Beach crafts

I've been away on vacation for the past week.  It was sandy, hot, breezy, wet- and super-duper fun.  I did some beachcombing while I was there.  I kept seeing these super cute drift wood sticks all over the place and I remembered seeing a drift wood wreath in a recent Pottery Barn magazine- so I started gathering sticks.  I think my relatives thought the sun was getting to me ;)
I started weaving them together and after about two days of gathering and weaving I had myself a cute little wreath.  Perfect for my daughters bathroom- that I'm slowing turning into a beach themed bathroom (I know!  So original- right!?)
When I got home I hot glued a bunch of shells and some rocks that we found on the beach into the wreath.  And then I glued a hand carved (no, not by me!) wooden turtle - that I bought at the beach gift store for $3 - onto the bottom corner.  Viola!  A three dollar drift wood wreath.  If you want one of your own you can buy one on Pottery Barn Teen web site for about $50 (in the shape of a peace sign and minus the shells).

Messenger Bags (for the kiddos!)

 I'm tired.  It's late- but I just finished sewing the cutest little bag EVER!  I got the pattern and tutorial off of ChezBeeperBebe- one of my favorite blogs.  Her tutorials rock my world.  It was so super easy to follow her instructions, and I even got permission to give myself a high  five at one point.  It was a bit awkward to give myself a high five, but I definitely deserved it! ;)  And can I tell you- I LOVE this bag (wish I didn't have to give it to the kids).  Like Pee-Wee Herman kinda love- I may just marry it- er, maybe not.

I have two more bags all cut out, ironed and ready to be sewn together.  Tomorrow.














Update:  Here's a picture of all three!Nora's is a bit more colorful than the rest...cause she's a girl!  ;)

Strawberry fields quilt pattern

 My goal for this week was to write a quilt pattern for the Strawberry Fields collection.  I did.  But it's super confusing, and since I haven't attempted it myself yet- I'd recommend buying the real pattern from this blog:  Diary of a Quilter.  I just based my quilt off of this picture (because it's AWESOME) and wrote my own pattern.  The math is terrible!  But- when I get around to it, this is going to be a fantastic quilt.  I'm in love with the Strawberry Fields line by Fig Tree for Moda.  Here is a picture of my pattern...

If anyone wants more detailed instructions- when I actually make the quilt I'll take pictures and do a tutorial.

Duh-duh-dum. The couch.

So I finally started to reupholster the couch.  I've had the fabric since last November.  Here's the before picture and some of the progress.  When it's done, it'll be a cool brown (as in cold), and it won't have a skirt along the bottom.

Shift Key Paintings

A long time ago Brian and I saw some awesome paintings at Target that were in a set of four.  We thought that they would look nice in the office that we would someday have...  Someday came, but we searched and searched for the paintings and couldn't find them.  Boo!
Finally we did find them on Target's website- after a lot of different searches.  We found out that they were called shift key paintings and that they cost $80.  A piece.  That's right $80 each.  That's $340!  No Way.
So Brian and I messaged each other at the exact same time with the same solution- Why don't we make them.?
So we did, and the whole project cost us less than $30.  Here are the results:

First, we (mostly Brian) painted the backgrounds on all the canvases.

We made stencils out of freezer paper.  Used a little glue stick to keep them in place on the canvas, and then used pouncers (little round foam craft brushes made for stenciling) and painted in the background color of the stencil.

 After the stencil area dried, we painted all the details on, with the freezer paper still in place.

 Once that dried we pulled off the freezer paper stencil and added any extra details to the picture as a whole.

Then we hung them- they look awesome!  If you want to see the originals that we based ours off of check them out HERE.  Just scroll down on the link to see the pictures we chose to make.