Not just a jello mold

About a month ago, I was perusing the blogs on my feedly and came across the PERFECT project for some small jello molds I bought over a year ago. Artsy Vava created a super stinkin' cool welcome sign with a similar mold.

I was not good  I didn't take a single picture of the steps to this project but the reality is, I was in a bit of a rush to get them done due to having little time to complete them once I decided to make them.

The first of these flowers was made for my mom's birthday. The past few years, I have tried to have something I have made to give to her. I actually thought of her when I first saw this idea.

Isn't she purty? Mom mentioned that the big colors in clothes at one her favorite stores this season was turquoise and brown and how she had to buy something in those colors because she didn't have any. So I decided to make her flower in those colors of course! I made hers much more rustic than the others, because we share the taste for that style. The wood base (as with the other two) were edged and stained by hubby. I pretty much just told him the size I needed them to be and he went from there. It should also be noted he helped me glue them all together with epoxy.

This little lady is my Steeler's inspired flower. Sadly, we said goodbye to an awesome coworker last week as she left to take on another position in the field. I was sad to see her go and when we all decided to gather together a goodbye basket for her, I knew what I had to make. She is a huge Steeler's fan and I figured she can either display this at her new job, or in her recently purchased home. One of a kind for sure.

This last little number was made for part of a raffle to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness month at work. Last year I made these to donate. When the email came out asking for donations again, I decided I could make a pretty pink inspired flower. I hope whoever wins this in the raffle is a happy camper and makes it a nice little home :).

I couldn't be happier with how these turned out and might have to look for other jello molds in the future. In fact, I already have another idea brewing that will come out at Christmas provided I can find what I have in mind.

What was the best thing you re-purposed?

Spooky Faux Mantel

I have said it a lot, but this is seriously my FAVORITE time of year. A few weeks ago I was off work and even though it seemed a little early, I decorated for Halloween and fall simultaneously. I didn't think I would really have the chance so I spent the afternoon/evening decorating it up!

I don't have a real mantel but when we moved into our current place, a really cool piece of furniture was given to us which is the perfect place for decorating.

Since I am a glass bottle/jar/whatever hoarder, I decided to stage a little spooky apothecary scene.

First step, scour the internet for some fun labels to use. Wind up here.
Second, go to the basement and find the perfect items to "labelize"

Third, crinkle up the pages of labels.

Fourth, Brew some tea

Fifth, squeeze the water out of the tea bags, leaving just a little. Use the tea bag to rub randomly over the paper to make the little "antique" and dirty look.

Sixth, go out to dinner and have a good time with your friends while the pages dry.

Seventh, come home, cut out the labels and use adhesive of your choice to put the labels on.

Finally- arrange your bottles and other glass pieces to your liking.

Even better, the fun little witches hat and the one bottle came from TJ Maxx last year for $2 a piece at the end of the season. 

I saw these bottles around quite a bit but never got the chance to make them. Even though I am typically more of a fall/autumn person, I am really happy how they turned out and glad I made them!

When do you start to decorate for fall/halloween?

Pretty Jarring Creatures

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that 8 months of the year I watch a group of pretty cool kiddos one weekend a month for a single mom in the national guard. While it is "work" of sorts I do also have quite a lot of fun with these kiddos. What makes it even MORE wonderful is their love for crafts and creativity. Even the simplest of things can be entertaining and fun.

Supplies:
Glue
Tissue paper
Pipe Cleaners
Silly eyes
Jars from your sister (haha, oh wait.. is that just me??)

I don't have pictures because we really all did this SO differently. Generally speaking, we all started by ripping our tissue paper. Well. All but one of us did. The boy among us decided to make his a ghost. I was so impressed by the angle he took on his little creature of the night and so were his two sisters. He was apparently the most creative of us all- the 3 girls all ripped strips and used two sizes of eyes.. this struck me as funny for some reason.

.. see what I did there?? 

At any rate this was really my first (albeit early) Halloween craft I think it was a pretty darn big success with the kids. The youngest and I actually perused pinterest looking at ideas and went from there. I think it all turned out pretty darn great for less than $5 spent at the good old Dollar Tree. 

Oh yea, that's right. They also had small strand of ORANGE lights at the DT too. Of course being the lights hoarder that I am I grabbed them up too. As you can see, they came in handy so we could light up our little creatures of the night..

What fall and/or Halloween crafts do you have on reserve for your little creatures? 

Checking in

If you follow me on IG (you should if you don't!) You have seen some sneak peekers of what I have been working on.

I haven't had a chance to sit at the computer at home and upload photos of EVERYTHING just yet (hopefully this evening). I did want to pop in and share those IG pics for those of you who maybe didn't see them. It has been busy between life, working, and training for my upcoming half marathon. Things will get a little more crazy before they die down after my half in October. In the meantime, I am trying to squeeze in quick but fun crafts. This is SO easy for me since I absolutely love this time of year (as you may have read about in this post.

This isn't everything I have been working on, but I wanted to share SOMETHING since it feels like it has been forever since I updated.

Be on the lookout for another post with more pictures and more explanation of whats been going on in craft land at my house. Hope you are all getting geared up for the fall season (even if that just includes Starbucks pumpkin coffee or lattes!) 

Talk to you all soon!

Fall fever

As you could probably tell, I haven't quite gotten back into any sort of crafting just yet. But I can tell you that as the days are getting shorter and darkness sets in before I even get home from work, this is really just right around the corner. Although I will moan and groan about shorter daylight hours, I am totally and utterly in love with fall.

I love pumpkin everything - bread, pancakes, coffee.



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I love the fall squashes available as quick and easy dinner options.


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I love the crunch and smell of leaves along with the crisp, cool air.


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I especially love RUNNING in the fall because it is so much easier to breathe and run my best without the impending doom of heavy, humid, thick air.


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In all fairness, this is where all my energy and time has been going. If you follow me over at Tiny Thunder Running you will see that I am training for my FIRST. EVER half marathon in Hershey, PA which is October 20th. As it is getting closer, I am getting nervous but know if I prepare appropriately, the rest will fall into place. In fact, my long run (9 miles) for the week will happen tomorrow.

I guess the moral of the story is, I miss crafting quite a bit but right now my time is tighter so I might just not really jump back in until after the race. I do have some fall projects I would like to do for decorative purposes, so we will see if I get to it. I will try to still make an appearance around here at least once a week with something :)

I hope you all are out there enjoying the beautiful fall weather, we are about to head out on the motorcycle for a decent ride while we can.

What are you favorite things about fall??

Portable Hard Drive Case

Ok, this is going to be pretty quick and dirty.

My husband has been taking this small portable hard-drive to and from work and really wanted some sort of protective case/cover for it. We looked around a few places and had absolutely no luck unless we wanted to spend 20-30 bucks. No thank you.

I remembered I had some really thick felt and decided to make a small sleeve for it. That's really all it is- just that. A sleeve.

First, hubby gave me the dimensions to work off of, but due to my terrible lack of ability to transfer this to how big a piece of fabric needs to be... I later had to have the hard drive in my possession so I could line it up that way. The first one would of been find had I made the opening just a little bit bigger. *sigh*

Anyway, so here's what I ended up with.

Nothing fancy pants, but it serves the purpose for sure. Just cut the fabric to fit, sewed a small cuff at the top to give it a more finished look and sewed the sides. BOOM. Probably will add a velcro enclosure of some sort down the road, but this will work until then. 

Inspiration Thursday

Is it really Thursday again already??

Wow.. well here we go for other round of inspiration heading into the weekend.


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Hopefully will be back tomorrow with a little project I created to protect our external hard drive.

Until then..

Curtains & Scraps

As you may know, it has been quite a while since I have crafted anything. If you follow along on facebook, you know that what I am about to show you was a manifestation of something I saw while out and about and my husband posed the quesion, "Couldn't you just make one?" I am still amazed at his faith in my terrible spatial ability and problem solving abilities. After all this required not only measuring, but actually planning out every little bit of this project from point A to finished. Read: there are no freaking tutorials that I could find...anywhere. Nor are there many pictures of such items. What am I yammering about??

Really, this can be used for any ipad/reader/tablet etc, we just have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 so that is what I used. The only thing you have to be careful of is not too cover too much (or the wrong parts) of your screen. 

While I don't have the exact "pattern" persay for this project, I wanted to post and share because I was too excited to keep it to myself. In fact, I already shared it on my personal facebook last night because I couldnt help myself :) 

So where did I start? I actually tried to draw a picture to kind of get my mind straight as far as what pieces I need... remember when I said my brain doesnt work like that? Yea, this didn't workout so well. Then I set out to find a picture of at least a wedge pillow which proved to be a pretty big challenge as well. I did finally find one, kind of grasped what I needed and rummaged through some fabric to see what I could use.

First up, old curtains. It is a pretty thick canvasy type fabric, I had lots of it and neutral which balanced perfectly with the fabric I chose for the side panels and the tablet pocket.

This fabric was freebie stuff from a shop in Carlisle that does a lot of costumes for local events.. they had scraps and my mom was wonderful and picked them up for me. They have really just been sitting around since then so I was very excited to put some of my hoarded material to use.

I got to work cutting the triangles from the patterned fabric with sides about 9 inches, 13 inches and 14 inches. Don't quote me on this.. Then I cut two pieces of the curtain materal at about 13.5 by 14 inches and a 3rd at 9 inches by 14 for the bottom. I ironed the fabric because it was quite wrinkly then I sewed the two triangle pieces to the two larger tan pieces and then tried my best to figure out how to make the tablet holding piece. 

I unfortunately don't have any pics of this part, I think because I had doubts in myself. I eye-balled how much fabric I needed, folded right sides in and sewed around 2 edges. I flipped it right sides out, cut some thick cardstock type material to fit and sewed it in what looked like a good spot. 

There you have it. My very fabulous tablet wedge pillow. I do want to make another that has the slit at a different spot so it lays lower. This will work for some things but I want a lower one for laying in bed on my stomach or side. Stay tuned! 

What was something you made totally from scratch that you are most proud of??

Inspiration Thursday

Well another slow (read: nonexistent) crafty week here. Too many other things going on which required my attention and/or energy that I had left at the end of the work day. While I am glad it is Thursday, I'd be even more so if it was Friday.. or really Saturday because then I wouldn't have to get up and go to work!!

I digress, here I am with a little happy, sparkly and shiny to the almost end of the week.


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I especially like the last one. I guess it seems a little poetic to me. I think it can mean different levels of things to different people dependent upon where you are in life at the time.

Hopefully I will soon get back to some crafty shenans again soon now that some of my other "projects" are coming to a close. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend and a crafty one at that!! I might even get my craft on.. maybe even on my wedding album. Bout time that sucker gets finished.. our 4 year anniversary is in a matter of 2 months!! WHEW!

Love and Spraypaint

So my job has this one little perk that after you work the weekend, you get 2 days off the next week.  I was off Monday and Tuesday and had a to-do list (self-imposed) about a mile long. The projects I am about to share are part of that to-do list.

So let me tell you about these two little (not so) lovelies. The one on the left has been with us for quite a while. It was an orphaned a yard sale leftover back when we lived at our last place. We just happened to be walking by a house on the way back from the store and saw it. It was just raw wood when we picked it up and I added the dark red paint you see in the picture. After about 4 years of that paint, I was growing sick of the table all together. Thankfully, hubby talked some sense in to me and I agreed to paint it instead.  The table on the right ... well more like little stool... was given to me recently by a friend preparing to move and sorting fun (old) treasures in her basement. Same friend who gave me the blue jars seen in my Summer Centerpiece  post. Anyway, I was totally happy with the beat up/well loved paint/stain combo this stool had going on. Husband didn't share my love. Once again, we compromised and I went with painting it. Thanks to an Ace rewards $5 off card, I got all the spraypaint for this project for about $5.

Anyway... So I sprayed both with the basecoats of gray to start and let them dry (which wasn't long at all!!). For the taller table I eye-balled and and finger measured my chevron pattern onto the table. Once I made sure it was pretty well attached, I painted it with this Burnt Red (awesome) color. 

I didn't get any pictures of the other stool with the tape on. It was really n big deal, any idiot can put tape on in kind of straight lines and at varied distances apart. Also, I was getting frustrated with the paint because I had to make 2 additional trips back thanks to paint that wouldn't mix up and as a result was to thick to spray.

Either way, I couldn't be happier with the result of this project. You know it's good when you can stop smiling makes your heart sing.

It makes me smile to walk in my front door and see my little chevron table. Amazing what a little love and spraypaint will do for two sad little pieces. 

Whats your favorite small item do-over that you have done?