End of the Year Project Wrap Up

I have been a very busy lady, but you wouldn’t know it from how silent I’ve been. I’d thought about doing an end of the year wrap up to recap all the projects I’ve done throughout the year. However, you can just click over to my Projects Page to see all my projects.

Instead, I thought I’d show you all of the projects I’ve been working on that I haven’t done a post for. Are you ready? In no particular order.

A few months ago, I got a catalogue from West Elm and found this Lourdes Sanchez Bull’s Eye runner and fell in love.

Not so lovable was the $129 price tag. I bought a $7.99 rug and made my own version. I just taped off some lines in varying widths and sizes and then painted away.

For some weird reason, the blue turned out much brighter than I wanted. It didn’t seem like the paint was that bright, but it dried that way. I watered down the paint, hoping I wouldn’t get that crusty paint feel, but it didn’t really help. It feels pretty crusty.

I want to do this again, but with a different type of rug. The pile on this rug was too thick. I love how it looks in my kitchen, though. The bright rays of color are a fun touch. The blue below looks much brighter than it really is. This picture is three months after I made the rug and it looks like I need to throw this in the wash.

One of my other projects was for my niece, Miss Cute, who celebrated her eighth birthday. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) this is a special birthday because it’s the year you can be baptized a member of our church.

Miss Cute chose to get baptized and I made her a head band and a scripture case to celebrate the event.

The headband she’s wearing in the picture is not the one I made. I made a no-slip headband. It has lace and pearls on one side and velvet on the other. The velvet side goes against the hair which keeps the headband in place. It really works, too. Babies have thicker hair than I do and it works in my hair and I can NEVER wear headbands. They all fall out.

For her scripture bag, I made a plain bag out of a quilted fabric. I embroidered her name on the top binding, along with some flowers.

Then, I froufed it up a bit. Shazam! I love the ruffles.

Speaking of scripture bags, I also made one for the Daja for Christmas since she asked for new scriptures this year. Apparently, the ones she got when she was 6 years old and highlighted with a pink glitter crayon were no longer working for her. Weird.

I bought a 1/3 of a yard of fabric and was actually able to make two bags. I needed a new bag as well, since my last one had gotten splattered with red paint during a freak ornament-making accident last Christmas.

The Daja chose the white handled set. The bag is big enough to hold a journal I made for her as well as her scriptures. I sewed a pencil/pen holder into the side of the bag. If anyone wants a tutorial for either bag, let me know and I’ll work one up.

I picked this fabric up from an Amish & Mennonite fabric store out in the country when Hubs and I took a drive one day.

We also stopped at the Planktown Country Market and got Amish butter, jam and bacon. I fell in love with a hand woven rug at the store and  tried to convince Hubs how perfect it was for our house. Santa Hubs and the Daja took a drive up there to get me the rug for Christmas. Isn’t it gorgeous?

It’s nearly 6’ long and I love having something warm and soft underfoot in this area.

Another project I’ve been squeezing in during the evenings when I watch t.v. is to crochet some dishcloths. I gave some of these to friends for Christmas presents this year and I’m now making a couple for me.

Excuse the upside down picture. Apparently, I didn’t realize I took an upside down picture until just now. The pattern is the Waffle Dish Cloth from the label of the cotton yarn. You can find the pattern at Sugar’nCream.com. You need to be a registered user to get the pattern, but it’s a free registration.

What else have I been doing? Oh yeah, I built a trundle bed. With the older kids coming home for Christmas, I knew I needed an extra bed around.

Kiddo has a custom built bed. It’s an old bunk bed turned upside down and extended to hold a long mattress. We got the mattress from a friend. As best I can figure, it’s a California Queen, which is a foot longer than a regular queen mattress.

With a few modifications to the bed frame, his bed was long enough that we could build a frame for a regular twin mattress to fit under his bed. It’s not pretty, and he needs new bedding, but it gets the job done and it works really well. Since Kiddo is 6’2” tall and still 13 years old. He is not done growing!

 The trundle bed is a piece of plywood cut down to the size of the mattress, some 2 x 4’s cut the width of the plywood support the ends and middle and hold 6 casters (2 of them are locking ones). I used some 1” x 3” boards to trim out the sides. I made some rope pulls to help maneuver the bed. Ba-da-bing. We have a trundle bed.

If you missed my post about the Christmas ornament I made this year, you can click on over to read about the Christmas Bulbs I made from some ornaments I picked up at Goodwill.

On that same trip, I came across this $5 mirror. I’ve been wanting a mirror for over our mantel and this one was just the right size.

 

I’ve touched up the gold to make it less orangey, but I used the Antique Gold Rub 'n Buff, which looks too close to the original finish. I want to pick up some Gold Leaf Rub ‘n Buff and see if that tones it down a bit. If not, I may just spray paint this a white and call it good.

You can see it’s not so orange on the mantel with the new Christmas stocking I made this year (6th stocking). I would like the record to reflect that I made this stocking under duress. See, way, WAY back in the day (cough1989coughcough) I made stockings for our first Christmas with Man Child. Country décor, teddy bear motifs and ugly Christmas fabric were in fashion (2nd, 4th & 5th stockings below).

Then we had Baby Girl. There were no girl Christmas teddy bear stencils to be found so I finagled the old stencil and created the angel bear for her stocking(3rd stocking). Cuter fabrics were available, so I used those instead of the old fabric. Years later, we had Buddy and Kiddo. Naturally, I needed to make two more stockings. Oh, how I wish I had junked them all then and started with all new ones!

I made the snowflake stockings (1st and 7th stocking) using all the fabrics from the previous ones (hoarding does have it’s advantages) plus some fabric from Hubs’ grandmother that she used to make her husband’s underwear. I kid you not.

Since Katie has joined our family this year and will most likely spend every Christmas with us, she needed a stocking. By the way, I have a second blog in which I talk about the challenges of caring for a disabled family member. The link is on my side bar if you are interested or know someone who faces similar challenges and think they may be interested. It’s called My Sister’s Keeper.

Anyhoo, I lobbied to make all new stockings for everyone, however, my people are ridiculously attached to these stockings. I hate them. My design was bad from the start and the execution stinks. Badly.

From a distance, they aren’t so bad. If you squint. And wave your hand in front of your face back and forth really fast. And the lights are low. They are big enough to hold all the stuff we normally put in stockings, so that’s their redeeming grace.

I refused to add another teddy bear to the mix, so we came up with a tree design for Katie’s stocking. Katie helped me paint the stocking by putting the dots on the tree for ornaments.

I did the rest. While it doesn’t show in the pictures, these stocking are quilted.

While Katie’s is the best of the lost, it still isn’t saying much and I’d love nothing better than to start anew. I fear I am stuck with these for the rest of my life, though.

Finally, I salvaged last year’s Christmas Tree Fail. I ran out of beads mid-way up the Styrofoam tree. I tried to fill the space with some netting. I hated it but kept plugging along thinking it would not look so bad once I filled in the whole area. *FacePalm* It was bad. See?

This thing sat in my craft room for a year. Kiddo was oddly attracted to it’s weirdness and would frequently comment on it. While we were decorating the tree this year, I decided to forego the pearl garland in favor of my new faux capiz shell garland.

With plenty of pearl strands at my disposal, I dismembered the tree tutu and glued the pearls on. I figured I could just spray paint the whole thing and maybe sprinkle some German glass glitter on for some bling and call it good.

However, I liked the pearls with the bead strand enough for this year. We’ll see how I feel about it next year.

Finally, Hubs got me a new camera this year for Christmas. I cried. A lot. Man child said, “Well, it’s not really Christmas morning unless Mom cries.” That isn’t really true. I rarely cry at Christmas. I was just so happy to have such an amazing gift from the person who loves and knows me best. In fact, I was really spoiled this year and it touches my heart to recognize all the blessings I have.

It’s a Canon T2i and I’ve been trying to learn all it’s features. I have a lot to learn. I will leave you with a photo from our Ugly Sweater Family Photo shoot.

Wishing you the warmest thoughts of blessings, love and many completed projects in the new year.

Suesan

ps. Let me know if you’d like a tutorial on any of these projects and I post one just for you!

Christmas Bulbs

I’ve been making some new ornaments this year. It all started with a trip to Goodwill where I found 2 gallon baggies full of plastic Christmas bulbs for $1.50 each.

Hoo Doggie, these bulbs have seen better days! I figured I could spruce them up a bit. There are about 50 bulbs in each bag, making them about $.03/each.

First up were all the dull bulbs. I sorted those out and decided to do the same faux mercury glass technique that I did on my bird. My pictures are better this time around, so I’ll repeat the process for you.

1. Spray with water – You want a spray bottle that will spray a light mist so small beads of water form on the object. I use an old hair spray bottle for my mister.

2. Spray paint over the water – Don’t wait for the water to dry. Grab the silver spray paint of your choice and spray right over the water. I used Krylon’s Sterling Silver spray that I picked up for super cheap during a close out sale at a local craft store.

3. Repeat steps for all sides – I had to get creative to figure out how to adequately cover all sides of the bulb. My method included large garbage liners, a furniture dolly, an old bed frame and some twine. I totally McGuivered that one, Baby.

4. Scrub off Paint Bubbles – You want to wait long enough for the paint to dry and not be tacky to the touch, but not so long that the water dries. I use an old tooth brush and an old t-shirt to wipe off the bubbles. Either one works well.

5. Repeat steps as desired. If you want a more layered look you can add more water and spray paint. I wanted the color from the bulbs to show through, so after I rubbed off the bubbles, I sprayed a very light layer of the spray paint to give some extra shine but still kept some of the color showing through.

6. Fleck with Antiquing Glaze – I use Valspar’s Antiquing Glaze and dip a stiff brush into the glaze. I run my thumb across the tip of the brush to splatter the glaze onto the bulbs. It’s a technique I perfected in Mr. Leque’s 4th grade class.

You could leave the glaze off if you wanted. I like the aged look it gives to the bulbs. The total cost for 50 bulbs is $1.50 since I had the spray paint and glaze on hand.

For the rest of the bulbs I pulled a page from Miss Mustard Seed’s book and decided to try out the German glass glitter. It is every bit as delicious as Marian claims. I bought both silver and sapphire, which is really more of an aqua color. I love how the colors of the bulbs show through the glitter.

I used regular Elmer’s glue for some and Mod Podge for others and honestly, they both shed equally. I’ll save my pricey Mod Podge for other projects.

It’s a fun way to add some new life to some old bulbs. I bought the glitter from a gal on eBay. She was very prompt with the orders and even sent a free sample of the pink glitter for me to try out. You can find her eBay store, here.

It was $8.71/each for 4 oz. of silver and sapphire glitters, with shipping. I had just enough to cover 50 bulbs, which makes the cost of these ornaments at $18.92 for 50 or $.38/each.

My next ornament came about from some left over cotton yarn. I crocheted some washcloths this year to give to a couple of friends. The pattern used up nearly all the yarn except one ball must have been bigger than the others  because I had quite a bit left over, which led to me trying out this star pattern I pinned.

Source: jellywares.blogspot.com via FrouFruGal on Pinterest

 

I had a small red glitter Joy ornament that came with two other words that I used in another project. I just wove the silver cord on the Joy ornament through the crocheting on the back to hold it in place. Here is my version.

I ended up giving this one away at a Christmas ornament exchange party. The gal that won it loves to crochet as well so I think she was happy to get it. I haven’t made any more yet because I need to pick up more of the word ornaments. Walmart sells them for about $1 or so for the three words, making this ornament cost about $.33 since the yarn was from my scrap pile.

Last, but certainly not least, is my favorite ornament I made this year. It’s my snowman parts ornament.

To make this ornament, you will need:

• 1 tablespoon Epsom Salts
• 2 black sequins
• 5-6 Black beads
• Orange Clay nose
• 2 Twigs
• Scrap of felt or wool
• Clear glass or plastic ornament

I only had to buy the ornaments because I had everything else hidden in my stash, including the clay nose from a snowman project back in ‘02 or so that I’ve been hoarding ever since. We made those out of orange Sculpey clay.

I had an old wool blanket that I’ve been using for different projects since it was too beat up to use as a blanket. I just cut a strip off of it and fringed the ends to make the scarf. I would have preferred a red scarf, but ya use what you got, am I right? To make the ornament, just pour/stuff/ease everything into the bulb.

I thought it would be fun to put some words on this ornament. I considered “I’ll be back again someday” or “In the sun he melted, melted, melted” which is some words for a song the kids sing at church. I found a saying I liked better, though.

It says, “Some Assembly Required” which just makes me smile. I used some black vinyl that I cut out with my Silhouette using the AR Christy font.  I also gave one of these away at the ornament exchange and to a friend. Hubs is giving a couple away to some co-workers. I did save one for us. Total cost for 6 ornaments was $5.94, which was the cost of the bulbs.

I also made the faux capiz shell garland for the tree this year, which I really like. It was super easy. Iron two sheets of wax paper together. Punch out circles with a 2” paper punch. It actually works better if you punch out several layers at once. Sew together and there you have it. I think I need one more strand for the tree.

I bought my punch from JoAnn’s for about $10 during one of their sales. A box of wax paper is under $3.

I don’t always make ornaments every year, but I did this year and I’m very happy with the results. I will show you the trees another day. What ornaments are you making this year? There’s still time to try some out.

Cost Breakdown:

• Faux Mercury Glass Bulbs (50) – $1.50
• German Glitter Glass Bulbs (50) – $18.92
• Crocheted Ornament – $.33
• Snowman Parts Ornament (6) – $5.94
• Capiz Shell Garland – $13.00

Total Project Cost – $39.69

That’s money well-spent for decorations that will give me many years of enjoyment.

Suesan