Friday, February 11, 2011

Valentine's Wreath

For this project all you need is a grapevine wreath ($4), a yard of felt ($3), a glue gun, and about 5 hours. Ha! This took me FOREVER. You can find the tutorial here. Even though it took a long time, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. But if I could redo it, I probably would have bought a smaller wreath and still used the same amount of flowers, so the flowers covered the sides too. This wreath looks a little big on my door. To attach it to the door, I took some old ribbon I had, wrapped it around the top, then thumb tacked it to the top of my door (so you can't see the tacks, but can still shut the door). Enjoy!


I will definitely be using these felt flowers in some upcoming projects. I seriously cannot get enough of fabric flowers!

Looking forward to spring

Every year about this time of year, we plant grass in pots to keep inside our house to get us excited for spring. And that it does! Spring couldn't come soon enough. If you have grass seeds and some empty pots lying around, this is essentially a free decoration for any table. Our kids helped Pete plant these and have loved seeing how fast the grass grows!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Menu Chalkboards

A few weeks ago, my sister and I made chalkboards that could be used to plan out our weekly menu for dinner.  It was pretty easy and I thought they turned out really cute.

Here is what you need:
Mod Podge, Chalkboard Paint, Paper, Paint (optional), and
a piece of  sanded Wood (We bought ours at Walmart for around $3)
First, we painted the boarder with craft paint and applied the chalkboard paint.  We had to put on a couple of coats of the chalkboard paint and then we set it aside to dry.


While the paint was drying, we cut out strips of paper to use as a border for the chalkboard.  Once the paint dried we glued the paper to the wood using mod podge.  I'm not a mod podge expert so my sister had to teach me how to use it.  Just so you know, you do this by first adding it to the back the paper, stick it on to the wood and then on top of the paper as well.  This was the trickiest part for me, because it is hard to not get bubbles in the paper.  Also, make sure not to get mod podge on the section you want to use as a chalkboard.  My sister also used mod podge to apply letters for each day of the week on her board.  I left mine blank so it could be used for writing notes/lists as well as a menu.

And now, the final product...

This is how my chalkboard turned out. 
(We made these around New Year's Day.)

This is how my sister's chalkboard turned out.