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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Bra Organizer ;)

          I have like 20 bras. This is completely unnecessary I know, but when Victoria Secret has a sale, I just can't help myself. LOL Anyways, I have a bra drawer and it's overflowing with them and on top of that it's crushing my pretty bras.  

          I decided I needed to come up with some kind of bra organizer so that it's easier for me to get to them.  I'm telling you sometimes when digging in my drawer I am reunited with a bra I haven't seen in months and it's kind of like Christmas. Haha! I just got a piece of wood out of the garage that we already had cut.  (It's scrap wood from another project.)  I went ahead and made the holes for the screws I planned on using to attach it to the wall in my closet. I then covered it with fabric. I only have girly fabric (like for kids) lol but I used it anyways. I used a hot glue gun.  I used 10 white nails (because they look prettier) for hangers for the bras. 

          I plan on making another to put right under the one I made for Victoria Secret's next semi annual sale. Haha My plain jane ones can stay in the drawer. ;)

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Patterned Alphabet Letters for Magnectic Dry Erase Board


          My daughter has epilepsy and because of all of the seizures she has had and medications she has been on in the past 3 years, she is developmentally delayed.  Basically every time she has a seizure it's like hitting a reset button and she forgets everything she learned.  Despite that, I have tried practically everything to help her learn.  This is one of my projects I did to for her.  

Materials needed:
Magnetic dry erase board
Adhesive magnetic strip
Pack of patterned and textured scrapbook paper
Wood letters
Exacto knife
Cutting board
Craft Glue Stick
Mod Podge


          I used the Blossom Butterflies Stack and the So-So Sweet Glitter paper packs (4.5x6.5 size) from Hobby Lobby to cover the letters with.  I was sure the bright colors and different patterns and textures would catch my daughter's eye.  She loves butterflies and flowers and basically anything pretty and colorful, so I knew it would be a hit.....and it was!

          After I glued the letters to the paper I chose it was time to start cutting!  I took out my cutting board and placed a letter (paper side down) and started carefully cutting the paper, by tracing around the letter with my exacto knife.  Ok, now do that again 25 more times.  

          Almost done!  Next I took all of the letters outside and placed them on a huge piece of cardboard.  I sprayed the letters with mod podge.  I probably put about 4-5 coats between drying times.  All I had left to do was to hang the magnetic dry erase board.  When the letters dried I put them on the board.  I also have an open window like thing above the board so I have a pink basket where I keep her dry erase markers and also a place to store the letters when we are not using them!
         


Kids Message Corkboard

          I wanted to make message boards for my 2 girls rooms but also wanted to be able to be able to tack things on it if we ever needed to.  This was really simple to make.

Materials used:

 17x23 Board Dudes corkboard with wood frame (if I could find one that large without a frame I would have bought it.)
 
Jessie James Big Glitter Dots

5/8 Satin Ribbon

 1 yard of fabric (I only used about 1/2 because it's folded in half.)

A pair of scissors & a hot glue gun
 
Instructions:
 
Remove wood frame.
 
Cut your choice fabric in half.
 
Lay fabric evenly over the cork board.
 
Use your hot glue gun to secure excess fabric to the back of the board.
 
Lay ribbon over the board diagonally where you want it and then cut and repeat until you have the criss cross look. (I didn't measure mine so make sure you leave extra to glue to the back)
 
When you are done glue the ribbon down in the back.
 
For every time the ribbon crosses I glued a glitter dot and also added a dab of glue under the ribbon to the board and in between the 2 ribbon pieces. (This way all of the ribbon and the embellishments are secure.)
 
Lastly, I used a piece of ribbon and glued each end to both sides of the top of the corkboard. Now you can hang it up! Done!
 

 





Love Tile Collage

          I made this one for my husband for Valentine's Day I believe.  It's kind of girly, but he loves it and it matches our bedroom.  Win, win situation. 

          I am not sure what this wood is called but it isn't like the composite wood. The top of it is smooth and it cuts well without damaging the edges so I decided to use this.  I paid for a huge sheet of this for about $8.  Home Depot and Lowe's are only supposed to cut large pieces, so I had them do what they could and let my husband finish the rest with his jigsaw (and he complained that a skill saw would work better but he didn't have one....yet) 

          Other materials I used for this project are: 12x12 scrapbook paper, 9 4x6 pictures, wood glue, craft glue stick, wood letters, wood heart, 2 sawtooth picture hangers, exacto knife and acrylic paint.

          I used 11 pieces of this wood for my project.  The large piece is 12x12, the 2nd largest piece that says love is 5x12 and the 9 tiles are 4x4 inches.

How to make:    

1.) Paint sides of all 11 pieces & your wood letters and heart. (Whichever colors you choose.)

2.) Once everything is dry, glue scrapbook paper to large pieces with the craft glue stick.  (I used the exacto knife to cut off excess paper on both.)

3.) Glue your wood letters to the 5x12 wood using wood glue.  Set aside to dry.

5.) Glue your pictures to the 4x4 squares. Let dry and then flip them over and use your exacto knife to cut off the excess photo paper.

6.) Glue your squares to the larger piece of wood making sure the spacing is even between all of them.

7.) Once dry put sawtooth picture hangers on the back. You're done!





 


         

"Shabby Chic" Sea Shell Frame

              My family and I went on a vacation to the beach, and we had pictures taken while we were there, right on the beach.  As soon as we got home from the beach I had all the pictures printed so that I could hang a few on the wall.  Normally I just go with black frames, but for this I really wanted the so called "shabby chic" look.  I figured white, banged up, old looking frames with some sea shells would def give it the beach feel.  

          The frame I was hoping to find was one with a flat surface but I couldn't find one that didn't cost way too much.  (At least too much for me to take home and destroy.)  I found these frames at Walmart at one of the end caps at the end of the frame aisle.  I had a hard time finding frames that were actually wood and didn't just appear to be wood.  The frames I bought were a super dark, almost black color and were only about $3 a piece!  

          All of the instructions I found for making this look included things like me sanding the frame FIRST and then painting it with a dark color, then white, sanding it again and using a rag and an ink pad.  That sounded like too much work.  So instead I just painted these already dark wood frames over with white acrylic paint.  I used small pieces of sand paper to essentially mess up the edges, corners and various other places on the frames.  I guess it depends on how old and damaged you want it, so I won't tell you how much to sand.  (If you do too much and you don't like it, you can always paint over those parts and try again.)  

           The blue sand bucket in the picture below was full of shells from our trip.  I arranged the shells on the frames the way I wanted them and then carefully starting gluing them one by one.  I used loctite heavy duty super glue.  I feel like I went a little over board with the shells on the larger frame, but I still love it!
        

Tv Tray turned into a bedside table

          This isn't the first thing I have made or in this case redone.  I have the set of 4 tv trays and well for 1 they are ugly and 2 we never use them. We eat dinner at the table like normal people and when I choose to eat on the couch it's with a pillow in my lap.  I was bored trying to see what I had in the garage that I could cover in paint and I came across 1 of these tv trays.  

           So I set this table up in the garage and I thought I should probably attempt to sand some of this but I am lazy so I decided I'd take my chances without.  I painted the top of this with white acrylic paint.  I know that isn't what it's for but that is what I had at the moment and hey, it did the job.  My paint brush left streaks even after about 3-4 coats so I used a roller to smooth it out and that worked pretty well.

          I was going to leave the legs black but I decided it would look better if it was all white.....but I was using acrylic paint and I was running out.  I started rummaging through my husband's stuff and found some semi-gloss oil based white paint for interior.  This crap is sticky and will NOT come out of the paint brush and is very difficult to get off your hands and your wedding ring (which I forgot to take off, oops!) Anyways the oil worked as a sealant and that paint is never coming off those legs.  Next time I will read the entire paint can before using. :) LOL

          I wanted light pastel like colors to match my daughter's room so I used the acrylic paint that I already had from a previous project. They were too dark for a pastel look so I mixed them with whatever white I had left, which is why they are not as light as they should be. ;)  I decided to cut  out circles out of card stock. I had to fix some of the edges of the circles free handed....but I think I did a pretty good job.  If you want this to be a little easier, I  suggest you buy a premade stencil  to put polka dots on something.  The only sealant like product I have is Mod Podge Spray but that worked fine. 

          So there it is! Simple bedside table for my 7 year old and she looooves it!  Stay tuned, I plan on trying to figure out how to attach some kind of matching basket for a drawer.