Spring Mantle Decor

I got a few questions from the pictures I posted of my Spring mantel decor, so here is how you can do it in your own home if you want!

The first element I used for the mantle was the weathered barn wood frame Garland made for me and I first featured at Christmas. It's just some old wood that he nailed to a couple pieces of framing to hold it together. Extremely easy project!

Then I took off the Christmas wreath and replaced it with this book wreath I made a couple years ago. I LOVE this wreath, it goes with anything! You can see that mine is different colors because I used a few different books and hung it on my front door, so they aged different colors in the sun. Make sure if you use different books that you do a better job of spreading out the roses so you don't get clusters of one color or the other (like mine).

If you want to do a wreath on wood like I did here's the easy trick: Buy a 3M hook and hang it on the backside UPSIDE DOWN. Then just tie a knot with the string around the hook as shown here. Genius! Thanks Pinterest!

Next I lined the frame and wreath with the mercury glass vases I made this summer. This was a super easy and inexpensive project, probably totaling $10-15 for 10 vases.

 Wild flowers from Hobby Lobby on half off! Oh, how I love that place. 

 I stacked some old books I got at a garage sale on both sides just to give plenty of variation on height.

Lastly I made a fabric garland to hang down from the mantle. This was my favorite part! I went and bought fabric scraps from a fabric store for $7 and that was the total cost! I used twine I already had and a lot of elbow grease. Depending on the type of fabric you get will depend on how easy or difficult your project is. A couple of my fabrics had stitching or were just really thick and it took a lot of effort to cut through. The plain cotton fabrics were really easy though! All in all it probably took me 3 hours to make and it's about 5 feet long. Here is the tutorial I used, but it's pretty self explanatory.

All in all the whole mantle probably cost me about $35 including the vases, wreath, books, barn wood frame, flowers, and fabric for the garland. Easy update for spring, now we just need to weather to catch on to the change in season! Happy crafting!

Christmas Mantle Crafts

Oh yes, it is finally that time of year (my favorite time of year) where it's acceptable to decorate for Christmas! If it were up to me I might leave them up year round, but the comings and goings of the Christmas decor do make it more fun to decorate each holiday season. So here is what I did for my Christmas mantle this year and how you can do it too!

 The first thing I did was get some old wood I had leftover from making a headboard and nail it together. Very simple! It's about 2ft x 3ft. Then I grabbed a wreath I had made for the spring and tied a ribbon around it and just snugly stuck this converted Joy Christmas ornament between a couple branches. Finally (here's the trick), I put a 3M hook on the back of the wood UPSIDE DOWN so I could loop the ribbon around it and keep the wreath stationary. 

Step 2: Create trees. I did these in kind of a hurry so I forgot to take pictures but they are super easy! All you do is take an old cereal box (or any food box, really) and roll it up into a tree shape. TIP: Make sure you roll it up with the colored side on the INSIDE of the tree, it will give you a blank canvas to work with.

For this one I just bought a holiday pack of twine (red and green) at Joann's and wrapped it around (hot gluing as I went).

This is a strand of pearls that was also in the holiday section (I guess to use as garland?). Don't look at it too close, it's kind of ugly, but from faraway it's super cute!

This little guy was made up of white pipe cleaners that I wrapped around the tree then spray painted gold (which sank in as more of a brown). When it dried I sprayed it with spray adhesive and put glitter on it (which ended up looking like snow and I like that).

The lace ones are my favorite! Super easy, too. I got $1 scrap lace from Joann's and just wound it around the tree until it was covered. 

This little guy is bubble wrapped and spray painted gold.

This is the most unusual tree. I hot glued those little craft puffs (the ones that look like cotton balls) all over and then spray painted gold. Then I did the same spray adhesive and glitter process as before.

Lastly, I bought a holiday potpourri bag at Hobby Lobby and hot glued leftover Joann's lace to the pinecones. Then I tied 3-4 together and made the lace into a pretty knot before hanging them on tiny command hooks on the mantle (get the clear ones!).

Put your stockings on their own command hooks and voila! Christmas mantle.

Let me know if you try this or something similar! I'd love to hear how it turned out.

Using my Fancy Camera

Almost 2 years ago I got a nice DSLR camera for Christmas and I was SO excited! At the time, we were trying to get pregnant and I knew I wanted to have a nice camera before the baby arrived (which wasn't for another year and a half). I started practicing my photography skillzzz on everything- the dogs, flowers, cards I'd made, anything I could get my hands on. At first, I was OBSESSED with figuring out all the fancy tricks and vocabulary that came with this new hobby. But the more I researched, the more confused and overwhelmed I became. It seemed like no matter how much I researched and asked around, I just couldn't get my pictures to be at the level I wanted! So I gave up trying to be the "oh hey, it's no big deal, I'm not a professional but my pictures look great anyway" kind of photographer and settled for being the "I use my auto settings and I'm okay with it" photographer.

Fast forward to today. Titus is here and I really do want to have great pictures of him. I take pictures that are probably better than people who don't have a DSLR, but they're definitely not where they could be! I stumbled across this blog that finally broke down all the fancy terms in a way that I could begin to understand (written by another DSLR newbie). I was so excited to try out her tips and tricks! Lesson one was aperture, which is basically how much light you let in through your lens (aka, how to make the background look blurry). The general idea is that lower aperture keeps one thing in focus and blurs the background, while higher aperture brings the whole picture into focus and gives everything detail.

The homework for this lesson was to shoot a line of objects started at the lowest aperture setting (3.8 for my camera) up to the highest (25 for my camera) and noticing the difference. I set my camera to Aperture Priority, which just means that everything else (white balance, ISO, etc.) were on auto and the only thing I was changing was the aperture setting.

So here is my homework assignment for lesson 1:

Did you notice that at 3.8 only the first apple is in focus and by 22 the apples, tablecloth, and chairs are all being brought into focus?

Cool, huh?! I knew the jist of aperture before this, but all the numbers were just overwhelming. This assignment helped to make it feel a little more manageable and I'm excited to try out the next step, shutter speed!

DIY: Overlapping Frame Wall

I've been thinking about this project for a while. Of all the new house projects it took the least "artistic ability" and the most "artistic eye." It mostly involved me finding random little pieces that I thought were cool (like wrought iron keys or a metal bicycle) and buying/refinishing old frames. I really love the finished look!

Here are the supplies I used:

• Old frames from thrift stores
• misc. decor items (smaller than the frames)
• nails
• optional: paint, finishing stain, sandpaper

Step 1) Find frames to hang. I got 5 or 6 at thrift stores for probably $5 and then refinished some of them to make them look vintage (painted them, sanded them down, used finishing stain to make it look old).

Step 2) Find objects you want to place inside the frames. I used wrought iron keys, clocks, poetry, misc. crafts I made.

Step 3) Decide where to hang the frames. Don't be too neat! It's meant to look hectic. I LOVE the look of the frames overlapping, dare you to try it! 

To make the frames overlap just place your background frame where you want it and nail plush to the wall. Then position your foreground frame that you want to float and put nails in as well, but make sure you don't nail them in very far so the frame can be hung an inch or so off the wall (I had to get longer nails for the floating frames).

Step 4) After you have placed all your frames start filling with random stuff! I only bought a couple items and then just tried to grab stuff from around my house that I already owned.

DIY: Reupholstered Chairs

Project: Reupholstered chairs

Here is a project that I thought would be way more complicated than it was. We inherited a beautiful dining room set from my grandparents but unfortunately the cushions were torn and stained in some spots. I had seen lots of tutorials on recovering chairs, but I had never done anything with fabric before and it was really intimidating. But alas, being poor finally forced my hand as buying new furniture was just not in the cards :)

Supplies needed:

• Staple gun (I ordered one off of Amazon for $9.99, and it included staples and a case)
• Fabric (I got mine from fabric.com for like $7 a yard + free shipping!)
• Drill

Here are my chairs before:

 and my chairs after!

Step 1) Use drill to remove screws from the bottom of chair and take off cushion

Step 2) Line up cushion on fabric and make sure you cut out enough to reach about 1-2 inches around the back so you have plenty of room to staple it to the bottom

 Step 3) Remember where your screw holes are!!! I took a marker and poked a hole then circled it so I would be able to find it again (don't worry, this will be covered up by the wood and you won't be able to see it.

Step 4) Pull fabric very tight (works best with one person holding fabric and one stapling) and staple one side to the cushion. Then do the same thing with the opposite side of the fabric. Make sure that if there is a pattern (mine was chevron) that it is lined up straight before stapling the second side.
Step 5) Staple the other two sides and staple the corners last. Since I am not a perfectionist my folded corners were pretty sloppy, but it didn't matter because no one sees the bottom of the cushion.

Voila!

DIY: Chipboard Canvas

Project: Chipboard Canvas

This project is SOOO easy! Seriously, anyone can do it whether you're artistic or not. I made it as a wedding present but I'm about to make a really huge one for our dining room.

Here are the supplies I used:

• Two 17x20 canvases (got them in a 2 pack for $7.99 at Hobby Lobby)
• Different sizes of wood or chipboard letters (I used chipboard, WAY cheaper)
• Craft glue
• Spray paint

I didn't take pictures of each step, only the finished product because it really doesn't need a photo explanation.

Step 1) Pick your quote and decide which words you want to be which size. Then buy the amount of chipboard letters needed in each size packet.

Step 2) Lay out the chipboard letters on your  canvases and make sure you like the flow.

Step 3) Glue down letters and press to canvas (I kept re-presssing mine every 10 minutes or so to make sure there were no corners left up. I even added a little extra corner glue to some letters). Let glue dry overnight.

Step 4) Take your spray paint (goes on much smoother over the letters than acrylic and doesn't leave clumps of paint in between letters) and spray 2-3 coats (until the canvas and chipboard are the same color)

Step 5) Enjoy the fruits of your labor!

DIY: Mercury Glass

Lots of projects are in the works for our new house! I have been so excited to have a whole new crop of crafts to dive into since we moved. Here's a snapshot of a few that I've done in the past few weeks.

Project: Mercury Glass Vases

I wanted to do a collection of vases and flowers for a dining table centerpiece, but regular vases were too boring! So I looked up how to create your own mercury glass and voila! Something special.

Supplies Needed:

• Lots of vases
• Krylon Mirror spray paint
• tape and paper

Step 1: Buy vases at a thrift store (I probably spent $6 for like 15 vases)

 Step 2: Wrap outside in paper (so paint won't drip down the outside)

  Step 3: Buy Krylon glass spray paint (chrome or silver spray paint is not the same)
Step 4: Spray the inside of the vase with a water bottle (this is what gives it the dirty/vintage look that is specific to mercury glass)

Step 5: Spray the paint on the INSIDE of the vases and then place upside down to spread out paint and dry. Repeat a bunch of times (I did it like 4-5 times)

Here is the end result!