Marshmallow Garland

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

I saw a marshmallow garland online yesterday and loved it! I decided to add a few above my snowmen decorations.

Materials:
~ marshmallows
~ scissors
~ floss
~ needle

When I did my first string I just used regular sewing thread but the marshmallows slid all over the place. I tried it with floss and they stayed in place! I don't think they'd stay in place with gloss floss but the waxy floss keeps them from sliding around.

I just threaded the floss through the needle, cut the marshmallows so I'd have different sizes of "snowflakes" and pushed the needle/floss through.

(These pictures don't quite do this thing justice. It looks really cool though, I like it)

Total Cost:
~ marshmallows: $0.00 (already had old ones in my cupboard)
~ scissors: $0.00
~ floss: $0.00
~ needle: $0.00

Marshmallow Garland: Total Cost ~ $0.00

Potpourri in a Vase

I got some beautiful potpourri in a gift bag a couple years ago and love how it looks so I've saved it. I had it just in a pretty glass I have but decided to change it up a little.

Materials:

~ potpourri

~ candles

~ vase

~ toothpicks

~ SWIMMING NOODLE -- yep, that's right. A swimming noodle :)

I wanted to fill a small square vase I had with the potpourri and candles but it didn't fill it up very much. So to add some filler space I cut up a swimming noodle. I was worried that the pieces of the noodle would get moved around once the potpourri got poured in so I stuck the pieces together with toothpicks.

This way they held together real well.

I also stuck toothpicks through the candles where the wick used to be and then stuck them into the tops of the noodle pieces. I poured in the potpourri and I was done :)

Total Cost:

~ potpourri: $0.00

~ candles: $0.00

~ vase: $0.00

~ toothpicks: $0.00

~ swimming noodle: $0.00

Potpourri in a Vase: Total Cost ~ $0.00

Christmas Trinkets

There's got to be a better title for this project, but I don't know what to call them, so for now they're trinkets :) Anyone who has a better name please leave it in the comments! I know it needs work :)

So, I wanted to do something festive for Christmas but didn't have money to spend and didn't really know to do. I decided to just go in to my craft supplies and start looking around. These are my favorite kind of projects because I just see what I have, put something together, and end up with a craft at the end! I get so excited when I'm able to create something out of all that stuff. To other people my craft corner (I don't have a craft room, just a craft corner) may look like junk, but to me it's a whole bunch of projects waiting to come together!

Materials:
~ Cranberries
~ Gold fabric
~ Candle holders

I started by looking at two projects I made last year (here). (They now sit side-by-side on my dinner table).


I love the cranberry look and while I was admiring my previous work ;) I decided that the green bottle had a few too many cranberries poking out of it. I decided to take off a branch. It looks much better now, and I was on my way to my new project! I cut up the cranberries and found some small scraps of gold material from one of my pillow projects (here). Now I just needed somewhere to put the two together.

I remembered that when I bought the candle holders for my bathroom (here) they came with little glass cups to place the candles in. I didn't end up using the glass cups with the holders so they were sitting in my craft box. I pulled two of them out, cleaned them off, and put the cranberries and fabric inside! What do you think?



When I started cutting the cranberries off the branch the outer paint layer came off, showing the styrofoam ball underneath. I had to cover that up! So I used a Crayola marker :)

Bird's Eye View :)

This "Oh Holy Night" was given to us by my mother-in-law. Don't you love it! Now I have my little nativity set with three cute things: my "Oh Holy Night" block, my Willow Tree angel, and my Christmas trinkets :)

Christmas trinkets:
~ Cranberries: $0.00
~ Gold fabric: $0.00
~ Candle holders: $0.00

Christmas trinkets: Total Cost ~ $0.00

Re-covered pillow #4, Weaved Pillow

I had one last pillow that came with our couches and I wanted to save it for a really good idea. And I got it! I'm way excited about this pillow and it's definitely my favorite. I got the idea from an old lady's dress :) haha Here it is...

Materials:
~ Old, ugly pillow
~ Fabric
~ Ruler
~ Pencil

I knew that I wanted a plain back for this pillow and a solid color underneath all the weaves in the front. I decided to do white in the front and red in the back. But when I went to cut out the white I realized that I didn't quite have enough fabric! So I decided to just cut up the stuffing of my old, ugly pillow to match the size of the fabric that I had left :) Problem solved! Now it's a kidney pillow instead of a square one.


Next was to measure how many strips of fabric I would need for my weave. You can do this with just one color but I decided to alternate red and gold. I took a ruler and drew out lines everywhere I wanted a weave strip to be. I drew this all out on the wrong side of my fabric (although since it's a solid color it didn't really matter which was the wrong side).

Then I measured how many pieces of red and gold I would and how big they each needed to be. I ended up doing 14 red pieces and 12 gold pieces. I sewed right along the edge and then turned them inside out.Two quick tips about sewing these strips together. When you're sewing a bunch of stuff all right after the other don't worry about cutting the thread and re-starting your sewing line for each one. Just sew them all on one big seam. Does that make sense? So when you get to the end of one piece, leave a little space and start the next one. Here's what you end up with, go ahead and just snip the extra thread in between each piece. This saves a lot of time and headache!
Tip #2: Most of you have probably seen this. If you ever have to turn something small inside out pin a safety pin to one side of the fabric at either the top or the bottom and then push the safety pin all the way through until the fabric is totally right side out. This saves even more time and headache!
Once I had all my strips of fabric right-side-out and ironed down flat I pinned them onto my fabric. Then I sewed all the way around the outside edge.

To make sure that the pieces of fabric stayed in place once the pillow got on my couch I tacked them down in the back. Every time the strips crossed each other I tacked down the bottom piece, making sure to not poke through to the top piece so as to keep my thread hidden. The back is ugly but this ended up in the inside of my pillow and it didn't matter what it looked like :)

After that was done I sewed the front and back together, turned it inside out, stuffed it, and hand-stitched the last few inches. That's it!! What do you think?!



Cost:
~ Old, ugly pillow: $0.00
~ Fabric: $0.00
~ Ruler: $0.00
~ Pencil: $0.00

Re-covered Pillow #4, Weaved Pillow: Total Cost ~ $0.00

Re-covered pillow #3, Multi-Colored

I wanted to do a pillow that was more than just that tan/gold I've used (see my other pillows here and here. I do like that color, but it's nice to add a splash of something else too right? The same color can get boring if it doesn't have anything else with it! So I decided to add some red in a pillow. I've mentioned before how much I like red--it adds so much to a room even if it's just something small.
Sorry, this post doesn't have very many pictures. I didn't do very well with picture taking on this camera. It starts out just like my other two pillow cases though, you need an old, ugly pillow :) Most people have one of those right?! And if you don't, go to a thrift store and I'm sure you'll find one real soon :) haha

Materials:
~Old, ugly pillow
~Fabric

This time I took two pieces of red fabric (the same fabric I used on my shower curtain shown here) and placed a white strip in the middle. I sewed the white onto the back sides of the red pieces and I decided to be a little bold and use some dark tan thread on the red fabric! I like it a lot!! There are two reasons I did this: 1-I'm feeling more confident in my sewing abilities and have always liked the look of thread that's a different color than the fabric, 2-I didn't have any thread that matched my red fabric. Haha :) Creativity comes out of necessity right?

Well, next I cut out two strips of a gold fabric I have, different that I used on my other pillow cases but same basic color. I cut them out zig-zaggy to add a little s.t.y.l.e. to my pillow. I tried adding little bows on too, to bring in more of the gold color, but it looked too kid-ish so I took those off.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of pictures throughout the process, but here's the final product. What do you think?



Total Cost:
~Old, ugly pillow: $0.00
~Fabric: $0.00

Re-covered Pillow #3: Multi-Colored, Total Cost ~ $0.00!

Re-covered pillow #2, Gathered Pillow

I re-covered one of our old pillows a few months ago and just did a simple pillow cover. It looks fine (click here to see that project), but it's the only pillow that I did and it looked awfully lonely sitting there on our couch... So, I decided to give it a companion! :)

I wanted to make this one a little fancier so I decided to do a gathered pillow. This was my first time doing a gather on anything! I was kinda n.e.r.v.o.u.s. but I decided to go for it! I followed this tutorial here on Make It and Love It.

Materials:
~ Old, ugly pillow
~ Scrap fabric

To start off with, I needed to cover up the ugly pillow I started with. Even once the original cover was taken off it was pretty ugly, and since the fabric I used it kind of see-through I went ahead and just made a really simple, white pillow case.


The next step was to cut out the fabric that I wanted to use for the gathering part. I wanted mine to end up with the measurements of 15 x 16. Whenever you gather something you want to double the length of the gathered part. So I cut out a piece of fabric that was 15 x 32. I figured out where I wanted my gathers to be, roughly every 2 1/2 inches apart for me. I placed pins every 2 1/2 inches at each end and in the middle of the fabric, just to make sure I stayed pretty straight :)
To make a gathering stitch, make sure that your machine is set to the basting stitch (usually just the longest stitch it can do) and sew straight down so that you've sown a straight line down the fabric every 2 1/2 inches. Make sure that you DO NOT back-stitch at the top and bottom!

Once I sewed all of my lines down the fabric (with OUT back stitching) it was time to start gathering it :) To gather, take the top thread and just pull to gather the fabric together. On the first one I did the other end came out! whoops!! So after that I started pinning down one side to a new piece of fabric that had the dimensions of what I wanted my finished gathered pillowcase to have (15 x 16). Then I just pulled away and adjusted so that the gathers were even.
Now that the gathers were all done, I needed to make sure that they would stay in place. So I sewed the two pieces of fabric together (my gathered top and the extra 15 x 16 piece it was pinned to) right on top of the gather stitch. I had some excess fabric left over so I just c-u-t that off. If you do this make sure you don't cut too much off :)

Now all I needed was to add the back! :) I cut out yet another 15 x 16 piece and placed right sides together. Then I sewed around the edges leaving just enough room to stuff the pillow inside. I turned the pillow case right-side-out and then hand-stitched the last few inches.

Voila! How do you like it!

That looks much better than one lonely pillow doesn't it? Especially since this one has PeRsoNaLiTy :)Cost:

~ Old, ugly pillow $0.00
~ Scrap fabric $0.00

Gathered Pillow Case: Total Cost ~ $0.00! Wahoo!

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

Re-covered pillow

My husband and I bought our sofa and loveseat on ksl classifieds for $50 total! They're quite comfortable and you can't even tell they're ugly with the couch covers we bought. (FYI--couch covers are expensive! We paid more for them than for the couches! Luckily we still had gift cards at BB&B so we didn't have to spend any of our money. Beware of this in the future to anyone thinking about couch covers!) They did come with pillows, but these were ugly too. I wasn't going to have pillows but I decided that I really like the added look that pillows can give to a couch--especially the way cool pillows I saw on Make it and Love it! (Click HERE to check out her pillows!) Tonight I used my new sewing machine for my first project! (Hallelujah! I didn't even have to unpick once! I honestly think that's the first time for me). Here is my first pillow. There will be more to follow.

Materials:
~old pillows that need re-covering
~scrap fabric

I kind-of followed this tutorial but I did change it a little bit. First, take off the existing cover on your pillow and measure it. Add about 1/2 inch on all sides for a seam allowance. Cut out two pieces this same size and pin them right sides together. Sew around the edge leaving about 5 inches to stuff in the pillow. Turn it right-side-out, stuff the pillow in and hand-stitch the remaining 5 inches of the pillow case. (The main fabric I wanted to use is quite sheer so I made two pillow cases--just a white pillow case first and then the gold one to go on top.)

Old, ugly pillows.


Sorry this is blurry but this is my white pillowcase that I made first to go under the sheer gold one.


My Bernette hard at work! :)
Can you tell that I'm WAY excited to have this?!


My beautiful new pillow that matches my couch and adds a spice of home to my living room!

Cost:
~ old pillows - $0.00
~ scrap fabric - $0.00

Re-covered Pillows: Total Cost ~ $0.00!

Magazine Rack

One of the things that really bothered me about our old apartment was that we didn't have anywhere to put our magazines. Each month they just got harder and harder to keep organized because they just sat on our entertainment center without anything to keep them looking nice. I finally found a solution! And the best news of all is that it was totally FREE!

My husband and I got a pizza stone for our wedding (which I absolute LOVE by the way!) and it came with a cooling rack. I did use it, but honestly it's kind of a pain; hot pads are much easier! And since I'm working on not cluttering my kitchen I was deciding what to do with it when we moved into our new place. I had the fabulous idea of stacking my magazines on it and then sliding it under my entertainment center. It slides very easily and now the magazines have something to keep them organized and neat. Hurray!

Materials:
~magazines that need organizing
~old pizza stone cooling rack

Stacks of unorganized magazines did not make me a very happy person--clutter really stresses me out.
This pizza stone rack wasn't any good in the kitchen, so why not make it useful somewhere else?!

Ta-da! A neat, organized stack of magazines :)

Cost:
~ old magazines that badly need to be organized $0.00
~ old pizza stone cooling rack $0.00

Magazine Rack: Total Cost~ 0.00!!

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