Modern Decorating with Doilies?

I have a clutter bug for a mother. This is one of the main reasons I rebelled against my upbringing and grew into the anti-clutter maven that strives for organization and simplification.

My mother’s clutter stems partially from her collections. One of her many collections is a doily collection. Yes, the obtrusive dust collectors that little old grannies find the epitome of home design. (Mom, if you’re reading this you know it’s true.) my mother, like most clutter bugs treasures every little bit of clutter and expects others to likewise treasure it. So I am on the receiving end of doilies, tea sets, and sets of cloth napkins, even though my apartment is too small for a dining room table.

Storing the gifts in a box in the closet tugs on the guilt strings, but turning my living room into a Sandra Bullock period piece isn’t an option. So I framed my favorite doilies behind new Ikea frames with funky red crocodile decorative paper behind. I thought the funky paper would update the look a little. So thanks to my Mom’s goofy collecting habits, I have a cheap and colorful piece of artwork. (And it makes me all warm and fuzzy to see something she cares about in a place of prominence. Awwww.)

I think it’d be kind of neat to frame some cute crocheted pot holders alongside maybe some random needlepoint. The key to modernize this project is to use sleek or a funky frame and use a funky bright paper behind it.

Cell Cord Holder

I'm annoyed. Everytime I want to plug in my cell phone, I have to crawl under my desk. It's irritating, there's a lot of dust down there, and I get dirty. So I devised a crafty little holder to keep the end of my cord off of the ground and dust free. Here's the step by step craft project.

1. Cut up a big magnet into an appropriate little square.

2. Then chop off each of the ends of a bic pen top.

3. Cut a slit down the side of the pen top.

4. Bend open that little slit so that you can slide the cord in.

5. Hot glue the back of the pen top to the magnet with the slit facing out.

6. Paint the fugly magnet and add some BLING.

7. Stick that magnet on the metal file cabnet and slip the cord into your adorable cord holder! Yay! No more crawling in the dust!

Maybe now I should spend some time with a dust mop and put the hot glue gun away...

Making Fairy Doors

There is an adorable myth around the town I live in. Fairies populate the walls and corners of our very normal buildings. For more on the legends, take a look at this website: http://urban-fairies.com/

They were so cute, my parents and I decided we wanted to make our own fairy doors. My father and I devised elaborate ways to build the doors when my mom reminded us that these are already done, they’re called dollhouse doors. So I went online and ordered some dollhouse doors. There are tons of sites that your can order from. The sites also have for sale little details that you can glue onto the doors, kickplates, doorknobs, and doorknockers: http://earthntree.com/miniatures/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=72_80&zenid=8f29cba960080127189300ea2df9e745

I then bought some paint and a little glitter and jewels. I painted the doors and added some flair. The first one is a perfect match of my parents door. Minus the diamonds of course. The one at the top is the fairy door in my own apartment. Hopefully I’ll get fairies to come visit soon.

Magnet Picture Frames

Today’s project is pretty simple. Recently I bought little picture frames from Ikea. They were pretty cheap, and when I tried to put them on the wall, I realized just how cheap they looked. So I decided to refurbish them and turn them into magnet picture frames for the refrigerator. Here’s a picture of the two of them. I did a little experiment and tried the bar magnets. (These I stole from a broken locker mirror) I also tried the little circle magnets, but it took eight of them to hold up the frame. I hope you like it!

Lace Easter Eggs...A Little Late

My mom saw these on Martha Stewart and made them. The comments on Martha's page were a little negative, but I thought my mom's turned out very cute! Sorry it's a little out of season, but you can try them next year. For directions follow the link...

Martha's Craft Page

Rose Ornaments

Today's post is a craft project making ornaments out of dried roses. I tend to take the special bouquets of roses I receive and dry them to make a keepsake that lasts longer. The problem is, all of these keepsakes take up a lot of room. To cut down on the space they take up, I made special little ornaments out of the roses.

Step 1: Pull off the outer petals of the rose blossoms. The best roses to use are the ones that are the fully open. These roses are miniatures so I made the ornaments small.


Step 2: Cut out a small cardboard circle the size of the ornament you want.



Step 3: Put a dab of glue on the back of the petals. Start gluing petals in a circle around the edge of the circle. Wait for the row to dry.

Step 4: Glue another row of petals in a circle in the center of the decoration.

Step 5: I like to glue something interesting in the center. Here I glued tiny matching jewels in the centers.

Step 6: Glue ribbon to the back of the decoration.

Amazing Craft Site

I just Stumbled upon the coolest craft site. It's so useful and personal. Everyone needs to check it out. I can't rave about this thing enough. Posting your projects is so easy and your profile and projects then are so manageable, it's easy to become an addict. Also really neat is that the community is so sweet and helpful. Everyone must check it out...

Cut Out + Keep

Embroidered Heart Ornaments

Today’s entry is a craft project inspired by some very cute crafts I Stumbled Upon and decided that I could make them cuter. www.crafts.com abounds with hand sewn ornaments and sachets. All of these are very cute, but with a little effort, you can make your own, and not have to pay $30 for someone else to do them.

Supplies (JoAnn Fabric):

½ Yard Brown Felt

½ Yard Red Felt

3 Pre-Cut Quilting Fabric Patches with Funky Patterns

2 Pkgs Sequins (Gold and Red)

2 Pkgs Beads (Gold and Red)

2 Spools Thread (Pink and Brown)

1 Bag Stuffing

2 Spools Funky Scrapbooking Ribbon

Taking the felt, I cut out a large heart using the old fold in half method. Next I took a matching piece of funky patterned paper and cut out a medium shaped heart. Using large rather grotesque stitching, I sewed the medium sized heart to the felt background. I think the amateur stitching adds to the homemade feel of it. Here is where I decided how to further decorate my little heart. Do it now before you try to sew things together or it’ll just end up being a big pain in the butt. In some of the ornaments I added small hearts that I had previously decorated with sequins. These little hearts I just glued down. Then in the extra background space, I further decorated with
sequins. Once I was done decorating, I sewed a backing felt heart to the front one using a end* stitch. To attach the ribbon to the top of the heart, I just sewed the ribbon in to the closing stitches. When I had only a little space left, I then stuffed the stuffing in as well as any lavender or scents that someone would want. Finally I sewed it up the rest of the way and hung it on a
rack. Here are some pictures of the results, I have a few I will post as soon as I go the lucky recipients and borrow them back for a picture!

I will post soon the patterns that I used for this project. While they started out perfectly symmetrical, I did trim more off one side because they look must better the less perfect they are. Also, here are some pictures of the completed one. I spared you the first mistake or two.

Recycled Coffee Tin Craft Project

Today’s project is pretty simple, but the outcome is very useful and I find it very attractive. I buy all of my coffee at Trader Joes, and in the end, I always end up with these large coffee containers. While, I get the large containers, there are smaller ones too I might experiment with.

The containers are sturdy, so I decided to dress them up a little bit and reuse them. I bought some paper from this gourmet type paper store around the corner from me called Hollander’s. I picked out a couple of beautiful sheets of paper months ago, and I was still looking for an excuse to use them. All I did was cover the coffee can with a sheet of this paper, making sure that the trees are growing in the correct direction. I used a basic Elmer’s-type glue. When doing this, the less glue the better, around the tip and bottom edges and the slowly gluing a little strip as you go around. Otherwise, the paper can get a little wrinkly. A bone flattener tool that is used in bookbinding could be helpful here to flatten out the glue bubbles.

Here are some pictures of my new storage containers. They store all of my nail polish and manicure supplies. I hope you enjoy this great recycling and organizing project.

Christmas Bread Gifts

Here is the second Holiday Tip that I would like to add, again sorry it’s late, but you can keep it in mind for next year. This is a very flexible idea so you can probably use it sooner.

This year for some of my office mates I made Christmas Focaccia. I case anyone doesn’t know, Focaccia is an Italian bread that is a cross between a thick pizza dough and flat bread. It contains about a gallon of olive oil and you can put any toppings on it that you like. For my Christmas version, I used fresh rosemary needles to emulate pine needles and then I also used onions and Red and Green Peppers. For a little extra flavor I kneeded in garlic powder and dried basil.

There are a number really easy recipes to make Focaccia, and I have included a few below. I also have a recipe that takes half a week to complete, but I wouldn’t recommend that unless you have absolutely nothing better to do.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Focaccia/Detail.aspx

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_309,00.html

Another Lazy Girl Idea is to use frozen bread dough. You can usually get them in packs, and all you have to do is let them thaw in a bag with olive oil overnight. Once it’s thawed, you can just punch it down and add a little more olive oil and let it rise again. It’s a pretty easy idea and the end result is super cute without a lot of work. (But no nice girl would ever admit to using.)

Once the bread is cooled, you can wrap it in Saran Wrap and then I found these cute Christmassy clear plastic wrapping at the Dollar Store and wrapped each loaf with the Christmas wrap so that the recipient can still see the bread below. A great thing to include with the bread would be a nice bottle of flavored olive oil or a jar of bruschetta.

If you want an Easter Focaccia, try some Yellow and Orange Peppers with some nice purple-y Red Onion. Or what about Orange Peppers and Black Olives for Halloween! The possibilities are limited only by the number of Holidays you celebrate.

Magnet Craft Project

I am very sorry for the delay. Christmas was a very busy time for this girl but I do have a few holiday gift and craft ideas to share. Part of the reason I waited till after Christmas to share these is because I wanted to take some pictures for you to help illustrate my directions. Also, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for any of my gift recipients.

The first project I will tell you about is an idea that I got from the great craft blog, Not Martha. They are homemade magnet sets made from recycled magazines as well as online Images I located on Google Image search.

The supplies needed for this project I picked up at Michael’s and consisted of one tube of clear drying glue like the one seen here.

The glass balls are actually the marbles that people use to make flower arrangements. They do have some in the mosaic section of the store, but I found these in the flower arranging section which gave me more pieces for less money. Little magnets are also available there in packs of 20 or more. I also did a little spin on the magnet idea and created some pushpins using thumb tacks to glue to the back of the pictures. While Not Martha recommended using a circle stencil to cut out the images, I found that just generally cutting out the images and then gluing down the marbles and then trimming up the edges after the dried to be the best process for me. I feel like this way I got just the right angle from the marbles which were not exactly round in the first place.

I made sets of the magnets of 5-8 that would match each other. Some of the sets I made were,

"Dogwood Blossoms"

“Impressionist Paintings”

“Old Masters Paintings”

“Butterflies and Roses”

"Puppies and Kittens"

"Colorful Gods”

...and then of course there are my Christmas Images.

Earring Organizer Craft Project

Today’s blog is about home organization. Ever have a problem organizing your earrings? Prior to making this little homemade organizer, I was constantly loosing at least one member of a pair. Or I damaged intricate and expensive accessories.

This organizer can be made very cheaply. Simply visit your local craft or fabric store. I went to Jo Ann Fabrics for this one. Get the plastic grid that is used for needle point and cross stitch. (It costs less than $.50) Then you can grab a ribbon. (I purchased a bag of scraps for about $1.00)

Cut the grid in half to be more manageable. Then take the piece of ribbon and tie it to the top of the grid in a little loop.

Then you can thread the earrings through the little holes in the grid. Hoops fit easily on the bottom. I only put my dangly big earrings on this one, and put the studs in a box, but the organizer can hold many studs too.

I hope this helps you keep your favorite fun jewelry together and safe. Remember, you can’t wear it if you can’t find it.

http://www.joann.com/joann

Martha Stewart has a really cute version of this on her craft website, with a frame and everything. However, this seems like a lot of work, and I’m not sure about it. I think a great east idea would be to take an empty picture frame and put the grid in, but then you wouldn’t be able to put the hoops on the bottom.

http://www.marthastewart.com/girls-catchall?lnc=ea166c3b5acee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=photogallery_crafts_organizing-crafts_p4

Unique Magazine Recycling Ideas

Clutter comes in many forms, but the most intrusive is certainly the old magazine piles. My mother has Better Homes and Gardens from a decade ago. I've always thought that simply throwing magazines in the recycling bin seemed like a waste. There are so many people who would enjoy even old magazine articles. So here are a few ideas for a way for people to reuse your old magazines.

1. Take it to the gym. My gym has a giant magazine rack where people leave their old magazines and then borrow them while they are working out. It's great because i don't have to drag one along every time and i get to see new stuff. If you gym doesn't have one, ask one of the managers if you can set up a neat little bin.

2. Coffee Break. Bring a couple to the break room at work and leave them in a neat little bin in the corner. Make a sign offering them for free. You'd be surprised how people will add to it and start sharing.

3. Use them for art projects. I love to cut out my favorite pictures and paste them on different projects, from those plain wooden magazine bins from Ikea, to a bland picture frame, they can really spice up your environment. I will have soon some more craft ideas for your extra pictures.

(Another way to get some cool cutouts is to go through old catalogs.)

Whatever you do, don't keep the magazines around, saving them for the day where you will pull the pictures out. If you don't have time, get rid of that clutter and haul those magazines away!