Photo Coasters.

I made these for a gift for Christmas using photos of the person’s dogs cause they’re so cute (I took the photos too!)  I have seen this a million times on the internet and wanted to make some.  I printed off the photos onto regular printer paper because I thought it might be easier to adhere to the tiles.  I went to Lowe’s and bought the 4×4 ceramic (?) tiles with finished edges and just Mod Podged the paper photos to each tile and then put a few coats of Mod Podge on top, letting each coat dry a few days in between. 

Aren’t they adorable?

Digital photo frame decorated!

A while back I saw on a gal’s blog where she had decorated her ugly ole digital photo frame and made it all pretty with scrapbooking paper and stuff, and I knew I wanted to do that with mine.  I got this for Christmas in 2010 and haven’t set it up yet and I feel bad about it because my hubby put a lot of thought into this gift for me.  So I finally got going and fixed it up pretty for my living room.

Here’s what it looked like before:

I used scrapbooking paper, Prima flowers and Prima crystal swirls.  Here’s what it looks like now:

And here’s a closeup of the flowers.  Love Prima flowers!

Much better, huh?

Christmas card display!

So I took some American Crafts double sided tape and tried it for the first time.

I stuck the tape onto one side of THESE:

and then I dipped them in THIS:

And this is what they looked like afterwards….

Okay….LOVE them.  And this is what I did with them:

I used them to clip my Christmas cards onto some branches I bought from Goodwill (that were gold and I spray painted them silver!)

I actually need 2 of these card trees, but I bought all the branches I could find at Goodwill so I worked with what I had!

I’m sharing my project here:

Blue Cricket  Design

Brooch Shadow Boxes Art.

Today I’m going to show you a special Christmas gift I was hired by my aunt to put together for her sisters. My great-aunt died early this year and while going through her house and cleaning we came across a huge amount of old pins or brooches, you might say. My aunt immediately had the idea to put them together in shadow boxes and I took it from there. Now, my aunt is not a rich woman so this had to be on he CHEAP.

Here are a few of the pins/brooches:

I went to Michaels looking for the shadow box frames, and they had a set of 3 for $20 plus they were 40% off.  Score!  There were plenty of pins to do 3 boxes and I still had lots left over!  I had the plan of lining the back of the box with some type of black velvety fabric or something, but when I was at Michaels I saw the T-shirts were 2 for $5 so I had the idea of going with those.  I bought 2 of them in XXL size and only used 1 to do all 3 boxes.

I worked for a few days here and there laying out the pins in different arrangements until I got to something I liked.

So I took the back off the shadowbox frame, cut a piece of black foam board (from Hobby Lobby) to size, covered it with the black T-shirt and secured it with double sided tape (I just didn’t peel off one side of the tape).  Then I took each pin and stuck it into the foam board until it would stay put and hang straight where I wanted it.  When I was satisfied with how each one looked, I put the backs back onto the frames and voila!   Here they are:

Okay, do you have any idea how difficult it is to photograph something inside glass?  ha!

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All in all, I am very happy with how these look!  What do you think?

I’m sharing my project here:

Redo porch light fixtures…or I love spray paint!

Last month while we still had a little bit of warm weather left, I got real motivated to get my front porch projects finished because I knew I would have to look at it all winter in whatever unfinished state it was in.  So I got real busy.  Back in February our porch roof (which was really just a huge metal awning) got overloaded with too much snow and ice and collapsed onto our porch, and it took out the 2 light fixtures on either side of my front door when it went.  I actually wasn’t toooo heartbroken, since they were probably 50 years old anyway (I live in an old house).  I was about to start looking for new ones at Lowe’s in our budget when my stepdaughter mentioned she had 2 that she had removed from her front porch when she bought new ones and did I want them?  Um, YES.  Free equal fabulous!

This is what they looked like when she gave them to me (you seriously have to click on the photo to see it larger and really appreciate the yuckiness! ha ha):

 I used this spray primer on them for 3 coats:

Then I used this glossy spray paint on them for 4 or 5 coats. 

AND then I also sprayed them with 3 coats of clear gloss spray paint. Felt like it took forever, but totally worth it!

Here’s the after shot of my lights:

It’s very hard to take photos of your porch lights in the dark!   Doesn’t it look like some huge monster’s eyes?  ha ha!

I seriously love these soooo much I could just stand outside all day and admire them!

I’m sharing this project here:

30 Handmade Days

Family Tree Canvas….crafting with kids!

My daughter is in the 6th grade and has already had to do so many projects since school started it’s borderline ridiculous.  One of them was doing her family tree with just immediate family members and on this one she could have help from parents, so I had fun working with her.  She drew her tree onto a canvas (16×20) in pencil and then outlined it with Sharpie paint pens.  Then I cracked open my paints and painted it all in for her. 

Here’s my favorite part:  The Heidi Swapp brown paint is so thick I was able to make it look like actual bark.  I love the texture!

Isn’t that fabulous? 

And here’s the finished project with all her leaves and photos of her family included on it.  I think it turned out great.

I’m sharing this project here:

Fall Decor – paper doily banner.

I took these paper doilies from Dollar Tree….

 and this American Crafts ribbon (from my shop)….

and made THIS fall banner for my fireplace mantel!

I simply alternated the types of leaves and fed the ribbon through the holes in them.  Easy!

What do you think?

I’m entering this into the idea linky at:

A Diamond In The Stuff

A Glimpse Inside

Paper Issues

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My Repurposed Life

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Girl Scouts yarn doll.

This is a doll my daughter made at her Girl Scouts meeting a couple of weeks ago.  They’re decorating a Christmas tree for an annual Festival of Trees coming up.  Each girl made one of these dolls and they’re going to be holding hands in a circle hanging on the tree.  I think that sounds pretty neat and can’t wait to see their tree. 

I have no idea how Summer actually made the doll’s body, but I made the outfit for her.  Can you tell it’s a Girl Scouts uniform?  And “made” the outfit is a pretty loose term.  I cut a piece of green felt to look like an apron (her idea) and used a hole punch to punch 2 holes in the apron, fed some red ribbon through it and then tied it tied in the back so it would stay on.  I also glued a half of a small paper doily just to add a little something.  I then cut a strip of the felt to be the sash.  Those tiny little round stickers are actually from K & Company’s Girl Scouts line and they’re supposed to be badges/patches.

What do you think?

altered lamp….spooky spiders!

A few months ago I found these awesome Ikea lamps at a Goodwill store for $7.99.  There were 3 of them.  I love them so much I wish there had been more. 

I found these spider web templates last year at the Mr. Printables website and printed them out onto a transparency.  Then I just taped them to the lamp.  In the photos you can see the scotch tape, but in real life you couldn’t see it.  The only trouble I had was the template didn’t fill up my whole transparency (8.5×11), because it’s actually meant to be wrapped around a pillar candle or a glass candle holder, but I just put a pumpkin in front of the lamp and hoped nobody would notice.  ha ha!  I will have to see if I can figure out how to fix that before next year. 

Here we are:

 It would actually be pretty cool to paint a spiderweb like these directly onto the lamps, but then I’d only be able to use them at Halloween.  Will have to see if I can find more at Goodwill!

Breast cancer awareness pumpkin.

Recently when I was making my jeweled Prima pumpkins, I decided to also make a breast cancer pumpkin in honor of Anita and Aunt Teresa.  I took the same route as the pink bra I made in 2008.  Here is the pumpkin before:

I bought a $2 pumpkin at the dollar store, tore all the stuff off of it, painted it pink with acrylic paint, and then covered it with pink Prima flowers. I stuck them on using Mod Podge.

 And here’s what it looks like now:

I used mostly all the same color pink but threw in a few lighter colored flowers here and there.  I rolled up a piece of dark green vellum and stuck it on the top for the stem.

Cute, huh?

I’m sharing my project here:

My Repurposed Life

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