Christmas Cards

As a child, I loved staring at our card display every year and reading the various letters people wrote updating us on their year. Never did I ever expect to be "grown-up" enough to send cards of my own. That was something families and old people did.

Well, last year John and I sent out our very first round of Christmas cards. It was fun to go through a list of people we loved, some we spoke to regularly, some we hadn't spoken to since our wedding. It was a way to tell them we are thinking of you. I greatly appreciate the cards I get from friends and family and I know they do, too.

This year, to further embrace our snowflake Christmas theme, I made homemade cards.  With my newly developed awesome snowflake making skills (seriously, after cutting hundreds for our non-tree Christmas tree and other various decorations, I'm a pro.) I whipped out some teeny snowflakes.  They were adorable and looked simple yet festive glued onto colorful cardstock.

Free DIY Wooden Frames

Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I am mildly obsessed with the Sandia Mountains. These majestic mountains can be seen from literally every spot in the city. Just look east and there they are. After moving to the east coast ten years ago, I still find myself scanning the horizon for my mountains much like a toddler blindly reaches for her blanket in moments of stress.

When I went to college in Virginia, I tried to placate myself with photos of the mountains pasted on every inch of my cinder block dorm room. The above photo is actually a card that followed me to every dorm room and apartment until I graduated. For the past six years it's been in a box of mementos hidden from view because I now require my art framed instead of merely taped to the wall.

After finishing my take on the recent pallet art phenomenon (check it out here), I began brainstorming other ways of using paint stir sticks. With the help of my trusty miter saw I knew I could easily make a picture frame.

After few 45 degree angle cuts I had the beginnings of a frame.  I took the scraps of some stir sticks and used them to secure the sticks together at the angles with gorilla glue.

Voila!  A simple frame was created...for free!  Add some paint, glue on a sawtooth hanger, and throw in a picture - you've got yourself a piece of art worthy of more than a dorm room wall.

Now when I find myself homesick and needing some comfort, I can glance over at my mountains and feel a bit calmer.

Wood Plus Stain Equals Art Tutorial

I feel as though I could start every single post with the sentence, "I was looking at Pinterest recently and...."  I spend entirely too much time on that amazing site (by the way, check out my boards on pinterest) but I love being awed and wowed and inspired by the amazing things I see there. All summer I kept noticing fabulous art created by pallets people were finding. After staining them and painting quotes or silhouettes, those free pieces of wood became beautiful.

I was torn by these beauties. You see, I desperately wanted to make some art with wooden planks but, as a former manager of a store that used thousands of pallets a week, I saw what most planks are coated with, how unsanitary they are treated, and how disgusting many of them are. I did not want to bring disease-invested wood into our home so I decided to find another way to create some free wooden plank art.

Enter paint stir sticks. I had a handful of these awesome, crafty sticks leftover from a previous project and pulled them out of the closet. They were perfect for what I had in mind!

After cutting off the beveled edges and picking out the most interesting sticks, I was left with the perfect little square of wood.  Taking some leftover stain from our branch bench (check it out here), I stained each stick. I wanted to stain them separately rather than all together once they were attached to one another in order to get a varied and non-uniform stain. My goal was to make this look as rustic and plank-like as possible.

The stain went on beautifully - check out the personality that little paint stir sticks can have.

Once they were dry, I used gorilla glue to glue the scraps I had sawed off earlier. 

Waiting 2 hours for the glue to dry was torture but I used the time to decide what I wanted to paint on my lovely canvas.

Now I have my very own faux pallet art!  Oh, and while working with the paint stir sticks, I started a couple more projects...stay tuned to see what else I can make out of these free pieces of wood!

Autumn Branch

If you've read any of my previous projects you know that I love incorporating sticks nature into our decor.  We've made benches and plant stands, art, pom pom flowers, and even a jewelry holder out of sticks. The most unique stick project we've done, however, has been the focal point of our living room. Above our television we have a huge branch.  We've decorated it with spring-like leaves, summery flowers, and now it's covered in fall leaves.

My personal favorite is the brown, glittery leaf. It adds just the right amount of sparkle to keep the branch's fall leaves from seeming too sad and death-like.

I am already planning on our Christmas-themed decorations...I'm thinking a colorful garland and perhaps some lights....

But for now, we have welcomed the colorful autumn season into our home.

Sweater Pillow Tutorial

After showing the first sweater pillow I created, I got several emails asking for a tutorial.  Not that I needed a reason to make a second pillow...these pillows are soft and cuddly and perfect for the cooling weather.

Allow me to introduce you to my Goodwill sweater. This colorful guy was tired of seeing the back of closets - with his busy patterns and unique color scheme he had little hope of making it out of that closet. Until I found him.  I recognized the greens and blues and yellows and creams that are right at home in my living room color scheme. Better yet I recognized the tans and oranges as a hint of fall that I've been looking for.  So that, my friends, is how this sweater made it home with me.

As with all fabric I bring home from Goodwill, I washed him in hot water.  Washing and drying the sweater allows for some felting to occur. I prefer the slightly felted look - it ensures the sweater is close-knit and won't gape and show the stuffing or pillow insert. It also gives me peace of mind that the yarn won't unravel. 

After he was dry (I put him in the dryer for a little bit and then allowed him to finish air drying), I took off the arms. I did this because the size of my pillow was going to force me to go slightly above the body of the sweater and past the arm area.

The arms are sewed on with a long piece of yarn. It's easy to determine which yarn once you squint put on your glasses and get a good look. Using a seam ripper, I worked my way around both arm openings.

Don't worry if you lose track of which yarn is the yarn you are ripping. I just skipped that section and started up again when I found a spot that was obvious.  Once you are ready to go back and work on the skipped section, it's easy to rediscover the yarn used to sew both pieces together.  You can see how I skipped a small section in the photo below.

With the arms off, you're left with a lovely sweater vest that you may just decide to keep as it. Kidding!  But ripping out the seams, you ensure that the yarns are not going to ravel because you are keeping the knitting and its hems intact at this point.

Now it's time to determine the size of your pillow. I wanted a 15x15 pillow which unfortunately meant that I would have to cut off some of the sides and go up into the arm area. If your sweater is larger than mine, you could just close up the bottom and the top of the sweater and call it a day!

I used a couple pins to keep the sweater together and mark the path I was sewing along. I then changed my stitch length to the smallest length possible. I did this to ensure that I caught every single piece of yarn so that unraveling wouldn't be a problem.

If you look very closely at the photo below, you'll see the white stitching running horizontally across the sweater. I chose to put in two lengths of stitches running parallel to each other to provide extra protection against unraveling.  Once that is done, cut your sweater.

Once you've completed your pillow, fluff and enjoy!

You can see my pillow needs some much needed cuddling to get the stuffing in all the right places.

My living room is slowly becoming ready for the colder months. I just need to incorporate some darker, more saturated colors (I'm thinking a hunter green and/or navy blue to darken up the color pallet) and a knitted throw.

Last night this little guy was my go-to-pillow while watching television. He makes a much  better pillow than sweater, don't you think?

Styrofoam Upcycle #4

Last spring we were cleaning out our storage shed when we found a styrofoam cooler that was merely taking up space. Instead of throwing it away, I decided to upcycle as much of it as possible and proceeded to make a couple frames and a few awesome letters for my gallery wall (seen here and here).

Well, that styrofoam cooler produced more styrofoam that I thought possible when I was dissecting it and I finally got around to upcycling another piece of the cooler.

 I had cut out a variety of rectangles knowing I wanted to make some textured frames.  I have many frames displayed on our gallery wall, but aside from my twig art and cork heart, texture and natural fibers were missing (and we all know how much I love bringing natural fibers and organic matter into the mix)

Using some hemp twine I had from a project gone bad, I began wrapping and gluing (with hot glue), wrapping and gluing, wrapping and gluing. 

 I love how some of the smaller details turned out. The V pattern at the corners and centers of each long leg add additional interest.

 It feels good to create something out of what would normally be thrown in a landfill and left to blow around for hundreds of years. Instead, I have a lightweight, textured frame to add to my gallery wall.

I'm still deciding if I should leave it empty or add some art. What do you think?

Pinspiring Sweaters

Edit: Pssst...check out the tutorial here!

 A long long time ago I shared that I was obsessed with Pottery Barn's amazing knitted pillows and blankets. Well, after being pinspired (yes, I made up a word just for pinterest) by Brassy Apple, I decided I needed to do something other than drool all over the pillows at the mall.

A trip to Goodwill, some slight felting, some seam ripping action, and a little sewing later I have myself a cuddly pillow.

Making Our Wedding Ours!

While planning our wedding, we were determined to have an intimate wedding that celebrated our personalities and showcased who we are as a couple.  Every detail of our wedding spoke to who we were and turned a day of celebrating a marriage into a day of celebrating our relationship and personalities as well.

The very first wedding project we focused on were our Save the Dates. Asking an old friend to help us, we designed a fun and meaningful save the date that illustrated our diverse friends and family and highlighted the travel that everyone would be doing to attend our special day.  Thanks again, Lori, for your beautiful work on our STDs!

Throughout our relationship, John and I wrote notes to each other in haiku form. Whether it a sweet love note, a teasing jab, or a mindless ditty, haikus plagued our facebook wall, our post-it notes, and our email boxes so much so, that even friends began writing to us through the use of haikus.  We knew that haikus needed to be used throughout the wedding in some shape or form and decided to make our guests work for their drinks.

Yes, our guests had to write a haiku in order to be served at the bar. Oh how we love the thoughtful, loving haikus our guests wrote us...they serve as a fabulously sentimental (and humorous) guest book we love taking out to read.

I hate cake (the icing is the worst part) and John could live without it so it didn't make sense to get a big elaborate wedding cake that neither of us would eat.  Instead, we asked close friends and family members to bake us a pie and created a buffet of delicious fruit pies that also served as our receiving line. You see, wanting to ensure we spent time with each wedding guest, we decided to personally cut and serve the pies.

My mother surprised us with aprons to wear during the serving of the pies - John's had his monogram, mine was a fabulous flirty apron she made out of apple fabric that perfectly matched our blue and green color scheme.

With so many touches of ourselves, we were able to create a one-of-a-kind wedding day that truly celebrated our love for one another.   From cootie catchers my little sister made that shared fun facts about us to luminarias, a New Mexican tradition that lit the way back to the guest parking lot at the end of the night everywhere we turned, we were reminded of our love and the reason for the celebration.