I am so absolutely thrilled to have made it through the second week of One Month to Win It! The five dollar challenge was a fun one, and it made me realize how much I rely on my stash of supplies at home to keep things cheap. I decided to do a project that I had actually already been planning on doing for a while. I was trying to infuse more color and fun into my kids' bathroom, and I wanted to do a kind of pinstripe wall. I love the look of wallpaper, but I have this problem: I'm cheap. And, sure, you can get inexpensive wallpaper on ebay and different places, but not three dollars inexpensive, which is all I spent on this room transformation. Truth. To create this look, all you need is a three dollar paint marker and a whole bunch of courage. It's nice to have a supportive husband Continue Reading
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Phew! – Family History Storybooks
I made it! I got through the first round of One Month to Win It! Did you go check out all of the projects and vote? There were some awesome projects this week. Did you guess which one was mine? I really love the way these books turned out. I started with personal histories I had recorded, but you could use any memories. Getting the story broken up into pages and on the right side of the paper for printing takes a bit of thinking and finagling (I can't believe I spelled that correctly on the first try). If anyone is interested, I could work on putting together a Word doc with the pages set up for people to make their own books. After I had all the text on the pages, I added illustrations. For one book, I hand drew the illustrations and then scanned them onto my computer. Continue Reading
DIY 3D Floral Canvas Art
I would estimate that about 70% of our wall space is bare.  naked.  sad. I'm sick of it, and I'm taking action. So. Our first PGSOMW project was inspired by something I saw on HGTV Design Star. Do you watch this show? All of the season five episodes were on HGTV's website at some point last year, and I think I probably watched the whole season in like two days. Sometimes TV happens. It's okay. Anyway... For one episode they had to take all of the junk in a sad, old apartment and reuse it in their design. Great challenge, right? The girl who ended up winning the show, Emily Henderson, made this box pendant lamp by attaching silk flowers and then spray painting the whole thing white. I really liked the look and thought  the same technique would make a fun wall hanging. And Continue Reading
Flower Hexi Baby Afghan Pattern
I made this afghan for my baby girl while I was pregnant. It was inspired by an afghan I saw  in Maggie Gylenhaal's fabulous apartment in the film Stranger than Fiction. I just tracked down an image of it: It's great, right? I just remembered that I really need that couch too. Oh. And maybe the lamp. The baby afghan is made up of solid color hexagons, flower hexagons, and a few half hexagons, and then finished off with a contrasting picot edge. I really love the way it turned out, and I am contemplating a larger version for my couch. I started crocheting hexagons after stumbling upon Attic 24's beautiful and incredibly helpful hexagon tutorial. She also includes some great information and images on how to join hexagons as you go. I would definitely recommend checking it Continue Reading
Felt Lattice Pillow
I'm back with yet another felt pillow. This one was inspired by this pillow from West Elm: After I started working on this, I realized that my plan of attack for the knots was not going to work, and I went in a different direction. I will probably play around with the knot idea a bit more, but for this pillow, I ended up more of a woven lattice look. Even though it is really far from perfectly constructed, I like the way it turned out. I started out with 2 17"x17" squares and 26 half inch wide strips of felt 23" long (this ended up being a bit longer than I needed, so you could probably cut your strips to be only 21 or 22 inches long). I sewed all of the strips up along one edge of one of my squares. I found it easier to add the strips as I went along rather than Continue Reading
Felt Eyelet Pillow
Who's ready for another pillow?!? I know I am! I am LOVING my sofa these days. Here she is: Isn't she sweet? Gee, I really like her. So this whole thing started with me thinking I should make an envelope pillow because, you know, those are pretty simple. And then I thought about how I like felt because you don't have to finish the edges. And THEN I thought what if I harnessed the powers of felt and the powers of envelope pillows to make a super awesome lace-edged envelope pillow? Which is totally what I did. Here's how it went down: One of the things that's pretty cool about envelope pillows it that you only need one piece of fabric. To figure out what size piece of fabric you need, first determine the size of your pillow form. The short side of your piece of fabric will be one Continue Reading
Felt Ruffle Pillow Tutorial
So. Here's the second installment of my pillow fight campaign. I just love this little lady, and she was so easy to put together. I love a quick, easy project with big impact. Don't you? Here's what you'll need: Wool felt cut into four pieces [two 18'x18' squares, one 5.5'x 26.5' rectangle, and one 8.5'x 26.5' rectangle - If you want your pillow to be more rufflely (that's a technical term), then make your rectangle pieces longer, maybe 30 inches long.] A pillow form [17 inches square] Thread in a matching color That's it! Start by stacking the two rectangles on top of each other so that the center line of the rectangles matches up. You could fold the rectangles in half and mark the center line to get it exactly, but I just eyeballed it. Next, sew along this center Continue Reading
Felt Circles Pillow Tutorial
Here is my first advance in the great pillow fight. As I mentioned previously, I am redoing the pillows on my couch mostly using wool felt. This pillow was inspired by the Layla pillow at Crate and Barrel: I recovered an old pillow I already had and used about a yard of 30% wool felt that I bought with a coupon at Joann. My total cost: about five bucks. Crate and Barrel version: $60. I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's how I did it: I cut two 18" x 18" squares of felt. My pillow form was 17" square. If your pillow form is larger or smaller, you will want a square that is one inch larger. This gives a half inch seam allowance. Next, you will need to cut out your circles. Dig around your kitchen or junk drawer for a few round objects of various sizes. Here is what I Continue Reading
