If I Dream It...

In trying to figure out what to share - this week really isn't super different from last week... but it's a different method... again super simple (and who doesn't love that?!) and worth the share in my book. I promise I will branch out soon to share new things - but for now... I stick with canvas, only this time it's not painting per se... it's "painting" by printing (a bit of a stretch I know -- but you get where I'm going) :) So I decided to try those homemade canvas prints that are ALL over Pinterest... that said, I had read a few a while ago,  but you would've thought I'd go look again before trying... that would've been the smart thing... that's not what I did. I had things in my head from what I read and I just went with it. The good news is it was simple and even with the wrong type of print on my first attempt - it still kind of worked (admittedly not as well though). Below are my first two attempts - in order... you can ...

The weekend is over and it's back to the normal daily grind... however, I felt my crafty bug crawling so I went ahead and got my canvas back out. A few months ago I had been working on items for a local animal shelter that does a charity art auction and I absolutely hated one of them... so I repainted over the whole thing in black to make it a black canvas... it was time to create something on it. That said, I wasn't feeling anything that would take a lot of time... I had dinner to get ready and some cleaning to do... and a poker game to play in... so not a ton of crafty time. The last detailed crafty time I did that I didn't have enough time for... well, the remnants can still be seen in my craft room... so yes, that's part of the cleaning I had. When working to get something done in time - I can destroy a room like no tomorrow... craft room and kitchen (for baking) in particular.  Anyways, I thought today's quick little project might be good for a #MakeItMonday...

I finished this project awhile ago - but it actually took two attempts and I'm finally sitting down to write out the successful one. When I got married we did an hourglass with colored sand. Thing was - we had a LOT of extra sand... what would we do with it? I decided to make a monogramed frame. My first attempt was an epic fail (sand is surprisingly heavy). So pouring it from the old one to the new one was a little tricky and the pattern wasn't as pretty. But the point was to use our extra and actual wedding sand... not buy more. So I worked with what I had. My original was a thin box frame with plastic sealing the back and then the back on top of that. I didn't get any pictures of the back - but you can see the plastic in the back in this photo. Sadly the sand started to leak from the bottom left corner pretty good. Each time I cleaned it up - more came out, the 'leak' got bigger, and I couldn't fix it without taking it apart and potentially ruining ...

Summer is here and my desire to eat more fruits and vegetables has increased... I always try to eat fairly decent (believe it or not), but for some reason when summer is here it seems much easier and I believe I get more fruits and vegetables in my regular diet. This is predominately a good thing, though sometimes it does lead to unfortunate side effects. We all know there's really not much of a bad side effect for things so good... Seriously, take a second to think about it... figure one out yet? Well thankfully this isn't always an issue, but now and then it does pop up... If you haven't figured it out yet - I'm talking about fruit flies!! You can take out the trash - keep the fruits and veggies in the fridge and still for some reason, they're in your house! Lately they've been hanging around my lemon seeds that have been sprouting in my kitchen window. And for some reason, instead of just being one or two of the little annoying things - there are ...

Ok so it's been far too long since I've taken the time to write here... However, I've still been trying new things and taking photos along the way. So I'm going to stop and take the time to write a few down right now and then will get to writing about the others too. For today - I'm going to share a few simple crafty things I've done. So lets get right to it, shall we? First, I did a candy tray / dessert plate for a birthday. We always had a special birthday plate for birthday dinners so I wanted to give something similar to a friend. I've done the painting ceramics at stores and had them fire them and then go pick them up. It's always fun but the hardest part is always waiting to go pick it up. I didn't want anything near as complicated (I'm no artist) and I had heard of writing on dishes and putting them in the oven to make your designs permanent... so that's what I tried. Birthday Plate: Plate Sharpie Markers Rubbing Alcohol Pape...

I don't know about you, but I love fun - unique nails... something pretty that looks professionally done. But I don't usually like the price attached to it, so I can't justify it very often. So, this means I have to get crafty with trying to do it on my own. I know they make all sorts of things you can buy to make doing your own nails easier... all the fancy things. But I also don't want to pay for all that and end up with a drawer full of nail stuff... I already have one full of polish colors :) Anyway, I wanted something like a french tip - but with a little bit of color and something simple. And what I ended up with - was something I liked so much that I actually did it for my wedding nails. And so I splurged on a pedicure instead of my nails since I liked these so much :) All you'll need is some tape - your main tip color, your highlight color, and a light over coat.  Here's my step by step explanation - sorry for the poor pictures, when I di...

When looking at card boxes for my wedding I was amazed at how expensive the ones I liked were! I was also surprised by all the DIY directions out there. And since DIY was so much less, I figured if nothing else, it was worth a shot... and if I totally hated it, I still had time to buy one. I had seen some great ones done with scrapbook paper and some lovely ones with fabric. So after surfing the net and finding great ideas I tried to take the things I liked from my favorites and tried to pull in our wedding colors. The main color was royal purple but we had wanted some blue mixed in too. Instead of just adding white and blue ribbon for accents, I decided to try to make blue one of the main colors. For awhile I was iffy about this choice, but all in all - I think it worked well. And it definitely served it's purpose. Sadly, I did not take pictures of the process for this so I am simply going to link the directions I read and used as my guide. I added an extra tier and flipped th...

When trying to figure out what centerpieces we wanted, we did a lot of searching online and had found many beautiful centerpieces made from wine bottles and we loved the idea... so we set to saving bottles, asking our friends for bottles, and even asking a restaurant for bottles. Thing was, with our colors we didn't think the brown or green bottles would look that great... this left only clear and blue (the harder ones to collect). In all honesty - taking off all the labels was the most work. We tried it a bunch of different ways, but found that soaking then in hot water with dish soap helped the most - and then for anything that was left over we used an anti-adhesive creme (from the auto store).  Then we had to figure out what we wanted to do with them - we tried three different things and honestly ended up going with the easiest - but we truly thought it looked nicer. We started with the most complicated and cut the bottles to use them over candles. We got a cutter tha...

Ok - I couldn't keep waiting on this one... so today is a two post kinda day :) More crafty things to come later... but for now, I leave you with a bridal hanger  post...  I had seen all the wire bridal hangers on pintrest and etsy... the how to directions and was bound and determined to make one... I had debated making one for everyone, but in all honesty after all the work just to get a decent looking 'Bride' I wasn't so sure about 'maid of honor' and 'bridesmaid' -- and ended up giving up. If I had not procrastinated as much as I did, I may have been able to practice more and get it to a point where I liked how they came out and wasn't so afraid of the bigger words and words with spaces and then everyone would've had one. Sadly - having multiple hangers would've been helpful as the one hanger got lost the night before the wedding and was no where to be found when the photographer was there and we started looking for it. Thank...