Green Thumb Crafting

Over a year ago when I was looking for decor idea for the barn-themed playroom, I ran across these tomato bean bags. I absolutely LOVED them, but couldn't imagine spending $240 + shipping on one, especially knowing that I would have to get at least two to avoid many fights! I quickly decided that I could totally do something like that on my own, but for MUCH cheaper. So I did...

These plain red bean bags normally sell for $20 each at Target, but since I started looking for them well over a year ago, I managed to snag 3 of them on sale for $15 each. :) I bought green fleece fabric, some batting, did some cutting, used some spray glue, spread a little fabric glue, and voila! For about $50 and some change, I have 3 of these adorable "tomatoes on steroids" bean bags for our barn playroom! They're super comfortable, were relatively easy to make (no-sew is always a bonus for me, since I don't know how to sew), very functional, and perfect!

My "CORGAN" Craft

Again, I've had this one in my head for a long time, but have been waiting for all of the right letters to execute it. Now that I finally have them all and have them hung, I LOVE it!

C
The "C" was bought at Urban Outfitters. It came as bare wood, so the kids and I painted it white, then brown, then green and sanded it down so that all of the colors showed through.

O
The "O" is an orange Smashing Pumpkin's record. I had been looking all over for a colorful record to use for O when I all of the sudden realized that Keith had a framed Siamese Dream album cover that Fancy had given him a long time ago, and I decided to look in it to see if the record was actually in it too. And it was! And it was orange, one of the colors of Corgan's room! Even though you can't see it in person because the record is up so high, I chose to display the side with "Cherub Rock" (because Corgan is my little rockstar cherub) and "Hummer" (one of Keith's favorite Pumpkin's songs).

R
The "R" is an ebay buy. I don't know much about it except that it looks cool. :)

G
The "G" is also from Urban Outfitters. When I saw it I knew it was the perfect color green for Corgan's room, and I love the metal with enamel. It looks like a real letter that you would see outside of a shop.

A
The "A" is a rusty metal star. I chose a star to go with the whole "rockstar" theme. I had seen these letters before, but as soon as I started looking for them, I couldn't find them in stores anymore. Of course, after I bought this one on eBay, I started seeing them in stores again. Oh well. At least I got what I wanted.

N
The "N" is an actual letter from an exit ramp sign in NYC. I got it on eBay. It is white enamel, complete with reflectors.

I really couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

Here's a look at it in relation to the rest of the room. It really stands out and makes your eye go to it when you first walk in the room, even though it's up 10 feet. As soon as Annabelle saw it she said "I want my name in my room too!"

Mommy's Art Project

I've had this "art" for Corgan's room in mind for quite a few months, and tonight I finally made myself actually execute it!

It was a pretty simple Eric Carle-inspired piece, but ended up being a little different than what I had initially envisioned. These are two 16"x20" canvases that were first painted orange, then I brushed a brown over that. I found an electric guitar that I liked online, and blew it up to the right size. I chose and cut out the various pieces for the guitar from scrapbook paper, modge-podged it all together, and glued it to the canvas. I'm still debating whether or not to add "strings". We'll see. Strings or not, I'm so freakin' happy with the final product, and think it's going to look perfect in Corgan's modern rockstar room!

I have a couple of other "crafts" that I've been workin' on for the new rooms lately, so be on the lookout for more crafty posts. :)

P.S. I just looked at this post on my blog, and realized it looks like it fits right in with my current blog theme. :)

Crafting Roundup

I've been doing LOTS of crafting lately. Lots of it has involved spray paint and scrapbook paper. I've been painting rooms, furniture, and decor for many, many years, but have just recently discovered the magic that is spray paint! I tried using spray paint in the past, but didn't care for it so much because it was too hard to get an even finish. I don't know if spray paint has changed or maybe my eyes are just going bad, but it seems to work wonderfully now. It comes in so many great colors now too. And, I didn't even mention how much of a time saver it is!

Here are a few "decor" items that I've done lately using scrapbook paper and paint.

Young Keri Silhouette When my mom saw that I was doing silhouettes of Annabelle, she packed up a silhouette that they had done of me when I was a little girl and brought it down to see if I could use it. Of course I could! I found this awesome square frame that was an ugly 80s style, but looks awesome with a little spray paint. I turned around the ugly forest green matte to convert it into a beautiful crisp white, and added some pretty scrapbook paper for the background. I used spray paint again to paint the silhouette frame (the one that it was originally in). Use a little Windex to clean the glass and voila... I LOVE IT!
Colorful Magnet Board This beautiful magnet board was actually a magnet board that I fitted with metal many years ago in the beginning of my "antiques reincarnated" phase. The frame is an antique that I bought at my first antique auction as part of a lot of probably 50 frames for $10 (no one else would bid because they didn't want to take 50 frames home). 8 years later, I'm still using the frames. Anyway, a little spray paint modernized this frame, and I decoupaged some pretty scrapbook paper onto the metal. I already had the magnets, but I added some sweet letter stickers to them to sweeten them up to match the whole theme perfectly.

Annabelle's Jewelry Music Box
Here is Annabelle with her "new room". :) When I first finished this jewelry box, I told Annabelle that I had a surprise for her. I didn't realize that just a few hours before I had been telling her all about the new room that we were making for her, so when I revealed the surprise, her response was "MY NEW ROOM!" I thought it was so cute that I didn't correct her. Later on, we told her that it's called a jewelry box, so now she alternates between calling it her "new room" and her "jewelry box". This girl LOVES her accessories, so she is totally loving her jewelry box!
Anyway, I wish I had taken a "before" picture of this jewelry box. I bought it at a yard sale that I drove by a few weeks ago. It wasn't in horrible shape, but it is so much prettier now. It was that 70s cream and gold and had dirty pink velvet walls on the inside. I removed all of the hardware and the dirty pink paper, and spray painted the pieces. When I was done, I added the paper on the walls on the inside, the fronts of the drawers, and the circle on the front. When I added the paper to the drawers, I had to come up with a way to open the doors since I had broken 2 of the tiny knobs while removing them, so I attached some pretty ribbon to use as a pull. I then decorated the front, and... Annabelle LOVES it!

Annabelle's Birth Record Embroidery I have been working on this embroidery for weeks! My great aunt made birth record embroideries for all 3 of us kids, and I had always wanted one for Annabelle. I spent many hours looking in craft stores and online for one that I liked, but had no luck. One day I discovered Sublime Stitching and fell in love with the retro-modern graphics. That was EXACTLY the style I had been looking for! They didn't have any "birth records" on the website, but I used an angel and birdy on their site to come up with my own design. As soon as I finished the design, I went out and bought all of the embroidery tools I needed (well... too many... there's a reason people stick with the basics), and started embroidering. I got most of the graphics parts done pretty quickly, but kept having issues like the thread being too big for the small text (I had to make the text bigger and eventually learned that I could just disassemble the thread to make smaller thread) and the freakin' transfer kept rubbing off so I had to keep trying to retrace it (if anyone has any suggestions for avoiding this if I ever decide to tackle another embroidery in the future, please let me know!). Anyway... after MANY, MANY hours with a needle in my hand, I finally finished this a few nights ago. Again, I used a vintage frame (from my lot of 50) and some spray paint, and here it is! It really is as perfect as I was hoping it would be!
And here is the cross-stitch of my birth record done by my great Aunty Anne. I painted the frame, cleaned up the 30 years of wear a bit, and now it's ready to go in Annabelle's bedroom too.

Have I mentioned how anxious I am to get all of this into the room to see it all together?!?!

Late Night Crafting

The past couple of nights I have been up until 2am working on some fun crafts for Annabelle's room.  Now that this house thing is actually moving along, I am so excited about decorating again, and I'm all about getting things ready to move right in as soon as the rooms are done. So... all of these craft/decor ideas I've been collecting on my computer, in my idea folder, and in my head are really starting to come to life!  Here's what I've done the last 2 nights:

All of these will be displayed on the wall in Annabelle's room.  Except for the birdhouse, these items will be part of a wall collage of a variety of items that contain the theme of Belle's room.  You can get a good idea of the color scheme of her new room from these items.

Silhouettes of Annabelle at 1 year and at 2 years old.  Silhouettes are very in right now in the world of decorating so I have been trying to come up with my own spin on it, and this is it. :)  I made the outline of the silhouettes using photoshop, then cut them out using the pretty paper, and glued them to the china.  The first plate is a teacup plate and the second is a cake plate that I got at Renninger's Antique Extravaganza 4 years ago.  I plan to make another silhouette of Annabelle every year.  I'm still not sure if I am going to try to come up with a way to display the year of the silhouette or just leave it as-is. Canvas art.  These two small canvases were pretty simple to do.  I didn't really know where I was going with them when I started, but I really like how they ended up.  I made the silhouette on the first canvas by printing out art I found online and cutting it out with my xacto knife.  The other attachments are all felt stickers.

Wooden initial "D".  I already have a fabric covered "A" that I bought at Anthropologie before she was born, so now I have a "D" to go with it.  This D was painted blue, then decopaged with some fancy paper.  I finished it off with sanding down the edges to give it a worn look. 

Fancy birdhouse.  I plan to make a silhouette of a tree with birds (exact design is still tbd) on the wall in Belle's room, and this birdhouse will hang on the wall like it's hanging on the tree.

I've had so much fun coming up with and executing these projects, but I still have SOOO many more to tackle!  I can't wait to do them and I REALLY can't wait to see them all in the new rooms!