Chandelier mobile how-to

My daughter has been designing her "princess room" for the past few months.  She doesn't yet have her own room, nor will she for about a year, but dream on, girl.  Luckily for her, I figured out how to make a "chandelier" (a must-have for any princess's bedroom) out of things that were on sale at Hobby Lobby.  Since as usual I forgot to take step-by-step pictures, I'll just post the final product and hope you figure it out.

I started with a wire wreath form.  They only come in dark green, which is obviously not a princess color, so I had to paint mine.  It was a sloppy job but you can't tell with all the stuff on it.  I added some sparkly garland and wrapped it around the wreath, then added the hanging crystals.  These are all found in the Christmas section of Hobby Lobby.  Yeah, I don't know why they have chandelier stuff in the Christmas section, either.  Your guess is as good as mine.

The middle part is actually an ornament that looks like a tiny chandelier.  I didn't make it from scratch or anything.  All you have to do to get it is sift through their 73,000 Christmas ornaments and find one like it. Easy, right? To hang that in the middle, I strung a wire across the wreath and hung it from that.  The wire was gold, so it didn't match the rest, but I don't hear anyone complaining.

And that's it.  Definitely not as complicated as it looks.

 Ignore her expression.  She actually loves it.

 Now we just get to sit in her room and watch it catch light all day!

Dresser makeover

Hi, I'm Lindsey and I like to have imaginary conversations with furniture.

I also have this superhero complex where I often feel like I'm rescuing furniture from an abused past or a bleak future.  I will find a chair on the side of the road that screams, "Help me!  I lived with three cats and they ripped a hole in my cushion!" or "A fat guy sat on me every day for 20 years.  I just can't take it anymore."

But sometimes I have conversations with new furniture.  I was at Ikea the other day and spotted a dresser that I had seen online before.  It looked so sad.  "Look at me.  Some bachelor is going to take me home and stick me in his room and put an ugly art print and an alarm clock on me.  And he'll only choose me because I'm cheap and have absolutely nothing interesting about my design.  And then after two years when he moves he'll sell me for $5 on Craigslist because I never meant anything to him."  And I said, "Not today, dresser.  I'll take you with me and give you a facelift and a home, and put an original painting on you.  You're going to look like you came from Anthropologie.  And even though my kids may color on you and confuse you for a ladder, you will be loved for the rest of your little life."

Well, here's how it turned out.  I forgot to take "before" pictures, so just imagine a very light unstained pine dresser with wooden knobs.  I started with giving it a coat of dark walnut stain, and I took those little knobs and hand-painted them into cute little flowers.  I love how it makes my room come together.

My daughter and I had a major discussion on how to style the top of the dresser.  She did not want the mask on there.  She kept taking it off and hiding it.

Driftwood jewelry hanger

One of my absolute favorite things about DIYing is that you can take something with sentimental value and turn it into something functional.  I guess you could say that the story of this jewelry holder actually began 2 years ago when my husband and I were on a trip to Washington.  On our way back from the rain forest at Olympic National Park, we stopped by Rialto beach.  I was completely taken with the scenery; fascinated by the lines of the driftwood.  I took a small piece home with me, knowing that I would do something with it, but not knowing what.  

That poor piece of wood sat on my shelf for a couple of years.  A few months ago, after my daughter went through my necklaces for the 824th time, I decided to make a jewelry hanger.  It was a couple of weeks before it occurred to me to use the driftwood, but it was a perfect match.  All I had to do was buy a pack of screw-in hooks, and they went in easily.  I have a pretty ugly bathroom right now, but I do love the beachy theme of my jewelry hanger, and I think it's going to look lovely once we have a nicer bathroom to put it in.

Wire-wrapped earrings

Hello there.  It's been awhile.  I'm not even going to come up with an excuse for my absence, though, because that would be very boring.  I'm here to post about these adorable earrings I made a few months ago.

I had planned to give these to my mom for Christmas, but I gave her an oil painting instead (which was obviously a better present).  I happily kept these for myself and they are my favorite earrings I own.  They were also really easy to make-- I found some earring hooks, these blue glass beads (briolette is the actual term) that had holes drilled across the top, and brass wire.  I used the wire to attach the hooks and then looped it around the briolette several times to finish it off.  The only thing I would have changed, though, is that I should NOT have used brass wire.  I had worked with copper wire in the past and it holds its shape nicely; not so for brass.  I became aware of this when I opened the package and the wire sprang out of it like my butt when I take off my skinny jeans.  As you can see, the wire wrapped around the briolettes only loosely-- not at all like the neat, tight wrapping I had in mind.