5 in Five update

The update is a few days overdue, but I finished my 5 in five!

1. Here's my fall banner...

I said I was only going to use stuff I already had to make these projects, and it turned out that I just enough burlap and fall-ish ribbon to make this.

I hung it in the office just for the photo because afternoon light is tough for pictures at my house.  But actually, if you picture the twine with clothes pins on it instead of pennants, that's #4 from my list - my inspiration "wire." :)

2. Halloween silhouettes

Easy!  I've had these frames laying around that my parents were getting rid of, and they were perfect for this project.  I originally wanted to use newspaper for the background.  I tried a couple different things to get it to look old and yellowed.  First I used coffee grounds, but that looked like someone stepped on it with muddy shoes.  Then I tried staining it with tea, but that hardly did anything at all.  So instead, I printed out some old handwritten letters I found here.  I found the silhouettes online and cut them out of black card stock.  And the cool thing about making these was that I figured out I really can use those little five and ten minute pockets of time; I made these while dinner was cooking Monday night.

3. A yummy, autumn inspired treat...

Ginger pumpkin bread, another Martha Stewart winner.  I'm such a Martha junkie.  The recipe was for two loaves, so I got to bring one to work and share the love.  This was so good!  And an awesome side benefit of #5, organizing my food mags.  I didn't get through them all - I was too distracted by all the delicious looking recipes.  But I did make a small dent, and I found a fresh batch of new recipes for dinners last week.


Most of the time, when life seems so busy and work leaves you feeling tapped for resources, the last thing you'd think you'd want is to add more to the to-do list.  But this little challenge of simple, bite sized projects totally took the focus off of looming deadlines and time pressures, and instead was a fun way to get recharged, be creative and celebrate the season.  Mission accomplished.

Picture window

My latest project is finally finished! All it took was a little focus and determination not to get distracted by the next shiny thing (which is tough to do when pumpkins and leaves are happening everywhere!)

I was so excited to take pictures of it, I couldn't wait till it was hung on the wall, but here it is...

How's that for a picture window!  Well, technically a door.  About a year ago, one of my neighbors was getting rid of this door, which I guess was from a hutch or something.  (Check it out, I actually remembered to get a before pic!)

I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I couldn't pass up a perfectly good door.  So I subtly (not really) carried it home while I was walking my dog, and smiled-and-waved when people drove by looking at me sideways.  What, it's a perfectly good door!  And so it sat in my garage until, finally, one day I got my light bulb.

Bing! 

Remember I said I found these words at a yard sale...

Well I don't know what made me think of it, but I held them up to the panes and they were just the right size.  I thought it would be so cute to get pictures of the girls to go with the words, and make a pretty, happy picture frame for their bedroom.

I picked out a soft pink paint and I thought it would be a nice touch to make it look old and weathered.  I found this awesome distressing tutorial and it worked great!  After a light sanding, we lit a tea candle or two and spread a thin layer of wax on the wood, like this...

Then we painted.  This is after one coat.  I almost left it this way because I liked the way it looked all brushy and uneven, but I decided to do the second coat anyway.

When it comes to the distressing part, the wax makes it so easy to scratch the paint right off.   There's no right way to do it, so being the direction-follower that I am, this was actually a good exercise in imperfection for me - recklessly "defacing" a freshly painted door.  (Hi, my name is Lynn and I'm a recovering perfectionist.)  Sunday morning, before my coffee, before my brain was awake enough to stop me, I took one fingernail and scratched it.  There was no turning back after that, and I think it came out just right!

All that was left to do was mount the photos.  After I cut them down to size, I needed some filler to keep them pressed against the glass.  The amount of foam board I would have needed was going to cost a small fortune, so instead I improvised using a few sheets of craft foam in each panel.  It worked like a charm, and it was a major time saver because they were already the right size.  Bonus!

I left a few panes photo-less because I'm a fan of negative space.  It would have been way too busy if every spot had a photo in it.  We trimmed a couple of sheets of poster board to allow for the "holes," then tacked it on with thumb tacks to hold everything in place.  And voila!  A beautiful, personal piece of art.

I'm so so happy about how this whole idea and project came together.  I even made a pretty wallpaper from the words that inspired it.  I know I only have like two readers, but I wanted to share it anyway :)

Wish, love, hope, dream, smile.  Enjoy!

Marble Magnets

Last week was my beautiful friend Sommer's birthday.  Sommer is summer—warm, fun, cheery…she's like a burst of sunshine and the kind of person that makes you happy just to be around.  Check out her blog, Creative Produce, and you'll see how cute she is!  Just try not to drool on on your keyboard over those cake balls.  She's super talented and one of the most creative people I know, and I knew she would appreciate a handmade gift.

Since Sommer and the beach go together like summer and the beach, the theme was an easy pick, and I made her a set of pretty magnets with a vintage surf vibe.  The idea for these magnets has been around for a while but they're so easy and fun to make, it's definitely worth sharing again.  I found this tutorial several years ago on not martha and I've made a few sets already.  I always love how they turn out!

All you need are some flat glass marbles, magnets, Mod Podge, glue and assorted pictures, papers, or fabrics or whatever you want to use.  I went online to find some vintage-style surf and beach images.  I found tons.  I even found one that says "Seaside Bakery," which is perfect because she loves to bake!  It's too bad I couldn't fit the part that said "Best Buns on the Beach!"  I went to this digital scrapbooking site, Shabby Princess, that offers full kits you can download for free.  The kits come with patterned papers, embellishments, alphabets and all kinds of digital goodies.  There was so much to play with, I could have easily made 30 magnets.  But who really needs 30 magnets?  It was tough to do, but I narrowed it down to 12 so she wouldn't be opening the gift secretly thinking, "Cute but…who really needs 30 magnets?"  I resized my favorites to fit the marbles and cut out little squares.

These little squares make me happy, I don't know why—they're like mini Polaroid art or something.  I glued the squares to the backs of the marbles using Mod Podge and let them dry overnight.  Once they were dry, I trimmed closely around the edges and used Aleen's craft glue to attach a magnet to the back of each one.

I like to package them in metal tins, 'cuz hi, they're magnetic.  I found this one at Michael's and dressed up in a beachy bow.  Isn't it cute??

I hope you like your magnets, Sommer!  Happy Surf-day, I mean Burf-day!

Halloween Blocks

I found some adorable Halloween scrapbooking supplies at the Dollar Spot at Target. I don't scrapbook, but these were so cute I knew I had to find something use them for.

Amanda at Imperfectly Beautiful makes these really cute blocks (go buy some!), and I wanted to try to do something fun like that for Halloween.  My Hero picked up a piece of 2x6 from Home Depot for me and cut it down into pieces roughly 7 1/4" long.

I used his awesome Dremel sander to smooth out the ends and the corners. (I love this sander, by the way.) Then I painted them with regular black acrylic craft paint, and they were all ready to be decorated.

I found one collection of free vintage Halloween images here, and another great source for vintage holiday images here. Free! It was a tough choice because they're all so stinkin' cute, but I picked these four, resized them in Photoshop and used Mod Podge to mount the images on heavy duty black cardboard to give them a little depth.

I don't know how I've never used Mod Podge before, but this stuff rocks. I used it to adhere my scrapbook papers to the wood and then went to town embellishing them. A few hours later, and here's what I made!

Okay, besides the mess, these!

 

I don't know which one is my favorite, I love how they all turned out...

 

Aren't those polka dots perfect for that little clown?  I had the ribbon left over from the lemonade stand.  (One day there will be pictures of this lemonade stand, I swear.)

This black and green ribbon was the only other thing I bought, $1.19.

The burlap was left over from a project a hundred years ago. And I made little bats out of ribbon.  I love them!
 

This pretty orange bow came off a package of potpourri I bought.  See, you never know when those bits and pieces come in handy!

These were so fun to make, and cheap, too. The wood cost about $5, the Halloween papers and stickers cost $3, plus the ribbon... puts me at under ten bucks!  Ain't no recession gonna keep me down!