Some Sewing Fun

This past weekend, my little family made the trip to the National Home Show and Canada Blooms at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto. A big thanks to our friends at aka design for the tickets! (The show is on until March 24 if you're interested in checking it out.)

Among the rows upon rows of booths displaying windows, doors, decks, hot tubs, massaging recliners (not that I have a problem with all of that) I found a little gem - The Sewing Studio. They are a store/studio in Toronto that sells sewing machines and offers sewing classes.

Their booth was set up as a mini studio and you could sit right down to make your choice of project in about 15 minutes. What a unique idea and totally fun! It was nice to take a break from looking at all of the home reno stuff.

It didn't take much convincing for me to sit down and make a project. Their booth was so cute and inviting, and the instructors so friendly and helpful!

I chose to make a mini cosmetic brush roll. I have been wanting to get a brush holder like this, so I was excited to find out that was one of the options. Now I don't need to buy one!

It was such a simple project, yet the finished product is really attractive. The fabric patterns they had to choose from were so fun.

Here's the outside. Who doesn't love chevrons?

 And the inside. Cheerful polkas and stripes.

And here it is with my cosmetic brushes loaded into it.

I don't have step-by-step photos/instructions because it was an impromptu sewing moment. But there are lots of easy tutorials available all over the web.

The Sewing Studio was also giving away little bundles of fabric. The best freebee of the day by far! (I was a bit tired of the mini flashlights and measuring tapes.) How chic are these patterns? I wonder what project I will come up with for them...

Maybe I will make some more cosmetic brush rolls to give away as gifts!

Thanks to The Sewing Studio for a fun memory and a cute/functional/easy sewing project!

DIY Christmas projects digital download

Last month I had the awesome opportunity to collaborate with some fabulous bloggers to bring you a week of DIY Christmas projects.

Shannon and Dean from AKA Design, Allison from House of Hepworths, KariAnne from Thistlewood Farm, Laura from Finding Home, Sarah from Cozy Cottage Cute, Shauna from Satori Design for Living and myself all shared a DIY ornament or decorating project.

As promised, the digital download of all the project tutorials in book format is now available! Thanks so much to Shannon and Dean at AKA Design for putting this download together.

Just click the image above to view the PDF online. Once the new window opens and you are viewing the PDF, you can download it by selecting 'File' then 'Download' from the drop down menu in the top left corner of the browser window, under the book title.

Happy DIYing and Merry Christmas!

Note: This PDF is to be used for personal or gifting purposes only. Using this digital download for commercial purposes or to make any profit is not allowed. Thanks.

Scrabble Ornaments and a Christmas Collaboration

I am so excited to be collaborating for the next week with six other fantastic bloggers to bring you some awesome Christmas decorating ideas and projects! Thanks to Shannon and Dean at AKA Design for being the ring leaders on this!

Each day one of us will be featuring a Christmas project on our own blog. We’ll be sharing the links to each others projects on our social media (twitter, facebook, pinterest) so you can easily check them out.

Then stay tuned later in December for a FREE downloadable PDF of all of the project tutorials!

Wednesday is my day to share with you, and here we are!

Being a lover of Scrabble, I couldn't resist making some ornaments out of old Scrabble tiles. Who doesn't love those cute little square, lettered tiles?

Being a Christian, I decided to use the five advent themes celebrated in the weeks and days leading up to Christmas for the words of my ornaments: Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and Christ. This adds more significance to the ornaments, reminding me to reflect on the reason I celebrate Christmas - the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

OK, here we go with the tutorial! Stick with me. I took lots of pictures to help explain each step. This makes it a really long post, but trust me, it's not as complex as the oodles of pictures make it seem!

Supplies:

Supplies needed:
Scrabble tiles (pulled out of an old game purchased at a yard sale)
Thin jewelry wire
Beads
Jingle bells (also purchased at a yard sale)
Scrapbook paper
Dry adhesive or glue (pictured later)

Tools needed:
Drill
Exacto knife and cutting board
Needle
Awl (or other pointed object)
Scissors

Step 1: Drill holes

My always-so-handy husband drilled holes in the top and bottom of each tile, using the smallest drill bit in his set - 1/16th. He fashioned a simple jig to hold the tiles in place while he drilled.

Step 2: Paper backing

I wanted to dress up the ornaments a bit, so I thought some festive-patterned paper on the back would look fun. I had this handy StudioTac dry adhesive leftover from my college days, and it worked out so well for sticking the paper to the letters. I'm sure another type of glue would work just fine, as long as it's not too wet, so the paper doesn't warp or bleed.

1. Glue letters to scrapbook paper. 

2. Use an exacto knife to carefully cut around the wooden tile (this paper is double sided, so that's why there is a patterned side facing up).

Step 3: Punch holes

Once the paper is on the backs of all of the tiles...

1. Use a needle to poke a small guide hole from front to back.
2. Take a larger pointy object (I used an awl tool) to poke a hole on the back (this is where the small guide hole you just made it helpful - shows you know where to make the hole). This pushes the paper into the drilled hole of the tile leaving a clean edge on the paper.

Step 4: String letters together 

Feel free to improvise with whatever works for you here. I have outlined a pretty detailed step-by-step process of what I did, but there are a myriad of ways you can string them together. As long as they are all attached together at the end, you have succeeded!

1. Cut a 4-inch piece of wire and feed through the bottom hole of your first letter. Add a bead or two to the wire on each side of the letter.
2. String the wire through front and back of the top hole on the second letter. Pull tight.
3. Feed wire back up through the beads on the front of the tile.
4. Do the same as step 3 on the back of the tile.

5. Feed the wire piece at the back, through to the front of the tile. You should now have two ends of wire at the front of the tile.
6. Twist the two pieces of wire together.
7.  Feed the twisted wire back through the hole of the tile and trim with scissors as close to the back of tile as possible.

Repeat this process for each letter in your word.

Step 5: Make a loop for hanging

1. Cut a 12 inch piece of wire and double it in half. Feed through top hole of first tile. Give wire a couple of twists so it is secure around the tile. Thread a bead or two over the wire.
2. String beads on each side of wire, leaving space at the ends to secure them together.
3. Twist ends tightly together.
4. Feed the twisted ends back through a few beads to secure closure. Trim the excess wire.

Step 6: Add a jingle bell

If you don't have a bell, you could just finish it off with a few beads at the bottom.

1. Feed wire through top loop of bell, give a twist or two to the wire and add a bead (similar to step 1 in the previous hanging loop instructions). Feed wire through bottom hole of bottom tile the same way you did when stringing the letter tiles together.

2.  Feed wire back down through the bead and secure around the bell. Trim excess wire.

And now it's done!

Now only four more words to go for me....

Aren't they pretty?

And I like how the backs are lovely to look at too.

And here they are on the tree.

Please take some time to stop by all the friendly blogs participating in this fun Christmas affair!

AKA Design
House of Hepworths
Thistlewood Farm
Finding Home
Cozy. Cottage. Cute.
Satori Design for Living

I will be pinning all the participating projects to this Pinterest board.  So be sure to follow my board and repin!

I'm linking up with these great link parties. Be sure to check them out!

Cheery magnetic message board

 

Quite awhile ago I pinned an idea for a magnetic message board made out of a cookie sheet that had been covered in fabric.

I thought this was a genius idea (and still do!). I've seen similar renditions all over the blogosphere since then, but I still wanted to make my own. It is such a simple idea and looks so darn cute when finished.

For my version, I picked up a round pizza pan at the dollar store and some cheery scrapbook paper and ribbon at the craft supply store.

I know it's fall and the Christmas season is approaching, but I couldn't resist the friendly grey and yellow colour scheme. Please excuse the spring/summer look of this project even though it's November. Perhaps the sunny yellow will add some cheer to dreary November days.

I cut the paper in a circle the size of the pan. I used my VERY OLD compass from my high school math set to draw the circle. It was JUST big enough to draw the circumference I needed. Then I cut it out carefully with scissors.

My always-so-helpful husband drilled paper-punch-sized holes in the pan for me. I sanded the pan a bit to smooth off any rough edges made by the drill. Then I lined up the scrapbook paper and punched holes in the same spot.

I took the lazy simple route and used double-sided tape to adhere the paper to the pan. Next I fed the ribbon through the holes and tied a simple bow. Doesn't the finished product look so sweet?

Thanks goes out to my sister-in-law for the lovely ceramic magnets. I've had them for awhile but they always looked a little too nice on my rather busy refrigerator. The magnets were on my mind when I was planning this project and picking out materials. I think they suit perfectly.

I like the finished product so much, I don't want to stick any messages to it! This whole project cost me about $3.

So now that I've got this springtime-looking project complete, it's on to Christmas decor!

Stay tuned next week for some special posts about DIY Christmas ornaments. I'm honoured to be collaborating with some other fantastic bloggers on this Christmas project spearheaded by Shannon at {aka}design.


I'm linking up with these great link parties this week. Be sure to check them out!

Office in a box

Living in the smallish house that we do, and having the majority of our free space consumed by baby paraphernalia, there isn't a lot of space left for things like, say...an office for me. Alright, forget an office, I'd settle for a small desk in a corner. But even that seems near impossible.

No, these days my 'zone' (as my husband likes to call it) is spread out all over the couch in our living room. Laptop, iPhone, notepads, pens, coupons, flyers, lists, notecards...you get the idea.

Here's a visual for you.

I'm constantly piling up my stuff and shoving it out of reach when our little guy is not napping or down for the night. Not exactly pretty or organized.

An 'office in a box' was in order. Something that would keep all my little items contained and organized. It just so happened that this great box was stored away in the basement with my gift wrap supplies. Perfect!

I have been holding onto this box for a few years now, knowing that one day it would come in handy.

I almost tossed it a couple of times, but those handy compartments inside would call out "Keep me! Keep me! I will be useful one day, I promise!"

So I hung onto a it little longer and now, FINALLY, I have found a use for it!

I wanted to update the fun/cheery pattern on the outside to something a little more modern and mature. It would be great to have it match our living room decor since that is where the box will be living.

My plan was to cover it with some pretty Martha Stewart wrapping paper that I scored for a great deal at Michael's craft store a few years ago when they were clearing out her gift wrap line (I stocked up). Then cover with clear Contact shelf liner for durability.

I also found some adhesive metal label plates on clearance at Michael's. Perfect for the outside of my box!

Inside, I wanted to increase the box's usefulness, so I planned to add magnetic stick-on pieces (from the dollar store) and a corkboard (cut out from an Ikea cork hot pad).

So I set to work covering with paper. I didn't do any fancy measuring, just placed the box on a large piece of wrapping paper and cut to size as needed, adhering it to the box with double-sided tape. The corners were a bit tricky, but it all turned out I think.

Some black ribbon adds a nice touch around the edge of the lid. I dug in to my scrap ribbon box and brought out the glue gun for this step.

Next, it was time for the Contact paper. Thankfully, it wasn't as tricky as I thought since the adhesive paper is actually somewhat removable. So, when it didn't go on just right, I was able to adjust it without wrecking anything. That made me very happy.

And now... here is the finished box with label plate.

And here's the inside, all ready to be filled up with my office 'stuff'. (I had to add a few more magnetic pieces than originally planned so it was strong enough to hold my magnetic notepad in place.)

Ahhhh, organization. I love it!

And look how pretty it looks on the shelf in our end table beside the couch. The accordion files on top of the box now hold my weekly grocery flyers and coupons.

Much better than the former chaos don't you think?

I'm linking up with these great link parties this week. Be sure to check them out!

Fall art tutorial - from failure to success

Have you ever had a great idea for a DIY project in your head, then when you go to do it, reality takes over and it just doesn't quite work out how you intended?

That's what happened to me with this Fall art project. I was about half way through when I realized it was not going to end well. Sigh.

However, all was not lost. With a bit of tweaking and simplifying, I was able to make it all work out. So, if you will stay with me, I will lead you through my Fall art how-to, from failure to success!

This all started because my front porch was in need of some Fall-themed wall art. You can check out the spring/summer look of my porch in this blog post that shows the reno/redecorating of the porch.

My idea for the wall art was inspired by this image I found on Pinterest (original source here).

 

I love the simple elegance of the lace on burlap. I thought I could capture that look by covering an art canvas with some burlap and spray painting a lacy stencil on it using some doily scrapbook paper I had on hand.

This project started off well. I even took a nice picture of all the supplies you would need: two small canvases from the dollar store, burlap, scissors, staple gun, white spray paint, and doily scrapbook paper. I did forget to include a utility knife and ruler in the photo.

Using a lightweight staple gun, I covered two small canvases with some burlap I had leftover from my wedding decorations (we had a fall wedding three years ago). 

This part of the project went off without a hitch and looked great (except that I ran out of staples half way through and had to make a trip to The Home Depot).

Then I cut a section of the doily paper. My idea was to use it as a stencil to spray paint onto the burlap. Simple, right? WRONG!

This is where it all fell apart. Spray paint on loosely woven burlap is not a good idea. 

Luckily, I was smart enough to do a test piece first before actually spraying my burlap-covered canvas. The burlap was too porous and sucked up the paint. A lot of the detail was lost. 

This wasn't quite the look I was going for.

So to salvage the project, I decided to simplify things and just use actual lace and ribbon like in the Pinterest photo. I dug into my box of ribbon remnants and came up with these pieces.

I used the staple gun to attach the lace and ribbon at the back of the canvas. Here are the finished products.

And here is how the art looks in my front porch. I used the same nails that my round black and white wall art usually hangs on.

Here is a shot of my Fall display below the art. I added some lace and burlap to tie it all together.

Even though my original idea didn't work out, I love it when I can work an idea through and come up with a revised solution. 

The best part? The finished product was actually easier to do than my original plan!

I'm linking up with these great parties this week. Be sure to check them out!