DIY: Up-cycled Easter Flowers

After all the eggs are hard boiled and ready to by 

dyed for Easter, what do you do with all the left over

egg cartons?

Well if you are me, you actually have a stash 

of egg cartons ready to be up cycled into something crafty.

While perusing Pinterest, 

I found thins great DIY from Homemade Serenity!

Now here's a lady that's on my 

"this could be useful for crafting" hoarding wave length.

Instead of following her explicit directions to make a 

wreath, the boy and I decided 

to make a little something pretty 

for his sweet little neighbor girl friend, Lily.

I am just loving seeing all the detail that he took the time

to put into these cute flowers.

It was also really cute listening to him talk about

how important it is to give girls flowers.

My little gentleman in training! 

DIY: Bleach Dyed Sweat Shirt

If anyone can figure out why oh why

I waited all these years to try bleach dying please let me know! 

I am kinda obsessed with single color 

tie dye which is what inspired this project.

Yet I have never tie dyed anything.

I have had this black sweat shirt for many many years.

It's always been one of my favorites,

but in recent times it's just started to look a little beat.

It needed something.

A pick me up if you will.

So a good bleach tie dye became it's fate.

I found this great DIY on 

Say Yes To Hoboken,

but as many of the things I see on Pinterest,

it didn't really work out for me.

I followed her directions to a T and the only results 

were one or two bleached out marks.

So I became frustrated with the project,

the hubs and I laughed at my waste of a 

perfectly good shirt, and I decided to take this project to the max.

At this point there was no coming back for this top, 

so my fears of "ruining" it went out the window.

I rinsed and rinsed the residual bleach from my first attempt.

I then re-twisted and rubber banded the top while it was still wet.

Part of my hesitation with tie dye or bleach dye in the past 

has been a lack of control, but I shook that off and just 

told myself that this wasn't an exact science.

After the sweat shirt was twisted and banded I

fully submerged the tangled mess into a bowl of straight bleach.

In the previous DIY steps that I had tried to follow

I was told that it would take 12+ hrs to see any change in color.

Well with my way it was almost instant.

With in about an hour I had the top out of the bowl.

I have to be honest with you,

at this point I was pretty sure that the next step for this 

beloved sweat shirt was the trash can.

The entire top appeared to be, well, tan.

I began to cut off the rubber bands on at a time,

as the shirt unraveled beautiful pinks, blacks, and creams were revealed.

Once I got the entire sweat shirt opened up I rinsed it until no more color 

bleed into the water.

I was so pumped up about how this top

turned out that I actually raided my closet for more things to

bleach dye.

Have you experimented with bleach dying?

I would love to see your projects! 

Share your secrets and results! 

DIY: Up-cycled Filing Cabinet

I found this busted up beauty last weekend at a yard sale,

and I knew she was going to be the perfect addition to my new office.

All she needed was a fork lift to get her home, 

because she ways a metric shit ton,

some TLC and elbow grease.

See that $10 price tag?

I talked them down to $5 and convinced them to load it into 

my car for me.

The frist step to bringing this cabinet back to life was to remove all of the hardware.

I knew that it was missing pieces and that I was going to have to 

replace all of the handles.

Once every thing was taken apart,

I got super sweaty and dirty giving this giant hunk of 

metal a really good sanding.

Using a medium to coarse grit paper. 

I used circular motions

(think Karate Kid)

and really concentrated my attention

to the areas that were rusty.

After sanding, I used a wet rag to remove all of the dust.

It took a few good wipe downs to really make sure that I got it all,

and the last cleaning I used mineral spirits and a dry rag.

Once all the surfaces were thuroughly cleaned,

I used a spray paint primer to cover the entire cabinet.

I also salvaged the label holders off the front of the drawers and sprayed them flat black.

The original cabinet had spindles that ran inside each drawer, but one was missing.

I opted to just fill the hole with a screw, hex nut, and acorn nut for decorative purposes. 

Lastly I sprayed the cabinet this beautiful and cheery

Marigold color and started calling it my happy cabinet.

After the paint had a full 24 hours to dry,

I put on all the hardware and labels.

This was such an easy project that really brought a dead piece of furniture 

right back to life, and provided so much storage and sunshine in my office.

New uses for old things

One of my absolute favorite things about moving is the total blank slate.

I love taking all of my treasures and belongings

and finding not only new homes for them,

but also new uses.

Bookshelves that used to be jam packed with craft supplies

now become storage for all of our "keep sakes".

Kitchen clocks become bedroom clocks.

A table that used to function as a front door catch all

returns to it's original calling as a dressing table.

Even things that used to be hidden away in storage from your childhood

find new homes as added pops of pink!

But one of my favorite new uses for old things so far in this crazy

unpacking and organizing process has got to be

this!

I was given this very sweet little magnetic sewing pin container as a gift 

from a friends mom.

In the old house it had no home. 

No job.

It literally just was tucked away into a box for a rainy day.

Then I realized that not only was she perfect for my great great grandmothers 

dressing table, but she had a secret hidden potential 

to house and organize my bobby pins.

Viola! 

DIY: Yarn Letter Ornaments

I love Anthropologie, but really....who doesn't? I rarely ever buy anything from there though, I have a really hard time justifying their hefty price tags! When I received the latest holiday catalog my heart skipped a beat.  I just fell in love with these little ornaments...

                                              

(source)

Well at $8 a pop, I couldn't possibly afford to add one to every gift that we give this year.  So the boy and I decided to make our own.  Here's how:

Step 1

Materials:

collected sticks and twigs

yarn, string, and ribbon

scissors

hot glue

Step 2 

To make this project a bit more educational, 

I had the boy first draw a picture of the letter that we were going to make.  

Then I would trim the twigs down to size,

 and have him arrange them as the needed to be.  

Then I hot glued them in place.

Step 2

Loop the ribbon around the top of the letter where you want it to hang.

Don't worry about how sloppy the knot or ends look, 

they will be wrapped and covered.

Step 3

With you choice of yarn/ribbon/string combo, 

start wrapping tightly around the sticks.

Don't forget to tuck your ends in so that they can be wrapped up.

This entire project cost me $5.  I was able to find all of my yarn at a local thrift store, and then pulled the rest of my string and ribbon from my scrap box.  While I am not doing the entire alphabet, I am making about 25 ornaments to use in gift wrapping.  Happy Crafting!

easter projects recap

the boy and i had so much fun crafting all day this past friday getting ready to easter. 

first we made little bunnies for the table. we made these using recycled toilet paper tubes, a little white paint, pink chalk, googlie eyes, and cotton balls. these would also have been our napkin holders if we would have had easter dinner.  although i guess i could have spruced up the chinese take out with them. haha

we attempted some ombré easter eggs with homemade dye.  i forgot how easy it was to make you own egg dye. simply 1 cup hot water, 1 tbsn vinegar, and food dye. 

then we made a mosaic easter egg picture. i let the boy tear up some tissue paper and then watered down some glue and let him paint the shreds on to construction paper. so cute and so simple.

DIY: hall clock face lift

after sitting on the sofa staring at our completely boring hall clock for so long i decided that i had had enough. i can't complain too much about the clock as it was a gift from my mother-in-law.  disclaimer: she has impeccable taste....this clock however was in her living room so that my father-in-law could read it.  it drove her crazy that there was no time telling device in our house, as we always just used our phones or watches to tell the time, so she brought this one down to our house to hang in the hall where it could be seen from the living room.

so back to the face lift - no pun intended there...well maybe a little pun. hehe

here is what you will need:
1 unassuming wall clock
1 12x12 piece of chalk board paper or other scrapbook paper
a few tools
chalk
paint (if you so desiree)

step 1:

simply take the clock apart. now i say simply, but the hubs did all the handy work for this project...so i can't say for sure how "simple" it was. my only advice though is to keep all the small working parts together, organized, and in some sort of order as to which they were removed.

step 2:

trace to face of the clock onto your 12x12 paper.

step 3:

cut out the traced image.

step 4:

i decided to paint the hands of the clock a chalky white. for two major reasons. one....i wasn't going to be able to see the black hands against the black chalkboard paper. and two....i wanted to keep with the theme and make the hands look chalky too.

step 5:

the hubs came up with the brilliant idea of making the old face into a template to make sure that we put the numbers in the exact right places....brilliant that man of mine is!

step 6:

mark the numbers onto the face of the clock.

step 7:

we decided after the fact to add tick marks on the rest of the clock, and then reassembled it. as we were putting it back together we also decided to ditch the second hand.

and viola...there you have it...our new and improved hall clock!

i am not sure why it took us a year to get around to doing this, maybe it was the house hold clock overhaul that took place a few weeks ago....the boy started complaining about all the antique clocks hanging in the house that didn't tell the time....specifically the vintage mickey mouse clock that hangs in his room.

wardrobe re-fashion

i would like to start off by just saying that you should never under estimate the power of an ugly dress. in the picture above it almost had the power of making me pee my pants i was laughing so hard. the shoulder pads in this thing are out of control! hahaha

 i found this "beauty" at an estate sale last summer with my in laws. they all looked at me like "well i guess if any one could pull that off it would be you?!?!?!" they must have thought i was nuts, or they were just praying that i didn't decide to wear it to dinner.

 it's been sitting in my closet for months now. i couldn't decide what i was going to do with it. for a while i thought that i was going to sell it. then i was just going to cut it up and use it for scraps. then i realized what a gem i was really sitting on. so with literally about 10 minutes of planning, cutting, ironing, and sewing i came up with this....