Do you want to build a snowman?

Neither Mom nor I had anything to hang on our front doors after taking down our Christmas decorations, so they were looking a little sad.  We needed some winter door hangings STAT!  Friday we were in Hobby Lobby shopping around and bought the materials needed to make snowmen to hang during these next couple of winter months.

I actually had the idea for these last year but didn't execute it.  This is one of those things that I don't know if I've seen somewhere or saw something similar or came up with it totally on my own.  I'm not sure, it was just in my head!

We gathered up all of our supplies: cheap embroidery hoops in three different sizes, buttons in varying sizes, and different colors of felt.  The buttons and embroidery hoops were purchased from the Hob Lob, but we already had the stash of felt.  

First, fill each of your embroidery hoops with white felt.  We did double layers so it would be a little bit more substantial and not see-through.  And the white felt we had had glitter in it...festive!

Then trim off the excess fabric.  Cut right up to the edge of the hoop.  Here are front and back views.

Repeat those steps until you have all three different sized circles done.

Since my mom has double front doors, we were working on three at one time (two for her, one for me).  Use a hot glue gun to glue the circles together in the shape of a snowman.  Do it from the backside and just pile that glue on there!  (You could also wire the outside hoops together before putting the fabric in...might be sturdier.)

Next, I cut out noses from orange felt.  I just freehanded them - no need for precision since real carrots aren't perfect!

Using our hot glue gun, we glued down the felt nose and also different sizes and colors of buttons to make eyes, a mouth, and...buttons.

We planned to tie old scarves of my mom's around their necks, but they still needed a little something else.  Using more felt, we cut out hats for them to wear.  Again, I just freehanded the shape.  To make it stand up, I cut two sides out for the hat and sandwiched a piece of cardstock between them to make it sturdier.  

The last step is to rig up a way to hang it on your door.  I took a small binder clip and clipped the loop of my top embroidery hoop, behind the hat.  Then I was able to hang it on the nail in our door by one of the little tabs sticking out.

Finally, just hang them on your door(s) and stand back to admire them!  

Mine has already been hanging for several windy days and it's still hanging in there!  (And revamping those sad flower beds is high on the priority list for this spring/summer.)

Let me know if you build a snowman for your own front door.  I'd love to see a picture of it!

Frame Upgrade

So, we've had this set of three frames hanging in our living room for some time now.  It started out with just the middle one, but I thought it looked a little small and lonely by itself so I added one above it and one below it and filled them all with black and white photos.  

While I loved the addition of the two new frames and they way they helped fill up the space, there was something about them that drove me nuts any time I was sitting in the room and had a view of them.  I thought the top and bottom frames were silver when I added them, but compared to the middle frame that was already there, they looked very gold and horrible with the black and white photos.

Here's a closer view of the top and bottom frames compared to the middle one.

Since the color of the frames drove me crazy, I figured I could solve that problem by just taking them down and making them more silver.  And it was a really good excuse to try two products that I've been wanting to test out.

For the top smaller frame, I bought a tube of silver Rub N Buff that I've seen a lot of other bloggers use.  The goal was to make the frame more silver so I bought the color Silver Leaf.

The application was really simple.  I took the photo and glass out of the frame and taped off the inner black edge.  

To apply the silver leaf Rub N Buff, I just squirted a small amount onto a paper towel and rubbed it on.  It covered it a lot like painting it would have, but it dried very quickly and had the smoothest finish ever!  Below, the original frame is pictured on the left, and the Rubbed and Buffed frame is on the right.

After removing the tape, I was left with a shiny silver frame!

Turns out, though, that it was a little too shiny.  I probably should've bought more of a pewter color in the Rub N Buff.  But, I knew I could tone it down a little with some dark glaze.  

When I applied the glaze, some of the Rub N Buff smeared over onto my black edge.  Guess I should've taped it off again!  No big deal, I'm ok with the way the frame looks without it.

So with that frame more silver, but not too shiny, I could call it done and move on to the bigger one.  For it, I wanted to try out using actual silver leafing.  My supplies included a jar of gilding size and sheets of silver leafing.

This process was a lot more involved than using the Rub N Buff.  First I had to brush on some of the gilding size (the sticky stuff to make the sheet of leafing adhere to the frame) and then I placed a piece of the super thin leafing on top of it.  

Then I used a dry brush to tap all over the leaf until it was good and stuck down.  As I did this, small pieces would flake off.  

The end result looked like this - kind of a distressed silver.  

Just like with the smaller frame, I was afraid this would be too shiny silver so I rubbed on some dark glaze while I still had it out.  Then I could call that one done and get these bad boys back up on the wall!

While I was pleased with how the upgrades on the two frames turned out, I still didn't like the grouping on the wall.  The top frame that got the Rub N Buff application looked much better with the original middle frame, but the bottom one that got the silver leafing looked out of place to me.  The other two were solid colors, making the distressed look of the bottom one look off.  

Luckily, I happened to see this frame on sale for 40% off at Michael's and thought it would work well with the other two.  So down came the bottom one and up went a new purchased one.  Don't worry, I'll find a new home for the leafed frame!

It didn't turn out to be the super quick and easy upgrade that I thought it would be since the silver leafing took more effort and then I still ended up buying a new frame, but I'm really glad that I can now sit on the couch without being annoyed at how the look together!  It's the little things, right?

Splish Splash

I'm here to tell you about some wall art that I recently did.  And by "recently did," what I really mean is recently finished.  I started the project when Thomas was two weeks old.  He is now 12 weeks old and I just finished.  So you might say it drug on for a while.

When Thomas was two weeks old, this wall art was gonna look a LOT different than the way it actually ended up looking.  Remember the watercolor quote art I did for Bren's room?  

To date, it's still one of my very favorite pieces that I've done so, naturally, when I was brainstorming something to make for the little kids' bathroom, this came to mind.  I decided to copy the technique and do something for our own house.

While Matt's parents were in town visiting and helping with Thomas, I decided to get started on the project.  I gathered my supplies - two wooden canvases that I'd already had my Dad make for me and a handful of colorful craft paints.  I chose brighter colors than the ones I used for Bren's quote art because I didn't want it to be too girly in the bathroom that Thomas would be using too.

Using the same technique as with Bren's, I started dabbing on the different colors with LOTS of water so that they would run and bleed together.  And...it looked terrible.

The brighter colors just didn't blend as well or look as pretty as Bren's softer colors did.  In a lot of places, the colors turned a gross orange-brown shade as they blended together.  Not really the look I was going for.  So I dumped them in the garage until I could come up with Plan B.

About, oh, a month or so later, I was ready to try again.  I had painted over the watercolor mess, giving me two blank canvases again.  This time, I added red to my paint lineup.  The pink is still pictured but I didn't end up using it.  It seemed like it would make it too girly instead of keeping it gender neutral.

For Plan B, I decided to pick up some new paint brushes.

Sweet, right?  

I'll go ahead and admit that painting with marshmallows did not turn out the way I had pictured it in my head, but that doesn't mean it didn't work.  In fact, I really like the way it ended up working out!

I roped Mom into helping me so that it wouldn't take forever.  We were all set up on her back porch while Mr. T was snoozing.  To begin, we squirted out a little of each paint color, and grabbed a big marshmallow for each color.

We dipped the 'mallow in the paint...

And then dabbed it onto the canvas.

For the most part, the marshmallows left a more solid and filled in circle than using a sponge would have.

We kept our marshmallow dots in rows and tried to be as random as possible about our color orders - something much easier said than done for the two of us!  If the dots started getting too spongey looking, we just ditched the marshmallows and grabbed new ones.  We may have eaten a few along the way too.  :)

When we painted the second canvas, we followed the exact same order of colors so we didn't have to think about it as much.  The second one was completed much faster than the first one!

I actually contemplated stopping the project right there.  Who doesn't love a bunch of colorful dots?  My niece and nephews all thought they were cool.  But, I couldn't just waste that bag of smaller marshmallows, you know?

With the bigger circles dry, we used the smaller 'mallows to fill in the white spots between the dots.  At first I thought we had made a big mistake by doing this, but by the time we were finished, I was ok with how it looked.  And I knew if I was going to move onto the next step, I needed as little white background showing as possible.

Pictured at right, the white space has been filled with smaller dots on the top canvas.  The bottom canvas was next!

With my canvases full of color, I could repeat the same steps I used to complete Bren's watercolor quote art.  Just like with hers, I used my silhouette machine to cut some letters out of adhesive vinyl.  Getting the letters evenly spaced and stuck down straight is always the hardest part for me!  I used a piece of painters tape to give me a straight line to work with.

After what felt like an eternity of sticking and resticking, I finally had all the letters of "Splish Splash" good and stuck.  :)

This project could've easily been finished here.  Colorful background with white letters would totally work.  But I was going for the opposite of that.

With a drop cloth down in the yard, I went to town with some glossy white spray paint.  It was so sunny outside that these nearly blinded me as I worked on them.  I couldn't see at all when I went back into the dark (by comparison) house!

After about a bajillion coats of white paint (had to cover up all those brightly covered dots!), I could peel the Splish Splash letters off and call 'em done!  You know, only two months after I'd started them...

Here they are hanging up in the kids' bathroom (which I've totally redone, by the way.  Pics soon).  You can see that the marshmallow dots added some texture to the white background, but I'm totally cool with that.  Don't mind how it looks at all!  And, I like that I finally have something gender neutral and bathroom appropriate to hang on the wall!

I'll have more pictures when I reveal the whole bathroom.  Need to find a new mirror first and then it'll all be done!  In the mean time, go paint something with some marshmallows!

Painting with Marbles

Some people tend to lose their marbles, but not us!  Instead, we use ours to paint with!  :)

My mom kept my nephew Jett and niece Bren today and, as the cool aunt that I am, I whipped up a fun little craft project for them.  I told Bren it might take us six whole hours to complete ("How much is that?" "It's like 4 Frozen movies." "Oh, ok.") but that was a bit of an exaggeration.  I think we were done in under one hour so while it did kill a little bit of time, it didn't completely knock out the whole afternoon.  But it was still fun and both kids enjoyed it so I'm sharing it with you in case you need to entertain some kids too!

You don't need much in terms of supplies.  Just some craft paint, a bag of marbles, pool noodles (we only ended up using one), a canvas of some type, and a drop cloth or something to protect your floors.  We painted out in the woodshop but we still put down a drop cloth to avoid too much of a mess.  Not pictured is the small plastic bowl of water we used to clean our marbles as we went.  You'll want to have that handy too.

While the kids picked out their paint colors - I let them choose three colors each - I cut up the pool noodle.  First I used a knife to slice it into thirds and then I cut those three pieces down the middle lengthwise.  It gave us six "marble slides."

I squirted out a little bit of paint near one end of each marble slide.  I was careful not too squirt out too much because I didn't want it to drip out, but there needed to be enough for the marble to roll through and pick up.

Then came the fun part!  The kids just took marbles, lined up their slides with their canvas, and let them roll through the paint and onto the blank canvas creating colorful streaks.  I think the pictures will explain that better.

We used wood blocks as barricades so the marbles wouldn't roll all the way across the floor.

Action shot!  That blue blur is a marble rolling across.

Jett really wanted to be too cool for this when I first told him we were going to do a craft project, but he probably got into more than Bren did!  He liked to get a handful of marbles and send them down the slide one after the other while he moved the slide back and forth on the canvas.  Bren was much more careful and took her time with each marble.

Another action shot!  Do you see the orange blur right out of the slide?

Once they were satisfied with their paintings, they ran back inside to play and left me with the mess.  So typical, right?

Here are their finished masterpieces!  Their mom has a wall in their house where she displays their artwork.  Wonder if these will make the cut??

You should try it out sometime.  (And if you do, send me a picture!)  Not gonna lie, I kinda wanted to make one of my own today but I only had two canvases.  I do have that extra pool noodle though so maybe I'll make one later in the week...

Diaper Babies

Anyone out there hosting a baby shower anytime soon?  If so, I've got the perfect quick little craft for you that's super easy, super cheap, and super cute!  I found lots of versions of this on Pinterest but the tutorial I ended up going by can be found on this blog.  

Here's a quick step-by-step guide of how you can make some of these cute sleeping babies for yourself.

SO easy, right? One pack of 8 wash cloths plus one pack of 4 pairs of socks made 8 sleeping babies.  I stole the diapers from Thomas's room...don't tell him.  :)

There are tons of different ways you could use these cute babies to decorate for a shower.  I was hosting a small crowd for lunch so I used mine to dress my table settings by just placing them on top of the plates.

The pink babies worked well with the pink flowers I picked from our yard.

Before I wrap this post up, I need to give a shout-out to my friend, Emily, for making these super cute pink onesie cookies.  Not only did they look great, they also tasted delicious!!  She is really talented; if you need fancy cookies for an occasion, you should give her a call!

Happy crafting, friends!