Roadkill Rescue: Zebra Office Chair

My sister has been looking for two chairs to put in her office. Yes, we could have gone to a furniture store and paid lots of money for one... but what's the fun in that? All it took was a little waiting and wah-lah, my neighbor put out four of these guys ready for trash pick-up.

We removed the upholstery tacks and weaving from the top and sanded the whole chair. We took off the seat and covered it in an rust orange zebra print outdoor fabric we found on clearance at Jo-Ann's for $6.00.  We spray painted it with Valspar paint in Porcelain and of course sanded down the edges to rough it up a little bit.

I love the way they turned out. $6 for two chairs, now that's thrifty!

I think the other chair is jealous. I have plans to redo the other two for my craft room. Right now I've been sitting on metal folding chairs...not comfy at all! Look for those soon.... I plan on being a little bold with those since they're for crafting!

Back to School Goody Bag!

I made a Back to School Goody Bag for my friend's daughter. Her favorite colors are purple and blue.

I made her a Felt Flower Pin or she could wear it on a headband.

Chelsea over at Crafter's Anonymous Club just posted a video tutorial here.

I also made her a button headband.

I posted about making these here. This time, I attached a skinny piece of black felt to the headband first, and then added the buttons to the felt, to avoid any buttons popping off.

I ordered some Mod Posge Dimension Magic from their website, you can read about it here! I couldn't wait to try it out. So, I made her a scrabble tile necklace.

Debbie at A Creative Life posted a tutorial here.

* I didn't have any scrabble tiles, so I just bought a pack of square wooden pieces from Hobby Lobby. It worked pretty well!

Rosette Ring

I tried my hand at making the cute rosettes that everyone is making. They are so simple to do, and look so cute when you're done. Here is how I made mine. I started with a fabric strip about 2" wide. Put a dot of hot glue and fold it in half.

Add another dot of glue and fold it over again.

Now, fold your strip over half of the end. This gives you a little base to start twisting and gluing your rosette.

The next steps were hard to get a picture of. Hold your rosette with one hand and twist your fabric with the other. Put a dot of hot glue and keep working your fabric around until you have the size rosette you want. Finally, fold the end of your fabric over the back and glue it down. Cut off any excess fabric.

I decided to add my rosette to an adjustable ring with a pad that I got at Hobby Lobby. I love how it turned out and wear it all the time!

Cute!

I'm Still Here, I Promise!

I know, it's been awhile! But, I do have a good excuse, I promise! School starts tomorrow...well, the kids come back tomorrow. We've been back since the Friday before last. I have been so busy getting my room set up and getting everything going for the start of school that my craft time has diminished to nothing! But, no worries, as soon as we get back into the swing of things I'll definitely have some time.

Flower Tutorial

Buttons!

I was adventuring around blogland one night and I saw that Someday Crafts had a new sponsor that was doing a giveaway, buttons and badges. Due to my recent OBSESSION with buttons I had to go check out their etsy store. Holy moly, I was in love! Of course I had to order some and when they came in the mail I couldn't wait to check them all out!

I ordered the Bulk Supply of Modern Silhouette Flat Back Buttons and the Assorted Bulk Supply Flat Back Buttons. I'm so excited to start making some things with them! Stay tuned for those... for now, just admire how wonderful they are.

Horse-ish Stool

So I found this guy at a garage sale last weekend for $1.

We couldn't decide if he was a horse, or a dragon. I thought horse.. so that's what I'm going with. I wasn't really sure what attracted me to him, other then I was looking for bargains and by golly a dollar is a bargain!

I thought he could become something pottery barn esq. So, I purchased him, brought him home, and spray painted him with Krylon White Semi-Gloss. I used a very fine paint brush and some black acrylic paint and painted in all of his details (eyes, ears, nose, etc.).

Of course, I gave him a good rough sand and was pretty proud of my little dragon...er, horse!

I haven't figured out where exactly he is going to go, but I like the way he turned out!

Keep Calm and Snap On

I know you've seen them.... Keep Calm and Carry On. They're everywhere, the original versions and tons of plays on the original. If you're wondering, like I was, where did this saying come from, you can find out on the Wikipedia page here.

My friend Jessica is a photographer, you can check out her awesome work at her website, JessicaKlimaPhotography. Whenever I saw this version of the "Keep Calm and Carry On", I knew it would be the perfect birthday gift for her. I used the same technique as I did in this project.

Silhouette Font: Gill Sans MT Condensed, Font Size: 189;122, Image: toy_camera_C00445_18816

A little Tulle... and it's the perfect gift for a photographer!

Finally...No Sew Fabric Flowers!!

I can't sew. I know. It's a bummer. I've tried, but ultimately everytime fail. I'm looking into a sewing class, but the classes offered in my town have been put on hold, so... until then, No Sew Tutorials are what I'm looking for! Everybody has versions of cute flowers to adorn on headbands, pins, alligator clips, but most of them are sewn versions. So, I was happy to find a couple of no-sew versions that actually looked as good as the others! I followed a couple of different ones, and ended up with a couple of different versions, all that I loved. I found my tutorials at Samster Mommy, Little Lizard King, and at The Examiner Houston.

"Create" Tutorial

Here is the tutorial for how I made my Pier 1 Inspired Wall Art. First I had the BF cut me a piece of MDF 10"X36". I divided my six sections, for each letter, and marked them with a pencil at 6". With this project you have to think from the bottom up. So the first color you want to paint is the color that your letters will be. I didn't worry too much about them being perfectly straight.

The next step I found out was not necessarily needed. So, you could skip this step if you wanted. I actually ended up liking how it gave some dimension underneath the flat black paint, but you could get the same effect at the end if you wait. But, for my picture's sake, and so you won't be wondering how those splatters got there, I splattered black paint across the whole piece.

I picked a font that I liked and cut 6" tall letters with my Silhouette. (Remember, you aren't actually using the vinyl, so use the color vinyl you use least in your projects, for me, it's baby pink!) If you don't own a cutter, you can just print out the font and size you like in Word and use those as a guide to cut out Contact Paper letters to adhere to your board. Also, if you're making a smaller version, you could just use store bought stickers.

So, thinking from the bottom up, next I wanted two of my sections to not be black. I used Scotch Decorate & Repair Tape (it has a real plastic texture and I knew it wouldn't pull up my letters or paint) to give a straight edge. I painted those two sections the colors that I wanted them, blue and white.

After the paint dried I then covered those two sections in freezer paper (dull side down), to keep them from getting spray painted.

Then, I used a fat black spray paint and covered the entire piece and sides. Once it was dry I removed the wax paper, tape, and vinyl letters. Then, using every color in my piece I coated a brush in paint and splattered everywhere, mostly on my garage floor and foot. (I tried to tape a small line between the "T" and "E", but ended up not liking how it looked, so I painted over it.)

I let it dry overnight, some of the splatters had a good dose of paint, and then gave it a light sand to smooth it down. I think it's a good addition to my craft room! I'm going to put it over my window, just haven't hung it up yet.