Table Runner

I am finished with my first quilting project! I made a 3 foot table runner and finally finished tonight. I'm very excited! I started this with my sewing teacher but had to finish on my own. It took me awhile to finish but I finally got some batting and fabric for the back as well as the binding. I don't have step-by-step pictures, sorry, but I do have a picture of the final product :)

I definitely learned a lot on this project. I got the pattern here but it was a little confusing because they want you to buy a package from them so they don't give you all the measurements. Luckily my teacher was able to help me figure them out and we actually did the hourglass blocks a little differently. The method I used saves you a lot of fabric and a lot of time! It's a little confusing to just explain so I'll put up pictures of this next time I do it.

When I bought the fabric for this I got 10 fat quarters which cost me about $20. However, it gave me enough fabric for 3 table runners. So if you decide to make one of these, you could lower the cost either by getting fewer patterns or just putting gift money towards the fabric and then giving away your two extra (or even all three). I also had to buy the batting and the fabric for the back (which is the same fabric I used to make the binding). This cost about $10 I think, but again, this was for all three. So I'm guessing my cost for this table runner was about $10, give or take.

Table Runner: Total Cost ~ $10.00

Oil Painting

This is not a craft that I made, but it sure is one that I'll enjoy! My brother-in-law is an oil painter and he recently finished a piece for me and my husband to hang in our kitchen. Thank you!!

Isn't is beautiful?!

I love the texture on the strawberries. You can literally see the seeds!


And you can see the pulp on the oranges! He's got a lot of talent!

My brother-in-law has a blog that you all NEED to check out! It's tnpaint.blogspot.com and he recently opened an ETSY shop so you can buy his paintings. He's also currently taking commissions for original paintings as well. Check out his blog and his ETSY shop! Some of my favorites are Death of an Artist, Winter Lake, and Aguacate. There's honestly nothing like having original art work in your home!

Christ collage

My husband had a calendar from when he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (visit mormon.org to find out more about the church). The calendar was pictures of the Savior and he loved the pictures and so he had held onto them for a few years. I really liked the pictures too but didn't know what to do with them because they're quite large and you can tell they've been ripped from a magazine. Well, my husband gave me the idea of putting together a collage of Christ. The small pictures that I used in this collage also came from my husband. I'm actually not sure where he got them, but they worked perfectly. This was a great project to do! I loved it! I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and I know that through Him we can be comforted, forgiven, and even raised from the dead. I hope you enjoy this.

Materials:
~Picture frame
~Old calendar pictures
~Smaller pictures
~hot glue

I went and found this picture frame at DI for $5.00! It was perfect and in great condition. If you're willing to sift through things, you can sure find a lot at thrift stores! :) The only bad thing is that the backing is just cardboard and there's no glass. I bought some Scotch tape double-sided squares to put up the pictures but the tape isn't very strong so the pictures keep falling. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to add some dabs of hot glue on the corners of these pictures and hopefully they'll stay up better. Next I decided which pictures I wanted as the main focus and then measured all the pictures to see how much I could cut off the sides. I didn't end up using all of the pictures he had saved, but I got in the favorites at least. Maybe I'll make a 2nd edition someday :) I put all the big pictures on and then realized it needed something else. You could tell that I had just put together some pictures side-by-side, it didn't have that collage look that I was going for. So I told my husband that I wanted to go buy some little pictures of Christ and he pulled out about 10 that he had! Perfect! They added just the right touch :)

Isn't this frame beautiful?

One of the small pictures I added

Since these big pictures were taken from a calendar they had the little holes in the top to hang on the wall. I obviously wanted to cover them up! Who wants holes in their collage?

This small picture is set right over the hole of the big calendar picture. Now you can't see it :)

The end product...what do you think?

Cost:
~Picture frame: $5.00
~Calendar pictures: $0.00
~Small pictures: $0.00
~Scotch tape (which I didn't use but I did buy, so I have to add it into the cost): $2.00
~Hot glue: $0.00

Christ Collage: Total Cost ~ $7.00

Vases

This was one of my favorites! I really like how they turned out. We have a bookshelf in the corner of our living room with nothing on top of it. Since it's in the back corner it's not a huge focal point so I haven't really worried too much about putting something on top. But I realized that it would look a lot better with something on it, and besides, I needed a new place to put a craft :) So here's what I came up with...

Materials
Vases (large, medium, small but all same shape)
Fake flowers
Fake grass
Hot glue gun

So first of all, since I got the vases at DI I put them in the dishwasher to get all the spots and stuff off them. I was surprised how clean they got! I hadn't realized how dirty they were! I bought two stems of fake flowers at Hobby Lobby and cut them up into their little branches so I had some of each stem in each vase. My favorite part was when I thought to put the grass on the outside of the vase. I had thought about buying a necklace or beads or something to put on the outside, but I LOVE the grass look! I bought a huge thing of fake grass, really I don't know what I'm going to do with all of it! I cut off 7 blades for this project and put a small dab on hot glue every so often on a blade of grass and wrapped it around the outside of the bottle. Be careful not to put too much or you'll be able to see the glue. My small and medium vase each have 2 blades of grass wrapped around them but the large one has 3. There isn't a lot in these vases but I like the openness that they have. This project did cost more than anything else I've made but for my birthday I got some craft money from my sister. Thanks so much!! I put it all towards this project and am so glad that I had some extra money! Anyway, enough of my blabbing...take a look!

Vases right after they came out of my dishwasher

Vases with the flowers inside (sorry the lighting is weird on this one)

Here's a close-up so you can see the wrapped around grass. I started with the thick end and put that at the top of the vase, then I just slowly wrapped it around and down.

Here they are on my no-longer-empty bookshelf :)
(sorry about the lamp in the corner of the pic!)

A closer-up picture of the finished product. What do you think?! Like I said, this is one of my favorites :) I L-O-V-E the grass look!

Total Cost:
vases: large ~ $3.00, medium ~ $2.00, small ~$1.00
yellow flowers: $3.00
red flowers: $2.00
grass: $3.50

Vases: Total Cost ~ $14.50

Feather and Candle Block Frames

Haha, sorry I don't have cool names for any of these! This one was so much fun though! I found these block frame things at DI and knew they'd make a great craft. So I bought them and went to Hobby Lobby to figure out what to put inside!

Materials:

~2 block frames (do these have an official name?)

~2 feather flowers (again--do these have an official name?)

~candles

~paint

~paintbrush

I wanted to paint these block frames brown but I only had $1.36 left in my budget so I bought some paint for 71 cents and then used a sponge as my paint brush! It actually ended up making it look kind of like a stain which was cool. The original color was pretty, it just had some dings and I wanted it a little darker to match my room better. I think the sponged on paint worked quite nicely :) Next I cut the stems off the feather flowers so they would fit inside the block frames and I even had to trim one to fit inside the smaller frame. The candles I bought were the perfect size but they came in way ugly aluminum covers. So I took them out and threw the cheap aluminum covers away! I decided though, that without the wick (which came out with the aluminum), the candles looked like small bars of soap. I needed to somehow replace the wick. So I cut up the stem that I had taken off the feather flowers and stuck them in the middle for my homemade wicks :) All I had left to do was drill everything in place! So I got my husband's drill bits and started making the holes. I stuck everything in and voila! Beautiful new frames to put on my walls! What do you think?

Don't they look SOO much better painted?!

That cheap aluminum HAD to go!

Aren't they absolutely beautiful! I LOVE them! I hope I'm not bragging, I'm just so excited they turned out so well!!

Cost:

Block frames: $2.00 for large, $1.50 for small

Feather Flowers: $2.12

Candles: $0.77

Paint: $0.71

Feather and Candle Block Frames ~ Total Cost: $7.10