Fall Wreath

I decided to do a Marthafest this year again. For those of you who don't know, Marthafest is like Super Saturday for you LDS girls. Essentially, it is a day of crafting held in honor of the queen of crafts Martha Stewart. Or, it's just an excuse for a bunch of girls to get together, eat food and craft. I decided to do this wreath as one of the crafts. The picture I saw on pinterest looks different. A lot different to me. The colors are all different. I think it's because my yellow is softer and I used a dark purple and a maroon. Anyhow, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Trick or Treat!

I've seen a few Halloween shadow boxes on pinterest and really wanted to make one. I also want to make a Christmas one, but don't really want to buy 2 shadow boxes. So I tried think of some way to do them both with just 1 box. Here's what I came up with. Instead of putting the trick or treaters and words directly on the glass, I found a clear sheet protector. I measured the glass as best I could and cut the sheet protector to size. I thought I could just buy another piece of glass too, but that would cost more money and the class that comes in a shadow box is a pain to get out. I put my words and picture on the sheet protector and fit it on top of the glass.

The paper behind is easily changed out as well. So now, when Christmas rolls around I can just pull my little plastic sheet out and change the paper. Voila!

Broom Parking

I love Halloween crafts. I'm not sure why, but I just do. So I saw this super cute idea on pinterest and really wanted to make it. You can check it out here. I whipped out my handy dandy silhouette and designed my vinyl. That was the easy part. I looked on line to find a broom that would work. They were all way over priced. I just couldn't justify $20.00 for a witches broom. So I tried to think of what I would do and decided I would just have to make one. It can't be that hard right? I live on the Palouse, which essentially means I live amongst wheat & garbanzo bean fields. It's harvest time, so all the wheat fields were recently cut. But, when they cut the wheat, they only cut the top off, so there is fields of great straw looking stuff. We pulled over one day and hopped out and cut some. (my friend Marilou saw us cutting it, and told me she thought, who is that cutting wheat? Then she saw me and thought, oh, it's Erin. That makes more sense. I got a good laugh out of it when she told me;-) I found a good looking broom stick down by the grizzly bear enclosure. Brought them home and started gluing. I think it turned out pretty good actually. I looked high and low for a toad and could only find this yucky orange one at walmart. You can't really tell with the flash on the vinyl but it says, One Hour Broom Parking Violators Will Be Toad.

Didn't care for it, so I spray painted that too. Got some hooks and put it all together tonight.

I love it!!

Coat Rack

It's been a while since I posted anything. This is for 2 reasons. First, I'm a little bit pregnant and haven't really felt like getting out of bed, let alone crafting. Second, the projects I've been working on have been kind of a long process. The process was obviously extended because the general nausea present at my house, but I've finally finished up a few things. Here's the first one. We had a little coat rack that was seriously overloaded ALL the time. It just wasn't big enough. Then I saw this pin on pinterest of someone using an old pallet as a coat rack. They painted it all sorts of colors, which I didn't really care for. And I wanted a shelf on top so it would have a more finished look. Now anyone who has been to my house knows there has always been this huge basket by the front door FULL of shoes. Overflowing with shoes is more like it. There were always shoes all over the floor around it. It's been driving me a bit mad. So when I was telling Daniel what I wanted to do with the pallet he suggested we build a box to go underneath for the shoes. GENIUS!!! My husband is super smart! Luckily, Daniel was working at SYG nursery for the summer and had access to as many pallets as he wanted. We went over and picked a nice one out. I rinsed as much of the dirt off as I could and then sanded the whole thing the next day. We got some wood from our complex who had just poured the foundation for a new shed, to use for the box too. Daniel built the little box and cut a nice piece of wood for my shelf and gave it a nice edge. We spray painted the whole thing white and then sanded some of the edges to give it a little character. Then I used a nice wood stain over top the white to antique it a bit. Seriously cheaper then the glaze I've been using on everything else. I ordered these vintage door plates with glass door knobs for hooks on the top. I REALLY wanted them, and paid way too much as a result. I couldn't find any on amazon or ebay that were cheaper. So if anyone knows where to find vintage door plates for a decent price, let me know. They finally showed up and were all the wrong color, so I spray painted those too. Daniel put everything together today and VOILA!! A new coat rack. I love it!

I especially love the shoe box. It works SO much better! I don't always have shoes all over the floor anymore. I LOVE it! And if I hadn't spent so much on the silly door plates, this project would have cost me $12.00. Not bad!!

Glass Etching

Do you know how hard it is to take pictures of etched glass? It's hard. I must have taken these pictures 20 time and they still didn't turn out great. Oh well. When Daniel and I got married, someone gave us a 9 x 13 pan with our last name etched on the bottom. It was my favorite pan. Sadly, Daniel put it on the stove to wait for the oven to preheat. Then went to cook something on the stove top. He turned on the wrong burner and my beautiful, personalized pan was shattered into a million pieces. So I decided to make my own. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I LOVE MY SILHOUETTE!!! Hands down, the best Christmas gift I ever got. Way to go Daniel!! I made my little design, cut it out in vinyl. Put it on the pans and put some Armour Glass etching on it and voila! Personalized pans.

I did learn a few things along the way though. 1st you really have to glob it on. It needs to be thick. Second, the blogs that say you only have to leave it on for 10 minutes are lieing. You really need to let it sit for 30 minutes to 1 hr.

It's hard to tell, but this is my pie pan and it says 'A Sweet Treat!'

This last one is super hard to see, but it's the side of the pie pan and has our last name on it. My sister and I did all these together and hers turned out super cute. Now I just want to go around etching everything!

Initial Wall Decor

I saw this super cute oval frame at a thrift store and since they are hard to find, I bought it for $1. It was the classic picture frame gold color that I didn't love. But I waited until I decided what I wanted to do with it, then I painted it. I have been totally in love with the latest robins egg blue phase. And it just happens to be one of the colors in my room. So I decided to paint the frame that color and antique it with the General Finishes, van dyke brown glaze effects. Someone in Utah send me more of that! I got it from the Wood Connection and I'm almost out!! This was my 1st time priming anything and it worked out so much better then all my other spray paint projects. I'm converted.

I looked everywhere for the right B to go in the frame. I was unsuccessful and settled on this one. I'm still not in love with it, but if I come across the right one, it's easily replaced.

I do like the colors though. It goes perfectly with our bedroom.

See what I mean about the font? Just don't love it. But, I am pleased with the overall product.

Silhouette Pendants & Resin

I've seen a lot of decoration with silhouettes lately and thought they were really cute. Many of the tutorials I found gave game complicated instructions on how to photograph your child then trace by hand and cut out by hand which I just thought sounded like too much work. I finally found a tutorial on how to do all that with photoshop. From there, it was super easy to open the picture in my silhouette studio and have it cut in vinyl. The only tricky part was getting the scrapbook paper to fit in the pendant just right. I knew the dimensions of the pendant and just sized down from there. I made several different sizes and cut them out on scratch paper first. I found the perfect size, copied it 3 times and sized the silhouettes to fit inside. I did have to use YES paste to glue the paper in the pendant. Then I put the vinyl silhouette on and added another coat of YES paste because I didn't know how the vinyl would react to the resin. I mixed up the resin and poured it on. It's supposed to degas on its own and remove all the bubbles, but the next morning there were still some bubbles which I foolishly attempted to remove with a hair dryer, which created more bubbles. So then I attempted to use a pin and pop them. Well that just pulled some of the resin up. Finally I decided to just leave it alone. It dried and is far from perfect, but I'm pleased enough with it to wear it. I think I might try a bracelet next time.

Any suggestions out there on how to remove bubbles without pulling the resin up?