Missing the beach

After having lived within 15 minutes of the beach, living in southern Texas has made me miss it terribly. Not that we went too frequently while we were still in North Carolina, but we had the option. Having it taken away sucks!

So when I saw some bags of shells at my local Goodwill I knew that I wanted to finally have a piece of the beach in my house. You see....I've always liked beach themed decor. The clean modern kind of course (sorry no lighthouses for me), but never thought it would fit in with the rest of my decor. So ironically never tried it when I could find anything my heart desired close by. I waited until Texas. And as I was walking around, I came across a couple glass pieces that I thought together would make a nice place to display the shells I had just found.

You see, a while back I came across a genius party planner, Michelle from Maddycakes Muse. And one neat trick that she had shared for easy party food displays was to use gorilla glue to adhere various glass objects together to create stands. I don't normally have a need for food displays, but knew that some day I would find an opportunity to use the same technique.

Start with these materials:

*large glass vase
*glass candle holder
*gorilla glue
and something heavy to hold the glass pieces together (in my case it was a couple books)

Once putting the glue onto the wider part of the candle holder, I turned the vase upside down on the table and placed the candle holder glue side down in the center of the vase bottom. Then placed a couple heavy books on top to help strengthen the glue's hold.

Let that sit for a couple hours to really get a good bond. To me that's the hardest part. I am SO the type of person that wants instant results. INSTANT I say! But I was good and left it alone.

I have to say that this glue is the bomb-diggity! (Yes, I know no one really says that anymore, but it was the first thing that came to mind) It has a very strong bond and isn't hard to use.

So here's a quick after shot, after filling it with the shells. It isn't quite complete just yet, as I would like to fancy it up just a little more. Just don't know with what just yet. But for now, I am in love!

Something to write about

Or actually I should something to write ON, not about.

I found this odd sized frame at Goodwill. (Boy I've typed that store name a lot in my recent posts) Since I didn't have a tape measure with me at the store, I hoped that it would be a size that would fit a print that I could order online. But of course, not so. It's only 9 3/4" tall and 27 1/4" long.

It didn't even have anything in the frame besides a cardboard backing. Oh and the paint was chipped in several spots.

It sat in my bedroom for a couple weeks, waiting for me to find it's purpose. It's reason for being. And I think I've done just that.

Instead of getting out the big can of black paint that I used to paint our dresser, I simply used a jar of black acrylic paint. Worked like a charm!

As for the contents of the frame. I thought it would make a good size for a custom dry erase board. I did a search for a blank calendar sheet. I found this one......blank calendar. Using photoshop I replaced the days of the week with a different font that I liked a little more. I couldn't really just use it as is right? Oh and added little boxes to write in the dates.

And then using scraps from my canvas wall art that would hanging across the hall from it, I decorated the rest of the background.

I hung it on the wall and then had the idea to attach some $1 wired ribbon from Michael's bargain ribbon bin to make the appearance of it being hung from it.

So what do you think?

In case you are wondering, the letters represent us....Stephen, Amber, and Brianna. My husband couldn't figure out what they were for. No clue! I might go back in and put miniature pics of us beside them. I haven't decided yet.

But for now, I have a fully function dry erase board that is customized to our needs. And can be changed if ever those needs change. I love things that aren't permanent. I have an addiction to changing and tweaking..lol.

With the completion of this project, my hallway isn't a blank slate anymore. Yay!

Everyone Loves an Indiana girl

Today's internet adventure started with an e-mail from Flickr telling me that one of my contacts had uploaded new pictures. I usually don't browse around on flickr, but I make an exception when a certain contact of mine shares her pictures. You see...she lives in my home state of Indiana. And not only just in the same state, but very close to where I grew up. She takes pictures all around the countryside and shares them with the rest of the world via flickr. I can't quite recall how I came across her photostream, but I do know that I won't ever want to leave.

Stopping over to her photostream, I came across a photo that I fell instantly in love with!

She titled the picture, "Which way do I go?" As you can imagine, when the corn fields get to this height you can't see anything past the fields. I can not even start to say just how perfect this picture captures southern Indiana. I even asked her if I had per permission to save it as my computer's desktop. I added a little text and love looking at it every time I see my desktop.

Indiana's official state motto is: The Crossroads of America

After having to google the state motto, it gave me the idea to look for those funny slogan shirt that include the states. You know the ones. But the only thing was, was that I didn't ever remember seeing one made for Indiana. But after some searching I found one that I thought was cute, and that I would actually wear. (Some of them can be vulgar.)

Yep, that would be me. Only thing that I didn't agree with was the asking price. This particular one was $25, and saw a few others on another site that were even more. And that didn't include tax and shipping. I didn't need the shirt that I bad! It was then that I remembered that I still had some t-shirt transfer paper left. Now I just needed a shirt. Looking through my closet and dresser, I found one white shirt. Sadly it was not what I was wanting. It was the white shirt that I used for an undershirt. The kind that is a little bit too see through for my tastes. So off to WalMart. I found a v neck on sale for only $3! Hey that's so much better than $25!

After searching through my plethora of fonts, I was able to find the exact fonts they used for the design. And went to this site for an outline of the state. Although I did find the fonts that matched these perfectly, I chose to change the one for Indiana. Mine reminded me of Indiana University. Just seemed a little more "Indiana-like" to me.

So what do ya think?

I love it! And I didn't have to spend more that $3 and wait for it to be shipped to me. Cute and cheap! my kind of project!

Oh....if you were wondering..the fonts used were : Brody and Athletic...both were free fonts that can be found at Urban Fonts.

Oh yea..AND if you ever find yourself wondering what the countryside of southern Indiana looks like, feeling homesick, or just plain want to see some awesome pictures....head on over to Cindy's photostream. You won't be disappointed. And tell her Amber sent ya! ;)

Something old, something new

While I was driving one day....when we lived in NC.....I spotted an antique store with some old windows propped against the building. On my way home, I envisioned having a couple of them hanging on my bedroom as wall art. Of course I had it all mapped out in my head.

Almost a year passed by, and I still hadn't gone back to get the windows. I kept telling myself that they had a ton of them, and that they'd still be there when I was ready to get them. Even though I thought about them ALL the time.

I really loved the idea of having something unexpected on the wall. And to reuse something that had been overlooked by a lot of people.

And out of no where, my husband got orders here to Texas.  WHAT?? And leave the store that has the cool old windows???? What if I can't find a place that has them in Texas? I would be crushed! So 2 days before the moving company came to pack up our house I finally went back to that store. Looking at them up close, I fell even more in love. Although I had misjudged how big they were. From the road they looked small enough to have 2 on the wall. But in reality one was enough.

So it got packed up and moved here with us. I hadn't found the right place for it just yet. But I unearthed it from the landfill I call our garage, and saved it from the cobwebs that would have eventually found it.

And it just so happens that I had a wall decal that I hadn't used yet, that would fit perfectly in our room. But didn't want to put on the wall. And then it hit me......put the decal on the window and then hang it in our bedroom!! That works for me. While working on it , I got more and more excited. My vision of having an old window frame hanging on one of my walls was coming closer to being true.

I hammered on some picture hanging saw tooth thingys ( I don't really know the name of them and am being too lazy to google it...lol), adhered the decal after cutting it to fit each pane of the window, and hung it on the wall. 

I love the chipped paint, the random rope hanging from the left side, and the rusty metal closure. All of which give the piece it's character.

To finish off the look, I added a couple 99 cent store frames with pictures of the husband and I. They started off as "framed art". I measured the opening of the mat and printed out 2 pictures of us that my friend had taken of us. I then disassembled the cardboard back and masking tape to remove their art, and replaced it with our lovely faces. And re-taped the back on.  In my opinion, they don't look like $1 frames.

                                                                   Before and After:

And on top, I added my recent silhouette frame of us as well. I can't wait for the hubby to see it when he gets home from work. When he left this morning, only the window was up.

Lesson? Stop to see the beauty in things.....w/o having to refinish them. Sometimes leaving things as they are helps you to find the true beauty and appreciate them for what they are. An old, cool, discarded window art piece.



Linking up to Hooking up to HOH #17

What I call lazy

Don't worry, this post is not about you. It's about me. But it's lazy in a good way.

I'm gonna try something a little different this post. I'll start with the finished product.

Cute, right? It's my husband and I in silhouette form. In April of 2009, I got the idea to make silhouettes for all three of us. I was working at a portrait studio at the time and was having our family pictures taken. My boss was taking them for us and I told him that I wanted him to take a profile shot of each of us for me to use. I then used the pen tool in Photoshop to outline our features and made some cool artwork for the wall.

Here they are framed in one of our old houses.

They have prominently hung in each home since then. Here at this house, they greet you at the front door. I love the colors I chose. Green and teal for me, pink and green for my daughter, and orange and navy blue for the hubby. (He's a Chicago Bears fan)

So knowing that I would most likely like to use them again, I saved the silhouettes in a .psd file so that I could still have the layers to play with later.

So on to the project at hand. The frame was found at Goodwill for $1.99. Where else? I bought quite a few things that day....lol.

So I knew I wanted to add scrapbooking paper as the background, and that I wanted our silhouettes facing each other. But what I also knew was that I DID NOT want to cut them out by hand!! Uh uh..no way. Remember the lazy part? Yep! I also didn't want to chance messing something up by printing on the scrapbooking paper. And just then...a lightbulb moment. What about printing on a transparency? That would work right?

I was hoping that I would get a glare to show the transparency, but of course it came out crystal clear. I added the red outline in Photoshop just to show the edges.

Using the glass from the frame, I cut the paper and transparency to fit. Once the frame was reassembled, you couldn't even tell the transparency was there! Just one more small project that worked out in my favor. Meaning that I didn't spend a lot of money, or time...and it turned out right the very first time.

The only draw back of this project is that I wouldn't be able to use the transparency idea very well with frames larger than 8x10, since they are printed on 8.5" x11" sheets. Ahh well....hakuna matata.

Why didn't I think of that??

On the same trip to Goodwill that I've been  posting about recently, I found another object that I normally would have passed by without a second glance. Before being introduced to the wonderful world of DIY blogs, I would not have been able to see the potential in pieces that had been tossed aside by their owners.

So let me try to describe the piece. It's a square thick piece of black wood, with 9 evenly placed holes in the top. Got a mental picture of it? Let's see how well you did.

As you can see, it doesn't look like much. It's exactly how I described. A piece of wood with holes in it. But I snatched that thing up as if i had found a $20 bill on the shelf...lol. In my mind I saw it being a candle holder. And possibly even spray painted with my favorite green spray paint. (Yes that would be the 2nd thing I picked up that day with the intentions of painting green. Do you have a problem with that?...lol)

On my way home, I stopped at my local Dollar Tree store to find a picture frame that I needed for this project. Of course, I can never walk out of that store without picking up more than what I went there for. But in this case, the extra item would soon be united with my piece of wood. By accident of course.

I don't have a picture of the first time I tried them together. The package only contained 6. So there were 3 holes left open. I pictured filling the 3 leftover holes with candles. I just hadn't gotten around to finding the perfect ones just yet.

That's when we had some friends over.  They are an artistic family that seem to enjoy seeing all my recent projects. At least that's what I've told myself...it's my excuse to show off my stuff and have people tell me they like it. :) So while explaining all the above to them, my friend Nick came up with an ingenious idea.

Go buy 3 more.

Check!
Spray paint 5 of them green.
Check!
Now play Tic tac toe!! OMG....really? Did he really just say that? How freakin' cool!

And this is how it will look while not being played with. LOVE it! Pretty and functional as a game. How could it be any better? Oh I know....it would've been better if I could have thought of it. But I guess I'll just have to live with giving him the credit.

While I'm at it...

After covering the canvases for my daughter's room, I went ahead and started on some slightly bigger ones for our hallway. These canvases were bought at the Dollar Tree.

They definitely needed help in order to belong in our house. But for $1? Oh yea, that's do-able. Doing the same process as when I made these, and voila.....cheap but chic wall art.

But once hanging them on the wall, there was just something missing. Like the wall just wasn't complete.

See?

While looking for something in the abyss we call the hall closet, I found  the perfect companions for this grouping. Two small iron sconces I bought from Family Dollar for $2 each. And yet it still seemed to need something else. But sorry, no picture of that step.

But in order to show you the finished wall, I need to share another of my adventures. (Ok so maybe it wasn't really an adventure per say, but I needed a cool word. :)

On my last trip to Goodwill, I found this mirror....

Although a little overpriced for Goodwill at $9.99, I couldn't pass it up. But it needed to be "Amberized". Not a lot of people would know what that would entail. But my closest of friends would probably guess that it involves my favorite color. And what came to mind at the time was the paint that I used in this previous project.
So I headed outside to spray paint the mirror and a few other smaller things that will be revealed at a later date.

And I got this......

I'm in LOVE! And I totally love that it's visible from the living room as well. Now if only I could camouflage the thermostat and light switch. But at least it's not a blank wall anymore.

A touch of fun

On my very first time at a Hobby Lobby store (don't judge me. I've never even seen one of these stores before moving here), Brianna and I did some shopping for some ideas I had around the house. A good friend gave me a gift card there for my birthday. And I can say it was one AWESOME idea!! She knew I'd love the store, and boy was she right! The store seemed to have so much more then Michael's. And there is so much pretty stuff that I seemed to oooh and ahhh all around the store.

First on my list was a bigger paper cutter. Once upon a time I had two, a 6in and one that I believe was 12in. But for the longest time, I haven't been able to find the larger one. So I picked up one of these, just in a different design I guess.

So then we were off to the scrapbooking paper aisle. Yes..a whole aisle! We picked up several sheets for a couple projects. We then browsed around the ENTIRE store! Looking at everything! Wanting everything! Oh, except for the fabric section. Being that I don't sew...at ALL...it seemed like a real waste of time.

And that's when it happened. My daughter came across a section of vinyl wall decals. I have to admit, they were cute! We already have a couple in the house. One being in the entryway, and one in her room. So the idea of them wasn't new. Her favorite one was a chandelier. But all the walls in this house are textured. Super textured. So these decals don't stick very well. So at first I dismissed the idea and told her she couldn't get it. But all the while was trying to come up with a way we could get it. After all, it really was cute!

My first idea was to get a poster sized frame and adhere it to the outside. And what better than a 50% sale on frames! Great! That was until I walked past a stock pile of foam core. And it was a third of the price.

So on to the pictures. Not too long after getting home I started on what could be separated into 2 projects.
The first being covering small $1 canvases from Michael's with scrapbooking paper.

If only I had a boy's room to decorate.
I thought they were super cute,
 but wouldn't work in our house

Combine those with these...

And the combine white foam core with this....

(a cool vinyl wall decal w/ crystals), and you get this........

It couldn't have been simpler to cover the canvases with paper. I actually just used double sided tape. It worked wonderfully. Although they are starting to unfold a little on the backside, so I'll be going back and adding a little glue to stick the paper back down. But my daughter loves it, and that's all that matters...right?

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.