Tuesday, November 13, 2012

In the cards

I'm always looking to score cheap artwork and I put these 3 together for $5 total. In August we went to the Minnesota State Fair and found a booth for I Like You, a local artists consignment store in Northeast Minneapolis. I must admit I have not been able to visit the store yet myself but I is definitely on my to do list. I found these 2 postcards at the booth for $2 each. The frames I found at Target and I used some newspaper for a backing.


There is a quote on the middle frame, which is actually a card a friend sent to me. It says "If you rest, you rust". Good words to live by.


Pillow Talk

It has been a loooong time since I was able to post with a very busy month. Well we are all moved into our apartment and I've been working on lots of projects for our place. We are on a tight budget and live in a school campus apartment so that means no painting and no nails bigger than a picture nail. Next to painting, one of the easiest way to dress up an apartment is with fabric. So I hit Joann Fabrics and found my favorite sections, the remnants, fabric quarters, and discontinued samples.




Each of these fabrics were around $2 each. 

I also bought 2 18x18 inch pillows on sale for about $5 each and a zipper for about $2. I had 2 larger throw pillows at home so I made some plain pillow covers to dress them up.

The fabric quarters and samples were too small to make a pocket on the side so I attached a zipper to that one.

The other pillows I made a pocket 


I wanted to personalize one of the pillows so I cut out the date of our anniversary to sew on the front


And there are the finished products!


Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Coming Soon!

New projects to come soon! We got all moved into our new apartment this past weekend. Brien works this Saturday so you know what that means...project day!

Monday, September 17, 2012

More to come soon!

I know I know it's been a while since I've posted. It's been a busy past few weeks with-

The Warrior Dash


My Grandpa's 82nd birthday,


And getting ready to move into our new apartment.



Once I get more packing done and especially when we move into our new apartment in 2 weeks, this blog will be exploding with projects. More to come soon!

Monday, September 3, 2012

Labor Day Likes

With having the day off of work for Labor Day, I thought I catch up on a few more of my projects. Some of them I did months ago and some were just a few weeks ago.

I recently got into wearing scarves. But of course when I start buying them and wearing them it happens to be the wrong season, Summer. I had a few that I bought a few years ago but never really wore. Then my Mother-in-law bought me one for my birthday right before my Husband and I went to Switzerland, and that's when it started.This project cost me a whole $1.50.

The materials were...

A hanger
Ribbon or yarn
Plastic shower curtain rings ($1.50)

I hooked all the rings on the bottom of the hanger but they kept sliding all around so I used yarn to tie them in place with a nice bow. Here is the finished product!


This can also work for ties. You'll notice the red tie on the left, the 1 tie my husband owns and it was for our wedding. I gotta get more scarves to fill it up!


Speaking of our wedding, I found yet another thing that would have ended up in a box in storage, our wedding cards. I've always been someone to keep cards, Birthday, Christmas, Graduation, and Valentine's Day. Those are in a box but the wedding cards deserved something better.

I found a small binder, about 5x7 with a clear pocket in the front cover and on the side.  I tore the cards at the fold to include what they wrote and some I included the whole card. After using a whole punch I put the cards in our red binder, our wedding color. I found 1 card that I really liked the cover and put it in the front cover. I then found a phrase from a card and put it in the clear pocket on the side.







Now I can look through our card binder and read and remember all the best wishes from those who shared our wedding day with us.




The last one I have for the Labor Day Likes is a bar cart I made for my husband and I.

I had a metal wheeled cart that was used for storage. I found some fun fabric in the remnant section at Joann's. I used some twine that I had laying around to attach the fabric to the cart and wrap around the top of the cart for more detail. Lastly found some foam sheets at Michael's and cut it to fit the shelves. Here is the finished product!




Sunday, September 2, 2012

Blast from the Past

While I was going through ideas and materials for LOTS of DIY projects for our new apartment, I found some oldies but goodies. I don't have the exact costs for the items but they are all fairly inexpensive.

The first project was a pair of old, tarnished, bronzed cranes. I found these hiding on a cluttered shelf at the thrift store.I loved the birds but they were kind of an eye sore. A can of chrome spray paint did the job; now look at them shine!





The next project helped me save a wedding decoration  that probably would have ended up in a storage box. Our wedding cake topper was a plastic, sliver capital A with some rhinestones on the side. Once I snapped off the steaks at the bottom that stuck it in the cake, I first hung it by a nail on our apartment door. Once we moved I thought, "there must be more that I can do with it..."  I took a 6x6 inch canvas and painted it red, our wedding color. Once it dried I glued our wedding topper on the canvas and now an item from the happiest day of our lives can be added to our home and not in a box.

11/06/2010 <3


This next project was one that my husband and I did together. We call it the splatter paintings.
Once I painted to canvases white to have a clean, smooth surface, we used the rest of the chrome spray paint. Before using the chrome paint, we started simple by adding a few pieces of masking tape across the canvas. Once the tape was applied we took the canvases outside and spray painted them chrome.  Next was the fun part. We took about 4 or 5 colors and one at a time we splattered it on the canvas with a paint knife. Once it was dried we peeled off the paint and Ta Da! The finished splatter paintings!



Brien's painting



My painting

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Staying Golden on a Stick

It's been a busy and exciting week but I'm glad it's almost the weekend. The week started with the Minnesota State Fair. If you are from MN or familiar with our fair, it's a HUGE deal; next to Texas it's one of the largest state fairs in the country. You can find pretty much any food on a stick and/or fried.  I got my fill with Alligator on a stick, roasted corn on the cob, Sweet Martha's chocolate chip cookies(the best cookies in the world) and milk, jalapeno cheese on a stick, and I stole a few of my husband's cheese curds. I was a little leary of trying my husband's must have of new fair food, lamb fries...but it is not fries. Lamb fries are fried lamb testicles. To be honest it didn't have much of a flavor; not bad but not amazing. After the fair we went out to eat with friends who couldn't make it to the fair for my husband's birthday. By Sunday night I was about to burst with amazing food.

Wednesday was my Husband's golden birthday so we went out to eat the came home to do cake and presents with family. He wanted an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen so I ordered him one, had them write "Happy Golden Birthday Brien" but made a few tweaks myself.



I found gold sprinkles and edible gold spray coloring from Joann's. The gold circle on the left side is a golden snitch from Harry Potter. I covered a donut hole with frosting and sprayed it gold. I cut out wings from gold colored paper and stick them in the sides then stick it in the cake with a toothpick. I wanted to make the cake as golden as possible.

Here's my handsome husband Brien!




 The Two Lovebirds

I had one last surprise that I put together with his Mom and Brother, the Golden Basket. I couldn't find any other basket we owned that was empty so I had to put everything in the laundry basket.

I took this picture the next morning so there are a few things missing. The Michelob Golden Light is in the fridge and the honey Teddy Grahams (gold packaging) and the goldfish crackers were taken to work by the birthday boy.

We ended up throwing Brien a surprise birthday party that following weekend so I got to decorate another cake. I bought this cake so I can't take credit for the frosting design. But I did use edible spray paint and gold colored sprinkles to decorate.



His next year's birthday, for his 30th...LAS VEGAS!!!