Chair Recovered!!

I know its a little bizarre to be so excited about a chair, but I am. I've never recovered anything before so for a recovering novice, I'm pretty pleased.

I just popped the back cushion out and used a staple gun to recover it. The bottom cushion was a bit of a pain because it was stapled and bolted it. I had to borrow my husbands muscles to get the staples out. It was a little tricky but I'm really happy with it!

Let Freedom Ring

I had this red charger I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby sitting around and decided to do something festive with it. There's always the classic flag decoration for the 4th of July, but I wanted something different. I wanted to do Let Freedom Ring and luckily I found the liberty bell shape to go with it. I cut out the vinyl on my silhouette and voila!

Firecrackers

I've seen so many cute, crafty firecrackers the last few years and decided it was time to make my own. I didn't want to do the typical flag design on one firecracker so decided on this design. I've had this 6 foot 2x12 piece of wood in my sewing room for a long time and decided to start putting it to use. Daniel cut out some blocks out for me and I trimmed them to the length I wanted with my scroll saw and sanded them up. I think I need to get a 1" belt sander to get the effects I want, but it'll have to wait for another day. I LOVE my silhouette SO much! I would never be able to write anything and have it look this good. So, as a solution, I typed up what I wanted in my silhouette studio and cut it out in vinyl and used that as a stencil to paint over. I think it turned out great. I also love the glaze effects from General Finishes. I use this Van Dyke Brown on EVERYTHING! It antiques it and makes it look amazing. I've had this jar forever and it's just now starting to run out. Happy 4th of July!!

4th of July!

I have no July 4th decorations, so I thought it was time. I looked all over pinterest and saw a few things that were cute, but nothing that I REALLY wanted to make. So I thought up this one all on my own. I have this huge piece of 2x12 wood in my craft room so my super cool hubby cut it down for me. He used the router on the edges to give it a clean look. But in hind sight, I think it would look cleaner with a smaller wood. 2 inches is just too thick. So I sanded it and painted it with real blue. Then used some of my glaze on it to age it a bit. (can I just say that I LOVE that stuff!) Then used my Silhouette to cut the vinyl. I couldn't decide on what phrase I wanted to use. I thought maybe, "I Pledge Allegiance . . . to the Flag." Or "One Nation . . . Under God." But finally settled on this one. I'm kind of loving it. If anyone wants one, let me know! I'll sell you one!

Father's Day Wreath

I saw this tutorial on pinterest a long time ago. Probably when I fist discovered pinterest. I've wanted to make it ever since and now that father's day is almost here, I decided it was time. The tutorial has you wrap the wreath with jute, but that just seemed a little too labor intensive for me. I decided to use burlap instead, and it worked out pretty well. One thing I'm not loving is how it doesn't seem to have a lot of contrast. I think I needed to paint the letters a blue or something. I guess there's still time to do it! You can see the tutorial here Enjoy!

New Dress

This is the dress I made for Ava to wear to the wedding. It was a heavy-itchy fabric that frayed like crazy. Luckily I figured out that it had some nylon in it and just took a lighter to the edges which helped with the fray. I'm too lazy to go buy fray check;-) The pattern didn't have a lining for the skirt and we wanted all the dresses to have a little pink petty-skirt (is that how you spell that?). So I essentially made a second skirt out of the lining and attached the pink tulle. I also made my 2 niece's dresses for the wedding. They all turned out pretty cute. Caitlin's turned out a little shorter then I thought it would, but looking at the pattern again, I think it was meant to be kind of a baby-doll dress. Luckily I added lining to that dress too, so I could extend the length a little with the pink tulle. I love how Whitney's turned out too. She's the oldest granddaughter so I wanted her to look a little older, so Christina and I picked out this pattern. I made an extra flower for her dress too. The wedding colors were bubblegum pink and silver and black I think, so they all looked adorable in the dresses. Luckily my sister in law Melissa, can sew too and made her daughters dress and the bow ties for all the boys. Everyone complimented them all on how cute they all looked together. It was fun because I'm starting to feel more comfortable altering patterns to what I want.

Flower Barrettes

My brother in law got married a couple weeks ago. My sister in law and I thought it would be fun to have all the grandkids match for the pictures. So she made all the bow ties and a dress for her daughter, and I made 3 dresses and all the hair bows. I found a great tutorial on pinterest for these flowers. It was super easy and simple and I LOVE how they turned out. My little model, isn't she so cute?! You cut 6 circles in the shiny-vinyl-ish fabric, each getting progressively smaller. And make 5 cuts halfway in around the side. The tutorial says to use a tea light for the next part, but it was so small it didn't work well for me. So I grabbed a regular candle. You hold the fabric about 2 inches above the flame, and watch it curl! At first I tried it with a lighter, just on the edges and it didn't work very well. So it's important you actually hold it 2 inches above the flame. Then you stack the flower petals. You can glue each one on to the other if you want. I just stacked them and sewed on the pearly beads for the flower center to hold them together. Then I just hot glued them onto a barrette and voila! A flower! They looked so cute on all the girls!