transgendered.

remember this little guy? all masculine, dark and rough around the edges.

well, he got a few procedures and has now made a transformation to a woman. she's gorgeous now! amazing what a little upgrading can do:)

this was one of my estate sale finds from when hannah and i hit up newton. a little paint here and some staple gun-ing there and she's a BEAUT!

my original plan was to use this for my desk chair, but since i failed to measure (surprise, surprise....) i got it home and found that it didn't fit. bummer. i refinished it anyway and now i'm just trying to figure out where her new  home will be.

any ideas??

3 Trees, 3 Dozen Easter Eggs, and 6 Hours Later...

After seeing this craft idea in Woman's Day magazine, my mother-in-law, sis-in-law, and I all decided it would be fun to attempt ourselves:

Cute, huh? And it looked simple enough!

So we gathered our needed supplies...

• Foam Trees
• Plastic Easter Eggs
• Paper Napkins
• Scissors
• Hot Glue Gun
• Spray Adhesive
• Modge Podge
• Paintbrush
• Easter Grass/Gift Confetti
• Container for tree (optional)

...and got to work Saturday morning.

 

This is the napkin pattern I chose. It looked Easter-y enough to me and it was all Hobby Lobby had really for bright patterns (I was kinda disappointed!).  It actually ended up being really neat because we were able to create many different designs on the eggs since there were three patterns on the napkins.

Start by peeling off the layers of the napkin--this will help the napkin stick better to the egg. We realized halfway in that we had only been taking off one layer when there were really two (hard to see, and very tricky to get off!). It stuck better when we took both layers off, but it was pretty see-through, so we did a little of both. Also, on a side note, the magazine said to use white Easter eggs but those are not that easy to find. We got colored eggs which actually provided more to the design element. You'll see.

 

 

The magazine also said to cut the napkin into diamond shapes. This helps with being able to glue them on easily. However, after a while we got tired of being so meticulous and started trying different things of our own including squares, circles, and rectangles. You'll see this later too :)

 

 Now's time for the modge podge. This is Rose podging her egg (notice the large brush...yeah...she switched to a smaller one later when discovering that was much easier). And as with any time you modge podge, you have to be careful of not getting too much or too little. 

 Due to the fact that you're podging (yes, I made this word up) eggs, you have to do the first side, let it dry, then do the other side. We found it easiest to do the top and bottom last. Here are all our eggs drying!!

 Rose and I spraying the grass on our trees...taking a break from the eggs (trust me, we needed it!).

Some of my favorite eggs...

 These two were mine and both were with the diamond pattern.

 This one is one of Diane's! I liked the two patterns she chose and how they overlapped.

Rose did this one and  you can see how the color of the egg comes through and has a neat effect on the paper's pattern.

Another one of mine..using rectangular strips. This is another fav...there are some wrinkles, but you can't really see them in person unless you're inspecting the eggs.

And yet another of mine...

After you're done with the eggs and they are done drying, hot glue them to the tree The example had them all in rows, but we decided to mix it up a little, both by having different sized eggs and randomly gluing them. Looking back now, I also notice the example had an egg at the very top of the tree (I'll have to go back and add one). Anyway....after all that...

taaa-daaaa!

 

 Mine! I got brown grass because it matched the bucket I bought and goes better with the rest of my home decor.

 Rose's! Fun and bright!

 

Diane's! Very bright and fun! Definitely Easter-y.

I seriously don't think the pictures do them justice. They look really cute. We were proud of them....granted, we cracked a lot of jokes along the way about how sick we were of making eggs (really the reason we got kinda lazy about cutting out the napkins!), how our trees look like cousin "It", and how we weren't sure we would even be done in time for Easter! It did take a lot longer than we anticipated, but it was for sure worth it for the time we were able to spend together--crafting, laughing, and bonding.

We also thought how it would be fun to make similar trees for other holidays, especially Christmas. I can just envision now a white tree with bulbs or pinecones on it...hmmm....

 Proudly showing off our creations.

But we're sure glad we're done!! Haha! Love these ladies.

P.S. Have you ever done a craft that took you way longer than you anticipated?! Did you feel like it was all worth it in the end?

A Whole Shoe Box Full of 'em...Dangly Ones!

One of Eric's favorite things to say to me is from the movie Home Alone....remember when Kevin's mom is trying to buy someone's plane tickets to get back to her son on Christmas? Well...she tries to bribe an old lady with money and anything else just so they will give her a ticket. She is offering her earrings as a desperate final attempt and the wife's husband interrupts to say, "she has her own earrings....a whole shoebox full of 'em...dangly ones!" as he dangles his fingers by his ears.  Why is this one of Eric's favorite things to say to me (fingers dangling and all)? Well, it may or may not be true that I have a small earring fetish. I just love them...especially big, dangly ones! In fact, the bigger and more dangly the better! lol
I most likely have one (...or two...) shoe box(es) worth! However, I don't just stuff my precious earrings into a shoe box.....no! In fact, I am going to share with you a creative and decorative way to store your earrings!

One of my besties, Meg, made me this for one of my bdays:

Isn't it awesome?! It has definitely been put to good use. She is so creative. She bought a frame, painted it black, and put a mesh screen on it so I could hang my earrings. Maggie's parents ended up making one for her as well and her's has a stand on the back--she keeps it in her bathroom and it seriously looks great as a decoration! Maybe she will share a picture with us sometime :)

As my earring collection continues to grow...I am running out of space on my cute little frame. I am needing to acquire one more like the size of this one:

This one is my sister's. She loved mine and wanted something like it, so when she found this old screen at a junk sale it was just perfect. It's big, I love the color, and she didn't have to do anything to it! She has it hanging in their bathroom and she put little hooks on it so she can also hang necklaces and bracelets on it...genius!! My mom, sister, and I love old, antique things. I never thought growing up that I would follow after my mom's style of "country/antique" (not because I didn't like it, but just didn't think it was what I wanted--in fact, I loved my mom's style...it always felt very cozy and just like home should feel). I should've known better!  :)

Hopefully the next time we go on a junk hunt I will find a similar one! Anyone know of a junk sale coming up or a good place to get stuff like that?!

Even though Eric teases me, you know a good husband when he still buys his wife earrings for her bday, Christmas, etc....even if she does have a whole shoebox full of them! :)

P.S. Stay tuned for another awesome jewelry hanger/display post...Rach made it for me!

Taming our "craft itch"

No, this is not a post about medicinal treatments for a scratchy ailment.  :)

Maggie emailed Hannah and I last week wanting to get together to craft. She said something about having a horrible craft itch and needing to get together to solve that problem. We laughed.

We all have projects we can work on and what's better than doing them in good company?  It's a way for us to laugh together and feel like we're accomplishing something pretty too :)  As a side note, I am loving having Maggie so much closer than she used to be.  It's like a 7 minute drive to her house now and I get to see her all the time!! Craft night never would have happened before she moved.

So, last night we got together and brought our supplies to my place to craft.  I worked on some surprises for Judah's birthday, Hannah scrapbooked her and Eric's engagement, and Mags was eager to create a wreath she's been loving for awhile now.  I also got on the wreath bandwagon toward the end and started a green and white one.

Mags "rolling" one of her felt flower roses for her wreath.  

Some of my creations.  (Hannah had fun messing around with my camera and took this fun photo).

Measure twice, cut once!

Hannah scrapbooking...  truth be told, this was a faux-shot because we had forgotten to take one of her when she was actually working lol.  

None of us finished our projects; between eating 56 monster cookies (give or take a few) and Maggie's car getting hit by our neighbor, we could have used another hour or two:)  Maggie's car is alright by the way, but that sure was a strange chain of events...

Anyway, I know a lot of you out there like to create things... and sometimes it can be therapeutic to work on projects alone but nothing is better than chatting, eating and crafting with some great friends.

I FELT Crafty. Part 2

I had wanted to get this post up before Christmas was over but I think I was overly ambitious in that aspiration.  I decided to go ahead and post my creation since it really could be made in any color and put up at any time of year...

About a month ago now, I made some felt flowers for some bud vases I had around the house.  I liked them so much (and they were so easy to make) that I thought I would go ahead and create a wreath with some of the same flowers.  I've always thought of wreaths as being an old lady type thing but they can totally be a fun and modern element in any house.  

By the way, I promise I have more to talk about that home decorating, it's just been on my radar a lot lately with the holidays and it's fun to share:)

Here are the supplies I used for my wreath:

• Styrofoam wreath form
• Ribbon to wrap form in (25 ft)
• Multiple pearlized pins
• Several sheets of white and red felt
• Brads for the center of felt flowers
• Embroidery floss
• Large needle
• Nice scissors
• Pipe cleaners

I simply wrapped the wreath form in ribbon (any type of ribbon will do but one that's not silky would probably stay put the best) and secured it to the back with the pearlized pins. Why use glue if you don't have to?

I created some felt flowers via this tutorial and also attached them using the pins.  

I wrapped the pipe cleaners around a pen to curl them and attached them as well.  

Here's the semi-finished product:

I thought I was done at this point but as the weeks went on, I kept staring at the wreath just thinking it needed something more.  I like clean and simple but NOT boring and I knew a few more layers would spice it up a bit and make it look more grown up.  I found this yarn and felt wreath tutorial online and went to town to up the umpf factor.

This time I needed:

Felt

Pom Poms

Pearlized Pins

A roll of tulle (a few dollars at JoAnns)

A glue gun

I started out with the rose-like flowers and was pleased with the ease that they came together.  They may look hard but trust me, you can't mess them up!  I was digging through my craft supplies and found the tulle and pom poms and decided it would make the wreath a little more exciting to add them too.  

I love using the pins to attach things because I can move them around if things aren't in the right spot.  It can be hard to commit to placement sometimes and this takes the stress out.

Here's a tip: always create a focal point when making a wreath with embellishments... either put all the weight on one point (I like it to be at 5 or 7 O'Clock) or offset it with the most visually weight-y (how's that for technical speak?) part at the bottom.

So now that the wreath project is officially done, I think I'm ready to make another one.  Possibly something green and white that I can hang on the door all year long.  Look at these for inspiration-they could easily be adapted to fit any color or holiday.

So what do you think, would you ever feel the urge to attempt a project like this?