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. :)

Repurposed Crate Box

Katie here! It's been over a year since one of us posted any projects...life gets really busy, so sorry about that.

There are many pluses to working at Hobby Lobby; one being that we have a clearance section once a year that some items get discounted to a ridiculously low price, and then getting my employee discount on top of that. So therefore, I bought this ugly crate because it had great bones (Sorry the quality isn't that great). I believe I spent about $5.00 on it, not including the materials I used to fix it up.

 I decided that the blue was too much and that I wanted to add a little bit of the color from the piece of paper that I bought to cover the design on the back, so I painted the corners white. This was really tedious... I had to use a tiny paint brush because the lines needed to be straight, and I didn't want it to look sloppy. See?! look at those beautiful bones! The white really made it pop, in my opinion.

 Next, I initially was going to try to mod podge the paper into the inside, and decided that the paper I chose wasn't going to work with mod podge really well because it was very thin; almost like wrapper paper. So I used Elmer's tacky spray, and it worked amazingly!

 And she's done! I decided to hang it up in the bathroom that my sister and I share, to put toilet paper in to. It works wonderfully and adds some creativity into our bathroom!

Dream Catcher Wall Art

Since I didn't originally plan to post this craft to the blog, I didn't take many pictures of it so, sorry! But anyways, I saw a post on Pinterest of this ADORABLE earring holder that just happened to look like a dream catcher, and I decided to make one of my own.
Items needed:

• Cross Stitch Hoop
• Embroidery Floss
• Scissors
• Spray Paint

Since I don't have pictures to show you my steps, I figured I'll just show you the ending product, and describe all the steps of how I got there(:

First, I spray painted my three hoops different colors and let them drive for a couple hours so I could tie the floss around them without ruining the paint job. Next, I looked up some different pictures of how to tie a dream catcher and tried to copy those as much as I could, and also used some of my own designs. I made sure they all looked at least a little different. At every crossing I tied two knots to make sure the string didn't ever slip, and was tight. And that's pretty much it! Very simple craft and you can add your own elements into it to make it personal.

Here's how it looks up on my wall. I've decided to leave them empty and to just be an art piece instead of serving multiple purposes.  Thanks for reading!

Revamping my Memo Board

SO...probably around five years ago, Kendra got herself and I these memo boards with the intentions of revamping them anyways; we didn't care for the pink and brown with little bows(not pictured here, I took them off like two years ago). Since then, it's been sitting in my closet just DYING to be redone, and finally I got around to do it! The wet spots were scratches on the fabric that I thought I would be able to get out with some water, but it didn't work.
Heres a list of items you will need:

• Ribbon; grossgrain is the best kind to use because it is more sturdy
• Staple Gun and staples for it
• Sewing Machine, thread
• Scissors
• Brads/Jewels/Buttons (your preference)
• E6000

  The first thing I decided to do was pick out different ribbon that I wanted to use. At first, I was going to use ribbon that were all the same size, but decided that using different colors and also different sizes would make it more unique and cuter. I chose colors that my mom already had, and that would match my room scheme.

Next, I cut all the sides where the ribbon was stapled in the back of the board. I then pulled out the staples holding it in place, and threw it all away except the strand of ribbon used to hang it up on the wall, I will need that for later.

For this next step, I needed Kendra's help holding down the ribbon to make sure that it stayed tight and straight so all the lines would end up perfectly(or close to it) aligned. I wanted to cover up the lines from the ribbon before, so I lined up and stapled them all in the same places as they were before. I first stapled the ribbon in the top back, and moved across the board stapling at each place needed, and then ending in the back for a final staple.

 

Here is a close up.

Here is a picture of it half way done.

And here is a picture with all the ribbon finally stapled on! I decided to have the different colors of ribbon all cross each other, making an 'X' pattern.

Next, I decided it needed some BLING. So I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a pack of 12 scrapbook jewels. They were the perfect size and ended up only costing me about $1.80 because they were on sale! Woohoo! I used some E6000 to glue them down in the center of each crossing, and let it dry for 24 hours. I also sewed together the ribbon that would hold the memo board onto the wall during this step. I kept the old pink ribbon so I could measure how long I would need it to be, and went off of that.

And that's it! Super easy, and a great craft to do if you are sick of the way something looks in your home. Here is how it looks up on my wall plain, and also with pictures and other things in it!

Thank you for reading!

How to make your own infinity scarf!

HELLO EVERYONE! I'm back today to share with you my newest craft--How to make your very own infinity scarf!

Believe me when I tell you that it is EASY! I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination. I can sew a straight line with a sewing machine, and that's about it. And that's all this scarf really takes! So without further ado, I am going to show you how to make this awesome scarf!!

T-Shirt Quilt

Hello again everyone, this is Katie!

During Christmas break this past December, I was really contemplating what I was going to do with all of my shirts that I had left over from high school. I didn't want to throw them a way, but I also was tired of wearing them as sleeping shirts. So, of course, me being the crafty girl that I like to think I am, I went surfing on Pinterest to see if there was anything I could do with my old shirts so I could still use them in a different way; that's when I found a post about making a T-Shirt quilt!

I loved the pattern of hers, but the directions weren't all that great, sooooo.... I winged it. And I TOTALLY do not recommend doing so; it caused me a lot of unnecessary stress! I love the way that everything turned out, but I probably will never make a quilt again; at least not the way that I did this one.

Here's some supplies that might come in handy to make your own:

• Sewing machine
• Matching sewing thread
• Scissors
• T-Shirts
• Bed Sheet
• Batting
• Straight Pins
• Yarn 
• Ruler
• Pen

 So first off, you need to decide what shirts you would like to use, and cut them into the desired shapes of your choice. I did 4x4 squares, 4x8 rectangles, and then my main pieces were the designs on my shirts which varied. I laid out the pattern and how I wanted it to look, and then took separate sections and sewed them all together one section at a time.

 Next I bought a twin size black sheet, and measured where I should cut it to fit with the front of my quilt. I then cut the batting to fit the front, and left my black sheet a little bit wider than the front so I could wrap the batting inside of it, and sew them together.

 Here are pictures of how it looked pinned to the batting while I was sewing it, and after.

Next, I pinned the front of my quilt to the back, with the padding that was showing in the middle. I left a black edge around the front to give it more of a classier, and quilt-like feeling.

 I decided to sew the front on with a zig-zag stitch because I felt like it would hold on better to the rest of the fabric. This picture is just to kind of show you that I am NOT the best seamstress, and you don't have to be either. Your project doesn't have to be perfect for you to be happy about what you have accomplished.  

Yay! One last step! And this one I guess could also be optional, but I did it for extra reinforcement. I bought a needle that would fit yarn through the end, and tied knots on random corners throughout my quilt. 

 Voila! I am so happy with the way that it tuned out, and am proud of all the little imperfections that it does have; no one else has the same one as me.(: