My door now spells "Welcome!"

 I've been thinking about how my house feels lately, and I've started taking the dark, unpleasant parts of it and trying to figure out how to make them more welcoming.  I decided to start at the most logical place: the front door.  This is what greeted me every day after work...

It's pretty uninspiring and not particularly welcoming.  It also didn't coordinate with any of the paint on our house anymore since we painted it white with Michigan State green trim (Go MSU!).  I don't know why it took me so long to tackle it after we painted the house (um...two years? totally embarassing), but I was having the first party ever at my house and wanted to put my happiest foot forward.  Earlier I had sprayed the antique brass (only "antiqued" cause it was so old and beat up) hardware with oil-rubbed bronze spray paint, and it has held up pretty well so far.  A few nicks and scrapes, but we will probably replace it all soon anyway.  

First step was to prime the door, and I used Zinnser Cover Stain oil-based primer (my favorite) since it doesn't really necessitate too much prep work.  You can even use the stuff straight on laminate without a bubble.  Amazing.  The blue was pretty high gloss, so I wanted to make sure the new stuff would stick.

Not the prettiest sight, but I knew it would give way to greatness.  Or at least something I could get excited about.  Now for the color...I wanted something cheery that said, "Welcome Home!" and wore pig-tails and had an endearing chip in its tooth and smelled like freshly mowed grass or something like that, and this is what I came up with.

I used Behr semi-gloss and custom color matched some other sample I had found.  I love it!  I feel like it is a breath of fresh air, and it actually has a positive side effect of brightening the whole entry to the house.  Even at night, we can actually see the keyhole because we have more light bouncing around.  Yes, it's bold.  Yes, it's a little crazy.  Yes, we have a door that doesn't match the color of the rest of the trim.  And I am enamored.  

It even has presence behind a pretty banged up glass door.  I feel like my door almost needs a name now.  Daisy Mae? I've got mad plans to update the rest of this little part of the house including that ugly lightbox thing, replacing the broken doorbell, and some container plant action.  We'll see how it progresses!

Mirror, mirror on the $10 dresser

I was thrift store shopping in St. Augustine with my mother and mother-in-law a while ago and found this picture frame for fifty cents.  I've been in a tray phase and someone pointed this out to me as having an interesting filigree-like edge. I thought I could easily make this a tray!  

First I applied thin, even coats of mirror spray paint on the opposite side of the glass.  Read the directions on the can for more tips on good coverage. I found a spray paint color in my collection that tied into the material I'm using for the curtains in my craft room (pics will come later, promise), and a couple of even, thin coats later, I had this...

Add a couple happy birds ( a couple of which seem to be intrigued by their reflection in the now-mirror) and you have a fun little dresser-top tray!  This is currently residing on a $10 yard sale dresser that I have yet to complete refinishing.  More to come later!

Total cost: 50 cents for tray

mirror and spray paint (already owned)

fun birds (birthday present)

=$0.50!

If you had to buy the paint, it would probably go up to $10 or so, but then you would have materials for a bunch of other things!  Any fun picture frame/tray transformations? 

Love you, man!

I was perusing Pinterest and found this little framed delight...

I love its simplicity and shadow frames are so fun and dimensional.  I put it on my "Art to DIY" board for a later date.  Well, that day has come!  I appreciated the simplicity of the design of the inspiration but wanted a little more pizzazz, if you will.  I also wanted to show off my Silhouette cutter to my mom when she was visiting.  Here is my pile of supplies: a shadow frame with no glass cause it was on the ground at some point and I stepped right into it and broke it (oh yeah.  I'm smooth), some Scrabble tiles from an antique store, and a pack of scrapbooking papers.  

First step was to find two complementary papers, which resulted in an orange dotted paper and a orange-themed floral.  I used my Silhouette to cut a square out of the dotted paper for the background (honestly, it is worth its weight in gold to me just because it does that easily) and a letter collage from the Silhouette store for on top.  Initially, I had some trouble because the design was so intricate and my mat was so sticky, but a little online research and some t-shirt dabbing (to get some fibers on the mat and reduce the tackiness), and it came off perfectly!  I used spray adhesive so I didn't have to worry about any bubbling, excess, or not enough glue and layered the two together.  I positioned my tiles first (to see what placement I liked) and then used E-6000 adhesive to adhere them.  Put all together again and voila!  

I gave it to my husband for a little reminder of how awesome I think he is, and he gave me something for my birthday that completes the look!  Meet Flopsy and Mopsy!

He is buying into my love of white ceramic animals (I'll do a run-down of all of those sometime later).  Aren't they cute together?

A little bling

My husband's cousins were visiting St. Augustine a while ago and their three children all happened to have a birthday within that month, so I decided to make a little something for their little girl.  We sent gifts to all of them of course, but this is the blingiest of them.

I had most of these supplies left over from a jewelry-making phase.  I used some chain and attached some pink pearls and charms with some small jump rings.  I used the clasp that I thought would be easiest for her to use, and it will grow a bit with her if she still likes it for awhile.  I just hope it will remind her of Florida and the vacation she spent here.

Cheers to craftiness!

Is it a bib? Is it an apron? It's a bapron!

So a friend of mine had a baby a little while ago, and I was searching for a suitably homemade gift to give the happy parents.  I came across this little gem on Pinterest.

The tutorial is pretty thorough and can be found here. I took a couple of pictures along the way.  I bought the bias tape at Joann, but honestly, after looking at the tutorials on how to make it, I will probably do it myself from now on.  It's mostly just folding something in half and ironing.  I mean, seriously.  Here are the two pieces to baste together.

I used some leftover indoor/outdoor fabric from previous projects thinking it might make cleaning the bapron easier in the future.  Here it is with the bias tape on it.  

I wanted to add something cute and personal to the front, so I used my Silhouette Cameo (love that thing!) and cut a fish with bubbles out of some cute material.  I used Fray Check on the edges and just fabric glued it on.  I then used my Silhouette to cut a stencil out of vinyl and used fabric paint to make the "little fisch" print on the front.  

My friend's surname is Fischetti, so "little fisch" is not just a typo.  Here it is all finished!  I hope they will get good use out of it in the future!  

   I am in love with this thing.  It's just so darn cute!  I keep threatening that I am going to make adult-sized ones for the sloppier eaters in my family.  It's definitely my newest favorite baby present!  

To bee or not to bee

Sorry for the Hamlet/insect pun.  I'm an English teacher; I can't really help myself.  

This is my new favorite decorative thing, and my only regret is that I do not have a ton of wall space with which to create and use more of these.  This was my inspiration.  

via

I searched my favorite local antique store for an old dictionary that had the font size that I wanted to no avail.  But I did spot an old collection of Shakespearean plays which my friend happened to kindly buy for me.  (Thanks Danni!)  As an ex-librarian and self-professed book hoarder (I'm getting better, I swear), this was a tough step for me, but I took my x-acto knife and cut out some pages to feed into my printer.

I found this cool blog that posts a vintage image every weekday and scanned a bunch of images to find the ones I wanted.  I found some others using Google images that seemed to be ( I say "seemed" since copyright law is complicated business) okay to use.  Here is one collection.

If you can't tell from the shadowed picture (sorry about that! figuring out my new camera still), I have a shell on the left, a crab in the middle, and a fish on the right.  

I made another to give my mom for Mother's day (with each picture representing a member of our family), but forgot to get a picture of it before sending it home with her.  This is one of those instant gratification projects that I love. All you need is a book, a knife, a printer, and a dream!

Who knew cutting things could be so much fun?

Okay, that title sounds a little macabre.  I only meant that cutting things with my new Silhouette Cameo is so fun!  Even knowing that this thing exists in my house gives me immeasurable pleasure.

I used it first to create these river rocks for my AP students.

Yes, I am giving them rocks as a good luck gesture for the test.  You'd have to hear my spiel about the symbolism, I guess.  I used the Cameo to cut out the vinyl small seal script figure.  It's the ancient Chinese character for literature and it's pretty simple for the silhouette, but would have been a pain for me to attempt with an x-acto knife.

I had the image scanned to a PDF, and I copied the image into the Silhouette software.  I used the trace function to outline the shape (amazing!) and cut away!  I did them in a variety of sizes according to the varying rock sizes, and the smallest one is pretty darn tiny!  I wrote the course, year, and signed the back of each so they can keep them as a memento of the class if they want.  I still have the mini-beanie baby my AP Calculus teacher gave us before the test.  That's also the test I got a 5 on; coincidence? Anyway, I'm very happy with the way they turned out and hope my students will look at them and feel serene and confident during the test.

Every make any memento for an occasion?  Have a silhouette cameo story/project to share?