Fabric Scrap Wreath!

I have been saving links to fabric scrap wreaths as an idea for a holiday party or a shower, so when I finally got to make this myself, I was really excited!

The links that gave me the idea for this can be found HERE or HERE.

I decided that I wanted my wreath to be pretty full, so one coat hanger folded into a circle wasn't going to be enough. I went to Hobby Lobby and found a wire wreath form. None of them were super-wide, so I decided to get two sizes and find a way to connect them. These are only a couple of dollars a piece.

Here they are together. This was exactly the width that I wanted.

I also picked up this inexpensive floral wire which was right beside the wire forms. And it's amazing. It has a cutter so no pliers needed! I'm sure everyone else already knew about this nifty invention. Anyway, I just wired the wreaths together at 4 points and it seemed pretty secure, so I left it at that.

Next, I went through my fabric scrap pile and pulled out all of the colors that we were using for the shower. The great thing about this is that these are the colors that I have used all over my house!

Next, I cut TONS of fabric strips around 6-8 inches long and about an inch wide. I didn't measure or anything, so none of them are exactly the same, but it doesn't matter once you attach them. The cutting and the tying take a little while, but just do it while you're watching your favorite show, and it will go by fast! To attach the fabric, I just tied each piece to a place on the wire form in a knot, with equal parts of fabric on each side of the knot.

This is what it looked like about half-way through. There was really no pattern to how I tied them, just tried to fill in gaps where I saw them.

Here is the wreath after a couple of hours of tying lots of knots!! I wanted to personalize it so I dug around in my craft supply and found some blue letters that I had from another project.

I used tacky glue to glue the letters directly to the wreath. I just pressed each one down for about a minute, and after about half an hour, they weren't going anywhere!

I knew we would be opening gifts in front of my TV, but I didn't want a big ugly TV to be our background, so I thought the wreath did a nice job of distracting! I was so busy that day that I completely forgot to get a closer picture of it!

Here's a little closer look of how it was displayed. I just used a white ribbon that I already had and looped it around the wreath. Then I used a thumb tack to pin it to the top of the shelf. I left a little ribbon on top to tie a bow to cover the tack.

This is something they can re-use as well either at the hospital or in his room!

DIY Tissue Paper Puffs

Tissue paper puffs are an easy way to add lots of color to a space for a shower or party. They are pretty easy to make, all you need is tissue paper in whatever colors you're planning on using, floral wire, scissors, and something to hang them with (I used fishing line).

You need 8-10 sheets of paper per puff.

First you lay out the papers on a flat surface, all stacked on top of one another.

Yes, that's a dog bone...I block these things out.

Next, you fold the paper back and forth, in about one inch folds like an accordian. Kind of like how you would make a fan when you were a kid.

Once you have folded the paper all the way up, find the middle, and cut a piece of floral wire. Wrap the wire around the middle and make sure it is pretty tight. If you want a smaller puff, you can cut your tissue paper in half long-ways. This will make the puff half the size.

After you have secured the wire, use your scissors to shape the edges. You can cut them to a point or leave them rounded. Just make sure that the ends are symmetrical.

I was doing this by myself, so I didn't get a picture of the last step, but HERE is one from Marthastewart.com, along with a tutorial (that I found after I made mine!).

At this point, before you pull the sheets apart, go ahead and tie your fishing line around the center (this will make it easier to find once the puff is full).

Pull each sheet of paper apart from the others, separating them one at a time. Be careful not to rip the paper when you do this!

Once you are finished, trim your fishing line to whatever length you need it, and hang it from the ceiling, a light fixture, etc...
Here is the finished product:

I used several colors and made both large and small ones to add layers.

This took care of the space in front of the window without having a large floral arrangement to get in the way! I secured these to the curtain rod. They are really light so I didn't have to worry about them weighing anything down.

Here's a closer look

These are really fun to make and I love how inexpensive they were!

DIY cupcake stand

I mentioned on Monday that I would be posting soon about the baby shower that I recently hosted at my house. I am actually going to make it several posts because there were lots DIY projects involved there and I was asked how several things were created, so I thought I would showcase them one at a time.
But first, I wanted to show you my solution to displaying 40 cupcakes on a small table. I knew I needed some kind of tiered stand, but I didn't want to buy anything new just for one night. So I went through my collection of serving pieces and found 3 that I thought might work.

 This is a cake stand that I found at a garage sale, an awesome cake stand that flips over and becomes a dip tray that I received as a gift years ago, and a serving plate that I found on final sale at Pottery Barn outlet!

I tried this arrangement of stacking them and then tested it out to make sure my cupcakes would fit on each tier. It worked perfectly!

And here it is with all of the cupcakes! I was so happy that everything worked perfectly!

Here's a closer look.
So if you don't think you have the perfect serving piece, take a quick look through what you have on hand and see it you can make it work!
Next up, how to create those cute tissue paper puffs! They are such an easy way to add lots of color!

Wainscoting

I tried to think of a creative title but I gave up. But this post really is all about wainscoting. Just as a reminder, this is what our dining room looked like in between the removal of wallpaper layer 1 and 2 not long after we bought it.

And here it was when I posted about it HERE. You know, when I said the wainscoting would be completed soon. And I believe that was February or 2010. Yes, a year and a half ago.

And until last week, still no wainscoting. This was as close as it got. Painting the wood that was covering the gross teturing on the bottom half. But after completing the table and chairs HERE, I realized that the room needed to be finished so that you could start seeing pictures of other rooms each week!

So here it is, finally, after several coats of paint. I don't have any pictures of the process, but you can check out this post HERE at Thrifty Decor Chick; the concept is the same. She used different wood and we actually removed all of the baseboards and re-installed them over the new wainscoting, where she just left hers.

It's weird how now the room feels a lot bigger, which is awesome because it is so small. This pic even has the leaf in the table because I needed it for a shower I hosted (fun pics of that to come soon!). But it still doesn't feel cramped, which is great.

Here is another shot. And yes, I have re-arranged pictures again. It's a sickness. Like my need to have massive amounts of pillows everywhere. And I didn't notice the creepy shadow my light was making on the walls until after I took the pics. But you get the idea.

One last shot.  I also think the new picture arrangement helps the room to feel longer. I am so happy that this project is finally complete! It looks so finished now and hopefully you won't have to see pics of my dining room for a while (until I move some more pictures around).

Anyone else have projects that have taken an unnecessarily long time? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

My first attempt at a Pinterest inspired project.

Like I mentioned a little while back, I am loving to use Pinterest as my scrapbook for ideas and inspiration. One thing I didn't want to do was pin all kinds of things and never actually DO any of them.  So when a need arose this week, I put one of my "pins" to the test.
The TV in the den was recently mounted on the wall. This meant the really awesome cheap and ugly TV stand under neath it was no longer needed. Luckily, there is a closet behind the wall that the TV is on, so it was easy to drill a couple of holes and route all of the cords to the closet. It also comes in handy for storing the cable box and anything else that the TV might need to hook up to.
For a reminder, here's the room before the TV was mounted:

 You can see it over to the left sitting up against the wall.

Here is the TV mounted.  You can see I needed something there to cover up where we routed the wires back into the room so that we didn't have to relocate the outlet. I didn't want anything too intrusive, and I couldn't find a piece at a thrift store that I wanted to tackle. That is where Pinterest comes in. A couple of weeks ago I had pinned this idea about staining crates and turning them into a furniture piece. You can see the original blog with a crate tutorial HERE. I decided to do my own simpler variation.

I stopped by Joanne Fabric and amazingly they had these crates for $10.99 a piece with 30% off! So I picked up 4.

I used the can of stain that I had left over from my house shutters and a sponge brush to stain the crates.

It is a Minwax dark walnut finish.

Here are my crates after one coat of stain. They took the stain really well and I decided that was all they needed. I could have done some kind of creative glaze/finish to make them look more "antiqued", but I decided not to.

Here they are stacked under the TV and covering up those ugly wires! They are the perfect height and are not too deep for the space.

And I went ahead and threw some accessories up there to see how I liked it. I can't believe how easy it was and how great it looks!

I love the new TV space and I think it is a HUGE upgrade from where it started! And the total cost was a little over $30 dollars because I had everything else but the crates. I'm excited about a successful first Pinterest project, and hopefully this will inspire me (and you) to take on another one soon!

Bringing My Stairs From Drab To Fab

My great room has two sets of stairs leading into it because it is not on the same level with the rest of my house.  The stairs have always been pretty ugly.  They were stained when the rest of the floors were put in, but they only stained the tops, not the sides.  They also have these really ugly granny rails that are kind of a dirty white color.  Sounds fabulous, right?
Well I decided to do something about them (after two years of ignoring them), but I need my DIYer card taken away because I forgot to take before pictures!!  What was I thinking?  Sometimes I just start something on a whim and get caught up in the moment :)
I did, however, find this picture of the stairs.  Ok, so really it's my cat being really cute but it also captured part of the stairs so you can see how they looked. Please ignore the in-progress chairs in the background. Oh, and the lazy cat.

Yes, this is how he sleeps...and if he is in your way, just step over...he won't move. 

Here is a pic I snapped after I attacked them with some paint.

I used left over trim paint to take care of the fronts, and black paint for the granny rail, which was left over from painting my back door black (which I haven't showed you yet).  I was afraid the black might make the rail stand out, but it actually kind of blends and brings a new sophistication to the stairs.

This is the best pic I could find of the other set of stairs...you might remember them from THIS Christmas post. 

Here they are now (from a different angle).  I gave them the same treatment, and they look SO MUCH BETTER.  Why didn't I do this sooner?? I also finally painted the door, which was just the off-white stock color before.
Ok, I know stairs aren't the most exciting thing in the world, but I wanted to show you how such a small change can really help out a space.  And the best part about the whole project: it was FREE!  Everything I used I had already.  I love it when that happens!!

Here is one last pic of my happy stairs.  Aaaand, I just realized there's a load of laundry on the couch. Sorry about that. Keepin' it real with this post.
Anyway, like I said, if you walked in the house, you would probably just assume they had always been that way, which is the point!  Everyone have a happy Friday!

Dining Table and Chairs Before and After!

My dining room table and chairs are finally finished!  It took me a long time to decide on a fabric, and at first I thought I was going to actually sew all of the cushions.  I pretty quickly realized that I was going to take the easy way out...staple gun+fabric=easy way to cover cushions.  And I am SO glad that I did!  It was really easy and looks great!
Just to remind you of where I started, here is my old table and chair combo (from college):

And here is my new table when I started($10 from a garage sale):

Here is my dining room now!!

Here is another view.  I decided to go with a print for the fabric but something neutral since the chairs will probably be used in different rooms for parties or when a lot of people are over.

Here is what the chairs looked like when I got them.  I used a spray paint primer followed by a coat of white spray paint (you can see them in-progess HERE).  It worked perfectly and I didn't have to worry about brush strokes!

Here is the after.  I love them!

And yes, there is a lot of stuff in my living room that's not normally there...having floors re-finished will kind of turn your house upside-down.

I literally just used our heavy-duty staple gun and stapled the new fabric right over the old.  I was worried that you could see through it, but you can't at all.  This made my life so much easier!  If you do this with a print, just make sure that your fabric lines up so that it's not crooked!

These pillows probably won't stay, but they needed a temporary home, and I like them with the green hydrangeas from my yard!

I like how you can see the fabric from the back too.  I think this room has so much character now!  The fabric was $9 a yard from Premier and I used 2 yards.  So $18 for the cushions.  Not bad!