Don't Worry, Be Crafty!

This week I have made multiple attempts to get back to "normal". My first task was to get back to crafting and cross more off my to-do list. I decided to tackle the Ikea APA Box Makeover I found on Pinterest. I was so inspired, I decided to makeover an unfinished step stool I found.

I am so excited, they turned out amazing!

This project was much easier than I originally thought. I was able to order the APA box online from Ikea for around $20. I bought 2 yards of fabric from Hancock Fabrics (Little Miss picked it out!) as well as the Heat 'n Bond. 

Following the instructions over at Little Free Radical, this all came together very quickly! In her tutorial, she paints the top of the box with chalkboard paint. I didn't want Little Miss to have chalk in her room for a few reasons: 1. I didn't want chalk dust everywhere upstairs, 2. I didn't want her drawing on the walls! For now, I just painted the top with green acrylic glitter paint. Eventually I want to paint a quote, I just haven't found the perfect one yet.

For the step stool, I used the same technique with the Heat 'N Bond & fabric after painting the stool brown. I finished by covering the stool in Americana Triple Thick Brilliant Brush-On Gloss Glaze. This gave the bench the high gloss finish.

Both of these projects were very easy and a novice crafter could easily complete. The most time consuming part was waiting for the paint to dry.

Now Little Miss has a place for all of her princess clothes, she is actually excited now when I tell her its time to clean up. We'll see how long that lasts...

Pillowcase Mattress Tutorial

In order to distract myself from the fact the Hubs finally left back overseas, I dove headfirst into my projects! A few months ago, I found a tutorial on Pinterest to make a pillowcase mattress. I just *had* to make one for Little Miss. It was a good tutorial, though I still managed to flub it up a bit. But I loved the end result so much, I knew these would make for perfect gifts. 

So 2 days ago I started gathering my supplies and looked back online for the tutorial...and its gone!! I was frantic, then my husband looks at me (like I have lost my mind) and says, "Quit nuking it Shannon, just wrap the material around the pillows." That man is a genius, but don't tell him I told you that though. I came up with this tutorial and I had to share it with everyone, I am so proud of myself!  

Supplies:
3 yards of material
4 pillows
sewing supplies

First, make sure you wash the fabric. You don't this to shrink after you've sewn it all together.

Next, lay out your pillows on the fabric. I placed mine slightly off center.

 Then I folded over one side of the pillows, then the other.

I left about 3 inches of fabric above and below the pillows, then I cut off the excess fabric from the bottom.
 

I pinned over the long sides of the fabric so I could hem.

After sewing up both sides, I laid out the fabric BUT WITH THE WRONG SIDE OUT and put the pillows in. Then I folded over both sides again. 
 

Fabric is wrong side out, one side folded over

Fabric is wrong side out and folded over the pillows

I pinned the fabric on the top together, then did the same for the bottom.

Fabric is inside out and the short sides (top & bottom) are pinned

After sewing the top & bottom, then you turn the fabric right sides out.

Turning the fabric to right sides out

 I put the pillows on the fabric again to make sure it all still fit (it does HOORAY!)

Time to create the pockets for the pillows. Measure the length of your fabric. Mine was 72 inches long. Now divide that number by 4, which gave me 18. So every 18 inches I drew a line and pinned to make a place for the pillows. You end up with 3 rows of pins.

One row of pins

3 rows of pins (you may have to squint to see lol)

After you sew along the 3 rows to make the pockets for the pillows YOU ARE FINISHED!

Wasn't that easy? Now its time to enjoy your pillowcase mattress. Let Little Miss show you how:

I am so proud how the back of the mattress turned out, see its a straight line!!

Then I went a little crazy. I decided to add a bit of personalization to it.

Did I mention this is a birthday gift for one of Little Miss's friends? I bet you'll never guess what letter her name begins with...

In case you choose to add a monogram letter, I would suggest doing this BEFORE you create the pockets for the pillows.

All folded up and ready to give to the birthday girl!

This project wasn't expensive at all. For my fabric, I used no-pill fleece which was 50% off at Joanne's this week. The pillows I bought for $2.50 a piece at WalMart. Plus, this was very easy to make. As long as you can sew straight lines (or mostly straight) you are good to go!

Unwinding and Redecorating

The last 48 hours have been rather emotional for me. I am sure I will blog about it later after I sort out my feelings and set aside my anger, frustration, and tears about the situation.

I decided to allow myself to have a well-deserved adult beverage, a bowl of ice cream, and unwinding on Pinterest.

Slowly but surely I have been updating all of the rooms in our home. I still have the ruffle curtains to make for the master bedroom.

In navy blue of course!

And I have the toy box makeover to do for my daughter's room. I want a special place for her to put all of her dress-up clothes.

Now I starting to find ideas to update the living room. Everything is pretty neutral, but I have a vase full of flowers from Pier 1 that are my inspiration.

I really like to "pop" the purple flowers add, so I want to add little bits of purple throughout the living room.

Our micro-suede couches came with like a million pillows, so I would like to make 1 or 2 pillows with a deep purple felt flower and pillowcase fabric like this:

Joel Dewberry - Aviary 2 - Lodge Lattice in Lilac

I would also like to make this window:

Look like this:

Suspender curtains!

Here are a few of the fabrics I like:

Swavelle/Mill Creek Chichester Khaki, I would use dark purple suspenders!

Riley Blake Designs "So Sophie" by My Minds Eye

Joel Dewberry Blockprint Blossom in Amethyst

It seems like everytime I complete a project, I add 10 more to my list! I am excited about getting all of these projects complete. I wonder what Hubs will think when he gets home, I wonder if he'll even notice HAHA!

I will get to all of these after I finish turning the pile of fabric and ribbons into pillowcase dresses for one of my friends :)

DIY Painted Curtains

I am so excited about sharing this project! This one has taken a little longer than others, mostly because I am a perfectionist and I could only work on this at night when Little Miss was asleep. Why? Because everytime she saw me with a paintbrush, she wanted to "help"! Oh goodness I think I am raising her to be crafty like her momma....

Here is what I used:

1. A Navy blue Room Darkening Window Panel, 84" long. 
             - I found this at WalMart, on sale, for $5!
2. Acrylic Paint
             - I was trying to match my new bedding set, so I was 
                trying to make a greyish silvery color. I mixed a grey
                with a silver, and voila!
3. Fabric Painting Medium
            - This was to help the acrylic paint stick to the fabric so
               it won't wash out. I found it at AC Moore. 
4. Stencil
           - I found this printable stencil here at Jones Design
             Company. However, I suggest if you are planning
             on painting the ENTIRE curtain, that you buy a big
             stencil! You can find those on Etsy.
5. Paint Brush
6. Chalk
7. Something to put under the curtain to prevent the paint
    from bleeding onto your floor or table, I used newspaper. 


Okay now that you have all your supplies, you are ready to begin!

Layout your curtain and grab your stencil. I used my daughter's chalk to trace the outline of the stencil onto the curtain.

I only wanted to paint the top third of my curtain, so that is all I had to stencil. Again, if you want to paint the entire curtain I strongly suggest you purchase a large design stencil and forgo this step altogether!

Then came the fun part, painting! I moved my project to the dinner table so I wouldn't have to be sitting hunched over on the tile floor for hours. I laid down newspaper under the curtain.

For my paint mixture, I did a big blob of grey paint. Then used approximately half as much silver to add the shimmer. I mixed it all up. Then I added the fabric medium, it says on the directions to add it in a 2:1 ratio to the rest of the paint, then came more mixing.

I traced over my chalk markings with the paint and tried to be as careful as possible. But since we are using acrylic paint and it is water based, if you mess up you can just wipe it off with a damp cloth! Phew.

These curtains were thicker, so it took 3 coats of paint total. I allowed it to dry about an hour between each coating. The first layer was the hardest to do, the curtains really sucked up the paint quick! The next two coats went pretty quickly.

I painted from left to right, top to bottom. Notice how the designs to the right and bottom have fewer coats of paint.

After it was all said and done, the paint dried over night, then I ironed that all to seal the paint (it said to do so on the bottle of paint medium). I used wax paper between the hot iron and the curtain just in case the paint decided to do anything funny. I took down the old curtain, hung up the new one and here is how they look:

Curtain open!

Nice and dark with the curtain closed!

See how nicely the curtain matches the bedding set...please note that I finally have all the pillows:

This project was fairly simple. It mostly took time, patience, and a steady hand.

I was so excited to finally hang the painted curtain. But now I am left wondering, should I paint another one and have both curtains on that same window? Its a rather narrow window and I am afraid if I have two curtains you won't be able to see the design I spent so much time painting...what do you think?

Sneak Peek

I have been a busy busy bee since I got here. Where is here? I am back home getting spoiled rotten by my parents for a few weeks.

Little Miss and I have been getting settled in and I have started 3 different craft projects. I wanted to give you all a sneak peak and I plan on posting tutorials on each one!

The teardrop gems I painted for a necklace

My first pillowcase dress!

I am LOVING how this tutu is turning out!

 What do you think?

Laptop Craftiness

Since I will be traveling to my parents house here soon, I needed a bag to carry my laptop with. I have been looking online for months and nothing really caught my eye. I saw a few interesting bags but they were entirely too pricey. So while searching Pinterest late one night I came across this laptop bag tutorial and I was sold!

So I started out making the laptop bag....which turned in to adding a laptop sleeve...and eventually an accessory bag!

Keep reading to find out how I made all of this!

I ordered the fabric online from Lilly Bella Fabrics on Etsy in 3 coordinating prints. The only other items I needed to buy from the store was the fusible fleece lining, the swivel clasps, and the rectangle rings.

I followed Mother Huddle's Laptop Bag tutorial to make the laptop bag. This was one of the best tutorials I have used and I didn't have any problems recreating it! I bought 1/2 yard each of 3 fabrics, 1 yard of fusible fleece, swivel clasps, rectangle rings, and matching thread. It cost around $30 for all the supplies!

Okay, that is a little bit of a lie. I followed the tutorial exactly and after completing the bag I realized that my laptop is not a standard 15", it is actually 15.5". Which means my laptop didn't fit in the bag horizontally as intended! That was totally my fault for not double checking the specs for my laptop.

Total blonde moment. Oops.

I had quite a bit of material left, so I decided to figure out how to make a laptop sleeve so I could still fit it in the super cute bag I just made! I searched online for a few hours and while I liked some of each of the tutorials, there wasn't one that I 100% liked. Then I realized I could just adjust the bag tutorial to make a laptop sleeve! I ran out of fusible fleece but I noticed a few of the laptop sleeve tutorials used minky fleece instead, which I happened to have a yard of leftover from a baby blanket. 

So I wrapped the laptop in the fleece and cut out one long piece to use as lining, just like in the laptop bag tutorial. Then I just pieced together 3 pieces of fabric (like I did for the laptop bag) and made that the same size as the minky fleece lining. After piecing the sleeve in a similar manner as the laptop bag, I cut out a strap from another fabric piece and the minky. I sewed those together and sewed it to my sleeve. I sewed on the velcro and covered the velcro stitching on the strap with a big button.

Voila! A laptop sleeve! I am not going to lie, I was pretty impressed that I was able to put together this sleeve by combining elements from all the tutorials I liked.

Then you can guess what I did next, I made an accessory cinch sack!

Once again I combined a few tutorials I liked, here is a pretty good one. I decided not to use a lining for the cinch sack because I didn't see a purpose. I pieced together the fabrics just like in the laptop bag tutorial then used that piece to make the cinch sack. I am not too sure how well the openings for the ribbon will hold up, I coated them in Fray Check. Next time I think I will make button holes to slide the ribbon through.

Now I want to carry my laptop EVERYWHERE! I am so proud of myself that I was able to make exactly what I wanted, it was exactly what I needed, and it was so inexpensive to make! I managed to do the whole project in a few hours and it would've taken less time if I didn't have to scour the internet for tutorials for the sleeve and cinch sack.

I will definitely be using the laptop bag for other purposes since it is so dang cute!