Paint by number!

A few years ago I had a blank canvas, paint and a idea.  The canvas ended up in the trash.  But since then I have discovered something, there are some projects that don’t come easy, and those times require “paint by number!”

I have two friends who are artist, Lisa is a professional and my roommate from college Amy was at one time a art major in college.  I could easily compare my artistic talents to theirs but the reality is I’m not a good artist.  So I mix it up, I have a pencil drawing by my college roommate hanging in our office, I have a beautiful painting from Lisa with the skyline of Nashville in my living room & then I have the beauty pictured above. This painting came out of one of those classes, you know the ones where you and all your girl friends get together and go to a local painting class… oh and some wine!

So there is no tutorial today, but there is this reminder, there are certain things you just can’t do as well as your friend. You can still be creative though, it just may not look like you had hoped.  Let yourself off the hook and let someone else show you how to “paint by number”. It’s a great experience to laugh at yourself and even more fun to do it with friends.

Garden Box & Compost

When we moved into our first home here in Nashville I knew one of my first spring projects would be planting a garden and starting to compost.  I realize that while I sit here I should have probably watered my garden this morning but alas here I sit, and my garden won’t get watered until tonight!

Compost Box:

This has been the most successful part of our adventure.  We started this just over a year ago and last fall we broke up a pumpkin and put it in there, this spring when we pulled out some SUPER rich soil there was no trace of our very large pumpkin!  Can you believe it?  I mean this thing works and because of it we have saved so much waste and also saved ourselves some money on garden soil when planting flowers and vegetables this year.

My boss, Blake, actually made us this beautiful box, check him out on Etsy: HERE

Here are some of items we regularly put in our box-

-Raw egg shells

-Coffee grounds

-Any raw vegetables (cut them up though, if not you will start growing root vegetables)

-Human hair (weird I know but I do cut my husband’s hair and I put it in there when i’m finished)

-Potting soil when winter hits

-Flowers/Plants at the end of growing season

-Cut grass

-Leaves in the fall

-Tree/Bush trimmings

I feel like I could go on and on!

We started our garden last year and didn’t get a whole lot of produce out of it, but we are hoping year two goes significantly better!  I want to make a disclaimer on my garden box supplies and tutorial, my husband and brother in law made this box, so after reading this he may have some additional steps to add that I left out, I’ll make sure to edit as he does!

Garden Box Supplies:

-New saw (my husband was super excited about this one!)

-2x4s (4 of them, length depending on size of garden)

-Shovel

-Hoe

-Level

-Nails/Hammer or Nail Gun

-Weed barrier (we actually just used old card board boxes that we broke down and laid out, they essentially do the same thing as the weed barrier you can buy)

-Garden planting soil

Tutorial:

-Dig up the area you want to plant your garden.  You can chose to do this by hand or with a tiller, my family had a tiller growing up but we just did our by hand.

-Level the ground, if not already level

-Put down your weed barrier for size of garden

-Cut your boards for garden size

-Nail corners together

-Dig small ditch like to put your 2x4s in, ours was like 2-3 inches deep

-After completing your box fill with soil & plant!

I hope you will try out some home gardening or composting!

Chalkboard Pallet

Pallet turned chalkboard.

About 6 months ago the church I work at had some pallets they were not using any more.  A couple friends and I took some of the leftovers.  I am excited to share how easy easy easy this big statement piece is!

Supplies:

-Pallet (you can get these from a lot of home improvement stores, just go to the shipping and ask if they have any extra)

-Chalkboard spray paint

-Drop cloth for painting

-Chalk & Eraser

-Sand paper

Tutorial:

-Sand down any rough places on your pallet

-Put down your drop cloth and spray paint your pallet

-Set it out in the sun to dry after the first coat

-Spray second coat on your pallet

-Let dry before moving indoors

And it’s that EASY!

What projects have you wanted to attempt with a pallet?

Transform your room by painting one piece of furniture.

Transform your room by painting one piece of furniture.

My parents gave me this old dresser from grandparents house.  I wish I had a before picture but really I hated it so much I never took one! It’s a great piece of furniture because its narrow and doesn’t take up too much space.  I also picked a color almost a year ago that I may be able to use in a future kids room.  Now that we know we are having a baby BOY I think this piece of furniture will go very well in our new nursery!

Supplies:

-Knobs, I love ceramic knobs

-Paint

-Screwdriver

-Sander & sandpaper

-If you have a dad or family member to help it makes the process go by much faster!

Tutorial:

-Take old knobs off dresser

-Sand off all the wood lacquer/finish off the dresser

-Paint dresser

It’s that simple friends but it does take a lot longer than one of my smaller projects. Hope this will motivate you to repaint one of your pieces making a big statement in your room!

Making the most of your old wreath.

Summer Wreath

This is the last wreath post, I promise!

A few years ago when my grandmother passed away someone gave her a beautiful wreath with artifical flowers on it.  I usually try to keep things simple at my house (avoiding a lot of wall hangings etc.).  But I really felt like this wreath needed a special place in my home.  After moving 4 times in 4 years I felt attached to this wreath but in it’s original appearance I hated it.  So what to do with something large that you are attached to but feel doesn’t communicate who you are, it just wasn’t my style!  So I took off all the flowers and arrange them in a small vase that I could keep.  Here is how we got the Summer wreath.

Supplies:

-natural wood paddle from a craft store

-applique for wall decal

-spray paint

-various color ribbons

-shells

-hot glue gun

Tutorial:

-Spray paint your paddle & let it dry

-Apply decal according to package directions

-Start your widest ribbon at the bottom of your wreath an wrap around

-Take smaller ribbons and weave them throughout the wreath

-Place one small dot of hot glue at the ends of your shells and stick randomly or gathered on the wreath to your liking

-Stick your paddle through the wreath, you may need to secure it but i did not have to

One of my favorite things about this project is how fast it is and that you can use the wreath to decorate in a similar manner for the next season.

Transforming a yarn wreath

Happy Christmas!

This past Christmas I decided to experiment with my first yarn wreath.  I will tell you it was probably the most surprising of all the projects I have taken on.  This one was not at all hard but it took FOREVER!  My advice to you is to start small.  I’m kind of a go big or go home girl so it doesn’t surprise me that I have often times found myself in way over my head with these projects but this one seemed to be extra time consuming with the very large wreath I purchased. So since I had already spent so much time on the yarn I decided I would transform that Christmas masterpiece into a Valentine’s creation.  It turned out pretty good, what do you think?

Happy Heart Day!

Let’s first talk about how to make the base for this wreath.

Supplies:

-Several types (colors) of yarn

-Ribbon to hang with

-Wreath (let’s learn from my mistakes and start small friends!)

-Scissors

Tutorial:

-Find a good place to start and tie your yarn around your wreath.  Just make a small knot.

-Start wrapping your yarn.  (This is the part that takes a while)

-Keep yarn section of your first color small.  (I did not and when I was finished it looked more like a life preserver than anything else!)

-After you have reached a desired amount of yarn on your first section tie it off in the back and cut your yarn.

-Use a tape measure to get the first section length and make every additional section that same length.

-Basically you are going to continue this process over and over again until your wreath is fully covered with yarn

Christmas Wreath Supplies & Tutorial

Supplies:

-Flat Christmas ornament, without hook.  (I thought this snow flake worked perfectly)

-Christmas flare, that’s what I will call it! (You can usually find this all over the place around christmas to stick in your tree for extra sparkle, it may be in the floral dept if you are having trouble finding it)

-Holly from a near by bush.  This is free but comes with a hazard, grab your gardening gloves and clippers and snip a few branches

-Hot glue gun

-Scissors

Tutorial:

-Take apart your Christmas flare so they are in individual pieces

-Next arrange your flare in a somewhat random pattern with different lengths

-Hot glue every piece together at the point to which you want to attach to your ornament

-Cut off all the extra wire from the flare

-Wrap this end with the same yarn used for your wreath, tie off and cut any lose ends

-Hot glue this to the back of your ornament

-Glue the whole piece to your wreath

-Stick pieces of holly into your wreath, I didn’t secure them and they stayed pretty well

Valentines Wreath Supplies & Tutorial

Supplies:

-Yarn Letter/Numbers

-Valentine’s flare

-Fabric Flower

-Extra ribbon and fabric in the same family

Tutorial:

-Take off your Christmas portion, throw away the holly & don’t worry about having some missing yarn, you will be covering this portion

-Cut pieces of fabric in long 1″ stripes.  Hot glue to the back of wreath wrap and finish by gluing to the back.  You can do this to cover the part where your christmas ornament was attached or pick another point

-Add your fabric flower at any point

-Tie knots in the ribbon and hot glue to your letter

-Cut small pieces of the fabric you used in step 1, I tied many together and then hot glued them to the back of my letter

-Use the Christmas tutorial to see how to arrange and attach to letter from above

I hope you can see how easy it is to transform your wreath from one season to the next.  My friends always wonder what I do with my old wreaths since I make so many, here is a great fix for the problem!

Burlap Wreath

Nothing gets me more excited then being able to create and give a gift to a friend.  I will confess that because I enjoy this so much that it’s very difficult for me to just buy a gift I don’t get excited about, espically by a certain date.  So this is why I’m always late on your gift or one time you may get something amazing and the next year I may completely forget your birthday… I apologize in advance!

All of that brings me to our project today.  It has been my stable, my GO TO gift for baby showers (espically little girls) over the last year.  My friend Ashley showed me last year how to start these wreathes.  The one below is my very first attempt, you can see how much better I’ve gotten over the last year!

Without you knowing this I’ve been building up to this blog post.  I felt like these wreaths offer so many options that I couldn’t give you 3 tutorials in one day so I have already outlined several elements I have already taught you!

Check out these posts for ideas-

Yarn letters/numbers for your wreath

Cloth letters/numbers for your wreath

Supplies:

Straw Wreath (For your 1st attempt I would start with a smaller one)

Burlap (caution: Red burlap fades if used in direct sunlight)

Scissors for cutting Burlap (I have a old back up pair because the material tends to ruin your scissors)

Scissors for cutting cloth

Hot glue gun

Lace or Ribbon for making hanger (I like wide lace the best!)

Fabric 1/2 yard per fabric should do for most wreaths  (I use between 3-5 different types and textures of fabric)

Ribbon of different textures

Quilting pearl pins

Tutorial:

-Cut long stripes of burlap, between 4-5 inches wide

-Hot glue one end of the burlap stripe to the back side of your wreath from the inside out, at a SLIGHT angle

-Wrap the burlap around the wreath working from inside out

-When you come the end of your strip of burlap hot glue it to the back of the wreath

-Start a new stripe of burlap until your whole wreath is covered

-Attach any letters/numbers you would like to with the hot glue gun (if you are doing a large letter in the middle you can save this for last)

-Cut your fabric for the flowers, free hand cut circles in different sizes of all the fabrics

You can see from all the various wreaths that for some I only used a few of these circles in small clusters, but like the one above I think I cut circles for 2 hours.  What look would you prefer? Some like to cover their entire wreath in these circles!

-To start this process I will take 2 different fabric circles (I like to start with larger circles) and grab them in the middle making a sort of stand up cone.  I put these two together on one of the pearl pins and pin it to the wreath at a angle.  I continue this over and over again until I achieve the look I desire, the great thing is you can remove any pins you want!

-After you have all your little round circles pined to your wreath take a step back and see how you like it, I always end up cutting a few more circles and adding more!

-The final step to your fabric circles is to secure them with a dot of hot glue.  I typically leave the pins in and just add dots of glue to secure the fabric to the burlap, don’t forget a circle, if you put this on the front door those pins can come lose easy with a strong wind.

-Cut your ribbon to hang your wreath from, like Steph said last week I don’t really love my wreath hanger I had so I just hang my wreath from a nail on my front door

-If you check out the first wreath in this post you will notice I also cut some small lace ribbon and burlap type rope to wrap around my wreath for additional texture, my friend Ashley has done this with leather ribbon and it looks awesome!

There really are a million different ways you can make these wreaths, I have friends that hate burlap and they have done virtually the same thing with cloth covering the wreath instead.  Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.