Re-Purposed Suitcase

Recently re-purposed this suitcase my mother-in-law gave me, and turned it into a decorative desk in my kitchen. I originally wanted to buy a buffet for under my windows, but after looking at the cost I started to rummage around my barns for other ideas. The suitcase worked great along with an old bench from my husband’s family and a wood chair from my dad’s grandma.

How I Stretch Canvas

A series of pictures showing how I put together stretcher bars and stretch my own canvas. My favorite part is at the end of the process when I soak the stretched canvas with water from my outside well spigot. The water gives the canvas a nice final stretch. I love doing my own canvases for oil painting, especially with larger pieces. I buy pre-cut stretcher bars from an online company, and they also offer wood supports that criss-cross the frame. Putting together my own stretcher bars gives better protection against warping, and I always have peace of mind that my painting bones are solidly constructed.

Canvas stretcher bars: https://www.stretcherbarwarehouse.com/best-canvas-stretcher-bar-p/1-1-4-stretcher-bars.htm

Canvas: Right now since I don’t go through a lot, I buy large pre-gessoed rolls from the local Hobby Lobby. Be sure to use your 40% coupon on the app!

Coffee Bar and Buffet

There have been a lot of previous posts on this blog about our remodeling journey. Here is a proud moment to share: we finally got the coffee bar area done and it’s everything we had envisioned. If you ever remodel your house, invest in the kitchen! It’s where hours of family time will be spent, and you’ll never regret putting a little more investment into the heart of your home.

Card Bouquet

 

Face Painting

Lincoln had to do a costume for his school speech about lizards, so as a painter of course the best thing I could do was paint his face! His teacher told me it freaked her out a bit, and she could hardly look at him-which sounded to me like I did a pretty good job ;)

 

Rainy Day Garden Art

 

Farmers market

I was thinking about taking the glass out of these old light fixtures and adding some spray paint to make a planter.  One of my many projects around the farm.

Tshirt scarves and necklaces

DIY tshirt scarves.  Super easy and adds a little loveliness to your day. I have also done these as a craft for my MOP’s group, and it was a hit with the ladies!

DIY Photo Book

I wanted to make my husband Adam a photo book for a gift, and you know what---those photo books you buy online can get pretty expensive!  So I took a cheaper route and made my own.  The hardest part is the binding.  I was looking online at college art courses the other day, and I found out you can actually get a Master's Degree in book binding.  No joke, it's that intricate!  Lucky for me, I found an easier way to bind my book.  I used a hole puncher, some ribbon, and a few knots later called it good!

DIY Sharpie Colored Bag

You see a lot of tie-dye projects on Pinterest using sharpie, but I prefer silk to the cotton projects you more often encounter. Silk is much more agreeable to being dyed and then manipulated for the tie-dye effect.

To do this project, simply color the bag any color(s) you prefer, in a pattern, leaving some white areas for the colors to run together, and then finally use rubbing alcohol to disperse the color. A paintbrush works great, and I bought a special higher diluted rubbing alcohol so look for one that is the most concentrated. Throw it in the dryer to heat set once you are done!

Girls craft night-actually completing one our Pinterest pins!

                         

Valentine's Day craft

A lot of times if I am painting, the kids want to paint too. So, when they want to get creative I pull out a large old sketch pad and let them go crazy with the paint on their own sheets of paper. I also let them paint multiple times on the same sheet so that it gives the page a nice layered affect. The end result is that I have several beautiful paintings that need utilized. Sometimes, I cut them into squares and give them to family members as miniature paintings they can hang on their fridge or have for a keepsake. But for this holiday, I decided to cut hearts out of the paper the kids had colored and give them as valentines to our extended relatives!

DIY kid's growth chart

I decided to make growth charts for all the kids in our extended family, and also for our own little unit. We have a lot of old barn wood out in our buildings, so I picked several of the best and cleaned them up with some water and a rag. Then, after they dried I cut them to size (about five feet is all you need), and then I gave each plank a thorough soak of lemon oil. Starting at one foot, I worked my way up with tick marks writing out only the feet measurements so there is room for future height recordings. I wrote the increments out in black sharpie marker, and printed the numbers out beforehand in a font I liked for a calligraphy reference. I attached a picture hanger on the back and hung our board a foot off the ground synced with the one foot mark on the growth chart. The beauty is, even if we move, we will always have a physical record of our kids height (and my husband and I's-we joined in and marked off ours too).

DIY Stenciling

In my 'moving in' post, I had some similar pictures of our stenciled walls. I wanted to revisit the pictures of our walls because I am in love with the whole-wall stencils that I used. It is a large stencil that you roll over with a roller brush instead of using the smaller flat brushes that take forever. It goes so fast with a roller brush, and the effect is awesome! Check out the stencils from http://www.cuttingedgestencils.com/ which is where I bought mine. They are also on Amazon. These pictures are the birch tree stencil and paisley stencil.

DIY bookshelf out of old ladders

These rustic bookshelves are so easy to 'make' and can be free (or at least fairly cheap) if you have an old wood ladder holed up in your garage.

One set I used was a very tall, straight pair that extended rather than fold up. I also used one single, flat ladder that was a bit shorter. The tall pair was too tall to fit in my bedroom, so I cut them down, and then leaned them against the wall. Voila! Bookshelf. Now, some of the books leaned against the wall, causing the ladder to push away making it unsteady. My solution for this was to tack a wide ribbon to the backside of the ladder from one end of the books to the other, and this held the books in place and off the wall.

The short cut pieces and the single ladder I used for shelves off our living room. I drilled in some screws at various intervals (sure to find a stud or use those plastic holders made for drywall) and using a tape measure made it all level by finding the same distance for each screw from the ceiling. Then, I hung the ladders by placing the screws directly under the top side of the ladder. VHS tapes stayed on really well, but the DVD's and a lot of books had to shelved tightly so they would not fall off. But these are all items we do not use very often, so I was not worried about the awkwardness of removing things from the shelves.