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.  

Super easy fall decorating

I'm always on the lookout for crafts that are easy enough to do with my daughter.  Today I went to BigLots and bought a few decorative pumpkins for $1 each.  They were pretty cute on their own, but they did look a little cheap, and when I brought them home I realized that I didn't love the colors.  That is when I remembered that I had this paint.  As you can see by the price tag still on it, it was not expensive.  And I think I got it when paints were 40% off (craft stores have sales like that all the time.) 

And painting them was easy enough for Violet to do.  

 Here are the two I did; I applied a pretty thin layer because I liked the different colors to show through. Also, they were much more metallic than they look in these pictures.  They didn't photograph too well.

 Violet applied the paint much more liberally, as 2-year-olds noramally do.

I have used this metallic paint on a couple of different projects and I will say that I am a huge fan.  They also have several different colors, and it would be cool to see how silver or bronze ones turn out.  Happy Autumn!

A non-commital makeover

Remember this fabric dressing room that I made for my parents' play room last summer?  It actually turned out really well. Unfortunately, kids under the age of 6 don't really care who sees them in their underwear and they think it's fascinating to pull apart PVC joints.  So it was short-lived.

 

But yesterday I bought a new bookcase for my living room and almost immediately decided that it needed something extra.  I had seen bookshelf makeovers where people put wallpaper on the backing, so I decided to try out fabric.  The fabric from the dressing room happened to fit it exactly, so I decided that it was meant to be.  I did have one dilemma, though: I wasn't sure if my husband would like it. I know that most people's husbands could care less about home decor as long as they don't have to sleep in a pink bed.  I do not have a typical husband. 

 

Then a light bulb went off.  I laid the fabric over the back of the shelf, put the backing over it, and nailed it down on the sides but not the top or bottom. The backing held the fabric in place but since the fabric wasn't actually attatched to anything, I could slide it out in case my husband decided he didn't like it. 

 I then stuck it against the wall. Nobody has to know that there is a mess of extra fabric behind it.  Now my toddler can take it over and put all her crap on it.  Wonderful.

Chalkboard place cards

This post was originally supposed to be a knock-off of these place cards that I saw in my parents' Williams-Sonoma catalog ($29 for a set of 4).  I now live dangerously close to a dollar store but when I went to look for mini-frames there, they only had them in a chrome finish, and that didn't really accomplish the cute country look I was going for.  So I abandoned the frame idea and went for a different approach to these. 

Williams-Sonoma place cards

 I found some wood plaques for 69 cents each at Michaels.  I got some chalkboard spray paint (about $5 at Lowes) and it was pretty self-explanatory from there.  (Please excuse the smeared chalk and tiny feet in the picture.  My daughter is now 2 and doesn't take naps, so staging good pictures during daylight hours is nigh impossible.  And when she saw the chalk she obviously thought this project was way too fun not to mess with.)

Why Batman?  Well, look at the shape and color of the plaque.  I couldn't stop the "Na na na na na na na na... BATMAN!" from going through my head.

So there you have it, four for less than $8 instead of four for $29.  And you could easily do the little frames if you were to find some in the right size and color.  They would also work great as food labels for a buffet party.  Now I just need to throw a party fancy enough to use them.  It may be awhile before I do.

And as for a product review on the chalkboard paint... it worked fine.  The chalk wiped off cleanly with a damp cloth.  It didn't come off too easily with a dry cloth, but that's probably because my base was made of wood and the chalk got caught in the grain.  That being said, I'm not sure if I could tell the difference between chalkboard paint and black matte spray paint.  I'll try it on another project before making up my mind on this product.

Back in Action

I know, a 6-month gap in between posts is inexcusable.  But I'm going to come up with some excuses anyways.  First, I had a baby.  And in case you didn't know, I tend to use the "I just had a baby" bit as an excuse to get out of pretty much anything.  But while I did get back in to sewing after about a month or so, I just never got up the motivation to blog about it.  I fully intended to but I just wasn't cranking out enough projects to have a steady flow of posts again.  After awhile I figured that nobody cared anyways and I may as well abandon all hope of being a productive sewing blogger.

Then last weekend I was having a friend take me to pick up something I found on Craigslist and she asked me about the blog.  I told her the same lame excuses that I just told everyone else and she said "Oh, you and your sister always used to post really cool things on there."  And then I got all teary-eyed and said, "Really? You thought they were cool?  You.... care about the blog?"  (Just kidding.  I didn't get teary-eyed and sentimental.  At least not on the outside...) I then told her about some of the projects I had been working on lately and being the supportive friend that she is, she assured me that they were cool and I should start posting again.  So here I am.

And I know, I don't have any project on this post.  But I have an old wingback chair, fabric, and chalkboard paint in my arsenal, so I can assure you that there will be some interesting things coming up soon.

Also, we now have a Pin It button, but it's only visible if you click on an individual post, and not on the main blog.  Lame, I know.  I'm working on it.

Crib bumpers: what I learned.

I never used crib bumpers when Violet was a baby.  Technically, the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't recommend them because the baby can roll into them while it is sleeping and suffocate on them.    However, when Violet was about 6 months old, she started doing this:

 Yep, that's Violet with her legs wedged between the crib slats.  When she was first learning to crawl, she would only go backwards and then this would happen.  At that point I started wishing that I had bumpers.  But I never got around to making any.

Until this pregnancy.  This is what I did with my on-sale designer fabric.  I love how they turned out.  I feel like they are gender-neutral enough to use with either a boy or a girl, since I don't know which I'm having.

They weren't as easy as I had planned.  I underestimated how many ties I would need (I ended up using 8 for each long side and 4 for each short side).  I also bought thick satin ribbon for the ties.  It looks pretty, but thinner, coarser ribbon is actually easier to tie.  I also didn't think about how expensive foam is (to fill the bumpers).  I resorted to cutting up an old foam mattress pad and  using that as the filling.  It actually works quite nicely.

I should let you know that you probably won't be saving any money by making these yourself.  You can find ones that aren't too expensive online.  But if you want to be able to customize the fabric and make them exactly match your room, this is the way to go.  Besides, if you buy them, you won't have the frustration of messing up and redoing fulfillment of making these on your own.

And as for the safety part of these, I have decided that if the baby starts to roll (which Violet never figured out how to do), then I will take them out.  Just to be safe.  But I have no reservations about putting them back in the second this kid learns how to crawl backwards.

Online store rave

I don't normally go for designer labels.  The budget-consious side of me simply will not let myself be won over by a brand name.  I do, however, LOVE designer fabrics.  (Amy Butler, anyone?)  Maybe it's because they're not really any more expensive than normal fabrics.  The only problem is that I can never seem to find designer fabrics in fabric stores; only online.  And I don't like buying fabrics online.  I like to be able to see and feel the fabric before I purchase it.  I like being super specific with how much I tell the lady at the cut counter to cut for me (I've been known to have them hold it up for me and show me what 1/2 yard would look like, and so on).  I like using the coupons that let you get anything in the store for 40% off.  And most of all, I hate paying for shipping and having to wait 4-7 business days before I can start sewing.

Okay, maybe I'm high-maintenance.  But I was able to let that all go today.  Today I found a site called quilthome.com.  It looks like any normal fabric site, and the prices are almost identical to other sites (because apparently someone decided that $8.75 per yard is the golden number for designer fabrics, and they seem to cost that much no matter what site you go to.)  But, they do have a huge selection of designer fabrics and if you look at the right side of the page, they have a bar that says "Specials" where you can get fabrics for up to 60% off.  These aren't fabrics that are on clearance because they're too ugly to sell, either.  The specials change every day.  Above that, they have a coupon special that changes daily.  They also let you purchase in half-yard quantities.

I was able to get this fabric for $3.58 per yard (normally $8.75)

I ended up saving so much money that I got coordinating fabric ($4.03 per yard) for the same project.  I had planned on just going to a fabric store and buying something solid to go with the fabric, but I'm pretty sure this is a better deal.

After that, I didn't mind spending the money on shipping.  Score.

Fancy little dress

Remember the dress I made for my anniversary?  I had a ton of leftover fabric from it.  For Violet's birthday I threw together this cute, fancy dress.  I put a liner in it (which I had never done before) so it was kind of tricky, but I'm glad I did because the fabric is not super soft.  I also added some sheer sequined fabric to the skirt to make it look less plain. 

 The flowers required a LOT of cutting and hand-stitching.  I hate hand stitching. 

 And I found the perfect buttons for the back. 

I can't wait for her to try it out on Sunday!

Happy Halloween! Costume review

I'm not sure I will ever buy a Halloween costume.  I mean, is there any other day of the year where you can just go nuts with creative sewing?  I think not.  Here's the lineup from this year.

Violet was a chicken.  My inspiration for her costume was her yellow, feathery hair.  I just sewed some felt feathers to a yellow onesie and stitched a feather boa around the neck.  The shiny pants were actually made by her dad.  He did a great job.

 And I was a cow.  I felt that it was an appropriate getup for a pregnant woman, and it went well with the chicken.  Plus, it was super easy.  I made an udder out of some pink fleece and sewed it onto a white shirt.  My husband made me a cute little ribbon that buttons in the back to hold my cow bell.  I also wore some devil horns that were spray-painted to make them look more like cow horns, even though they're not in this picture.

I suppose I could have painted black spots on my clothes, but I didn't want to ruin the shirt.  I would have done it if I had a cheaper shirt to do it on.

Oh well.

Maternity dress (sort of)

A couple of months ago, I inherited some clothes that my sister didn't want anymore.  Among those was this cute white dress, which at the time had no sleeves and a see-through-ish part that went a little too far down on the chest area.  All I had to do was make some sleeves for the arms and a bib for the chest and sew them in.  That's the great thing about white clothes; I always have fabric to match!  Anyways, I put a sash with it and it turns out that it fits me as a maternity dress.

 I did have "before" pictures, but I guess I deleted them before uploading them.  Oops.  And I know these pictures are cropped really weirdly, but it's because I am 7 months pregnant and having major body image issues.

My only question is, if this fits me NOW, when I'm 7 months pregnant, why did my size 00 sister ever buy it in the first place? 

Flower tee

This project consisted of a plain blue tee, purple fabric that had been ruffled up and sewn onto the tee in a circle, and gray fabric sewn on in the shape of a stem.  The only hard part about it: getting Violet so sit still for a picture.

Houndstooth skirt for fall

Last Christmas I made Violet a cute little pleated skirt.  Unfortunately she grew out of it before it was even washed.  So, I tried again with a new fabric.  I gave Violet a choice between brown and pink plaid and houndstooth.  I thought she would go for the more colorful one but when she saw this one, she literally gasped and yelled, "Blackwhite stars!"

It was pretty simple-- a pleat in the front, pleat in the back, a waistband, and some elastic.  I lined it so that it wouldn't be so itchy.

 It turned out pretty cute.  The fabric is really thick and I don't like the way it bunches in the back, but that's mainly due to the fact that I made it a little big so that she could grow into it.

Polo shirt to dress

My dad is so sweet. A few months ago he gave me this purple polo shirt that had gotten too short for him.  His idea was for me to wear it as a maternity shirt.  Instead, I got really excited and said, "I think I'm going to make Violet a dress out of this!" And he gave me a look that said, "You're crazy, but do whatever you want."  So I did.

I cut out a little dress pattern while trying to use as many of the existing  hems as I could. I couldn't decide if I wanted to do buttons or a zipper (I hate them both) so I just made the neck big enough for her head to fit through.  I made the sleeves out of the sleeves from the shirt and added some embellishments from fabric from another shirt I had.  It worked perfectly. 

DIY art

Last week we actually had a pintucksandruffles reunion.  I flew out to see Brittany and help her get her new place set up.  We didn't do anything too exciting besides paint and shop, but we did have a lot of time to think about home decor.

And I started thinking about art.  I love to paint, although I don't do it nearly as often as I should.  But when people find this out about me, I always get the same response: "How cool!  I wish I was aristic."  And I always want to say, "Well, you play the piano, don't you?  I bet your mom made you practice every day when you were little.  And you probably weren't good right away.  And I really bet that if you practiced painting every day, you'd be much better at it than I am."  But for some reason, not many people enroll their children in art lessons or make them participate in an art team that travels from school to school and competes.  That enthusiasm is saved for music and sports.

So, why not try it?  I put some pictures here that wouldn't require much skill.  Sunsets are always easy.  I did a sunset once and it took me three hours.  And I painted it with a knife.  The middle picture is a litle more complicated but when you look at it closely, it's just a bunch of vertical stripes and dots on a blue and brown background. And the last one-- seriously, anyone could do that.  If you don't have a lot of technical skill you can always call it abstract.  Don't have any good ideas?  Just copy something you like.  (I went to a lecture by an art critic once-- he said real artists do it all the time.)

by Wendy Puerto

by papermoth on etsy

Happy painting.  I promise, it feels awesome when you finish one.