Green in the new black

For the last few days I've been in full craft mode. I've looked at probably over 20 blogs, marveling over everyone's creativity. They inspired me to take a trip to my local Goodwill for my little diamonds in the rough. And I have to say, when you go looking for things that aren't perfect on purpose, it opens up your eyes to the possibilities.

Projects made from my finds are to come at a later date. But to begin with, I worked on a birthday present for a friend's daughter. There's something about this little girl. She is such a great child....warm, kind, compassionate, artistic, smart (oh-so-smart!), and an all around great kid. Of course her mom would say that she's a typical tween. But see, because I'm not her mom, I get to see all her good attributes. And this girl knows what is important to her as well. She has a great passion for being eco-friendly.

So for her birthday, I wanted to honor that. Other than a couple dollars spent, I used supplies that I already had around the house.

Supplies (I had everything on hand except for the ones with prices):
8x10 picture frame
3x3 picture frame ($1 at the Dollar Tree)
pages from an old book
mod podge
cardstock
green ribbon
green button
glue gun
printer photo paper

The project started off with the idea of making her a picture frame with rolled up magazine pages. I tried and tried to get them to roll up perfectly, but it just wasn't working for me. I couldn't find something small enough to get the rolled as tight as I wanted, but also to be able to get that item out of the middle of the roll. I tried and tried and finally gave up. That's when I had a lightbulb moment. Her and her family love to read. And I have a couple old Reader's Digest hardback books that I had bought a long time ago at a thrift store. I had used them at one point as decoration. But for now they were just collecting dust in a box. So how cool would it be to decoupage them all over these two frames?

I didn't think to take a before picture of the frames because I was so excited to start. So let's just use our imagination for a bit...lol. I took the glass and backing out of each of the frames. Located my bottle of mod podge and a small paintbrush. Then tore random pages from the books. (I'm not 100% sure of what the stories were in said book, but I tried to scan the pages for any bad words or inappropriate language. Sorry ahead of time if I missed anything...LOL) Then I commenced to tearing the pages into smaller, more manageable pieces. Using the paint brush I slathered the frame with mod podge, making sure to wrap the paper all the way around. Once I had it all covered, and it had dried, I then covered the whole thing in another layer of mod podge.

Again, beginning this project I had envisioned the 8x10 frame holding a mirror for her room. But the only mirror I found must not have been the right size because when I tried to put it in the back, I broke it. (Hope the 7 years of bad luck doesn't find me. I was just working off a few I broke quite some years ago) At first I was really bummed. But my inner crafter got to work on another idea. Using my skills in Photoshop I got to work on some artwork. I've drooled over typography art for some time but never had the guts to try it myself before now. Her name starts with an "h".....so I found one that I liked and covered it with tons and tons of other h's.

It was easier than I expected, but very time consuming. The perfectionist in me started out carefully placing them in just the right spots. But I soon had to give in at the end to just filling in space. I printed it out on offwhite colored cardstock. And I had already planned to print out a picture of her and her family that I took of them to put in the small frame.

But while I was extremely happy with how they turned out, they still both needed color. I chose to print their family picture in color, but it just didn't seem to be enough. So I did a search for "how to make paper flowers". I found a few but the one I really liked seemed perfect for this project. I found it here . So I got to work cutting out 1 inch strips of cardstock and more pages from the old book.

My first attempt at the flower started off really well. But as I got to the middle, it wasn't working out as well. The reason for that was that I don't have a regular sized stapler, therefore the staples I used weren't able to get to the very middle like the example on the blog showed.

But that didn't stop me. I gathered up another set of paper strips and started again. Only this time I tied them together with embroidery floss that I had on hand from making friendship bracelets with my daughter.

That did the trick.

I love the alternating book strips and colorful cardstock. It was perfect for adding a touch of color along with more pages from the book. With a little bit of help from my hot glue gun, I added some pretty touches with a button middle and ribbon leaves.

I then added a small paper flower embellishment to the small frame using the supplies I had on hand from this recent project.

I love how they turned out! I WILL be recreating the typography in some form for my own household. I don't know what form it will be in, but I must do my own! :)

The flower vase behind the frame is Brianna's.
But we made one for the birthday girl as well.

So if there's anyone reading that knows the intended recipient of these gifts, please don't ruin the surprise. It's going to be hard for me to keep these until her birthday. I usually give in and give people their gifts early. I'm horrible at keeping ahold of them until the right time. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap these up so that hopefully it will help me stay strong and not give in...lol :)

Paper flowers

My latest project with Brianna came from a really great blogger, Ashley over at Little Miss Momma. I found her while blog browsing. You know..where you start off looking at one blog, then you spot something neat that takes you to someone else's blog, and so on and so on until you've wasted most of the day.

So while over at Ashley's blog, I found this tutorial for an oh-so-cute idea! She used paper flower embellishments and made a fun little arrangement. I didn't take step-by-step pictures since she had them. But I did take a picture of our final product.

It was such a fun and creative project. We loved it so much that we made another one for a friend and she loved it as well. She couldn't wait to get it home :)

Edited to add: We didn't realize at the time, but we ended up buying the same exact flowers without knowing so.

Bringing back an old past time

As a young child, I used to enjoy making bracelets out of embroidery floss. I actually had no clue what a person would use that string for OTHER than making bracelets. What on earth could someone make other than for my fun?...lol.

And for the past couple years I've tried to explain them to my daughter. But she always had other craft ideas that she wanted to complete. Like painting misc. wooden pieces to put in her room. But recently some friends of ours had starting making the friendship bracelets and shared some pictures with us. Of course at that time she got interested in them.

We first went to Wal-Mart to try to find the embroidery floss. Unfortunately their craft department lacked the supplies we were looking for. I was looking for the individual skeins, but only found a couple kits prepackaged for kids. The one we came home with had 7 skeins of floss, and advertised that it came with instructions on how to make the bracelets.

Brianna made several from those, but quickly ran out of string. We replenished her supplies at Michael's. I should have know to go there instead of Wal-Mart in the first place. It sucks being new and not knowing where everything is just yet. But never fear, we came away with enough floss to make TONS of bracelets, and then some...lol.

my first attempt at a chevron pattern for myself

and my latest new pattern attempt, the top bracelet is a criss-cross pattern

So for the past few days, we've been making tons and tons of bracelets. I think I may need to find a 12 step program for her... :) She's been calling all her friends to ask for their favorite colors. She's such a giving child! I love her for that!

Great deals at Goodwill!!

After making the move to Texas, we discovered that without a dresser for our bedroom, that we had a lot of clothes between my husband and I that still needed homes. Our poor old dresser didn't make the move with us. It was from Ikea and had already made a few previous moves. But slowly was starting to fall apart because of the movers.

But moving on....as we were unpacking boxes upon boxes of clothes, I mentioned to the hubby that I wish we knew where a good local thrift store was. In an ingenious move, he googled our area and found a goodwill nearby. Good thinking!!

So we headed over and I instantly saw this gem. It wasn't a dresser, but oh so cute.

The price tag said $25.99. Not what I was expecting at all. Normally if I like something, it seems to be priced at least in the $40 range if not higher.

But it wasn't what we were there for. Just a few inches away was the only dresser that they had. This time the price tag was a little more steep. Ok a lot...it said $60!!! At a Goodwill store?? And it looked like this.....

Not much to look at. Faded white, stains, stuff running down the front, and dirt filled drawer corners. I was not impressed. It was well built and pretty solid, but it was obvious that it needed to be refinished. But with the cost of the supplies, I was NOT willing to spend that much.

Just as Stephen and I were talking back and forth about the potential that the dresser had, an employee walked by and whispered something. "If you take it today, furniture is 70% off". Did he REALLY just say that?? So the $60 dresser would be 70% off? OOooooh and the $25 table??? OMG!

We tore off the price tags from both pieces of furniture and headed for the checkout. The $60 dresser was now around $15...and the small table was just under $7! So for around the original price for the small table...we got both items! I was on a savings high....lol.

Once getting the pieces home, we headed to Lowe's to get the supplies we need to refinish both of them. We decided that we'd like to paint the dresser black, and add hardware. And as for the table that we could sand it down and restain.  (I was a little hesitant about staining. It was my first time. But OH SO EASY!! wow, who knew?...lol)

Loved the stain from the beginning.

So for the finished products. I totally love them both. Thanks to my thrift store idea and Stephen's idea to go to Goodwill. We make a great money saving duo.