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

Flower Plant Wedding Present

My sister-in-law is getting married soon and I wanted to make her something for her shower. I had this old clay pot that wasn't doing anything and I thought it would be cute to use. I also wanted to use some mod podge and the rest of my river stones from my Bathroom Makeover project. Here's what I came up with :)

Materials:
~ Clay pot
~ Fake flowers
~ Newspaper
~ Styrofoam
~ Craft Paper
~ Mod Podge

I bought some cute light-blue argyle craft paper at Hob Lob for only 35 cents. I wrote "Love Blossoms Eternally" and mod podged it onto the front of the pot. I think it's way cute but I hope it's not too cheesy!
Next step was to stick the flowers in the pot. I started out stuffing newspaper inside the pot because I didn't have very many rocks but the flowers didn't stick in very well when I did this. So I went to Hobby Lobby (for the second time today! Seriously I think I'm getting an addiction!) and bought a little round styrofoam to put inside. I still did keep some of the newspaper stacked inside so the styrofoam was close enough to the top. I realized that even after I put in the river stones you could still see the newspaper, so I cut out a circular piece of white paper, painted it brown, and set it inside on top of the styrofoam. I cut up the flower stems using wire cutters and stuck them in the styrofoam! Voila!

Here's me stuffing newspaper inside the pot. I folded it up and placed it on the bottom of the pot. (Apparently this is also an advertisement for Charmin :) haha)


Here's my circular piece of paper that helped cover all that newspaper and styrofoam.



Here's the end product :)

Total Cost:
~ Clay pot: $0.00
~ Fake flowers: $4.00
~ Newspaper: $0.00
~ Styrofoam: $1.89
~ Craft Paper: $0.35
~ Mod Podge: $0.00

Flower Plant Wedding Present: Total Cost ~ $6.24

Bathroom Makeover

When I was at my friend's house the other day I saw her bathroom and it was so cute! I decided I wanted to redo mine and fix it up. Money is of course a restriction but I had a few tricks up my sleeve :)

Materials:
fake grass
old plastic container
ribbon
bamboo place-mats
chopsticks
bamboo blinds
soap dispenser
river stones
Chinese fan
Chinese hair comb

I still had tons of grass from the vases (click here to see that project), a plastic container, some ribbon and some Chinese decorations. I bought some bamboo blinds at a garage sale with my sister this past summer. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but they were only $1 :) So I bought them! I also had a bamboo place-mat set with some chopsticks. I wrapped an old brown ribbon around my plastic container and stuck it in place with some hot glue.
I wanted to stick the fake grass inside the plastic but the grass was very heavy and the plastic wasn't very sturdy. I tried stuffing the plastic with bags, paper, etc, but nothing was strong enough to keep the grass up. So I caved in and went and bought something. I went to Hobby Lobby (I wish they had some sort of frequent-shopper card! I would totally qualify!!) and bought some river stones for $1.38 (half off!). I put those inside the plastic and LOVED how they looked! And they were strong enough to hold up the grass...perfect! I folded the place-mat and set it on top of the toilet. I then placed some chopsticks and the grass on top. It was coming together so wonderfully! I had a Chinese fan and hair comb from my friend who went to China a few years ago. I added those in as well! I took the strings off the bamboo blinds and hung them up on the wall next to the toilet. I used some of the extra bamboo from the blinds and wrapped it around my soap dispenser! It was a very nice touch if I may say so myself :)

I had to cut the blinds because they were SO long!

I had to re-tie the ends of the blinds so the separate pieces wouldn't fall out.

What do you think?!

Total Cost:
Fake grass: $0.00 (leftover from my Vases project)
Old plastic container: $0.00
Ribbon: $0.00
Bamboo place-mats: $0.00 (part of a set I had lying around)
Chopsticks: $0.00 (came with the place-mats)
Fan: $0.00
Hair comb: $0.00
Bamboo blinds: $1.00
Soap dispenser: $0.00
River stones: $1.38

Bathroom Makeover: Total Cost ~ $2.38

Comments

I just realized that I've had my comments on "moderation" and didn't realize it! So thanks to all those who have commented. Sorry to those of you who have made comments that I should have responded to and haven't! I'm so excited that there are so many comments! Thank you :) (And keep them coming :) haha) Thanks!!! Really, I was so excited that people had actually looked at my blog and commented it! I'm glad that I'm not just posting to myself!

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

Bulletin Board

For Christmas my husband and I were on his sister's family for gifts. We are supposed to hand-make our gifts and we decided to make her and her family a bulletin board for their kitchen. I liked it so much I decided I wanted one too. So I went to DI and bought this cork board for $2.00, used some scrap fabric, ribbon and...voila!

Materials:
~ cork board
~ scrap fabric
~ hot glue gun
~ ribbon

Cut the fabric to the size you need for the board. If you don't like the edges of your board you can just place ribbon over it to cover the ugly edge (which is what I did for my sister-in-law's gift since it was just metal). If you like the edge, however, then fold down the edges of the cloth and iron them down. This will give the edges of your cloth a nice, even look instead of the raw edge you cut out. The edge of my board matched my fabric perfectly so I wanted to show it off instead of covering it with a ribbon. (I used left-over ribbon for my sister-in-law's but had to go buy some more for mine.) Tack down the cloth with some hot glue (or whatever you have). Then take ribbon and lay it across the board to create specified sections. Then make labels and place them in each section.

I ironed down the edges of the fabric to give it a nice, even look.


Doesn't the fabric match the edge perfectly!! I was so excited when I laid the fabric down and saw how well they went together!

I just wrote my labels. I did print them for my sister-in-law though.

What do you think? The four sections I have on mine are "Calendar, To-Do, Shopping, and Quote." For my sister-in-law we did six sections, "Calendar, To-Do List, Shopping List, Quote, Family Picture, and Kid's Corner (for report cards, pictures drawn by the kids, etc)."

Here's a picture of the one we gave my sister-in-law. You can't see the edges very well, but can you tell we just hot-glued the ribbon all the way around? It worked out really well.

Cost:
cork board ~ $2.00
ribbon ~ $1.00
labels ~ $0.00

Bulletin Board: Total Cost ~ $3.00