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?

Bookmark

I was wasting some time and flipping through pages on either Pinterest or StumbleUpon and saw the cutest little bookmarks! I actually made a bunch of them for gifts for my family and friends. You can use any design for the paper and any type of teeth or eyes too, it's easy, fun and cute!


Here is the how too...

SUPPLIES:

• 1 Page for your template
• 1 Page Designed Scrapbook Paper
• 1 Page Solid Paper for the background (should complement the designed paper)
• 1 Page Solid Paper for the eye color
• White Paper for eyes and teeth
• Black paper for eye pupils
• Scissors
• Glue
• Ruler
• A Pencil

DIRECTIONS:

1) Make your template.. here is how...

• Take your ruler and draw a square 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches. Then draw two more coming off of or sharing the side of the square...hard to explain! Draw this!...

• Now, take the two end squares and draw a line straight through the middle like this...

• Now, cute out the exterior bolded line, that will be your template!

2) Trace your template on the plain piece of complementary solid colored paper. Also, cut our 3 squares about a quarter inch smaller than the square used for the template. In my case, I used a 2.5 inch square so my other squares are 2.25 inches per side. Then cut out the pieces for the eyes. As you can see my pieces for the whites of the eyes are larger than the pieces for the color and the pupil. I just free handed mine buy you can use a nickle and a dime to trace the whites and colors and then the top of a pencil for the pupil if you want.

3) Take two of the smaller squares of designed paper and paste them on either side of your main solid piece. You want to paste them over the position that was the original square from your template and center it. Like this in number 2.

3) Fold the ends up and over the paper like in the photo and glue them together, it will make a little pouch like in number 4.

4) Now, you are going to want to take the third small square you cut out earlier and cut it diagonally down the middle, creating a triangle. Then, paste the triangle on the top of the pouch as seen in image 5 behind the eye ball.

5) Paste your eyeballs together. Whites to the rim of the pouch, color to the white and pupils to the colored in a stacked kind of way... it should look like #5.

6) Finally, cut out the teeth! You can be creative here and chose and style of teeth you like, I free handed some buck teeth. Make sure to leave room and the top of your teeth so that you can glue it to the upper inside flap of the pouch.

YOU'RE DONE!

Here is how mine turned out...

Cute, functional and fun!

Sorry about the confusing directions everyone, hopefully it still worked out for you!

What do you think? Any other ideas for goofy faces?!

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?!

Melted Crayon Art

I am addicted to StumbleUpon and Pinterest and if you are as well you will understand why I had to make this next project.  It's EVERYWHERE! I kept seeing so many different versions of this project on different sites I just had to make one.  Here is the How-To...  I may be adding to it later in a Part Two post if I get motivated. I have another idea!...

SUPPLIES:

• A Box of Crayons
• A Hair Dryer
• A Canvas
• A Hot Glue Gun
• Glue Sticks
• A Ruler

DIRECTIONS:

1) Choose the colors you would like to use for the project and arrange them as you would like.  I chose a standard rainbow arrangement because I think its pretty. 

2) Take the crayons you chose and arrange them along the top of your canvas in the pattern or order you would like.  Like this... (I used a ruler to make sure they were straight.)

3) Now glue each individual crayon down onto the canvas with your glue gun.

4) This is the fun part! Plug in your hair dryer (I would not recommend using the one you use daily unless you don't mind cleaning it off after the project, the melted crayons splatter!) Ok, hold the hair dryer about an inch from the top left end of the crayon in the corner.  You have to hold it here for awhile until the crayon starts to melt and run, then you can use your hair dryer to push the melted wax wherever you'd like it to be on the canvas.  You can melt all of them as much or as little as you like,  I melted mine alot because it was so fun! 

5) Let it dry, you're done!

Here are some other ideas from Crayola for melted crayon projects!...

http://www.crayola.com/educators/techniques/meltedcrayon.cfm

Oh, and here is how mine turned out...

I really like it! It's colorful and fun and I have it hanging in my craft room :)

Are you going to make one? What color scheme are you going to use? You could even put it upside down! What do you think?

Bathroom Wall Art

Our bathroom was kinda bland and I wanted to do something fun and different with our wall decor. Most people have photos of toothbrushes or soap or like butterflies for some reason but I wanted something unusual. And I didn't want to spend a lot of money.


I came up with this idea because I saw a photo of someone who had framed a bunch of Hermes and CHANEL bags over a vanity. I loved it but I didn't have those types of high fashion bags from purchases just laying around. I had one Coach bag (from my wristlet) and one CHANEL bag (from my sunglasses) which clearly wouldn't have been enough... then I thought well.. I receive ELLE Magazine and that is full of high fashion!


I started going though the magazine and finding AWESOME ads that were glamorous and beautiful. They were ads that I knew if I had gorgeous supermodels in my bathroom I would be more motivated to be a little more glamorous every day. So here is where the project began...

SUPPLIES:

• Magazines (I chose ELLE)
• Scissors or X-Acto Knife
• Picture Frames
• White Paint
• Picture Hangers
• A Hammer
• Nails
• Ruler

DIRECTIONS:

1) Take the magazine and find the images you want to frame. You are going to have to compare them to the size of your frame. I chose four 8x10s, two 4x6s and one 3x5 of all different designs and colors. I bought them as Marc's and Walmart for around $2-$5 each. Once I had a stack of images that fit and I liked I cut them out with my X-Acto knife and set them aside.


2) This set was necessary because I had purchased frames that were not all the same color SO I had to lay each one out and paint them white. I chose Krylon Dual with paint and primer to knock two steps out at once. I spray painted each frame so they matched... See Below

3) Then I took my picture hangers, measured the center of the back of the frames and hammered them in.

4) Next add the ads that you want! I chose 6 different ones - A Gucci, a Marc Jacobs, a Valentino, a Dolce & Gabbana, a Bottega Veneta and a CHANEL. I also frames the Coach bag I had for the small wall next to the sink.

5) Now arrange them and hammer the nails in the wall in the spot you desire to hang them from!

Here is how mine turned out!

I LOVE THEM!!! And I get A LOT of compliments! Fun, easy and cheap! My boyfriend doesn't mind either because they're hot supermodels, Haha!

What would you frame? Supermodels? Cars? Art?

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?

Intent

Hello, I'm Jamie! Welcome to my web.log!

So, what is my purpose for this blog you ask? 

Well, here is some background on and the answer to that very question...

For the longest time I felt like there was nothing really special about me.  I didn’t have a cool hobby like dance or theater.  I wasn’t especially or naturally good at anything like singing or playing guitar.  I didn’t have that one thing that I could do all by myself that I was good at and that I loved even though it seemed like everyone else around me did.  

And then I found crafting.

I know that probably sounds cheesy or dramatic but I really mean it.  I finally found something of my own. Creating things comes naturally to me and I just recently discovered that.  I am good at it and I love it.  Its fun, I can get lost for hours making things or coming up with new ideas.  I am inspired all of the time by the things around me.  I see items at the store or in other blogs and think I could make that or I could use that for this project.  It is really exciting for me.

So, in this blog titled “CrEaTe: Projects by Jamie”, I am going to post How-To  directions, photos and feedback on things that I create and the products I use to create them with. 

Please, let me know what you think, share your ideas and give me suggestions. 

I am really looking forward to this and I hope you are too… here we go!