Ruffles & Ric Rac: crafting

Showing posts with label crafting. Show all posts

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Thrifty Mantel Makeover & Tutorial

I've been wanting to dress up our front living room for awhile now. We originally had kind of a country outdoors theme going on. I've spent the last two months on bed rest with a bad back. When I saw this cute wreath over at The Little Brown House I knew it was something I could do from bed! My sweet mom picked the things up from the store that I needed to get it started.

Coffee filters...

They ended up being the flat kind instead of the giant cupcake paper kind...I was worried about that, but LOVE the way it turned out!

Start by opening up the filter...

Then fold one side in towards the other...

Fold the bottom and push a straight pin through it, then push it into a styrofoam wreath...

Build your rows so that you aren't able to see any of the white styrofoam...

The first day that I was able to get up I quickly gathered supplies to paint my ugly gold frame. It is and old frame that I had in our junk pile. It is made out of plastic and painted a ~~cheesy~~ pretend gold...

It had a mirror in it, I had no clue this print was behind it...

I primed it with Krylon white primer, then I spray painted it with Krylon glossy black. I hung the wreath with a satin white ribbon...that I don't actually like. I'm planning to change that out...

Not too bad for the price!

For a full list of parties I link to click HERE!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Modge Podge Name Letters

I had so much fun doing these! We have a fantastic wood store locally - The Wood Connection - I bought the unfinished letters there. They have a great variety of sizes and fonts. I'm positive I went with this font because I simply could not RESIST the adorable curly "i" dot.

I sanded and sealed the wood first (not sure if you actually have to do that). Then I picked out the paper I wanted to use and matched the paint to it. I traced the letter on the backside of the paper and cut it out...it took a little bit of fussing to get it just right. I painted each letter, and then used Modge Podge to apply the paper. I thought this floral pattern was just so sweet...

And I'm a sucker for polka dots...

For the "f" I just painted it brown and highlighted the edges with pink...

I love these stripes! They remind me of an ice cream shop...

And I certainly couldn't live without this pink and white damask pattern...

Finished it off with pink and white polka dot ribbon tied it together with chocolate grosgrain.

I keep thinking I should add a cute flower somewhere...and maybe a button or something. Maybe one of these days!

For a full list of parties I link to click HERE!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Cute Picture/Bow/Card Display

We've been decorating our 3 year olds room. It's pink, brown, and white. I of course couldn't live without a cute board to hold things on! I found an old ugly frame in our storage room that was holding a mirror (measured 16 x 24). I had some of those thin canvas boards on hand (also 16 x 24), and some thin batting from making rag quilts. I also had white spray paint. I bought some material at Wal-Mart. I also bought plain white flat thumbtacks. I wanted some extra sparkle....the cute little self-adhesive pink jewels from the scrapbook isle did the trick, I just stuck them to the thumbtacks.....

Here is the thin batting that I used...

I used spray adhesive to glue the batting to the canvas board, and to glue the material to the batting. Then I laid out my ribbon, I made sure to measure the spaces between and mark where I wanted them. Next I attached the ribbon by leaving them a couple inches longer on each side so that I could glue them down on the backside (I used super glue for that). Once I had the thumbtacks in I turned the board over and hammered the back of the tacks to bend and lay them flat. I sprayed my frame white (ended up having to do a layer of primer because the ugly paint kept bleeding through). Put my board in the white frame and hung it on the wall....

My plan was to hold pictures or bows, but right now it's holding one picture, a 2 dollar bill, birthday cards, and Valentine's cards. She LOVES it!....