Cabinet Door Uses Part II

Make some chalkboards! Here are a few, they take a few minutes to make and you can hang them on the wall, put them on an easel on your counter or a book shelf or hang on your front door to say that it's "Nap Time"!
This one is my favorite... just wish I could use it in my house. The color doesn't work in my house, but it was such a great deal on the pain that I couldn't pass it up. It was a miss-tint from Walmart, $5 for the Glidden 2 in 1 Primer and Paint! Hello, that is a rockin' deal!

These are just a few of the things that I am going to be selling at a craft fair this fall. I don't know if I'm quite ready to do Etsy yet, but that might be in the near future.

Cabinet Door Uses Part I

A month ago I came into a giant loot of cabinet doors. My Aunt and Uncle bought a house from a guy that made custom cabinetry and left behind dozens of doors! So, she said I can have as many as I want, which of course the hoarder in me squealed with joy. I have several projects that I have been working on with these, some to sell at a craft fair I'm doing this fall and some just for fun.

Here is one that is a very easy and fast project. Add handles to the sides of your cabinet door to make a serving tray.

We live outside during the summer and carting all our plates, silverware, and condiments outside gets a little waring as you have to make several trips in and out. So, we use a big door with handles and can carry everything out at once.

How simple and fun is that?! You can always paint it and make it festive if you want, but I loved the finish on this one and the size made it perfect!

Hope you all have had a great week!

$10 Mirror Makeover

The other day I was in some serious need of some retail therapy. So my sweet sister-in-law offered to come over, watch my kids for an hour and let me borrow her car to get around in. Now that's love! So I hit 3 thrift stores in an hour, it was amazing. Lol

I got some good clothes, but as I was at my final stop I found this mirror. They only wanted $10 for this thing. It needed some work, but it was HUGE and there weren't any issues with the mirror or the wood. It was a mirror that went on a vanity, so it has holes on each side where it was mounted to the vanity.I took my sander to it, put some wood filler in the little holes and smoothed it all out as much as I could. Then I painted it and distressed it again.

Here she is in her new glory on our red wall that will soon be painted and decorated with other things as soon as it is painted.

This is really what sold me on the mirror was this flower detail on it. I love it!

And you can't take a picture of a mirror without doing a silly pose in it.

What thrifty things did you find this week?

Bedroom Reveal

I have had this done for some time now, but as the weather in North Idaho has been so... ridiculous, I have not had good enough light to take a picture of my room. So, I am making the best of the sunshine that FINALLY decided to grace us with its presence.

Remember my canvases from this post? Well, now you know where they went!

For the headboard I used an antique window frame (one of my many) and two shudders on each side. I took all the glass out of the window, sanded the poo out of it (as I didn't know if the paint was lead paint or not), repainted it and then distressed it a bit. I did the same to the shudders. Here is a closer view of the window.

Here is one of the shudders. I took my handy dandy palm sander and just distressed these to give them more character.

The sign in the center is something I did awhile ago as well, but I am still on the fence if I like it or not. I found the inspiration from an Etsy shop, but I cannot find the shop or the sign now.

It says:
"You are the Icing on my Cupcake
You are the Cheese to my Macaroni
You are the Jelly to my Peanut Butter
You are the Bubbles to my Bath
You are the Milk to my Cookies
You are the Ketchup to my French Fries
You are the Gravy to my Mashed Potatoes
You are the Eggs to my Bacon
You are the Ink in my Pen
You are the laces to my Sneakers"

The wording is what I took from that Etsy shop, if any of you know what shop that was, I would like to give her credit. I love the wording, but as I did the letters by hand with a paint pen they aren't super straight. Not sure if I want to redo it and make it more straight and clean. Hmm.

Well, there you have it!

The Plague

Well, we are alive... barely. My kids have been horribly sick for the last few weeks with "The Black Lung" as we call it. They both sounded like chain smokers as they coughed their guts out. Three trips to the doctor, two ear infections later and weeks of interrupted sleep and I think we will make it. When you have sick kids, you know that time to do anything other than wipe snot, be a short order cook, have super human hearing to tune out the constant crying and not putting on makeup for almost 2 weeks has made my crafting come to a complete stand still.

So I am posting something that I did about a month ago. I saw this project in a Family Fun magazine about a year ago and loved it! The link is here. It was so fun to make and turned out so cute!

There you go! Easy, cute and fun!

Now onto my daughter's birthday party that is next week. Stay tuned for all the fun eye candy that I have made for it and yet another cake!

No Apron, But Maybe Some Art?

I have all the pieces cut out for the little girl apron, just have no thread. As soon as I get some thread I will get crackin' on the tutorial!

I have mentioned before that I have been trying to finally decorate our master bedroom. We have lived in our house for almost 7 years, been married for almost 8 and we have never had a bedroom that was decorated! How crazy is that? As I have a baby sleeping on my bed right now, I can't take a picture of our super fun headboard that I made, but I can show you some wall art that I made last night with fabric that I cut out and Modge Podge.

My original plan was to do silhouettes of our faces, but realized that I would have to do some "nipping and tucking" for my double chin and that would just not look real to me. So I decided to make these. They were inspired by these pillows:

(Source: Freshly Picked)

I love these! Now, because my husband works in a place where they are not allowed to have beards, just a mustache, and no goatees, I decided that the mustache would work the best for his side. If I had done something that looked like him, there would be a blank canvas. He buzzes his hair and is usually clean shaven, so the mustache works the best. And of course for me I had to have a little hair pretty in there as I usually have something in my hair these days.

As soon as I get my bed made and my canvases hung, then I will post pictures of the room's progress.

Happy Friday!!

Layered Design Sign Tutorial

I have seen all these amazing signs lately and I've wanted one for my living room, on my big, red, empty wall, for a very long time! My mother-in-law got rid of a few signs that she had in her house and gave me this one, but with it being red and have a giant red wall, I needed to change it. Here's what I did. And, yes, I used my Cricut, but it's NOT necessary!

Supplies:

* Board for your sign

* Primer (Not totally necessary, but I had to cover the red and black paint, it also holds your paint onto the wood better.)

* Three Colors of your favorite paint, or more! (I used what I had on hand, including the free pint I got from Glidden last year!)

*Paint supplies (brush, clean area, whatever you use.)

* Masking Tape/Painter's Tape

* Contact Paper/Vinyl (You can find pre-cut letters at Michaels, Joann's and Hobby Lobby, you can also do it the old fashioned way and print off your letters on your computer, and then trace and cut on your vinyl/contact paper. Whatever works for you.)

Step 1: Paint one coat of Primer and two coats of the color your want your letters to be. I wanted mine white, so I painted just the center of the board with the white. Let your paint dry thoroughly! This is a huge step!!!! Trust me! I am saving you lots of blood pressure issues with this advice!

Step 2: After you paint has dried thoroughly (usually about an hour if its warm outside), take your masking tape/painter's tape and create a straight line on your board to keep your letters from drifting and making your sign look like you were "under the sauce" (if you know what I mean) when you made it.

Step 3: Lay your letters that you have already cut out (which should be step 1 but you get the drift.) This will allow you to evenly distribute your letters and do a rough draft of the spacing of letters.

Step 4: Remove the backing of your contact paper/vinyl and place your letters onto the board. Use the back of a spoon, a pen, a spatula, or if you're really fancy, the tool that you get to press all the sides of the vinyl down. Just make sure that there are no creases in your letters.

Step 5: Paint two coats of the main color you want your board to be. This color green is what was left over from doing the Dr. Seuss room and my stools. Lol I have a lot left over still!

Step 6: After you have let the two coats of the main color dry, place your accent design on top of the board. This is more of a "do as I say, not as I do" step. I didn't let my paint dry and I didn't make sure the creases were out of my accent design. BIG MISTAKE!! I had to go over and hand paint it after I was done, so just trust me. Get all your creases out and again do two coats of your accent color. Allow your board to sit over night, if you can, to let all the coats cure and become hardened. I did not do this either, because I'm INCREDIBLY impatient and I am very upset that I didn't let it sit. When I pulled all the contact paper off the paint was gummy and came up with the letters! So I had to hand paint each letter, which was a total pain! So please, be patient and wait.

After you pull all your contact paper off, it looks like this!

This was the best picture I could get of it. Its a good 4' wide and you can't get the full affect close up. So there you have it! The possibilities are endless! What is your favorite sign that you've seen? My sister made one that said, "You Don't Scare Me, I Have Kids" Cracked me up.

Decorating on a Shoe String Budget Part III

A few posts ago I talked about how I got some cool garage sale "Cast Offs." They were free to me, but the fact that no one bought them was shocking to me as I would have scooped them up instantly! This is one of the two sets of wooden shudders I got from my mother-in-law. They were marked at $2.00!!!!! Why no one got these was crazy, but their loss is my gain!

Now the paper bag wreath I made looked a little lost on the wall I hung it on. It needed a little something extra. So I took my handy-dandy spray paint and painted it pink.

Then I sanded it down and made it look old and wonderful!

And finally I hung the wreath on the shudder! Now that looks better, don't you think?

Decorating on a Shoe String Budget Part II

Remember the canvases I did for my son's room? Here's the Tutorial if you missed it, but I had one canvas left over. So I had my creative juices going, changing my mind several times in what direction I wanted, then taking the plunge and made this little ditty!

Here's what you need:

*Canvas, whatever size you want

*Paint for the canvas (I spray painted mine with a soft pink called "Ballet Slipper")

*Picture of birds (I found mine from my favorite vintage picture website Graphics Fairy and here is the picture I used)

*Fabric or Paper

*Branch

*Glue Gun

*Modge Podge

*Little Silk Flower (Optional)

Step 1: Paint Canvas. Then cut out your birds using your picture as your stencil. I used Fabric for mine, but you can use paper as well. Then Modge Podge the back of your paper/fabric and stick to your painted canvas.

Step 2: Glue your branch onto your canvas, making it look like your birds are perched on the branch. Now, I thought that the canvas looked a little bland, so I glued little flowers and leaves from a stem of flowers I had from our wedding 7 years ago. Kind of makes me happy to use those flowers for things for my daughter.

And Ta da! A simple, sweet picture. I love it and catch myself stopping just to look at it.

Decorating on a Shoe String Budget Part I

I guess, technically, this should be Part II with the canvases for my son's room being the first installment. However, this one was almost so cheap it was silly! I found this tutorial on making a wreath with paper lunch bags. I loved it! However I didn't have the fun paper cutter that she had, I had to get a little creative in what I used. I took the lid to my Crystal Light and traced it, then cut out the circles. I layed each bag out and stacked them, so I could cut out many at a time. Now she says to use 8-10 paper bags, I, on the other hand, used about 30. I guess I figure that if you do something, might as well go big! Lol I also used the Dollar Store wreath like she did and her template for the butterflies. This project cost me... (drum roll)... $0.00!!!!!! I already had everything that I needed! SWEET!!!!! Hope it inspired you!

My next post will be about our "wonderful" carpet experience. And by "wonderful" I mean holy smokes of a nightmare! That's why I haven't been posting lately. When I am in a bad mood, I stay away from blogging because I tend to be really negative, and who wants to read anything from a crabby mom? Not I!!!! Hope you all are enjoying your summer so far!

Easy, High Impact, Cheap Canvas Wall Art Tutorial

Hello there! I have been a busy little bee as of late! Making things for the kids rooms' and repurposing clothes for all of us (more on that later). One thing that I have been wanting to do is some wall art for the little man's "Route 66" room. I have painted it a... well, I guess the only way to really describe it is to call it "Cookie Monster Blue." No joke. But when all the furniture and new carpet is in there, you will love it as much as I do! And even if you don't... I love it, so that's all that matters. My poor children have to suffer because I grew up with only white walls at all times. So I go a little crazy in the color department at times because I want lots of color in my house. Onto my post!!!

Material Needed:

*Canvas (I got mine at Michaels as a 2-pack for $4.49! Score!) Use whatever size you want.)

*Craft Paint

*Sponge Brush and Fine Tip Brush

*Freezer Paper (You can also use Contact Paper if you wanted as well. You just need something that will stick onto your canvas.)

*Cricut Cutter (You don't have to use it at all! I just did because I can. You can also print off the image you want and use a razor cutter to cut along the outside.)

*Iron

Step 1: Cut out your image you want out of the freezer paper. Easy.

Step 2: Place the Freezer Paper (waxy side down) onto your canvas, then with your iron set on the hottest heat setting and NO steam iron your image onto your canvas.

** Tip: Because the canvas has an empty back it is hard to get your iron to evenly go over the wax paper. So I took a hard back book, placed a towel/fabric over the top, and put the canvas over the top of the book. I'm sure there are easier ways or more proper ways of doing it but I had to think on my toes and used what I had on hand!

This is the towel over the book.

Step 3: After ironing, being very careful not to burn your finger tips off, run your finger or the back of a butter knife over the edges of the wax paper to make sure that the edges are on tight. If they aren't, just take the iron over it again.

Step 4: PAINT! Take your brush and move out from the center of your Freezer Paper, making sure not to lift the edge of your paper. This will allow your edges to be more straight, however you will probably have to go over it with a fine tip brush after you lift your stencil up.

Step 5: The hardest part.... wait. Make sure your paint is completely dry before lifting your stencil up.

Step 6: If your edges aren't real straight, go over it with a fine tip brush. I have the most unsteady hand in the history of the world, so if I can do it, so can you! Just go slow and make small strokes with your brush. Work from the inside details and work your way out. Then wait for it to dry and then you are done!!!

As you can see the edges are a little spotty here.

Here are my finished products for the little man's room.

Here are all three that I did with the same technique.

The next one I am making is for my daughter's room and I'm thinking I'm going to use spray paint! I will keep you posted!