DIY: Spring Wreath

It's been such a busy past few weeks! We had my sister's first baby shower, followed by my mother-in-law's birthday party, then the second baby shower. I've spent a lot of time over at my sister's house helping her sort through all the baby goodies and get them organized and put away. So much to do before a baby gets here! I really had no idea! I will get more posts up about all those fun happenings soon.

I actually had a bit of time to do a project around my house, which was a nice break from all the running around.

Confession - I had my Valentine's Day wreath up until about mid-March and realized that I should put up my St. Patrick's Day wreath. The only reason it got taken down is because we had a huge wind storm and the bells on the wreath were driving me crazy banging against the door. I decided this time instead of making an Easter wreath that may end up getting left up until Fourth of July, I would make a nice spring wreath.

We Have a New Look!

I've been toying around with changing the look of this place for awhile now and I finally found something that is totally me.

Hope you all love the facelift too!

What's in a Name?

There are a lot of really cute family name art pieces out there. I've even made a few for around our house. But the latest project I have been working on had me a bit puzzled. What kind of family art do you create for a "modern family" who may not all share the same last name?

Being the Shakespeare lover that I am (and having just recently watched the movie) the famous Juliet quote popped into my head:
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part 
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet. ( Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Sc. 2, 43-47)

Being a family doesn't mean that you all have to have the same family name, what matters is that you are family. After a little bit scribbling and a whole, whole lot of erasing on my scratch pad, I finally settled on this design.

I made the lettering with my Silhouette and I used the LDJ Forever Friends font. The "Our Family" is available in the Silhouette online store. The vinyl is from Expressions Vinyl in light brown. Expressions Vinyl is one of my favorite places to shop for vinyl. They always have good discount codes for their email subscribers and Facebook friends.

I really love how it turned out because the names are all connected - like a family is! It's perfect because all of the people I know with modern families can now have name art too!

I'll be linking up to my favorite parties this week.

DIY: Subway Art Frame

My roommate's birthday was a few weeks back. I already had part of the gift planned - some really cool Stila eyeshadow and a few other make-up things, which I love and knew she would too. But I wanted to do something a bit more personal since she's so dear to me.

I came across this darling Subway art over at Kiki & Company. It was just the thing I was looking for!

Side note - so my friends and I always call patterns for projects "recipes" and I've had a hard time not doing that lately but I just can't help it! So...

Recipe:

You will need a blank wooden frame, acrylic paint (I used Apple Barrel by Plaid White and True Teal), scrapbook paper, white cardstock, Krylon Triple Thick Crystal Clear Glaze, sponge brush, and craft glue (I used Aleene's Quick Dry Tacky Glue).

Step 1:  

Remove the glass (or in my case plastic) from the frame.  Prime frame with 2 coats of white paint. Let dry thoroughly in between layers. Then paint 2 coats of your desired color (also drying well between layers) and let dry. 

When it is completely dry, spray the entire frame with the Krylon Triple Thick Crystal Clear Glaze. Be sure to do this in a well ventilated area like outside (my roommates always gets mad when I do this in the house). Let the frame dry really well before handling again - ask how I know about that!

Step 2:

While that is drying, you can pick out your Subway Art for the frame. Like I mentioned, mine came from Kiki & Company. You can also do a search for "Free Subway Art" on Google for more ideas.

Funny thing was that I was trying to use the red and teal design on Kiki Creates. I didn't realize until it printed that my printer was out of magenta ink. Luckily, I love the way it turned out. To make it fit in my frame, I scaled it down to size in Photoshop and printed from there. I printed it on white cardstock to help the colors really stand out and make it sturdier. 

Step 3: 

This is my favorite part of any project - embellishing! I chose to make some 3D flowers and leaves with the colored cardstock. I love it because it is two-sided! I used my Silhouette to cut them and then glued them to the frame with the craft glue. You can find some ideas to make handmade flowers on my Favorite Flower Tutorials Round-up.

The best part of this project is that you can decide how you embellish the frame. You can use ribbons, buttons, stickers or vinyl cut outs. Personalize it and make it your own.

 

It turned out perfectly and she loved it! The best part of giving it to her was that I could finally take the sign off the craft room door warning her to stay out!

Craft Room Makeover Update #1

I've been busy working on the craft room this week for the challenge at I'm an Organizing Junkie and haven't had much chance to post anything. I will get caught back up this weekend! I've made some definite progress this week though and it is coming along nicely.

You may remember how it started out:

You almost couldn't see the carpet in here!

There is a big improvement on that! I spent most of this week rearranging furniture to give the room a better flow. Before everything was spread all over the room and it was pretty much chaos. When I moved in, I pretty much just put things wherever I thought they would fit. Well now I've got a plan!

I rearranged the room so that the back half is office space and the front half is craft space. Much more functional!

The tough part is that my organizing process involves pulling everything out so that I can see clearly what I've got to work with. I feel kind of bad really, really bad for everyone I live with that I work this way!

This is what they have to deal with in the hallway while I'm working on organizing:

Hopefully for their sake, I can get the hall cleared out quickly! The doors on the right are the access to the washer and dryer!

Organizational Challenge - Chaos in the Craft Room

I may have mentioned this a time or two or hundred before, but my craft room needs some major help. It's even on my list of 30 Before 30. I really have to find some way to rein in the chaos in this place so that my craft projects don't keep spilling out into the living room. I mean that's the whole point of having a "craft room" right?

So over at I'm an Organizing Junkie, for the month of February there is a 29 Day Organizational Challenge to get one room in the house under control.This is just the motivation I need to get this place into a workable state.

This is what the current state is:

The closet is overflowing so much I can't even close it!

This cupboard is supposed to be for craft supplies but good luck finding anything in here.

My sewing table that is currently so covered in stuff I can't sew on it.

Somewhere under all that stuff is my desk. Then apparently I like to pile more stuff under it.

The view looking out into the hall.

And the horrible view looking from the hall into the craft room.

This room just ends up being the dumping grounds for anything and everything in the house. It's time to get it under control and organized. I need a craft room I can actually use!

DIY: Monogram Coasters

My brother-in-law has been wanting me to make him coasters ever since I got my Silhouette and he saw all the great things I was making with it. I was planning on making them for his birthday and then somehow it didn't get done in time. So I made sure to put them on the list for his Christmas stocking. They turned out to be such a fast and easy project, I don't know why I didn't get them done sooner!

I found these great tiles at Home Depot packaged in a set of 9 for only a few bucks. They are nice unglazed tiles so they should be perfect for absorbing condensation from drinks.

I cut squares of craft felt just a tad smaller than the tiles. I used my rotary cutter and ruler to get nice even squares. (Don't you love my carpet background? I had to work on the floor because every other space in the house was covered in Christmas chaos!) The felt is a great backing so that the tiles don't scratch whatever surface the coasters are going to be used on.

I coated one side of the felt with Fabri-tac and made sure to give it a really good coat. I wanted to make sure that all of the felt was going to stick to the tile.

Then I carefully lined it up with the back of the tile and smoothed it out to make sure that there were no bumps and that the whole thing was secured. I did this to all four of the tiles that I was making.

When they were all glued, I got a big stack of books and set them all under it to dry to make sure they set up really well.

Now for the monograms! On my trusty Silhouette, I settled on the LD Old Glory font and stretched it to a good size to be centered on the tiles. I made one and then copied it so they would all be the same size. Weeding out the little holes in the "Cs" was quite a task but I got them all done. I measured and marked each tiles to be sure the were centered and then applied the vinyl. I have step by step instructions on applying vinyl on this tutorial. If you don't have a Silhouette, you can always use an X-acto knife and cut a design by hand. 

He loved them so much that he wants me to make more. Let's see if I can get them done before next Christmas!

Linked up at:  Fun to Craft 'Look At Me' Party, Sew Can Do Craftastic Monday, Hope Studios Tutorial Tuesday, My Girlish Whims

Living Room Gallery Wall

I knew that I wanted to decorate the living room yellow and grey in my new place months before I even started apartment hunting. This is my favorite part of the living room. Honestly though, the rest of the room couldn't get more yellow and grey unless I got a yellow or grey couch. I was working on getting one, but I figured out how to clean my couch here so the grey couch will have to wait. I would love to paint the walls a nice soft yellow or light grey, but that too is out since we rent. 

This is about what I could do and I am so excited about it!

The quilt is a project I found on Happy Together here using Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 collection of fabrics shown here. I convinced my mother that it was the only thing that would do for a birthday present this year. I LOVE it. I think it is the most beautiful quilt I own. The pillows are from Ikea and very affordable. I love how they tie in the couch color with the yellow and grey theme.

The gallery wall is inspired by many that I saw on Pinterest. Search gallery wall and you'll see what I'm talking about. I used a few frames from Ikea (love that place!) and put in black & white pictures from an old Ansel Adams calendar I happened to have. It was really old - like from 2002! (I'm a bit of a hoarder.) The top left frame has lyrics to a song. It's super tiny writing but I managed to fit the whole song in. There is also a quote from e.e. cummings and the bottom right frame says, "Be Awesome Today." Those are all printed on cute scrapbook paper. The "S" is from Michael's, and covered in many, many coats of yellow spray paint, then hung with a black & white polka dot ribbon. I used my Silhouette to cut various words and phrases out of vinyl and used those to fill in the spaces around the frames.

I love using vinyl to decorate in the apartment. It doesn't damage the walls and adds a lot of style when you aren't allow to paint. I almost always get my vinyl from Expressions Vinyl and for indoor use order the removable indoor vinyl. There are so many colors and styles to choose from I could really cover the whole house in it! I'm not being paid to say that, I just love their selection, great customer service and fast shipping.