Thursday, July 26, 2012

Magnet boards

Yahoo!  We finally got rain today.  There was thunder and lighting to boot.  I love a good lighting storm.  After the rain stopped, I stuck a trowel in the garden.  It was wet about an inch down.  We need more, but I believe I heard my plants breath a collective sigh of relief!  The forecast is calling for more rain tomorrow and possibly Friday.  I hope it saves the local farmers crops and I hope it continues.

I mentioned in my last post that I've been busy.  Here's one of the projects I recently finished and added to my Etsy shop.  My personal favorite is the black and white one, but I love all the papers.


I found these 3 magnet boards recently.  They were scratched and I wasn't fond of the design on them, so I gave them a few coats of spray paint, then covered the front with some pretty papers, using mod podge.

After they dried well, I inked the edges a bit, then sprayed them with a couple coats of clear matte spray.  I tied some pretty ribbon to the back, then made some coordinating magnets.  So if you find a magnet board or have a piece of metal, or the back of a cookie sheet (make sure a magnet will stick first), you can design your own magnet board.

If making one doesn't float your boat, you can check these out in my etsy shop.  Stay cool, stay dry...unless like me you are out dancing in the glorious rain!




I've linked to:

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A Door

It seems I can either do projects or clean my house or blog.  Why is it always all or nothing for me???  I've been busy.  I've made things for the house, made or shopped for vintage things to sell, painted a cool door, and watered and watered and watered the gardens.   We are officially in a drought.  But the forecast is for rain...lots of rain...starting around 1:00 today.  There's a wall of water coming across Lake Michigan at us.  Oh Lord, bring it on!  I will go dance in it!

I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet, and just stick with one project today.  My favorite project is the door that goes to our basement.  It is in our kitchen, around the corner from view.  It's the first thing you see when you walk in the back door.  It's not completely finished yet.  I have trim to paint and nail up, so I will give you a peek.



Yes, that is chalkboard paint in the panels.  I should be finishing the trim next week and I'll give you the whole picture.

That's it.  Told you it would be short and sweet.  Gotta go help my dad with his deck!  Ta Ta for now.


Monday, July 9, 2012

The Scrapbook Room is Underway Again!

The heat has broken...aaaaaahhhh!  Today I didn't have to decide whether I should sit down during the standing praise and worship at church before I passed out from the heat.  Can I get an amen?!!

It's still as dry as a bone.  I tried to weed my rock garden, which has gotten very little attention this year.  It was like trying to pull weeds out of concrete.  The plants in that bed are tougher than nails!  I had to water it to be able to pull the weeds out.  The forecast calls for a stray thunderstorm tomorrow evening and no rain in sight the rest of the week.  I'm hoping that stray storm will settle over our place and drench us.  Otherwise you know what I'll be doing a lot of this week!

I am enjoying a lot of pink in my flower beds this year.  Every one of my hollyhocks are some shade of pink this year.









The following pictures are not beautiful, but to me they are.  



Hubby moved the plumbing this weekend, and we attached beadboard to the stairwell, then fastened the wall in place and the stairs to the wall.  I'm almost afraid to cheer in fear that I will jinx it, but I am one step closer to my craft room.  Now I just need him to run electric and we can finish the walls.  Then I can move on to building the cabinets and putting everything together!  Yeehaw!


Friday, July 6, 2012

Beating the Heat and Upgrading Old Jewelry Boxes

It's still hotter than a bank robbers pistol!  We are supposed to get rain tonight and tomorrow with cooler weather.  Bring it!

We don't have air conditioning.  The two best ways to beat the heat around here is to go swimming or go shopping...in air conditioned stores.  I spent extra time in Walmart today.  Every minute I spent there, was a cool one!

As much as I enjoy Walmart's air conditioning, I would rather be thrift shopping.  Our thrift stores are thrifty...alas, no air conditioning.  So I didn't go.  But I have plenty of things from previous shopping trips to play with.

I finished up a couple of things in the past two days.  These jewelry boxes were both found in the same thrift store at different times.  I was pretty sure I had before pictures, but darned if I can find them!  They were both stained dark brown, both ugly.  Here they are finished.


This smaller one is great for rings and earrings, or just for rings.  





The larger one has more detail with paper squares individually cut and added to the raised detail on the drawers.  It plays Sunrise, Sunset from the musical Fiddler on the Roof.  I need to watch that movie again.  It's been forever.





I don't have step by step photos for these, but it's pretty simple.

1. Remove hardware (if you can).  Otherwise paint around it.
2. Brush or spray on gray primer.
3. Whitewash with white chalk paint.
4. Cut scrapbook paper to cover the top and any other areas you would like.
5. Mod Podge the paper to the jewelry box. Let dry.
6. Sand lightly and apply a second coat.
7. Again, sand lightly.
8. Finish with a couple coats of clear non-yellowing spray finish.
9. Replace hardware.

These two are available in my Etsy store.  Stay cool and hang in there...cooler weather is on it's way!



This post is linked to:











Funky Junk's Sat Nite Special
It's Overflowing
I Heart Nap Time
RomanceOnADime.com



Sunday, July 1, 2012

Easy Clothespin Bag


It's hotter than a sweatband in a fireman's helmet!  Sheesh! You'd think I lived in the south, instead in northern Michigan.  I had to get up early to weed raspberries or I'd have looked like one!

I finally have time to get back to projects.  My craft room is still on hold.  Hubby ended up working for a friend (a paying job), and he won't turn that down.  I'm trying to convince him to take a working vacation.  We have so much to do around here.  He usually takes one or two weeks every summer for that reason.

Since I can't work on my craft room right now and since it was too hot to poke my head out the door, I decided to do a quick sewing project that's been on the back burner for awhile.  My trusty old clothespin bag had bitten the dust.  I had resorted to pinning it on the clothesline.


This is a pinterest inspired project.  It was very simple and took about an hour to make.  I loosely followed the instructions found on Is it Naptime Yet?  Christy made this cute shark bag.


I made a couple of changes, so I'll show the steps I went through.  You will need to cut two pieces each of coordinating fabrics (you should have 4 pieces).  Although Christy cut hers 13 x 19, I decided to measure my hanger at the last minute, before cutting.  It's a good thing I did, my hanger was almost 14 inches long.  So I cut my pieces 15" x 19."  Apparently all child size hangers are not the same!


Because my fabric was heavy weight decor fabric, I eliminated the iron on adhesive.  I just pinned the two different fabrics together, wrong sides together.  Then I zigzag stitched all the way around. This gave it a nice finish on the inside too, with no raveling threads for the clothes pins to get tangled in.


Next you want to fold down 1/2 inch at the top of each piece.  Fold it toward the side that will be the inside of your bag.  I added the step of stitching about two inches in the middle (the pin marks the middle). This is where the hanger will poke through, and I didn't want my fabric flipping up.


Lay your hanger on one of the pieces.  My hanger was shaped a bit differently than Christy's, so where it touches the folded edge isn't exactly in the center.  To see where the hole for the hanger will be, fold down the corners around the hanger, making sure it is straight on your fabric and each end is equidistant from the edges.


Mark the placement of the top edges of the hanger and the top of the curved part.  This will be your sewing line.  I used a disappearing ink pen you can find at any sewing center.




Lay a ruler about 1 inch under the bottom of you hanger, mark a straight line across and cut.  Do this to only 1 piece.  It will be the front of the bag.

Then add bias tap to the raw edges you just cut.  If you want, you can cut bias tape from some of your inside fabric, or just buy bias tape.  I didn't have the right color on hand, so I cut my own.  I had a 13" wide piece so I squared it off, traced a line (in purple) from corner to corner with a sewing ruler, then traced parallel lines on either side as a guide.  Finally I traced two 1 1/2 " strips as wide as my bag (In my case 15")


Fold 1/4" on each long edge of the tape.  Sew the seam binding to each cut edge of the panel you just cut.


Sew the top (smaller piece), that you marked, to the back piece, right sides together; sew along marks and down the sides, leaving an opening at the top for the hanger.


Trim and zigzag the edges.


Pin, sew and trim the bottom half.


Another change I made was to angle the bottom corners to make them more rounded.


Flip your bag right side out, slip your hanger in and fill her up!


Just hangin' out. enjoying the fresh breeze.


I think this would make a great plastic bag holder too!


Have a great Independence Day!





This post linked to these great parties:







PhotobucketRomanceOnADime.com

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails