Chalkboard Love- More DIY Chalkboards

I raided my mother in law's goodwill box (things she was donating) a few weeks ago and found this trivets...

I thought they would be the perfect base for a chalkboard so I painted them with chalkboard spraypaint. I used my Silhouette to cut green vinyl to decorate my chalkboards. Once the vinyl was cut, I laid out my design...

One is divided in half with a shopping list on the left and a menu on the right. The other has the letters for the days of the week down the left side, it could be used as a menu or as a calendar. I attached the vinyl with transfer paper and bought $2 easels at Wal-mart and they were ready to go!

The one shown below will be part of my upcoming giveaway that will take place once I officially reach 100 followers (only 7 more people!). So it could be yours!

The other one now belongs to my dear Allie, whose birthday is this weekend. 

I know that not everyone has a Silhouette but with any hard surface and a can of chalkboard spray paint, you can create a chalkboard. With a cheap easel you can easily display it for ease of use. You could also attach magnets to the back and put the entire chalkboard on your fridge.

My vacation just started and I am hoping to get some projects completed next week! I will be posting them as I complete them! Happy Friday!!

Wooden Crate Shelves

The entryway to our house is in our living room, meaning there is no separation between the front door and all the action in the living room. We have had a little entryway table set up, it works great as a place to drop keys and mail but that is about all...

A while back, I added a trellis coat rack to the wall opposite of this so we had a place to hang coats...

Recently I have been wanting something to put under the coat rack to put shoes and purses. Yesterday we went to Guardian Angel Thrift (a local thrift store) and I found some wooden crates that I thought would be perfect to stack and make some shelves.I bought 2 of them and put them under the coat rack in the entryway...

I think they look pretty cute! I could always paint them or stain them down the road but for right now, I am happy with them! They are a nice addition to our entryway, you can see them when you walk in but from the living room they aren't visible, which will be nice if it gets a little crazy back there :)

Tray Makeover- Craft Night

Our local pottery painting venue "Crazy Glaze" had a Diva Night tonight for women only, a BYOB type of thing with pizza and pottery. I decided to get a group of friends together to go but when I called to make a reservation, all of the spots were taken. So, since we already had everyone on board to get together, I decided to host craft night at my house. We kept the menu the same and had pizza but instead of pottery, we painted trays.

I gave a sneak peek of our set up in my last post but here it is again for those of you who missed it...

After the ladies arrived, we ate dinner and then got started....

 Painting...

 Cutting out designs on the Silhouette...

Drying the paint so we can apply our designs...

A little free hand painting action...

Using ModgePodge to apply our paper designs...

Mica's awesome moose tray!

Kara's tray- I LOVE this design- I may have to copy this!

Sarah's lovebird monogram tray!

Allie's monogram tray (I didn't get to get a picture of it completely dry!)

Erin's bird tray!

Tonight was so much fun! I am happy with how everyone's trays turned out! This was a super cheap and easy project. I got the metal trays from the dollar store (they are pizza trays) and bought 99 cent bottles of paint so that we had a large selection. We used the Silhouette to cut out designs in cardstock and then just used modge podge to put them on the trays. Can't wait to do craft night again soon!

My Wishlist

I am at a place where everything I have been making cannot be shown until after upcoming birthdays take place! I can't wait to show you what I have been working on! In the meantime, I have been itching to purchase a few things....which brings me to my wish list:

 I love this set of mugs and the cute little stand from pier one...

 via

I really want this sweet ring from Etsy.....I would like it to say "k&g" instead of a monogram.

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I have been searching for a cute camera bag that looks and functions like a purse while it protects my camera. This Etsy shop lets you pick a vintage purse and then they build a padded insert to protect your camera. They also just sell inserts for you to put in your own purses.

 via

 I love these gurgling pots! They are also sold at Carolina Pottery for $25, which I thought was a little high at first but now that I have shopped online for them, I think it is a good deal!

 via

I have been dreaming of all that I can destroy and refinish if I only had this cutie mouse sander from Home Depot. They recently lowered the price by $15!

 

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I guess that will do for now :) If you follow me on Pinterest, you have seen this stuff already on my boards! I am getting pumped for tonight, I am having a craft night over here with some friends....here is a sneak peek at our set up....a post to come with what we create (the items below and my Silhouette will be involved)!

Redesigning Old Curtains

My in-laws are in the process of trying to sell their house. In the process, my mother in law has made may changes to their home. We were talking about curtain options and looked at some options that she could buy. She really liked the oatmeal color of her current curtains but wanted more color to tie in with her newer color scheme.

We decided to redesign her curtains by adding green and brown ribbon to each panel. After purchasing ribbon (so cost effective, one roll of ribbon covered the length of all three curtain panels!) I pinned it onto the curtains...

I then sewed the brown ribbons on each panel, and followed that with sewing on the thinner green ribbon.

Sewing the ribbon on ended up working perfectly but it was a bit time consuming. If you are wanting to do a quick and dirty version of this you could use fabric glue or hot glue.

Doing this reminded me of how much we can reuse things that seem outdated or unusable in your environment. I think it is exciting to find materials in your own home to reuse to make something new.

Wire Garden Cloche

Over the 4th of July weekend I bought an awesome wire garden cloche from Stein Mart. It was already a pretty good price but was on a 50% off rack, so it only cost me a few bucks. I don't know what it is about things like this that I just love. The cloche has found a home in front of our fireplace with a plant under it. I am pretty happy with it! Check it out...

 Also, we went to the mall this weekend and I noticed Cold Water Creek was having their annual sale. They don't have a huge selection on home decor but the stuff they do sell is normally pretty cute. I got this set of basket/vases for $6 (originally $36). If you have one around you, you should check out their sale (their clothing is on sale too but I just shop the home stuff!) It was at this same sale last year that I got my slate chalkboard charger!

I'm off to NYC for the week for work! Hope you have a great week!

Wreath Update

I have been wanting to spruce up the wreath on our front door for a while now. This morning I had some time and some inspiration from A Glimpse Inside's Summer Frame Wreath, so I got to work on it.

Here is the before shot:

Here is the after:

What I did:

1) I used my Silhouette to create pennants, but it would be easy to cut your own (it's just cutting out triangles with little tab at the top to wrap around the string.) I used striped scrapbook paper.

2) I also used the Silhouette to cut out letters to spell out "welcome" but you could simply write your own directly on the pennants. I used blue cardstock for mine.

3) I strung the pennants on jute and tied it to the grapevine wreath.

4) I made a paper flower out of green sticky notes--- I followed the tutorial here. (she uses magazine pages but I used sticky notes) Thanks Kiley for sending me the tutorial! These flowers are so easy to make and really cute.

This was so simple to make and you don't need a Silhouette to do any of it, you can do it all yourself! I may add more flowers but for now I am liking it simple! Also, not sure how the paper will hold up long term but I am just tied everything on so that I can remove it easily if it gets wet or dirty.

Happy Saturday!

Metal Tray Makeover

I purchased a little metal tray from a thrift store a while back, it was white with handpainted strawberries on it. I thought it was cute but never found a place for it, so it has been in my craft closet ever since. Last night, I decided to give it a little makeover. First, I painted it a solid gray...

Then I used my Silhouette to cut out some pitchers in white card stock and got my Mod Podge out and ready to go...

Once the paint was dry, I got to work on arranging the pitchers on the tray, and then used Mod Podge to glue them down. (I could've cut these in Vinyl but I don't have white vinyl at the moment and I wanted white pitchers.)

Once the Mod Podge dried underneath, I gave a nice coat of Mod Podge over the entire tray to give it some protection...

Here she is, all finished...

I am really happy with the end result, it was so simple to do! Even without a silhouette I think it would be simple to trace and cut out the shapes. I am not sure whether it is staying here or going to someone else's house but I am enjoying now either way!