Archive for Crafts

Put a Flower on it – Pinterest Challenge

By Kristen on February 27, 2013

When the Winter Pinterest Challenge was announced last week, I was beyond excited.  Mostly because it feels like I’m pinning everything lately.  Of course, I couldn’t decide what to do (seriously – it took me until Saturday) but I eventually pulled it together.

WIthout further ado, my pinterest challenge item is…

fabric flowers!

(Thanks to the tutorial on Bower Power)!

20130227_fabricflowers2 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

This was the perfect project for me to tackle because I had all of the supplies (and by ‘had’ I mean ‘found them after in assorted boxes’).  To start, I cut a few strips of fabric from my scrap collection.  I tried to stick with whites, greens, and blues.  My favorite was the green and white polka dot fabric because it was flannel and oh-so-soft.

20130227_fabricflowers1 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

With the strips cut, I started by tying a knot at one end…

20130227_fabricflowers3 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

…and then twisting and wrapping the fabric around the knot.  I did this and attempted to make it permanent with a push-pin, which was a major fail.  Thank goodness for hot glue, even if I do burn myself practically every time I use it.

20130227_fabricflowers4 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

20130227_fabricflowers5 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

Before I knew it, I had a whole slew of fabric flowers just hanging around.

Clearly, I hadn’t thought past this part because what do you do with all of these flowers?

20130227_fabricflowers7 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

You make a wreath, that’s what.

Well, you could really do a lot with these flowers, like dress up a headband or make a fun necklace, but in this instance, I decided to make a Spring wreath.

Our Former Spring wreath ended up being a donor for this project.  I basically had to rip off all of the leaves and flowers – sometimes cut them off – to get the basic wreath.  Totally worth it, in my opinion.

PS – Don’t worry about the flowers – they’ve all been placed in an apothecary jar for a lovely touch of Spring in our dining area!

20130227_fabricflowers8 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/20130227_fabricflowers9 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

At this point, I pretty much just went wild with some leftover tulle from an earlier wreath.  It really helps tie everything together, rather than have the flowers look like they were just thrown on.  The green doesn’t match the green in the flowers, but it’s a soft green that’s perfect for Spring.

You know, in case Spring ever decides to happen.

20130227_fabricflowers11 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

Ta-da!

I’m currently hanging the wreath on one of the built-ins’ knobs because I have yet to find the command strips.  Once that happens, I’ll be tossing this bad boy up on our front door.

20130227_fabricflowers10 http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

So, that’s my Winter 2013 Pinterest challenge. Can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with!

Linking up: Young House Love | Bower Power, Decor and the Dog, and The Remodeled Life.

Psst – You can check out my previous Pinterest Challenge projects: a beaded necklace, spray painting lamps, and paper rosette escort cards.

Posted in Crafts, Fun, Projects | 17 Comments

Sew Last Minute

By Kristen on January 8, 2013

On Christmas Eve’s Eve, Joe and I were prepping the apartment to host my family for dinner.  While Joe was in the kitchen making the sauce for our red sauce with clams and mussels, I was sewing curtains.

I wish I was kidding, but that was one of the projects I tackled before hosting our first adult dinner.  You know the kind of dinner – it’s the one you bust out the fancy china for.  It was a terrific plan, if I do say so myself.

On an IKEA trip that feels forever ago, I grabbed a yard of their Sofia fabric (in green).  The game plan was to use it for pillows in the bedroom… which clearly never happened.  That means, it was just sitting in a basket with other fabric, just waiting to be used.  After about 3 months, it was clear that the pillows just weren’t going to happen so I thought about what else I could use it for.

Coincidentally, this was also around the time I got annoyed with the kitchen curtains.  Not only were the curtains the wrong size for the window (ironically, they weren’t wide enough), they were getting partially bleached by the sun.  This window gets a lot of sun during the day so I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t exactly happy either.

The week before Christmas, I thought “Hey, I should use that green-striped fabric for curtains in the kitchen.  They’ll be perfect!”.  Of course, the week before Christmas was a regular work week so between cleaning, decorating, and figuring out our menu, there wasn’t a whole lot of free time to sew.  Hence my Christmas Eve Eve sewing.

Totally worth it though – I love how they turned out, and those stripes definitely helped me make sure everything was straight.

20130108_curtains http://popcornonthestove.com

And now, for their close up because I love them…

20130108_curtains2 http://popcornonthestove.com

These aren’t perfect (I have to trim each side) but I love the way they look and their pop of color.  The green was ideal for a Christmas Eve dinner but they’ll also work throughout the year, which is great.

With that said, I thought I would create a little tutorial in case anyone else was interested in DIYing a set of curtains like these.

Curtain Tutorial via http://www.popcornonthestove.com/

All of the red lines are where you should sew, and the blue is where you should fold.

Step 1: Fold and sew the seams on the sides and the bottom.
Step 2: Decide how large of a fold you want and fold.
Step 3: Sew small lines on the sides and in the middle.
Steps 4 – 7: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you have the desired amount of folds.
Step 8: When you’re done with the folds, sew the top seam, but be sure to leave enough room for whatever curtain rod you will be using.

Anyone else out there wait until the last-minute to tackle a project?  Have you made any recent updates to your home’s decor?

Posted in Crafts, Kitchen, Projects, Sewing Tagged: , , | 8 Comments

Disco Balls

By Kristen on December 3, 2012

Today is Monday and seeing as it’s now December, I thought it would be nice to introduce something new:

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‘Merry Mondays’ will be when I share a fun project that you can DIY.  After all, crafting makes us merry, right?

Up first are these disco balls made from CDs.  This is my response to when my Uncle gave me four boxes filled with old CDs.  The photo below is only showing 25% of the CDs we have… there are even 2 more boxes still in the trunk of our car!  I can’t remember why he had so many but he and my Aunt assumed that I would come up with something creative.  As Barney Stinson would say, “Challenge accepted!”.

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What you’ll need are some old CDs, some styrofoam balls (I picked up a bag of 6 from Michaels for around $4.00), and a hot glue gun.

You could also grab some ball ornaments – either new or old – because they could make fun gifts.

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While my hot glue gun was warming up, I started cutting up the CDs.  I used a pair of scissors to do this step but since there was no padding, it started to hurt my hand.  I would recommend using some type of shears because it would probably be easier on your hands, plus a longer blade will give you more control in the shapes you cut.

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Once you’ve got a whole lot of pieces of varying sizes, you can start hot gluing them to one of your styrofoam balls.  It’s best to start off with the larger CD pieces and then fill in those awkward spaces with the smaller ones.  You really can’t mess this step up, though.

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And you keep going…

As you can see, I didn’t have the pieces touching each other.  Instead, I gave them about a centimeter or so apart so because I liked the way it looked.  You can glue the pieces as far or as close as you want them to.

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And soon you’ll have a finished ball!

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Wipe off all those stray strands of hot glue and you’ll be ready to display them wherever you want.

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Happy with how well these turned out, I’ve been finding different places for them.  For the Autumn months, I tucked two of the balls in our apothecary jar with some faux leaves and putka pods.  You’ll have to wait until my Christmas decor reveal (which I promise I started this weekend!) to see where they ended up next!

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Are you doing anything that’s making you merry?  Perhaps crafting or finishing up shopping??

PS - I’m sharing this at the Dare to DIY party hosted by Decor and the Dog, Maybe Matilda, Newly Woodwards, and Two Twenty One!

Posted in Christmas, Crafts, Fun, MerryMondays, Winter Tagged: , , , | 12 Comments

Belated: Random Acts of Craftiness

By Kristen on November 13, 2012

So, I actually did have a project complete for the Random Acts of Craftiness (hosted by Erin and Michelle) but then there were some things that interrupted my posting schedule (ie. a hurricane and the loss of internet) so I’m only getting around to posting it now.  This is the ultimate #fail but I wanted to post it anyway.  Better late than never, right?

So, last month, I bribed Joe to venture with me to the local Home Depot so I could wander the aisles until I stumbled upon inspiration.  My only real criteria was spending as little money as possible.  Prior to getting there, I had absolutely no idea what to do.  Somehow, the idea of making jewelry popped into my head but I wasn’t exactly sure how to make it happen.

When we got to HD, we headed over to the chains section, but everything was either too clunky or way too thin.  Basically, I couldn’t imagine making a necklace or bracelet out of any of it.  Time to move on.

Now, I was really starting with a blank slate.

The wood could have been an option if Joe and I had any tools that could be used to build something.  One of these days, we’ll invest in something but until that day (the day we buy a house), it’s not in the cards.  Next!

I stumbled upon the metal sheets that you can insert into radiator covers to make them look pretty.  To be honest, I lingered here more than I should have, trying to come up with an idea for this.  I believe I’ll end up going back and grabbing one of the smaller sheets for a future project, but it wasn’t going to happen on this trip.

Then, an idea hit me.  Like, literally came up and punched me in the face.  It was so obvious that I was surprised I hadn’t come up with it already.  I headed over the trim and molding section and picked up a pair of shelf brackets.

I didn’t want to leave them naked so I ended up checking out the wood stains (didn’t see anything I loved, plus the bracket wood wasn’t anything to write home about) so I decided to be thrifty and use something we had plenty of: paint samples.  After two apartments, we had plenty of tester pots that were just dying to be used.

I decided to use the paints that we had used on our living room – Nimbus Cloud and Bedford Grey (both from Martha Stewart’s collection because it’s no secret that I love her).  I would’ve used the greens from our previous apartments’ living room but decided against it because the paints were a little dried out (to be fair, we did get those samples over 2 years ago).

And then I painted.  There are not in progress shots because I am a messy painted – the kind who gets paint EVERYWHERE.  Seriously – nothing is safe.

But there are afters!

Bonus points if you can guess which books are Joe’s and which books are mine:

For some reason, when I take photos of these, they end up looking white but I promise you that they are grey.

This was an easy project and depending on your local hardware store and budget, you can find some great options!  For example, there were these giant ones that I thought about getting – at least until I saw the price ($40!  That’s crazy!).  I believe ours were only around $10 and the pack included two so it was a great deal for me and what I wanted to do.

You should head over to Erin’s blog to check out what some other bloggers came up with – there are a lot of creative projects over there!

Anyone else enjoy wandering around your local hardware store and browsing for inspiration?

Posted in Crafts, Design, Details, Fun, Paint, Projects | 9 Comments

Zombies and Vampires

By Kristen on October 26, 2012

Today’s post is a preview at some of our Halloween decor and a download for all of you so you can make it yourself!

A week or so ago, I was playing around in Adobe Illustrator and ended up coming up with some fun logos that I could use for some vials.  The first one was inspired by the hubs.  Joe really likes zombies… to the point that within a year of us dating, I was having dreams about zombies.  And not dreams like “Oh, no… I’m being attacked by zombies”, but dreams like “Oh, hey.  Zombies are attacking.  I am totally calm and know exactly how to react in this situation”.

True story.

And a little zoom in action…

It may be hard to read, but underneath the label it says “Caution: There is no cure”.  I tell you this because it’s true… there is no cure for the zombie virus.

Let’s not neglect the other vial which is filled with fresh blood (or just water with red food coloring).  It’s a little homage to my love of all things True Blood – including the Sookie Stackhouse books.  With that, I decided to make the ‘Fresh Blood ‘ logo a little campy and fun.  I can’t help but smile when I look at it.  Can you blame me?

I imagine that you pour blood into a glass rather than drinking from the vial, which is why I chose this vial with a handle.  Classy vamps.

Both vials were picked up from A.C. Moore for $1.00 each but I’m sure you can find something similar at any craft store, and possibly even the dollar store.  Heck, you could even use empty wine bottles!

So, are you interested in creating your own vials?  Below is the .png file so you can download it, size it to whatever you want, and print it out on a sheet of labels.  If you do download the labels, I would love to see what you do with them (be sure to link back here!).

http://popcornonthestove.com

Have you finished decorating for Halloween?  Anyone else have zombie (or some other creature) dreams?  Perhaps you’re more a fan of mad scientists, witches, or goblins?

Posted in Autumn, Crafts, Design, Details, Freebies, Fun, Holidays, Home, Seasonal Tagged: , , , | 10 Comments
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