Ruffles, yes please!

A few friends of mine have made these cutesy dresses out of tank tops and I figured I'd take a whirl at it.  Lucky for me, I decided to make a few towards the end of the summer and little tanks are starting to hit the clearance section.  I snagged up a few in various colors and started digging through my fabric drawers looking for coordinating colors.  I'm hoping to ramp up some stuff to start going to craft shows with my mom and grandma.  I know I've been saying this for years but I might actually be able to make a go of it pretty soon.  We'll see how these little darlings fare at the county fair coming up.

I think most of them will be 18 months-24 months and a few 2T and 3T.  I've thought about making a matching bow to go with it.  What do you think?  $10-$15 with a bow?

New Pillows

I've  been reading craft blogs for a while now and seen some really cute pillows.  I've been waiting to recover my family room pillows until after Ella was done with spitting up so much.  She's destroyed those pillows!  I went to Joann Fabric to find something for another project and thought I'd look for some fabric for the pillows.  I found a beautiful brown, red and turquoise fabric but that would mean I'd have to make new curtains and buy a new rug....not gonna happen right now!  So I stuck to trying to find something that would match the curtains and rug.  That left only a few choices.  I found a pretty paisley pattern but the green was a little too lime and I needed something more olive.  I kept coming back to a simple stripe that would look really nice.  But were the stripes too boring?  Another thought....ruffles!  Now the plan was to actually make the pillows, where would I find the time?  Lunch hour I guess!  I started with the ruffle since we have a love hate relationship.  It turned out pretty good although it always kinks up on me but I managed to make it rather even looking.  Then the pillow part and next, inserting and sewing it up.  It turned out pretty good but guess what?  I've got another one to do!

Race Car wall art

I've searched high and low for some type of wall art with cars or race cars and the main thing that I end up finding is for the movie Cars.  I don't want to invest too much into decorating Colin's room because Lord knows me and I'll change my mind after a short while.  Or Colin will change his mind and want something different.  My grandma made Colin a beautiful quilt with cars all over it so that's the theme for now.

I bought 2 blank canvases at Michael's and was sure to get the ones with the staples on the inside so the sides could be left un-framed.  I painted them a basic color and using my handy dandy silhouette machine, I searched for some cars.  I found a couple of race cars and used a simple font to cut out on black vinyl.  If I would have thought about it beforehand, I would have used white vinyl instead of black but again, this was a cheap project for the time being.

Because the paint was a matte finish and I wanted more of a gloss, I used Modge Podge to coat the whole canvas and to seal the vinyl.  It turned out very cute and just like I wanted.

Mantle Decor

I found an idea for these pots a while back and honestly I can't remember which crafty blog I found them on.  But it's such a simple process and pretty cheap as you can use items from around the house.  I had 2 terracotta pots, some wall spackle and a little bit of spray paint. 

I'm sorry but I failed to take pictures of the step by step process of the pots but the general gist is to smear the spackle onto the pots and let it dry.  Rest assure, smear is a very technical term and it is a skill to smear in the right context for the over all look.  Ok, I'm full of crap, just slather it all over, there is no right or wrong process here.  After it's dry, spray paint.  D-O-N-E!

While they look ok for now, I'm not totally happy with the half ball topiary look so I will probably change it up into a full topiary since the nooks on my mantle will require a bit of height to book end the whole wall.  But for now, it's a done project in my book. 

BOWS-BOWS-BOWS

I recently found a great tutorial for making hair bows.  I can make a mean decorative bow but hair bows are a whole other beast.  I played around with them before Ella was born but quickly admitted defeat and resorted to buying the cute things but the problem is that I have an insane addiction to ribbon, lots of ribbon.  I have 2 storage totes full of ribbon.  So I decided that I needed to make a better attempt to learn to make hair bows.  Insert easy peasy tutorial!  I now have a reason to bust out all that pretty ribbon that I have stock piled. 

Where've you been??

You might think that I've fallen off the face of the earth because it's been so long since I've posted here but I honestly have a problem.  I have a problem posting incomplete projects.  I've got a ton of stuff that I've done but I can't bring myself to post pictures until they are 110% done.  My projects start with a vision and then it comes down to the little details that I can't commit to, those little details that bring the whole project together.

ie: the spare bathroom.  It's been done for months but I'm still on the hunt for a final piece to hang over the toilet.  Which is a good point, why does the toilet need a focal point?  Maybe to draw your eye away from the toilet?  Ok, sounds good to me.

The master bedroom curtains, they've been done for a month  now but I'm in the process of spray painting the curtain rods because I started with white but changed my mind to black so it's a lengthy process to take it all down spray paint a few coats and then put it back up.  I've got 2 done and have 2 more to do.

The master bathroom, that major overhaul is finally done but there is a little bit of touch up, caulking and a piece of artwork that I'm working on.  These things take time but I can't bring myself to post pictures of projects not done.

Ok, I promise to finish one of those this week and finally put up some pictures of projects.

How to spend a sick day

My oldest was home sick so Jay and I took turns staying home with him.  I took the baby to school and came back home to take care of my patient.  I love the age of independence, while he couldn't go to school because of fever, he was perfectly fine.  He watched tv and played all day long.  This gave Mama an opportunity to get some stuff done without a baby attached. 

I finished this crayon valance about a month ago but it still didn't look complete.  My original thought for the window was this funky fabric for some basic curtains but came up with the crayon instead.  So I busted out the original fabric and stitched up some curtains real quick.  The fabric was pretty thin so I just doubled it up with basic black.  They still didn't fit so off to the fabric drawers I went.  I wanted to add some ruffles but boys don't do ruffles but they might if they're blue.  It's hard to make something so gender neutral for both boys and girls.

After both panels were done, I used my handy staple gun to adhere them to the back of the crayon and hung that bad boy back up on the wall.  Now if I could just get my butt in gear to get some wall art up.