I would like to have painted the wooden frame but it was far too cold to spray paint here last weekend, and I was impatient, so it stayed the way it was.

Once I hung my cute cork board I realized that all I had were boring primary-colored push-pins. That just wouldn't do, so tomorrow I'll show you how I fixed that!

I'm linking this post to Kimba's DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land and Show and Tell Wednesday at Blue Cricket Design, as well as Homebody Holly's Pottery Barn Knock-off Party!

Book page wreath

Today it occurred to me that if I spent half the time I do looking at what other people are doing around their homes (ie, reading blogs) on actually DOING things around MY OWN home, I'd have this place whipped into shape in no time.

Huh.

Easier said than done, however.

One project I have managed to finish is this book page wreath from the great tutorial on Living With Lindsay.
I've wanted to make this wreath for a while but didn't have the time or energy (or clean counter space) before Christmas. Now that all the holiday decor is put away and my house is looking bare, I've finally had time to put it together.

Lindsay's tutorial is very thorough and I followed her instructions exactly. I used a green foam 10" wreath form from the Dollar Store and a paperback book that I bought for 45¢ at a thrift last week. My book was a trade paperback, but I couldn't tell what size of book Lindsay used. I watched her video on how to roll the pages but once you start doing it yourself, you figure out which way you like the best. It's very, very easy! I figure I used around 120 pages on my wreath.I'm very pleased with how my wreath turned out! I have it hanging over an old window on my wall and I like how the round shapes in the wreath contrast with the straight lines of the window panes.

Now, what to do with the extra book pages? I'm thinking something along these lines...

Goody Goody Gumdrops!

I love gumdrops. I love the way they look and I love the way they taste. I love them at any time of the year, but most especially at Christmas! A jadeite bowl full of gumdrops is just a happy sight, isn't it?
I saw a gumdrop wreath in a Martha mag years ago and have always wanted to make one, but never got around to it.
Until this year, that is! I decided that it would be the perfect festive activity for Maren to help with, so even though the Thanksgiving decorations still sat in a pile on my table, I set out to make a gumdrop wreath. After looking at two stores with no luck, I happened upon big bags of gumdrops at JoAnn's, of all places! I didn't even think to look there but as I was buying my wreath form, I found bags of candy near the cash registers. Not only did I save myself a trip to another store, I was able to use my 40% off coupons for them as well! It worked out perfectly.

Although the construction seems pretty self-explanatory, I did use the instructions found here, via One Pretty Thing. I used a 12-inch white foam wreath form from the craft store, but I did see 10-inch green forms at the Dollar Tree this morning as well. I used nearly three 20-ounce bags of gumdrops (the small size) and that allowed for plenty of 'sampling' opportunities as well. I took Cheryl's advice and used my hot glue gun rather than toothpicks to attach the candy. I went through several glue sticks, more than I had anticipated, so make sure you have plenty on hand. From there, it's easy.
I applied mine in a CPR fashion--CPR in this case standing for Carefully Placed Random. I didn't want to think about it too hard but I also wanted a fairly even distribution of colors. I just fit my gumdrops together like bricks. If you look at Cheryl's photos, it looks like she did one wreath that way and one where they are placed in more orderly rings. I still need to spray my wreath and add a little bit of glitter, and once I decide where to hang it I'll add a nice wide RED grosgrain ribbon to the top.

I wish gumdrops came in pink--I think a pink gumdrop wreath might make me feel faint from the super-high cuteness quotient. I do remember that Martha showed all-white wreaths made of champagne-flavored white gumdrops in one of her wedding publications, and they were quite pretty. I know that Walgreen's has bags of red and green gumdrops on sale this week for 99¢, so if you purchased a dollar store wreath form and a couple of bags of candy, you could have yourself a very cute little holiday decoration for around $5!

Thanksgiving leftovers

I'm getting all the Thanksgiving decor ready to put away so the Christmas decorating tornado can commence, but wanted to show you this before it disappears into a box for another year. I initially started this collage to put in my etsy shop, but 1) I took too long to make it so couldn't get it listed in time and 2) I fear I might like it too much to let it go!

I've said it before, but these bits & pieces collages are SO much fun to make. I love having a way to use up all the precious little treasures I've collected, and a 3"x3" square is a whole lot less intimidating to fill, even if there are a dozen of them to do. I think this is my 5th bits & pieces collage, and it certainly won't be my last.

Hope you're all enjoying the weekend. I'm going to try to get the house cleaned up today so I can start bringing up the Christmas boxes. I can't wait to get a look at all of my vintage Christmas pretties again!

Posh Squash and a furry visitor

Oh, how I love my Posh Squash!
Last November on our girls' weekend trip to Phoenix, I purchased the wee pink squash on the left. It's teeny and made of the most beautiful rose-colored velvet. I loved it so much that even though it's a pumpkin it has stayed on my desk for the past year, where I could admire it's soft pink sweetness. When I found out that Kim from Olive Juice & Company was selling kits on her blog for her "Posh Squash" you better believe that I hopped over there in a hurry and ordered! I received the kit back before Halloween but just haven't had the time to get them made until now.

The pattern and construction itself is ridiculously simple--in fact, you can probably find instructions for free on the internet by Googling. What makes these so beautiful is the scrumptious velvet in the loveliest fall colors that Kim hand-dyed and included in the kit. I did use a thrifted skirt to make the brown pumpkin, an idea I got from Amy. I'm afraid the kits are all sold out for this year but bookmark Olive Juice & Co, because hopefully Kim will do them again next fall.

In other news, we had an unexpected guest the past few days:

Awwwwww! Isn't that a sweet little furry face? We played foster parents to a little ferret for the past few days. On Tuesday afternoon we discovered him hiding beneath the steps in our garage. We put food & water out but he disappeared that night, only to reappear in our neighbor's arms the next morning--seems he bunked with them on Tuesday night. He was out wandering again yesterday around noon so we let him back in the garage, where he stayed until about 30 minutes ago.

Maren was obsessed with him, as you might imagine. He's really friendly and ferrets don't exactly roam wild around our subdivision, so we knew he was somebody's lost pet. I was all set to make "FOUND" posters this afternoon but the neighbors spotted a "LOST" sign one street over, so they called the ferret's owner and made a joyful reunion. Turns out they are our back-fence neighbors, so little Westley (his mate is Buttercup! CUTE.) probably did a prison break out the dog door and hopped the back fence into our yard. It was a fun little diversion and I have to say that he's pretty darn cute for a weasel!

Glamour Gourds

Make your own 'mercury glass' pumpkins? Oh. My. GOSH. Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Sweet & Sinister swap--sent and received

When I told The Mister that I had signed up for a Halloween swap with an Oct. 1 mail-out deadline, he thought I was nuts given my due date (and eventual delivery date) of Sept. 17. I thought I might be crazy too but I had such fun with last year's swap that I just couldn't pass up the opportunity, impending birth or not!

The color guidelines for the Sweet & Sinister swap are black and white with just a touch of orange. I already showed you the blingy black pumpkin I sent to my partner Julie, but I made a few other items for her as well:

--This black and white witch silhouette in the perfect, already-distressed thrifted frame:Want to make a Halloween silhouette of your own? Go here.

--A bouquet of black, white and blingy vintage button flowers:
that I loved so much I had a hard time giving away!

--And a beeswax collage canvas with another cute silhouette:I've been meaning to make another beeswax collage ever since I learned how last November in Phoenix. I bought all the supplies and they've sat in my craft closet ever since! This was a good opportunity to finally dust off my mini-iron and wax pellets and get to work. I had such fun creating things for my partner and I hope she liked them.

My partner Julie sent me a fabulous package. She knew that I am planning a Haunted Library-themed Halloween party this year and that I love crows, so she tailored her package to suit me perfectly!
She included Halloween cupcake mix and the most delightful box of fancy sprinkles & cupcake toppers, a big vintage-style black and orange lollipop decorated with festooning and a sparkly chipboard H, a package of darling party parasols, a very old copy of Poe's "The Raven" (I'd been looking for one of these but had given up!), and the beautiful sparkly table runner that everything is sitting on.

As wonderful as all of those things are, my very favorite thing in the box was this awesome decoration that Julie made for me! She used a box that looks like an old book and decorated it with a crow who is wearing a string of pearls and a sparkly party hat! I absolutely ADORE it and it will be the centerpiece of my party decorations!
Check out the neat detail on the black roses: She took apart the flowers, traced the petals onto the book pages, cut them out, curled the edges and punched a hole in the center. Then she reassembled the flower, layering the book petals with the silk petals. I love the look--perfect for a Haunted Library!

I'm so glad that I signed up for this swap and plan to do it again next year!

Halloween craft: Swirly crystal pumpkins

When I saw the cover of the 2009 Better Homes & Gardens Halloween magazine I bought it immediately, purely because of the image of that pumpkin on the left with the swirly designs. If you look closely, the swirls are made of little gems, and since I'm all about adding a little bit of *bling* to Halloween I knew right away that I wanted to make one of my own. My mom saw it and loved it too, so we decided to make the pumpkins when she came here to help me before Porter was born. Because he took his sweet time in getting here, we had time to get our pumpkins completely done before I went to the hospital! I even made one to send to my Sweet & Sinister swap partner and now that the package has been sent and received I can finally post about it. This was such a fun, easy and satisfying craft project and I've been dying to share it with all of you! Here are some of the particulars:The pumpkins:
We used the fake pumpkins that you can purchase at Michael's as they were slightly less expensive than the Funkins brand from JoAnn's. We used both the large size and the smaller size. We wanted our pumpkins to be black and white rather than orange like on the magazine cover, so we used a can of black spray paint to spray some of the white pumpkins black (fortunately the painting went better than last year's attempt). We didn't initially paint the stems but after we were all finished we realized that black stems would look better, so we used black acrylic craft paint and a small sponge brush to touch them up.

The crystals:
The most difficult part of this project was finding enough crystals to use for our pumpkins, since we knew we each wanted to make more than one. The crystals we used are from Prima Marketing. They are self-adhesive and they come already placed in the swirl patterns, so all you have to do is stick them onto the pumpkins. The ones we used come on a sheet that looks like this:Each sheet is slightly larger than a sheet of paper and contains 4 large swirls, and will cost you approximately $7. The colors we used were black and clear (they also come in black diamond, which is really more of a smoky gray or charcoal). We bought out the stock at Archiver's and two separate Hobby Lobby stores to find enough packages of each color. Here is a link to buy the large black swirls on Amazon, and here is one for Ritz Camera (it doesn't appear they have the same swirls we used in clear, though they have a different design).
We found that it took approximately 6-7 of the crystal swirls for the smaller size pumpkin: 5 swirls to go around the top and then an additional swirl or two to cut apart and add in here and there to make the design balanced. Because the swirls are self-adhesive it's as easy as peeling them off the backing and placing them carefully on the pumpkin. On the painted pumpkins we had to be careful in our placement because the adhesive lifted off the paint if we tried to adjust the swirls once they were adhered. We also used larger single gems in both black and clear to accent the swirl designs. We purchased those at the Hobby Lobby as well and attached them with Glue Dots. I can't recall how many swirls the large pumpkin used, but I know I used more because I wanted them to come further down the sides of the pumpkin.

The leaves:
The pumpkins shown in the magazine didn't have any leaves, but I remembered that I found some awesome vintage silver foil leaves at a garage sale earlier this summer that would be just perfect for our blingy pumpkins! For the black pumpkins with clear crystals we left the leaves silver but for the white pumpkin with black gems we spray painted them black with a bit of the leftover spray paint. Then we simply hot glued them to the top of the pumpkins (this is when we realized we should have painted the stems. Alternately, you could cover the stems with coordinating glitter).

I love how the pumpkins turned out! My photos don't do them justice. They sat on the table for a few days after we finished them and every time I walked past them I think I mentioned how much I loved them...I think The Mister got sick of my declarations of affection for my silly pumpkins!

I'm linking this post to Kimba's DIY day!