Ikea trip!

Pardon the background mess but I had to share 2 of my 3 ikea finds!

Let's get the kinda boring one out of the way first.....This is Alex:

Its functional, not the prettiest (a bit plain for my taste) but that is something I plan on fixing down the road...So this little fella is holding a ton of stuff which is giving me more room on my desk and that makes me a happy girl. Its also holding my drawing supplies that my Hubby got me this past Christmas, see those canvases? He got me those too, talk about intimidating...I'm barely learning to draw and paint and he got me those giant things but he said he knows I have the talent in me tackle them. I love that he has such faith in my talent when even I don't.

Anyway lets keep this rolling right along. Here was the piece I just fell in love with....meet Raskog!

This thing is my favorite color, its easy to organize and keep the things I use most at my fingertips.
Top tier holds my inks, glitter mists, stamp cleaners. Second tier hold all my fun cling stamps, all of my liquid pearls are now in the little side caddy and the bottom is a bit of a catch all at the moment.

Once the rest of this loft gets squared away then I can put up my new Expedit and get started on my Thanksgiving help.

Thanks for checking in,

Workin' my way back!

I hope some of you are still with me....

This year has brought some changes and a few almost changes with it. The biggest almost change was that we almost moved to Idaho so we did quite a bit of remodeling on the house but alas it is not meant to be just yet. So after we packed half the house and were on the market for a couple of months we decided to stay for a little while longer...maybe till next summer, we shall see but now I am in the middle of unpacking it all again!!!!

We painted the kitchen but the counters were still in too good of shape to scrap just yet.

I have done quite a bit of purging in the process and boy that felt good, the creativity is starting to bubble up again, oh how I've missed that feeling.

I'll do another blog post soon to show some additions I've made last week to help get my scrappy goodness under control, a little hint...I went to IKEA! I just need to do a little more organizing to make it look presentable, sadly my hubby has yet to finish the lower part of my desk, maybe next year :)

Talk soon,

Grapevine Wreath for Spring and Summer

I've finally made my first wreath ever and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It was pretty low on the cost scale since I got the Grapevine Wreath for free from a friend who didn't think she could put it to good use. I must say this thing was a bit intimidating at first (it actually lived in my crafting chest for about 4 months before I dared to touch it)because I had no clue what to do with it. One day I was at J's and came across these cute little Lavender bundles that were $1 so I thought maybe this would be cool. I hunted down those other picks which had a 40% off sign above, score right? Wrong, it turns out that discount marker was put in the wrong spot but luckily I had coupons so I still got em on sale. 

Don't you just hate it when that happens?  Personally I can't stand to pay retail, even when its tiny things like these too.

Typically something so asymmetric doesn't appeal to me
 but for whatever reason this does in a very nice way.

I used my Slice to cut out all the butterflies and gave them fake bodies with the help of some Stickles.

This was a fun little project to make so I think I might start making more of these for each season from now on.




I'm on a roll this week, maybe my mojo is back :D

PSC: Since its been a touch windy...

I thought I'd make Pinwheels!....for my garden. 

I recently potted a fern and placed it by my front door but it was a bit bland.

I think a few of these will do the trick to liven up that plain little fern.

Its rather late so instillation with happen some time tomorrow. I'll also need to rotate my sprinkler head as well as it completely soaked attempt #1's sassy pinwheel that I had make a week or so ago but forgot to photograph until it was too late.

In the center of my pinwheel is 2 decorative buttons glued together.
I made this from a 6x6 scrap piece of paper from my pile.

I got a few cards done so those posts will fallow along soon,

Beautiful weather has returned and so have I

Spring has come to Elk Grove and my family and I couldn't be happier. We spent a pretty big amount of time outside, cleaning up the Winter mess and seeing if any of the Berry bushes we planted last summer survived the winter and it looks like 3/4 of them have! Even the Virginia Crawler fence plant survived, I thought it was dying in the fall but I've got buds. I'm hoping it will start to really crawl and grow all over my back brick wall to give a rustic look to the brick.


I was avoiding being in my craft space since I shared the Loft with my Babushka and now that she isn't there its a little lonely. Our house is quiet, no hum of the oxygen concentrator so I've started to listen to music in there since I don't have her to sing to me either.


I had this weird little metal bird that I bought from Cost Plus-World Market a couple years back, I've grown to really dislike this bird and for some reason its just stuck out like a soar thumb to me lately. So decided I needed to make it pretty, this is the first project I undertook when I went back into the loft. 

Say Hello to my little friend!....I couldn't help myself, so here is my little Babushka Bird. I was really surprised with how adorable it has turned out to be. It was this ugly little gun metal gray bird but now I think its found it true look.


I used Mod Podge to get the small strips of paper to adhere to the metal which I was surprised by how easily it worked. After I got all the paper on I let it dry and then applied some ink to give it a little vintage look (I could have inked the paper had I thought of it earlier), then after a  10 min. drying time I followed it with another layer to seal the ink in place.  Finished it off with some flowers and ribbon and wah-la! Oh I did discover that glue dots did not want to permanently adhere the flowers to the mod podged bird so I used Glossy Accents to get that and the bling of the eye to permanently stick.


What I used on this Bird:

• Metal Bird 
• Junky Book
• Flowers: Prima and Hero Arts
• Ribbon: unknown
• Ink: Antique Rose, Frayed Burlap and Walnut Stain (TH-Distress Pads)
• Bling: unknown
• Mod Podge
• Glossy Accents (Ranger) 

Thanks for reading,

Closet Curtain

So today was a day of lots of projects since my hubby had the day off. One of them was sewing the curtain cover for my closet with the fabric I showed off a couple posts ago with my revamped room. I'm pretty happy with the results and just had to share!

The lighting is the best at this late of night but you get the idea.  Now looking at this picture I think its time to find that tiny cross a new home. When we moved in there was nail left there and that was the first thing to come out of our first "bedroom" box we unpacked so it just went up and stayed there. I think I need to come up with something different for up there, maybe a cool Vinyl saying or something.

So thats pretty much it, just wanted to give a quick update to show off the use of that fabric, tomorrow my MIL will make our decorative shower curtain so I'll take pics of that to show some other cool cheap fixes we did today in there.


Later,

Mod Podge Medicine Bottles

I always thought these old medicine bottles had potential so I kept hangin on to em even though I wasn't totally into their design but now that I've learned how to use Mod Podge...its like a whole new world of possibilities have opened up to me!

This was Slavic's favorite because 1 it was a vintage car and 2 I made it look dimensional  by placing the grill over one of the edges. I totally did that on purpose too...not really but nobody needs to really know that right?

This is the back side of the bottle above with a cute airplane on it

So for my first adventures into Decoupaging I'd say it was a success! I really had fun and loved the results, I think I'll do a little bit more tomorrow and maybe spruce up a bland mirror.


What I used in this project:

• Various size/shapes antique glass medicine bottles
• Mod Podge with a Sponge Brush
• Paper: Mariposa paper (DSWV), Flowers from a back that lost its cover but I think it might be K&Co, Vintage Images from a massive paper pack (maker unknown)
• Marker: Daffodil Delight (SU!)
• Ink: Frayed Burlap (TH Distress

Thanks for lookin,

Earthy Bathroom

So this was the project that started it all, the bathroom.  I haven't hung up the art piece in here yet or reattached the towel rack but that's a job for another day. This is good progress though for our bathroom, eventually we will change the floors and counters but for now a fresh coat of paint has done wonders.

Our walls are in a mystery earthy "craigslist" green while the trim matches the taupe on our bedroom walls. I must say I love how this turned out and I really love that I was able to do it myself, I only needed help moving the heavier furniture but over all this project was all me. Now I need to still figure out if I want to stencil a boarder or not but I think I'll wait a bit to do that and get some crafting done first.

Toodles,

Tada my freshly painted Bedroom

So here is our freshly painted and newly rearranged bedroom.  The ceiling is in an Eggshell, the walls are a nice warm Taupe and the trims/baseboards are in a soft Green.

Our room felt pretty cramped before with just too much in here so when i went to paint that left wall I moved our dresser to the foot of the bed to get it out of the way but I liked the look of it there so that was what inspired the rearranging of the room. I was initially just going to paint and do nothing else but....once I get started I just run with it.

I haven't put the curtains up yet, I'll leave that for Slavic to do, I've done everything else :). His one complaint about the room was that I didn't paint the vent Taupe, he wanted it to blend and not be noticed.

This dresser used to hold the mirror that is now on the vanity so I decided to decorate the dresser with some of my antique books and the little chest. I also swiped the 2 candle holders from the bathroom which was framed the whole thing rather nicely.

This is a cute space but I've never really done much with it other then putting all of my books in a nice neat row. This time I wanted to let more of the light through from the little window that sits behind all of these.

I saved a few of the bottles from the Trader Joe's Sparkling Pink Lemonade but had no use for them, I'm happy to report they now have a purpose. Those little balls up there are a couple of my glass Christmas ornaments too.  

So I think I'm going to do a little Mod Podge project with those Lemonade glasses. In the morning the sun rises though that window and having the glass up there really lets through a lot of light as well as some sparkle.

There is my pup Cheba, I wouldn't let her make a mess of her pillow on the floor so she jumped onto my bed to get comfy.

Okay check out my ugly white closet doors and now look at all of that pretty double sided fabric. Since we've moved into this house a few years back we've wanted to somehow hide those doors and now that we've put our bed right in front of them we really want them gone. Our idea is to make 3 large curtains to hang above the doors to cover them up but still give full access to the closet.

Let me share with you the MAJOR deal I scored on this fabric. I'm sure quite a few of you are aware of the 50% off fabric sale going on on Joann's right now, well I thought I'd head down there with my MIL and see if we could find something to go with our new wall color. Luba was a bit put off by the $39.00 price tag on many of the fabrics but then we found the Red Tag area and this lovely fabric (regularly $30.99 p/yard) was residing there at the low low price of $6.00 a yard! Luba loved that price since that kept me under the budget I set for this project but due to the 1/2 off sale we ended up scoring this fabric for $3.00 a yard!!!!!!!!!!!  Yes we got this fabric for 90% off, can you believe it?!? Luba was in total shock and kept giggling so we just bought the rest of the bolt because at that price how can you not?
So in total we got 12 yards of fabric, leaving us with 5 yards extra that will now be used to make a decorative shower curtain (we have the ugly silver and glass enclosure now) that will run floor to ceiling, matching mini Curtain in the bathroom and maybe a Valance to dress up our bedroom Curtains.

So if anyone wants to score on some fabric, hit up J's and take a look at the Red Tag sections to score the majorly sweet deals!

Thanks for stopping by,

 p.s. Painting was just what my sickly body needed, I casted those vile viruses out :D

Painting Update

Okay so I tried to use my cellphone to work mobile blogger but that was unsuccessful so I'm just doing a regular post.

Here are two quick pics via my camera phone so the color isnt all that great. I'll take good pics once my painting is all complete.

The bathroom is a pretty earthy green and the walls of the bedroom are a rich taupe. Eventually I'll paint the doors in a shade of chocolate but I haven't decided if I'd like a 58%, 65% or a 78% yet (sorry geeky culinary humor alert!) so till I decide they'll just stay white.

Still sick :(

Its hard to get me sick but once I am it sticks around. I've been dying to create but cant be in the loft so what is a girl to do....well I came up the a rather brilliant idea on how to cure myself and accomplish something at the same time. Yesterday I set out to paint my Master Bath, figuring good physical labor will help cast these demons from my body, today I'm still coughing so maybe a bit more painting will help. I just have to paint our baseboards and decided if I want to stencil a boarder up on the walls and then that is done...well then I have to paint the door. Oh but now that I've painted our bathroom I think I need to paint my bedroom too, surely this will cast out the evil and vile Musinex looking creature from my chest!

Anyways the real thing I wanted to share was the cost for this project, my grand total as of right now is $0.00!!!! I don't think I will need to buy any supplies for painting my bedroom either so it should all go down for a total cost of $0.00! How you ask? Did I already have the paint before?

The paint I just got maybe a couple of weeks ago but I got it for free using the great and wondrous thing called Craigslist! See there is a company that cleans out foreclosed homes and constructions sites, they have gallons but figure they cant resell them so they give them away for free. Since Sacramento has lots of new construction going on there is lots of left over paint so they also had 5 gal buckets and that is what me and Slavic went and found one day. We got 4 colors each in a 5 gal bucket, I've already modified 1 shade by adding white to it to create the perfect honey color for our bedroom. That bucket of white was left in our house when we moved in so that was free too. I already had brushes and rollers so that has made this an awesomely cheap project.

So if any of you are looking to save cash, give the "Free" section of Craigslist a gander, its amazing what you can find there because someones trash can always be another's treasure with the right frame of mind.

I'll post pics of my bathroom when I finish it tonight

Re-Purposing of a Tea Crate

My MIL got me this cool glass tea pot with flowering teas for christmas but I must say when I first unwrapped the gift my first thought was what a cool storage crate this will make on my new desk! I love flowering teas so this was an all around perfect gift and the fact that I got a cool new container, shredded fluff and pretty cardboard was like 5 gifts in one :D....yes I was excited when I found well formed corrugated cardboard under all of that fluff, I'm easy to please.

So here is what I did:

Take one tea crate and carefully un-stick the paper logo stuff. This had glue dots on it that hung on for dear life!

One the bog was free of the paper I was left with shredded fluff, I stuffed this into a ziplock for later use. I never imagined when I started this craft that it was as "eco-friendly" as it is. I re-purpose stuff like crazy now!

Next I started to stamp. I used wood blocks and clear stamps on this box. I really didn't have much of a theme I just started going for it, figuring it would probably turn out perfect in the end. I did discover that using Early Espresso wasn't dark enough to really show up and that I actually had a use for black ink after all.

Since I had already stamped lots of things onto the box in Early Espresso I just went and stamped over some with the Basic Black and with others I off set the stamp to create a layering affect on it the image. I like the was it turned out with the 2 colors, gave it a old burned wood kinda feel to it.

I added a little bling to it to make the flowers pop a bit more, I like it so far but I think the box as a whole needs something else so for now its just a work in progress until I figure out what that thing is. 

Here is where I will store my ink overflow and clear stamp overflow for the time being.

What I used on this project:

• 1 Numi flowering tea create
• Early Espresso and Basic Black (SU!)
• Stamps: French Foliage (SU!),  Cantaria (Prima), Vintage Stamps in Liberty and Paris (Hero Arts), and some various other stamps that I do not know the names to.

Thanks for looking,

Best Christmas gift ever....I do believe so.

Now that Christmas is passed I can share with you the story of my Christmas gift. This year all I wanted was a wooden storage solution for my SU ink pads (I'm not a fan of the plastic ones) so I showed my DH a few examples I've seen around of what I wanted him to attempt to make for me. He said sure no problem but somewhere in all of the panning it went from a small ink storage system and morphed into a full blown desk! See my little plastic table started bowing slightly in the middle, rendering it unlevel which aggravated me to no end since I like to stamp a lot. Anyways here's the tale of my table.....(don't mind the messy garage)

Did you know that Home Depot will cut your boards for you? Since we don't have a table saw yet this little fact came in very handy.

Here is Flipper inspecting all the new things in the garage. I like to call him my old man cat even though he's just 4 years old because he gets in these moods....like a pissy old man.

Slav said, " Argh I forgot to buy clamps to hold the in place." I said, "dude we still have boxes of tile, if all you need is weight save the money and use heavy things in the garage." Another great problem solved and money saved thanks to my quick thinking!

This is one of the lets of my table, its laying on it side. The table top weighs about 100lbs so we needed strong support below. No particle board here, this desk is all solid old fashioned wood!

Here we have 2 completed legs that will eventually house drawers of various sizes to organize my papery goodness!

Here is Slavic scraping the top of the table to level it out with his new wood working tool that was a early Christmas gift from my Nana. Right after we got the table perfectly smooth my MIL saw it and was loving it but then she went upstairs and I went for the hammer and chains. I proceeded to beat the hell out of my table with anything hard I could find, I really liked the texture I was getting from the small end of the vice grips. My MIL came out and almost started to cry at the sight of my freshly distressed table but eventually she calmed down and let me finished the distressing. 

We used a Red Mahogany Oil Stain first, going heavier in some spots but upon drying I didn't like it. So I added some pale blue paint to it and then ran upstairs, grabbed the Distress Ink Pads (I was not about to assault my SU pads but my TH ones I wasn't too worried about) and started to go to town on the table. I realized I needed more deep brown so I used my Early Espresso re-inker to really darken up areas of the table. Right after this Slav added 2 Satin Clear coats to finish it off.

here is a close up shot of the pretty wood but the lighting has slightly distorted the color so between this photo and the others below you'll get the idea.

For Christmas my MIL got me those pretty vinyl flowers so I put those up once my new space was squared away.

He made my desk a few inches wider then the plastic table, I really didn't think a few inches would feel like much of a difference but now I feel like I can breath easily and have more space to work in.

So that was my Christmas gift, after he put my desk in he decided I needed utilize my walls better so he started playing with my tools like puzzle pieces. The bottom part of my desk isn't finished yet but once he gets around to it, I'll be posting those as well. 

Talk to ya'll later,