Sewing...

I've been really trying to get into sewing, and actually thinking of starting a business out of it, but who knows what will happen. I just wanted to share a couple of examples of what I have been doing lately, and hopefully I will get some tutorials up soon!

Pin Cushion

I don't know if I've already said this before, but we are horrible bloggers; literally awful. I've been pretty busy sewing and doing all these side little projects, that I would completely forget to take pictures as I was doing a piece...woops.

But, I did get some of this one! First off, here's what you'll need:

• Scissors

• Fabric

• Picture Frame

• Packaging Tape

• Spray Paint(optional)

• Poly-fil Batting

First, I bought this frame from D.I. for $.50, didn't like the colors of it, so I spray painted. You can choose whatever color you like, but I decided to go with aqua because I had multiple fabrics that it would look cute with, plus, it's one of my favorite colors. :)

Next, I put my fabric and batting together! The amount of fabric you will need is just determined by how big the opening of your frame is, but I decided to add an inch and a half to all sides for wrapping. This was the most challenging part. I could not find staples for our staple gun, so packaging tape it was...I taped down two of the sides first and then started to fill it with my batting. I had to have Kendra help me during this part because there was no way I was going to be able to rip off pieces of tape at the same time that I was pulling and trying to tighten all the sides so it would look good and even. It definitely did not turn out perfectly, but I think it looks pretty good considering the circumstances.

Next, I needed to put it all back together.  The frame I chose had two different pieces of cardboard on the back, so I stuck the one that I hadn't used to the back of the fabric, and used the nails that were already used, to put it all back in to place.

Ain't she just fabulous? I love Pinterest. Especially when there are so many easy, cute, and useful projects like this!

Headbands

I've owned these cheap headbands from Walmart since my senior year of high school which was about three years ago... and never wore them since I bought the whole pack just so I could have one of the colors for school dance I was going to. Anyways, I never wear them, and all my headbands break on me since I probably have a big head, so I decided to re-do some of these headbands so I could have more options to wear.

First off, I want to state that I am no where near perfect, and a lot of the time, my projects turn out pretty crappy, so the second headband you'll be seeing is one of those. 

Items needed: 

Headband

Trim or ribbon

hot glue (not E6000 like I first tried out)

First, I decided which headband and trim I wanted to use, and I thought these two made a good combo.

 I laid it out against the headband to see where I wanted the design, and to also make sure that I would have enough to do it. Once I got it aligned, I started hot gluing the sides down. I wish I would have hot glued the top, but I didn't in fear of the glue seeping through.

I burned my fingers...a lot... so if you're going to use a trim or ribbon like this that has holes throughout, please wear gloves or something to protect yourself from getting those nasty burns. Here's what it looked like half way through. I really should have taken a photo of my fingers as well. ;)

 And she's done! I just cut off the extra fraying parts, and she was done. I love the pattern on this one and the blue peeking through.

 Now, on this one, I thought I was being super clever by using ribbon that was just a tad bit wider than the headband, and I would just glue the tiny edges down as well. That's where this all went wrong...

 I was smart though and glue the top down! It made it a lot easier to handle, and it made the headband smooth as well.

 This is what she looked like before I glued those tiny sides down....yeah... don't do that. I definitely got burned more than I did with the last one, and I will not be wearing this headband. Sometimes things just don't work out, and that's okay. :) Later on I did try this method out again, but instead of just covering the outside in ribbon, I did the inside as well and glue those side pieces together. This worked out SO much better, and it actually looks pretty professional if I do say so myself. I'll have to post a picture later.

Re-imagined Trash Can

I've had this trash can probably since I was about fourteen, back when one of my favorite colors was pink (it definitely isn't one of my favorite colors now). Over the years I've still kept it in my room and use it, but last night I decided I was tired of looking at that pink, and wanted to try out something new with it since there's no point in throwing away a perfectly fine item.

Items needed: 

Scissors

Jute (any thickness you want)

Trash Can

Hot Glue

Patience ;)

Here is the beginning picture. And I must say, this took me over four hours total to do. If I ever decide to do a project like this again, I will definitely pick a thicker size of jute, because this got just down right annoying and difficult.

 To get to this point, I was probably about an hour and a half into it, and that's with me working on it constantly and not taking my eyes off of it. :)

 Half way there! Time to go to bed and get back at it in the morning. :) This definitely got easier as I went on, since I decided to start at the top where it was wider, and so it felt easier and less time consuming to do as I reached closer to the bottom.

 Ta-da! I really love how it turned out, and am grateful I didn't run out of jute or hot glue, even though it did come close. :) I would say it looks pretty awesome for my first time, and I'm really proud of it, considering how much patience and time it took to do. Thanks for reading!

"Can you see me?"

First off, we aren't very good at this blogging thing... since it takes forever for us to post anything. Secondly, I wasn't sure what to call this post about redoing a mirror, and my dad said "Can you see me?" so there we go. :)

Items needed:

• Mirror needing redone
• Paint
• Sandpaper
• Mod Podge 
• Masking Tape

To start off, I found this AWESOME mirror at Deseret Industries for $1.50, and it already had hardware on it, so how could I not buy it? It doesn't help that it was already beautiful and didn't necessarily need to be painted.

I wanted to make sure I taped the sides of the mirror so that I wouldn't get any paint on it, and boy can that be the hardest part sometimes! If you don't have a good eye, definitely make sure you have some glasses on so you don't get any masking tape on your frame, and also make sure that NO sides of the mirror are shown so you don't get paint on it.

Also sand during this step so that your paint can adhere to your frame better.

 Now the painting begins! I used a fine grit sand paper, and my frame didn't really care for it, so I ended up having to do about eight layers of paint so that the finished projects didn't look splotchy like it does in the top picture...the bottom one looks much better. :)

 Lately I've been on a "roughed up" looking kick, so before I finished, I sanded some of the sides to make it a little more unique, I suppose you could say. After, I did one coat of matte Mod Podge to finish it off.

 And she's done! I love how it turned out.

 Sorry for being such a slacker and not posting more... We're working on it!

Not another quilt!

Yes... I decided to make another quilt, this time I kind of knew what I was doing. ;) I stuck to an easy pattern I made up, and I ran into very little problems this time. It also took me like 1/6th of the amount of time it did with my t-shirt quilt.
At first, I was going to do this quilt in only yellow, grey, and white, but as time went on and I bought more scraps of fabric, I thought some black and turquoise would be cute too. :)

 Keep adding more patterns and squares!

 Here's me just showing you that I actually did sew this. :) I bought all my supplies and fabric from Hobby Lobby (of course) and Joann's. I sewed the set of four squares together first, and then sewed those to the bigger squares.

 She's almost done! Just need to finish the last couple of rows, do the back, and stuff it with batting!

 Voila! This quilt only took me about 3 weeks to finish since I was so excited about it, and I love it! I did the back in just a queen sized sheet cut down to fit, and then tied yarn knots in it every couple of squares to make sure that the batting stays in place.

From "Blah" to "Voila"!

This has got to be one of my favorite projects and also the most difficult and time consuming one that I have ever done. I never thought I would be taking on the task of repainting a dresser, and all the time and effort it would take to do it. I'm so grateful that I was able to do it in the summer, when I had more free time than I do now! Before I found this dresser, I had a long, cheap one, that I've had for several years now. I decided I needed a new one, and was on the search for a couple of months. Thank goodness for Facebook yard sale sites, or else I wouldn't have found this beauty! In the picture below you only see one of the knobs, but I have all of them (which is pretty lucky). My mom was nice enough to help pitch in for buying it, and I believe we paid $70 total. And then I had to buy paint, sandpaper, knobs, wood filler, and some nail tacks. We believe she was made in the 50's or 60's since she is solid wood, and has dove tailed drawers ( this made me fall in love!!). 

 Stripping the paint off was definitely the longest, and hardest task for this project. I had to use a screwdriver, scraper, and also a sander to get the paint off. I probably spent around 3+ hours for two weeks, just scraping off the paint...yeah... I'll never do that again.

 Finally!! I got all the white paint off and it was now time to sand and then paint! I chose to do a black semi glossy paint that I bought at Home Depot. Just for future reference, I would never do a glossy paint on a piece of furniture again, or paint a piece this large black. It's really pretty, but everything sticks to it, and you can see every speck of lint/dust.

 Let the painting begin!

 Done! All I need now is knobs and to put in into my room!

 This is the awful dresser that I had before... thank goodness I got rid of this thing. It was definitely screaming "throw me away and never look back!". You can even see all the dust on top of it..and my earring holder from an earlier post on here! :)

 And now! My room looks much more mature now, and I bought a bookcase to put beside it for all my movies and such. I bought glass knobs, that really match the dresser perfectly. In the picture below I hadn't quite finished the knobs for the top two drawers, but I stuck with the original dresser knobs in white for contrast.
Next time I do a project this big, I definitely will NOT be painting it black, and will never use semi-glossy paint again. :)