Chalkboard Plant Pots

I also love to bake, cook and garden as well as craft. It was actually a difficult decision choosing which subject to blog on, crafting obviously won! That being said, this next project does have some overlap from my other hobbies. I have a garden every summer where I grow green beans, carrots, cucumbers, gourds (for bird houses), cat nip and various other things.  I hate only having them in the summer though so I decided I would plant some fresh herbs in the winter indoors and that way I would be able to have at least fresh parsley, mint, basil and oregano when i make sauces or bruschetta or other things that require these herbs.  Then of course I decided to get crafty with it haha.  Here is my how-to.. 

SUPPLIES:

• 4 Ceramic Terracotta Pots (with matching water catching dishes)
• Painters Tape
• Chalkboard Paint
• Chalk
• Seeds ( I chose mint, parsley, oregano and basil)
• Dirt
• Water

DIRECTIONS:

1) Tape off the top thick rim of the ceramic pot with the painters tape.  I did this because I did not want the entire pot to be chalkboard. I liked the contrast of the terracotta color with the black of the chalkboard paint.  

2) Once it is taped off then you can begin spraying with the chalkboard spray paint.  I did multiple thin coats because I have found that works best.

3) Let it dry and remove the tape.. 

4) Write the names of the seeds you are going to plant on each pot with the chalk.  Just make sure the name you write correlates with the seed you plant! All of the seeds look so similar and the plants when they grow are hard to tell apart sometimes also so be careful! 

5) Plant your seeds! I put the dirt in, wet it and add the seed on time.  Then I lightly brush some dirt over them.  

6) Now place them in front of a window that receives a lot of sunlight and wait for them to grow!

You're done! Here is how mine turned out! 

Now I have fresh herbs all of the time! 

It's great!

What seeds would you plant?!

Colorful Doormat Part 2

Ok so by now our doormat slates should be primed, sealed and dried! On to Part 2...!

SUPPLIES:

• 14 Different Colors of Paint
• Paint Brushes
• Thick Rope (it has to fit through the holes you drilled!)
• Scissors

DIRECTIONS:

1) Pick your color layout! I chose 14 different colors from the Martha Stewart Paint Testers I bought at Home Depot.  Once you've chosen them, paint each board.  I did a few coats on each and painted the entire thing, not just the top.  

2) Let them dry

3) Rope them together!  This is actually more complex then it seems.  I estimated the length of the rope needed, cut it longer for a margin of error (I think I did like 6 ft) and dipped the end in glue so it was easier to thread (it was kinda split before).  Now take your rope, tie a knot about 3 inches from the end, take a board and thread the longer side (not the 3 inch end) through the the hole in the board. Once you've strung it all the way through the 6 ft rope strand to the 3 inch knot tie another knot on the other side.  String one side of each board this way until you've done all 14.  They should all be on the same string with nothing but a rope knot between them. Like this... 

 It was ok with me if they were a bit uneven because I am really into the homemade imperfect look.  I do blame the Home Depot guy though!

Oh and here is a bonus photo of my cat Monster he decided to rest in the box that my boards where drying on once I took them off of the top :)

4) Now do the exact same thing to the other side, loop them through and knot them. 

You're done and it hopefully looks similar to this now!...

Tada! I really LOVE it. 

 These photos do not do the colors justice, I am going to take a day light photo and post it soon!

How did yours turn out? What did you do differently?

Colorful Doormat Part 1

This project is by far one of my favorites.  I have been attempting to redo my house in a way to make it less 'store bought' and more homemade. I decided the easiest way to do this would be room by room so I decided to start with the porch/entrance.  That is where the whole doormat idea came in.  I wanted my guests to be greeted with something cute, colorful and original.  So, here is my How-To for my summery cute doormat- Part 1!

SUPPLIES:

• 14 pieces of wood cut 1"x2"x14"
• A Drill
• Primer/Sealer
• Sand Paper 
• A Paint Marker

*A side note- OK so you need 14 pieces of wood that are 14 inches long, 1 inch tall and 2 inches wide.  How do you get that? Well, I went to Home Depot (Home Depot!) and I purchased three 8 foot long pieces of wood that were 1 inch tall by 2 inches wide (they were like .75 cents each.)  Then I asked the nice man working (who actually wasn't that nice) to cut them into 14 inch pieces for me.  They do it for free, you just buy the wood and tell them how you want it cut.  Then you walk around a bit and check back periodically until your pieces are cut! When I came back I actually had 18 pieces because you could get six 14 inch pieces per board.  I didn't want a super long doormat though so I only used 14, spares are always great though for mistake purposes!

DIRECTIONS:

1) Ok, on to step one! Now, you have 14 1x2x14 inch pieces of wood you are going to want to drill two holes in each one through the 2 inch width of the board.  I chose to do it 2 inches from each end.  I took a paint marker and on the "sides" of each piece I made 2 marks two inches from the end. Be careful when you drill because sometimes a large drill will split the wood and make it unusable.  I actually drilled a small hole in the correct location and then drilled the larger hole so there was less stress on the wood. 

*You must make sure that holes are across from each other and will meet up in the middle when you drill through.  This requires you to drill STRAIGHT through from one side to the other.  Here is an image to help explain better... Basically, do this to each side...

2) Ok so hopefully you've now drilled two holes straight through each board two inches from the end and through the width.  Now you are going to need to sand the wood until it's smooth.  When you drill it sometimes splits the wood weird so you are going to need to do some serious sanding in some areas.

3) Lay your boards out and spray paint them with your primer/sealer.  I used an 'all in one' because I am slightly impatient and thought it would be easier and more efficient to knock them both out at once but you can do it separately if you'd like!

Let it dry! Part one COMPLETE!

Did you use different dimensions or amount of boards for your doormat?

Give a New Look to a Bookshelf

This project just kind of fell into my lap and turned into something really great that was totally not what I had originally planned.


Here is the story...


My boyfriend and I went to Target to look for a plant stand for a Meyer Lemon tree we had purchased. We wanted to put the stand in in the front picture window of our home so our lemon tree could get enough light. Well, while looking through the aisles of Target I found this bookshelf for only $15. I thought it was a GREAT deal so I decided we would be leaving the store with it also!


We got home and put it together in our living room, it's not real wood it's like compacted cork but it looked nice! So we put it together and then he asked me what I planned on doing with it. Well, my original idea was to put the bookshelf in my craft room to help organize all of my supplies but he had a different idea. He suggested since the shelf looked so nice, we should put in in our hallway as a decoration.


We put the bookshelf in the hallway and it looked really nice so we agreed to keep it there. BUT being that I am obsessed with crafting I wanted to make the shelf a little bit more me and less plain. This is where the crafting comes in, it was so simple too! I decided to take some Martha Stewart paint testers I had purchased at Home Depot a few weeks earlier and paint the inside bottom panel of each shelf a different color. It was simple, easy and fun and it added that something extra I needed to make the shelf 'mine'.


Here is the How-To...

SUPPLIES:

• A Bookshelf
• 3 Different Colors of Paint
• Painters Tape
• A Paintbrush

DIRECTIONS:

1) Take your bookshelf and the painters tape and tape off the sections you do not want painted. I did the a strip on the right and left inside sides of each shelf and the back panel because I was painting the bottom panel. I also taped of the front lip of each shelf.

2) Paint! I did a few coats because I wanted the colors to be bright.

3) Let it dry and remove the tape. You're done!

here is what mine looks like!...

What do you think? Are you refinishing any furniture?

'Create' Wall Art

Once I put the melted crayon art on my wall I realized how empty the wall of my craft room were. So I decided to make something else for the wall above my craft table. I wanted it to relate to crafting and to motivate me or remind me why I have that room in the first place. After thinking about it i came to the conclusion and this piece of wall art should just say CREATE. It is after all the name of my blog, what I love to do and it defines the purpose of that room!

Here is my how to for my 'Create' wall art piece...

SUPPLIES:

• 5 Different Colors of Acrylic Paint
• 5 Correlating Colors of String/Yarn
• Glue
• Cardboard
• Scissors
• Scrapbook Paper
• A Picture Frame
• A Paint Brush
• A Pencil

DIRECTIONS:

1) Take the piece of cardboard and the pencil, draw bubble letters in the font that you would like your word to be in. I wrote Create and did it in curly-ish font.

2) Cut the letters out!

3) Paint each letter in a different color with your acrylic paint. Let them dry. (Here is a link about acrylic paint, it's so versatile and one of my favorite things to work with... About Acrylic Paints)

4) When your letters are dry wrap them in the yarn/string in a scattered spaced out way. Similar to how you wrap your headphones around your iPod.

5) Fit the scrapbook paper to the frame and frame it. I removed the glass pane from the frame because I wanted 3D letters.

6) Glue the letters to the frames piece of scrapbook paper.

YOU'RE DONE!

here is mine...

What do you think? What word would/will you do?!

Silhouette ‘Birds in a Tree’ Wall Art Part 2

So earlier this week we covered Part One of the Silhouette ‘Birds in a Tree’ Wall Art project. Now I am going to cover Part Two!

SUPPLIES:

• 2 Canvases
• A Pencil
• A Paint Brush
• A Bottle of Black Acrylic Paint
• Pictures of Birds
• X-Acto Knife

DIRECTIONS:

1) Find photos of birds sitting in a tree. You can find the photos on the internet and print them out or do what I did which was buy a bird book (Half Price Books again) and cut the images out that way. The birds need to be the size and shape that you want on your canvas because these will be the stencil for the silhouettes on your tree branches. They also need to be photos of perched birds, not ones in flight. I found a few I liked in a book. Now, cut them out with the X-Acto Knife very carefully and along the outer edges of the whole bird and set them aside.

2) Take your canvas and free hand branches of a tree. Be sure to incorporate branches from one canvas to the next. Make it as compact or thin branch-wise that you'd like.

Here is what mine looked like...

3) Grab the cut out bird stencils you made and place as many as you want on any branch and trace them with your pencil.

4) Paint! Now it is time to fill in your outlines with solid black paint! Mine required two coats.

You're done!! Here is how mine turned out!...

I love it! and I have even had a few requests from friends to make them for their apartments or houses! Easy and fun! Hope you enjoyed the project too!

Did you use as many birds or tree limbs? What did/would you do different?

Silhouette ‘Birds in a Tree’ Wall Art Part 1

I wanted some new wall art for our living room so I decided to do some research to find some different ideas for inspiration.


I finally decided on a project that would spread over two medium sized canvases to create one large image. I love bird watching and parks so I decided that on the two canvases I would attempt to paint silhouettes of birds on branches. I also did not want a traditional white background so I used Mod Podge to create a funkier background with some pages from a book.


Here is a step by step for you! I'll start with a How-To on the funky canvas backgrounds for Part One and in a second post I will show the steps for the bird and branch silhouettes in Part Two.

SUPPLIES:  

• 2 Plain Canvases

• A Jar of Mod Podge (I chose Matte because I didn’t want my final project to be glossy but either would work!)

• A book that you can cut up (I know, it made me uneasy too!)

• An X-Acto Knife

• A Rubber Roller

• A Sponge Brush

DIRECTIONS:

1) Get a book to cut up. I went to Half Price Books (check out their website! you can find great coupons and great books for alot cheaper, just follow this link... Half Price Books). I found a neat one! It was an old 'Slang' dictionary and it had some really funny definitions in it. Now, cut out pages that you want to use along the inside spine of the book with the X-Acto Knife. These will become the background of your painting so try to pick ones full of text or with interesting information on them and make the cut as straight as possible.


2) Chose a layout for the pages, you want them to overlap and entirely cover the canvas. Lay it out first to decide what you feel looks best. *Make sure you wrap pages around each edges too so the sides of your canvases aren't blank.


3) Take your Mod Podge and the sponge and start to coat both sides of the pages and lay them on the canvas in the spot you designated. Mod Podge is basically glue so be careful! Once you place it, it isn't come up!


4) After placing each piece you are going to want to individually smooth them out. Sometimes, when laying a page, you will trap air bubbles that need to be released. After using the rubber roller (it is actually a Mod Podge product) and rolling it over each page, you shouldn't have a problem with the bubbles.


5) LET IT DRY! This may take awhile but you can't do anything until your piece is dry.

Once you're done your canvases should look similar to this...

Ta-da! Part one COMPLETE!

I was going to use a novel written in French for the background instead of the dictionary pages...What are your ideas?