Think Spring!

We're in the middle of our third winter storm in the last two and a half weeks. This is what I'm looking at out my window right now: 

Another 6-10 inches on top of the 15 inches we got on top of the original 5 that fell almost 3 weeks ago.

I'm sick to death of winter. So what did I do with my snow day?

I made a bright, cheerful, fantastic spring wreath. Wishful thinking? Definitely. This thing is going on my front door, snow or no snow. I'm thinking maybe it'll keep any more of the white stuff from falling.

I'm loving it! I think the cashier at Michael's thought I was crazy when I checked out with an overflowing basket full of spring flowers. My friend said, "You know you'll never need all those flowers." I used ALL 16 bushes. But it's so worth it.

 

The sprigs of . . . well, whatever the yellow things are really added some depth to the wreath that I felt it needed and a little pop of vibrant yellow.

Spring fever, here I come!

DIY Clothes Pin Magnets



I needed some magnets to go on my new chalkboard and decided to head in the clothes pin direction. I've seen them a lot on Pinterest and it seems pretty popular.
 
Here's what you'll need:

Fabric tape

.97 cent magnet strips from Walmart



The handy-dandy hot glue gun



Clothes pins (of course!)

   

And scissors. I forgot to take a picture of those.
 
I just happened to have the fabric tape on hand from a card I'd made for my mom's birthday back in November. Washi tape should work just as well.
 
It's an incredibly simple 5 minute project, really. Just cut a strip of your decorative tape long enough to fit your pins and apply to one side. I found that cutting the corners of the tape at an angle makes it a little easier to fit it around the edges and corners of the clothes pins. Also, make sure to cut a line around the metal part of the pin so that you can wrap your tape more closely around the pin.

The magnets that I bought were pre-cut (which I didn't know when I picked them up - I saw .97 cents and sort of went blind to the rest of the packaging). I ended up having to cut the strips in half lengthwise and then in half again to make it fit the clothespins' back.

Even though the magnets were coated in adhesive, I've found that their idea of adhesive is not my idea of adhesive. I used hot glue to make sure that I got a tight bond on the back of the clothespin.

And that's all there is to it! Now put them on your magnetic chalkboard (or your fridge) and enjoy!





DIY Yarn Bowl

I have pets. And they shed - a lot. Because I make things to sell, I either have to lock myself in my pet-free craft room (and away from everyone else in the house) to make anything with yarn or shove my skein into a bag and hope that it doesn't escape and roll across the floor while I'm crafting.

There's nothing worse than having to spend your time meticulously cleaning every project you make to be sure that your yarn didn't pick up any stray hairs.

To solve my problems, I turned to yarn bowls. The beautiful ceramic ones that are so popular right now generally won't hold the large skeins I like to use and as it has no lid, I still struggle with hair. I needed a large container with a lid. 

When my boyfriend finished his jar of animal crackers a few months ago, I insisted that he save it. It was too cute to throw away and I knew that I'd EVENTUALLY find something to use it for. 

And I did.

There he is, all cute and unassuming. My parents bought me a Dremel for Christmas and this is the first project I've ever used it on. 

I used the drill bit attachment to start on the lid. After a few glancing blows, I had John hold it down for me so I could apply enough pressure. I don't want to say it got away from me, but it wasn't exactly pretty. Especially considering I didn't keep my finger on the on/off switch, so I had to flail around for a few seconds to get the thing cut off.

Not my best work, I'll admit. Apparently, I'm really scary with power tools, so John took it from me to finish it up. 

He switched to one of the sanding heads and worked on smoothing out the mess I'd made.

(He doesn't like me to photograph his face. He's one of THOSE.)

We made sure to cut out the side of the lid to make it easier to stash skeins inside when you're already working on a project. Just unscrew the lid, dump your yarn inside, thread the yarn through the side and screw back down. Voila! A cheap, recycled and super cute yarn bowl!

Please, please, please be careful while doing this project! It's super easy and really only took us a few minutes, but be wary of moving parts and flying pieces of tiny plastic. They can be very hot when you're using the sanding attachment. 

But so far, it's worked like a charm! 

I hope you like it. Share pictures of your Animal Cracker jar makeovers!

                                           Happy crafting!

Desk turned chalkboard!

Whew! The holidays really kicked me in the butt as far as blogging goes. I told myself that I wasn't going to let it get in my way but first came Thanksgiving and then my birthday and before I knew it I was caught up in the mad rush to Christmas.

I feel like I blinked and the last two months just sort of disappeared.

So here's to hoping that everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving, Christmas and that 2015 is a great year for all of us!

On to the craft of the week!

My family owns property in the neighboring county that we've mainly used as a hunting camp for the last 20 years - its full of rolling hills and mountains, a river, some creeks, an abandoned cabin in the woods and a couple of old barns. My boyfriend and I explored one of the old barns a few weeks ago (risking life and limb on the rotten ladder joists that lead up to the hay loft) and discovered a treasure trove of forgotten old junk. I think my uncle's been using it as a dumping ground of sorts for the last two decades. There were huge piles of old lumber, twenty or thirty old tires, moldy hay, old school desks (score!) and huge glass window panes. Underneath all of this, covered in mouse poop and what I'm afraid is bat guano was a pile of furniture parts. We're assuming that after my great grandparents died, this desk was part of the estate that didn't find a home with other family members and didn't make it at the estate sale.

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of it when I found it. I always do that and it drives me nuts! Maybe that should be my New Year's Resolution . . .

Anyways, I smuggled a side piece home with me, filled with ideas. It would've been a beautiful desk, but the top was missing and some of the pieces were too damaged for repair.

Here's the end result and I'll explain what I did to it:

I started with a magnetic primer on the inner piece. I have to say I didn't really like it that much.


I was so excited when I read the back of it at Lowe's - for only $20 and half an hour of your time you can make any surface magnetic! Exciting!

Except not. The stuff stunk to high heaven, the bottom was thick as molasses and the top was the consistency of stain. It took a solid 20 minutes of stirring to even come close to the "smooth gray consistency" that the box suggests and over an hour for the first coat to dry. I did the suggested 3 coats and was so excited that it will now hold a promo magnet from Pizza Hut. That's about it. Forget getting anything else to stick.

I dashed my dreams of being able to keep my bills posted on my new board and moved on to Valspar's chalk paint. This stuff went on like a dream. One smooth coat took only a tiny bit of my can, so I'm looking forward to a long line of chalkboard decorations.








The outside of the piece I painted with cream acrylic paint and rubbed with fine steel wool before it fully dried. It gave it a really nice, used look to it without tearing up the wood as I'm wont to do with sandpaper.

I love it! I'm still a little disappointed about the magnetic paint, but I can't help but love the lines on this thing. As soon as we buy a stud finder, we'll be mounting the chalkboard beside the front door.


Thanks for reading!!

Canva - The Secret to Looking Professional

I spend a lot of my free time trying to figure out how to better my Etsy business, which basically means I'm constantly trolling the online forums. There's lots of good info there if you take the time to sort through it all.

Someone posted a question a few weeks ago asking buyers what turns them off to a shop once they click on an item. Most of them said pictures and a lack of shop policies (which I was very guilty of), but one person mentioned that they don't like when a shop doesn't look put-together. Namely, no banner, no logo, etc.

For the last year my banner on my page has been a pretty generic picture of roses and baby's breath that I took a couple of years ago. I never really thought twice about it, but it certainly didn't fit with what I sell or say anything about me or my business.

So I finally posted a question of my own. How do you make a banner? For free, because I'm a cheapskate.

And thus I was introduced to Canva. The secret to looking professional on the internet. I had to download a new browser to use the site (my preferred Safari isn't yet compatible), but it was totally worth it. It's super user friendly and there's tons of free options so you can really create something that says something about you without having to spend a penny. Granted, there are even more options if you're willing to shell out a few dollars, but that's beside the point.

This is what I came up with for my new banner:

Simple, clean and effective. It gets my shop name out there in a very low-key way. I don't want my banner or my logo to distract from the items I have for sale, but I want it to look like something that a professional did (hopefully I achieved that, lol).

The opportunities are endless on Canva. You can create banners, business cards, facebook pages, blog pages, even your own custom-sized image. I'm officially addicted.

I was messing around with it one night and came up with a new design for my business cards.

All my boyfriend could say was, "Looks good. But 'crafter extraordinaire'? Really?"

Hey, I was just having fun. And what's more fun than that?

Get out there, guys! Try Canva for yourself and let me know how you like it :)

Burlap Christmas Wreath

What a week! My booth is officially closed at the local antique mall and my Etsy views have increased 300% this month, due to my tweaking, re-tweaking, and triple-tweaking of all my listings and my SEO. Not to mention that I've added more than I ever have. Granted, 11 items isn't really a lot, but I'm getting there.

One of this week's projects (I've been a busy bee) was an adorable little burlap Christmas wreath. While I generally prefer the glitter and pizzazz of a decomesh wreath, my boyfriend absolutely hates them. When I told him I was going to make a burlap one he actually volunteered to drive me to Michaels with the hopes that it would replace the one that I have ready to put on my front door after Thanksgiving.

No such luck for him. It's too small for a front door wreath and our door is exposed to the elements anyway, so it just wasn't to be. So it is now posted on my Etsy site, hopefully soon to go to another loving home.

I love it! I'm pretty strict about having seasonally-appropriate decorations up in my house, but I'll admit that I've got this thing hanging on the wall in my hallway right now.  It's so simple, it's the perfect addition to a "rustic Christmas" theme.

I've got to say that I'm really digging the little faux-stitcheed deer on this ribbon, too. It's made to look like a knitted sweater and as much as I love the look of it, I can tell you from experience that it's a bit of a pain to actually knit those things. Tangled and overlapping yarn, a cat trying to drag off the skeins and making a huge knot of the whole thing . . . Nightmares.

I'm a sucker for a double bow like this one. I've made some of the round bows (the kind that I can only ever think of as a "fair ribbon" bows) and used them on various wreaths, but I always seem to come back to these. They're almost peppy, somehow.

I hope you like this week's craft as much as I do!

The Challenges of a Small Success

Despite the fact that I've had my Etsy shop open for over a year now, I still consider myself a newbie because (until recently) I didn't really mess with it much. I think over the past year I've posted 15 items and 10 of those were in the past month.

I sort of jumped the gun when I first opened shop. Bright and early one morning, while the rest of my house was asleep, I hopped on my Mac, got myself a cup of coffee and said, "Really, how hard can this be?" I grabbed a scarf that I'd knitted a while back, took a couple of photos and voila! An Etsy shop was born. 

My first item sold within a month or so, and frankly that was a surprise. After my initial spurt of confidence, I hadn't really thought too much about the shop or the solo item that I'd thrown on the web. A woman in Australia bought my scarf for $15, but I hadn't really researched my shipping costs and ended up losing money in the end.

Did that bother me? A little. But I was riding the Cha-Ching high from Etsy.

This spurred me to convince my parents to go in halfsies with me at a local antique mall on a booth. 

I didn't have the inventory.

I didn't have a business plan.

I didn't really think past that blur of I can do this!

And so, a year of significant monetary losses later, my contract is almost up and I'm about to close down my booth. Actually, Friday is my last day. And I'm okay with that - I jumped in without really thinking. My parents were more geared towards selling knick knacks and interesting small pieces that they found at auctions while I was more interested in making and selling my wares. It didn't mesh well. Frankly, it looked like an awkward hodge-podge of just stuff.

To make matters worse, the booths on either side of mine were well-done and exactly what I had been hoping for my own.

So now I'm taking a BIG step back, revamping my Etsy shop, researching SEO and marketing. I'm hoping that this next step with EclecticMES is a little more successful than my last one and definitely hoping that it'll be at least more organized and focused.

Lesson learned: Don't let a small success go to your head and interfere with your business plans and goals. Keep a clear, calm head, work hard, and the rest will follow!

Crochet baby blanket

It's official! I've finally finished my first crocheted baby blanket!

I've been knitting since I was eight years old and all my life I've heard that if you learn to knit first, you'll never learn how to crochet. I'm not sure who decided that was a fact or why it's such a popular notion, but I'm here to tell you that it's not true.

I love crocheting. I hate to say it, but I might just like it even better than knitting. 

I've been teaching myself to crochet through trial and error, online tutorials, and the occasional youtube video. I've done hats and scarves and was really excited to tackle my first "big" project, if you can consider a baby blanket big.

I love the bright colors on this thing. My boyfriend shied away, but then again his idea of a "fun" color is gray. Bleh.

I went with a 3 double crochet shell pattern for this one. With the cotton yarn and the no-brainer pattern, it worked up in time at all.

 

Nothing beats the clean lines on this thing. I stuck with a single crochet border on the blanket and I'm glad I did it. The single crochet brings it all together with a clean, crisp outline.

My pride and joy baby blanket is for sale in my Etsy shop :)

Chalk Paint and Re-Upholstered Chair Makeover

This is the fifth day that it's been raining here in the Valley. We're really not used to this kind of weather and I think everyone's going a little stir-crazy. My own stir-craziness prompted me to revamp an ugly dining room chair left over from a yard sale I had over the summer. What was I supposed to do with a single chair? For the last few months it's been living underneath of a pile of junk in my basement. 

Well, after getting my new desk settled in my craft room, I realized that the hulking rolling chair that I used with my old desk was way too big. And thus began the great chair makeover.

Welcome to my dirty basement!

This was really a project of firsts. I've never worked with chalk paint, never made chalk paint, and I've never re-upholstered anything. I never really thought that I would.

First, I removed the chair pad by unscrewing the four screws on the bottom of the chair.

Which left me with this:

That's a layer of dirty, outdated fabric, a layer of rounded foam, and a final layer of square foam. I saved the old fabric to use as a template for my new polka dotted material.

Then I painted. I used the recipe for chalk paint that I found online from Lowe's: 

1/3 cup of cool water

1/3 cup of plaster of paris

1 cup latex paint

I used paint that had primer in it and I've read in a few different places that it's better to use paint WITHOUT primer, but it was just what I had on hand. Like I said, this was a stir-crazy, gotta-do-something-NOW kind of project, so I literally had everything I used for this project on hand. Was that the best way to do it? Probably not.

It took a solid 2 coats of paint and I still had to go back and do some touch-ups here and there. Not really sure how I feel about the homemade chalk paint, but I don't have anything to compare it to, either.

Then began the upholstering. I cut my new fabric, tossed the old, and very carefully laid it out on the old foam. Then I took my handy stapler and stapled it down all the way around. I found the corners to be a lot more challenging than I'd thought they would be. I sort of took the bunched-up approach. I pulled it as tight as I could across the front and then bunched it so that you can't see the bunching from the front. Then I stapled. Liberally.

Last, but not least, I figured I had to do something with the big blank space on the back of the chair. I thought about adding the initial of my last name but (with hopes that I'll one day get married), I decided on a big M instead.

I downloaded a cursive M from offline, printed it, and colored the back with a chalk pencil. To transfer the image, I taped it to the chair and traced over the lines on the paper with a pen, then removed the paper. The charcoal leaves a sort of "ghost" image behind and then I painted in the lines.

If you ever choose to do anything like this I STRONGLY suggest that you do NOT do it this way. It took FOREVER to hand-paint that letter. It looks pretty decent, but I didn't even have the right size paintbrush and ended up using a tooth pick to fill in the small lines with paint and at the end gave up and outlined the whole thing in black Sharpie to smooth the outer lines. (Remember: last minute project, here.) If you have the option of a stencil or a vinyl letter, definitely go that route.

All in all, though, I'm pretty much in love with my new chair. 

Love!!!

Ruffled burlap garland

I'm a little late on this week's post - sorry guys!

The big project this week is a ruffled burlap garland. A friend of mine had mentioned that she'd seen one draped over the door of a local primitive store and when I went to check it out, I knew I had to make one for myself. The store was asking $30 for one garland, but I was pretty sure I could remake it myself for less.

It was a pretty good success. I bought some burlap rolls from Wal-Mart, grabbed some scrap yarn and a yarn needle from my craft room, and went to town.

Yes, I have purple walls in my living room. No judging lol.

The secret to sewing the burlap to make the ruffles is to sew in a zig-zag pattern. The larger your zigs and zags, the larger the ruffles. Sew through a good two feet of burlap and then push the burlap down on the yarn to make it bunch up. The burlap didn't go as far as I thought it would - I used two entire rolls of burlap (not sure what the measurements are on the length of those rolls) and it only made a garland long enough to just cover the top of my mantle, about 4 1/2 feet. Right now I'm using it as a fall decoration on the mantle, but if I were to make another one for Christmas, I think I'd make it a little longer so I could drape it along the front of the fireplace.

Some pumpkins and some shiny fall leaves really made the burlap pop.

Bundt Pan Wreath

About a year ago, I came across an old orange bundt pan at a thrift store. It's really seen better days - the coating on the inside is flaking off, the orange on the outside is scratched in places and I really just didn't feel right using it to cook. Who knows how much of that inner coating would wind up in my cakes? Yikes.

Thanks to the trusty Pinterest, I came across the idea for a bundt pan wreath. I started with these materials:

Don't ask about what happened to the scissors - it involves an inattentive crafter and a teething puppy.


I also used my hot glue gun and some wire, but I forgot to throw those in there for the picture.


I strung my ribbon through the center of the pan to make the hanger and hot glued the ends together. Then I made a little bow to go over the top where I planned to actually hang the wreath. I used some wire to attach the bow to the strip of ribbon and made a little hook to hang it on. I could get the wreath to hang by slipping the nail through the holes in the burlap, but I wasn't sure how long that would hold before pulling the burlap out of place.

The pan looked pretty plain just sort of hanging on the burlap, so I surfed the web for some good felt flower DIY instructions. I found the perfect one here. Do be careful with the hot glue - I've got two nice burns on my fingers to show for my hard work this afternoon!

I'm really pleased with how the flower came out. The grey one is from the instructions on the diaryofamadcrafter blog. She used another piece of felt for the middle of the flower, but I used a little wooden bead that I had in my craft room. The little cream flowers were super easy - just use something as a template for a circle, cut the circle out of the felt and then cut the circle into a spiral. I just wrapped the spiral from the bottom out, putting a dot of glue on as I went along. Easy peasy.

I hot glued my flowers onto the pan and voila! The perfect kitchen wreath.

I love it, and it's available on my Etsy shop if you love it, too :)