Easy Wall Art

I have been making weekly trips to Hobby Lobby in the hopes that canvas will be on sale. Even though canvasses haven't been on sale, I haven't had any trouble finding other things to buy at Hobby Lobby. I digress, though. On a "just looking" trip to Big Lots, I stumbled on a set of TWO canvasses for $6!!! I bought them so I could finally reproduce a project I had seen on Blue Cricket Design. I decided to use gray and yellow (my favorite color duo) to match our bedroom and hang them above our bed. Don't mind the crappy pictures, they were taken on my new phone.

You can see the tutorial and the original art here.

R-Lo and Auj: Craft Day, or "Hold Me Closer, Tiny Tailor"

Finally, a day off! I "slept in" (which is now, sadly, 8a.m.) and took about an hour to wake up. I started reading a book, but I just couldn't get into it. So I decided to do my other favorite day-off activity - crafting! I figured my friend Auj would be up for some refashion projects, so I invited her to bring some old clothes and shoes over to see what we could come up with. I planned on doing 2 things: a men's plaid shirt refashion, and a bleach pen shirt design. The bleach pen shirt seemed like the easier of the two, so I went ahead and did that first. Success! Then it was time to move onto the men's shirt refashion. It pretty much involved cutting off the sleeves, creating a new neckline, and adding ruffles. As a non-sewer, this seemed like a pretty good beginner's project. At first it went well...I mean, cutting is easy! But when it came time to sew, it was a disaster! The thread kept bunching up in crazy ways or getting caught in the bobbin somehow, or breaking (seriously?!?). I tried for hours and could not manage to make a ruffle. At this point, Audrey had made some super cute boots and a bleach pen shirt. She brought in her Singer Tiny Tailor (her mom found it for $2 at a garage sale!) so we could try the ruffles on her machine. That too was an epic fail. It was the most confusing bobbin set up process I have ever experienced. Finally, we gave up on sewing. On the bright side, I know how to thread my machine and put in a new bobbin. And we came out of it with some cute new things!

Audrey's bleach pen desgin: a super cute owl!

Boots made from old flats and sweater sleeves.

My bleach pen shirt design

And my headband!!!!!!!!

I have another craft day planned for tomorrow with L-Mo. I'm hoping it yields much better results!

Monogrammed Wreath

I love having days off! Lately, I've been reading on my days off rather than cleaning or cooking or being any sort of useful. Sometimes I like to go to craftgawker to get inspiration when I'm just lounging around in my free time. Last night's post-work craftgawker browsing yielded so many potential projects, my bookmark bar is exploding with crafty goodness! I stumbled upon a lot of craft blogs I had never seen before and found a good three or four projects I wanted to try. So today, I went thrifting and Hobby Lobbying with my mom and sister. Joey and I went ahead and did a monogrammed wreath project I saw on The Diary of Dave's Wife. If you want to create your own, you'll need:

1) a picture frame

2) 2-3 pieces of coordinating scrap book (or Stampin' Up!) paper

3) mod podge, craft glue, and hot glue gun

4) some cute brads

5) acrylic paint

6) a wooden, metal, or paper letter found at Hobby Lobby or Michael's

First, we painted our frames and our letters. Joey painted hers the same color. I originally did the same, but ended up painting my "L" black and my frame yellow.

While all this was drying, we moved on to the paper portion. We used mod podge to adhere paper to the frame's backing. We also used to other coordinating pieces of paper to cut out 3" circles. The circles are made into little medallions. For each medallion, we used 4 circles and a brad.
Joey did all the cutting! Then we folded the circles twice to make triangles. These we glued to a 3" circle that we cut out of scrap paper. In the center, we glued a flower and pushed the brad through the center.
Lastly, we used hot glue to attach the medallions to the frame. I love how Joey's turned out. She did a great job!
And here is mine. We still need to buy ribbon so we can hang them on our doors. But I can only handle so much in one day. I can't wait to finish them though and hang them on our doors!