Shutters Interior Decor

I have been waiting for this project for a long time! About a year ago I went to DI with my sister and we found these beautiful shutters for only $5!! The color was beautiful and they were in great condition. We decided that I had to buy them! :) How can you turn down a find like that? Now I just had to figure out how to use them . . . but I wasn't worried about that.

Since we were going to be moving in just a few months I kind of put the shutters on my mental back-burner for awhile. I had the beginnings of the final product going and it just slowly came together. My husband wrote a beautiful poem a few years ago that I have wanted to hang up somewhere in our home so I decided to incorporate it into this project. This one was a little pricey-er but I'm very happy with it!

Materials:
~ Shutters
~ Fabric
~ Poem
~ Shelf
~ Paint
~ Things for shelf
~ Things to hang shelf/shutters

I bought this little shelf at Robert's and painted it brown to match the shutters. The things on the shelf are just things that I had lying around my house.

The trickiest part of this project was figuring out how to put the poem onto the fabric. I didn't just want to slap a piece of paper on top so I decided to create a "frame" with fabric. I sewed four little tubes and ironed them out flat. Then I hot-glued them into place around my poem. I really like how it turned out!

Here's the view from our bed.

Here is my husband's poem. Click on the picture to enlarge and read.

Total Cost:
~ Shutters: $5.00
~ Fabric: $0.00 (extra from my table runner - here)
~ Poem: $0.00
~ Shelf: $1.00
~ Paint: $1.00
~ Things for shelf: $0.00
~ Things to hang shelf/shutters: $3.00

Shutters Interior Decor: Total Cost ~ $10.00

Christmas Plaque

I had this mirror left over from when I tried to use that Porcelain Marker for my bathroom quote project (here). You may remember that the marker dried up so fast I couldn't even finish the quote! I ended up using something different and so I had this mirror just sitting on my desk. I decided to use it for Christmas :)

Materials:
~ Mirror
~ Christmas picture
~ Mod Podge

I went through a church magazine and found a Christmas picture that I really liked. I cut it to size and mod podged it onto the mirror.



You could still see the mirror along the top of the picture so I decided to add a little quote. I've given up on using Porcelain markers so I just used a black sharpie and it worked perfectly! (Also MUCH cheaper!!) Since the picture was of Christ I decided to write "O Come Let Us Adore Him"


Here it is!

(The pictures aren't the greatest sorry)

Christmas Plaque:
~ Mirror: $0.00
~ Christmas Picture: $0.00
~ Mod Podge: $0.00

Christmas Plaque: Total Cost ~ $0.00

Quote and Candle Holders

I was at a garage sale with my sister (who got me into all this crafting and thrifting and re-purposing!! Thanks! I love it!) and we found these candle holders. They were so pretty! A really classy tan/gold color with black de-stressing, curvy and loopy with pretty leaves! They were only $1 so of course you all know what I HAD to do!!! I brought them home with me, not knowing where they would end up or what they would be used for, but knowing that someday I'd figure that out! It actually didn't take me too long to figure out that I wanted them on the wall in my bathroom surrounding a quote. I got this idea like 5 months ago but I only just finished because I had trouble getting my quote. I couldn't get my vinyl order to come through so I decided to come up with an alternative to vinyl.

Materials:
~ Candle Holders
~ 8x10 frame
~ Fabric
~ Paper/Pen (I used a scrapbook pen)

The first thing I needed to do was come up with an alternative to vinyl for my quote. I needed this because my order wasn't going through. I also thought though, now next time I move (which hopefully won't be for 2 years! Cross your fingers!) I can take this project with me. I saw these way cool things on a blog (here) called Porcelein Markers. Basically you kind of make your own vinyl, she made some dinner plates. So I went and bought one at Michael's but it dried up insanely fast! (I got the Porcelain brand anyone know about these things?) I had bought an 8x10 framed mirror at Dollar Tree and I couldn't even finish the quote. L.A.M.E.
I didn't let that deter me though :) I decided just to write it on my own so I got out some printer paper and wrote it with my best penmanship! It did look a little plain though so I added some fabric yo-yo's to give it some pazzaz.

I love these things! They're super easy too! Cut out a circle of fabric twice as big as you want your final yo-yo to be. Take a needle/thread and go up and down around the outside edge. Pull the thread until the fabric gathers into the center. Tie it up! That's it :)
(follow tutorial here if you want more detailed steps)

Here's the quote, I love this quote! Read the full thing here (I left out a few sentences)
(Sorry, I don't know why the yo-yos are purple in this picture, they're really red! It's the same fabric as my shower curtain! See that project here)

This did come with little glass containers to put in the candles and I actually bought some. But I decided it was just a bit too much with the candles, so I just left them out :)

Looks great with the shower curtain doesn't it?!

What do you think of the final product? I would say my bathroom is done, but I'm sure I'll think of something else to add to it later! :)

Total Cost:
~ Candle Holders: $1.00
~ 8x10 frame: $1.00
~ Fabric: $0.00
~ Paper/Pen (I used a scrapbook pen): $0.00

Quote and Candle Holders: Total Cost ~ $2.00

Awesome Quote

I just got an email from one of my best friends and she had this quote on the bottom that is just awesome so I thought I'd share with all of you! Here it is...

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

~William Morris

That's hopefully what I'll be accomplishing with this blog. Why would you have something in your house without it being useful and/or beautiful? I mean, I know that life gets busy and things get cluttered, my house definitely gets like that. But I hope that through this project I can get to a point where the things in my home (at least for the most part) are either useful or beautiful. And hey, who says useful things have to be ugly? Let's beautify!