Toliet Paper Craft

It is time for a cheap-o craft project.


I have had this blank space on my wall, it is just to the left of where my bed faces and to the right of my TV.  It has been driving me nuts to look at that wall. I put a framed chalk board up there with a quote but the space was still to big. I needed something simple but big.

I ran across this cute toilet paper craft idea while searching through blogs one day and immediately started to collect toilet paper rolls from any and everyone. I had my co-workers saving them for me, my family members, I even slipped some out from Starlight while cleaning rooms.

These gazillion empty toilet paper rolls turned into this lovely piece of wall art...

I decided to add a little pizazz to mine my adding napkin flowers to hang with it.

This has got to be the easiest craft in the world to make. It costs virtually nothing... I mean you have toilet paper don't you?! Just save your rolls, Cut them in fourths and create your masterpiece. I hot glued all my pieces together.

 

You can also use paper towel rolls and cut them into sixths. 

 

Overall I am pretty happy with my easy peasy creation. It filled my dead space and allowed for a simple organic feeling all at the same time.

Happy Crafting!

Halloween Decorations

I have really really been getting into the Halloween mood this year. My house is already fully decorated and ready to go... and all for pretty cheap!

 When you walk in the door to our house these Dollar Tree Pumpkins are sitting on our entry table with a "creepy cloth" also from Dollar Tree. I wrote the BOO myself so excuse the sloppiness of it.

 

I got these ideas from Martha Stewart. So easy and super fun. I just used her stencils on black foam for 58 cents at Hobby Lobby and taped to our lamp shades. I used the same concept for the bats below on the inside of the shade. The stencils are for free at Martha Stewart.com. The spider web I created out of yarn and tape and found the ginormous spider at the Dollar Tree.

I had a couple of extra black frames laying around and found this vintage frame idea here. I pasted my photos on brown cardboard paper to help make it pop.

 

Another great idea from Martha Stewart.com is to put cheese cloth over candlestick holders and put creepy crawlers on them. The black candlesticks make them pop. I just inherited these candlesticks from my Nana and am loving using them for my Halloween decorations.

On my lunch break today with all of Michael's halloween decor being 30% off I bought the sweet little tree above and cute little ornaments to hang on them. It was the perfect look for our coffee table.

 

My green pumpkins were 98 cents at Walmart and I love the spaztic little owl that tops the tree.

I am a little obsessed with these napkin balls. I have used them at every party we have thrown. These were multi-purposed from Drew's Harley Party and now for Halloween. They are hanging from the 3 main chandeliers in our house as well as sitting on a couple shelves. They are so easy to make and add a fun pop. A tutorial can be found here.

 

I made this wreath out of black feathers hot glued to a styrophome circle. The little bats and Boo were found at Hobby Lobby half off. It hung on our door for a day before I saw a wreath tutorial I liked better. My inspiration came from here.

Take a plain wooden wreath and spray paint it black.

I then spread this packaged spider web, that I found at Michael's,  across the wreath.

These are a few things I picked up at Michael's to decorate my wreath with.

 

 

I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out... cute and spooky at the same time. Total cost probably $17 and I haven't seen one pre-made in the store that I would like any better :)

Now I just have to focus on what to be for Halloween because my house is all ready!!

Lamp re-do

I have really been trying to revamp my room. Take some of the old lamps, frames, candle holders, etc. I have had in my past dozen houses and making them look new and fresh again.

In my last house I wanted to find the perfect lamp to fit in this nook on my dresser behind my TV. It had to be tall and slim. I found what I wanted at Lowe's. It was tall, skinny and a blah brown color.

Similar to this one...

 

After moving in to my new room I decided this lamp was too ugly for my new tastes. I spray painted it gold and made a bajillion ivory felt rosettes to cover my ivory lampshade and I ended up with this...

 

 

I used about 60 squares of felt, getting 4 roses out of each of them and am sad to say the back still has a big empty space in it. So far I love the way it turned out and my only regret is that now all the lampshades in my room are a very neutral white/ivory color. I would have probably chosen another color of flowers however I don't know what color that would be. I love the lamp on it's own and am very pleased with how well it has turned out. 

Sunburst mirror

We have big blank walls in our house. This is a problem that comes with more square footage.However Neeley and I are used to cramming every inch of our wallspace with decorations so these empty patches are literally driving us crazy.
I have been oogiling and googiling some DIY design ideas for big wall spaces. After searching for what feels like a gazillion sites I kept coming across this...









The Sunburst Mirror. I decided this would  be the perfect thing to take up space in our living room. We do not have anythign else like it in the house and who doesn't need a little mirror in their living room. There are probably a couple hundred different DIY's for this nifty little project. You can use wood, bamboo, shis-kabob sticks, dowle rods, or branches from fallen trees or any other straight something  you find plenty of.

I found a great diy here  from Isabella & Max  that I got all my basic ideas from. I am horrible at following directions when it comes to craft projects and usually do my own method.

I went to Hobby Lobby for all my craft needs (not sure it was the cheapest way but I wanted to make it quick instead of shopping around for prices). I did hit the Hobs Lobs at SALE time so everything was half off.

My mirror was originally 24.99 on sale for 12.49 and my bamboo was 5.99 a bundle on sale for half so basically... buy one get one free right!

For asthetic purposes only (and because the BF thought it was cooler) I went with the green bamboo as opposed to plain tan. If I had been thinking I would not have done this. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't want to paint over it and that the green would look cool.. it did but the thought of having a big gold monstrosity was just too appealing and I ended up spray painting all my bamboo. I say it was a mistake to buy the green because I am sure I had to use more spray paint because of it :( I bought 6 bunches of bamboo for starting and then had go to back and buy two more. Now remember I am making a BIG sunburst mirror!

I did not document my process because it was a little sporatic but I LOVE the final product. It is just what was needed for our big empty wall! There are million DIY's out on the blogerweb to follow and tweak to make your perfect sun mirror.

 

Photo Booth Props

            

Photo Booths have become a HUGE Hit in Wedding photography these days. People love to put on the faux mustaches, big lips, and whatever other disguises are available to make a cleverly unique keepsake for the bride and groom. 

These are SUPER DUPER SIMPLE to do. And after talking to a bride whos wedding is coming up very soon I decided to jump in to the new phenomenon.

      

There are gazillion different ways to make these cute props. I decided foam paper from Hobbs Lobbs was going to be my method. I found several different templates by googling "mustache template" or "big lips templates." I simply traced around the template on the foam with an Xacto knife, one line of hot glue and attached the handle and BAM! I had some AMAZINGLY CUTE props for my wedding photos!!

I had to jump at the opportunity to have some of my dear family to test out my props upon completion. They were all naturals with the props and if only I had shot them with a real camera and not my iphone.

I did use the props at my last wedding and will hopefully be posting pics on my photography blog soon!!

4th of July

I have been in a headache comatose for the past two days so I apologize for the lack of posting.

The 4th of July was SO FUN despite that the city banned fireworks due to extremely high fire dangers.

We had all of our little gang over for a wonderful cookout including all the delicious American foods that are a MUST HAVE on this holiday from Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, chips and dips to Sausage filled jalapenos, bacon wrapped green beans, watermelon and topped off with My Mom's 5 Layer Delight. It was Perfection!

We climbed on the roof to watch the "laser show" that was substituting the fireworks this year. It was NOT impressive at all so we just chilled on the back porch instead.

I did manage to do one little crafty on my day off.

I had ordered a return address stamp from Etsy. I have been so excited for it to get here and last week it finally arrived from Costa Rica. The stamp came unmounted so I was debating for a week on what my best mounting option would be. I purchased some round wood blocks from Michael's with a cute little knob to top it off but it did not provide enough weight on the stamp :( So that was a bust!

I found a hockey puck laying around the office and decided it was the right weight and size for my stamp. So over the 4th of July I cutsied up my hockey puck and glued my new return address stamp to it.

I also completed a new yarn wreath for our front door last week. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! I wanted something HAPPY and CHEERY  for the summer time. I tend to be a black and greys with some browns kind of a girl so it has taken me a while to find the right colors.

While searching Hobby Lobby I found this great green/yellow for $1.22 a bundle. This was like music to my ears with all the other yarn bundles being $3-5 each. So I grabbed it and paired it with some purple fabric I had left over from a necklace. I made grey felt flowers because come on we can't have TOO much color on our front door and then suprised myself by adding some pink flowers scattered throughout. Turned out so cute!

May I just offer some advice if you are going to make your own fabric wreath?!

I have found that Michael's is the best place to find the yarn. They usually have huge bins with great colors on sale for .99 to a $1.29. I have also found that Hobby Lobby is the best place to find the actual wreath. They have the wooden wreaths, wrapped straw wreaths, and foam wreaths all for under $3.00. For fabrics I am partial to Joanns. The felt is about the same everywhere. Happy Crafting!

DIY Anthro Lampshade

I have gotten in pretty heavy to the DIY crafting. I see something someone has cleverly reconstructed in a cheap and stylish manner and want to instantly run home to re-create it myself.

I have had my eye on this Anthropologie Lamp DIY for quite some time and at the first chance I got to sit down and do it since moving I jumped on it!

Materials:
2-3 yards of Burlap (depending on lamp shade size)
Hot Glue gun/sticks
Lamp shade

So easy and so chic looking! I LOVE IT! I got a new lamp base from TJMAXX to complete my new look.

I am planning on going back through and filling some of the gaps with some extra burlap scraps I have to make the shade look even fuller.

A little Birthday Celebration

Last week, promptly after moving into our new house, we through a little B-day party for my friend Bailey.

Bailey is one of those people who is ALWAYS there to lend a listening ear, she will ALWAYS make you smile with her chipper personality and her clothing ensembles. She is FULL of JOY and we jumped at the chance to gather our close group of friends to celebrate her!

She was coming in from a trip to Dallas where she is about to leave us to go so we had a late night cup-cake celebration for her on our back patio.

Being a bit tight on cash since we all just booked a VEGAS trip I decided to go with the "Homemade" gifts for Bailey. She is very fashion friendly and is anxious to get any of my little crafties she can get her hands on.

I made this lamp for her. I got an adhesive plain lamp from Joann's and some great turquoise/aqua fabric. I used the cover of the lamp as my stencil to cut the fabric and carefully laid the fabric on the lamp with an inch overlay on top and bottom. Obviously NOT perfect but I was pretty pleassed with it. I cut three sizes of felt flowers out and layered them and attached them around the shade to add some design. I wanted to find a cool gold broach something to put in the center of the flowers but time and money caught me short and these little buttons worked out well.

My friend Brandais got the lamp base and this little lamp will be the perfect addition to Bailey's  new apartment in Dalls.

Brandais made these delicious CHERRY-CHIP cupcakes for our little Party.

Super STOKED about the bracelet Neeley got her!

I found this great fabric from Joanns for Half off and thought of Bailey immediately. So I got a yard and sewed it together into an infinity scarf... She LOVED it!

Then we drank our coffee ate Cupcakes and hung out on our new patio. PERFECT chill night!!