New shelf life

My friend Valerie gave me this wooden shelf a little while back. It is built really solid but didn't match my house, so I covered it in newspapers and painted the insides a burnt orange. It was a time-consuming project, but I think it turned out pretty fab. 

Let's go drape-sh*t

I needed some curtains for my kitchen and bedroom, but they are so expensive! We are talking $40 for basically a yard of fabric, people. I ended up making the ones for my kitchen out of old cloth napkins. I just hand-stitched them together at the corners and once in the centers so they billow a little. I may get crazy and add buttons later. The ones from my bedroom are just cheapo fabric from Joann's.     

Everything's coming up roses

Two more mini-canvases available at Artpool:

Junk in the trunk

Fancy holiday hair!

I had a fancy holiday party to attend this year, so I whipped up these bad boys to try out with my fancy dress. (I ended up going with the blue one.)

Holy mattress money

My friend LyAnne needed a fab headband for a wedding she was in, so this is what we came up with. We went to Michael's together to pick out elements that would match the jewelry she bought on Etsy. It turned out pretty good. 

Craft station for the stars!

I found a card catalog on the side of the road awhile back and couldn't pass it up. (I'm a big fan of libraries and organization and free stuff.) It was in pretty bad shape, though. 

I already had this dresser that I bought for $20 at a thrift store several years ago, but it also needed refinishing because it had paint spots on the top and the finish was peeling in places. 

So I sanded down both and refinished them. I repainted all the hardware to match. And I stacked them to make the Ultimate Craft Station. 

Oh, heck yeah!

Jewelrypalooza

I've been on a jewelry spurt lately since my boyfriend's mother offered to sell some earrings for me at her office. I cranked out a few pairs to sell before getting distracted and making a couple of necklaces for myself. :)  

A tree by the sea

A good yellow shoe is hard to find

You'd think it would be easy for a girl to find a good pair of yellow shoes. Not so here in Tampa, Florida. Lucky for me, I found a shoe repair store on Kennedy Boulevard that sells shoe spray paint. That's right, I said shoe spray paint. It's made for leather shoes. So I bought a can of yellow and some test shoes from a thrift store for $2.  

First I cleaned the shoes and taped the edges because I wanted to keep them black.

 Then I spray-painted them. It took several coats to cover the black, but they turned out pretty good. Next time I'm going to try polka dots. :)

Tree with twisted trunk

Giddy-up, cowboy!

The cow is from a Sunday school lesson book from the 1960s, and the text is from a National Geographic story about rodeos in the '70s. The canvas is 5-by-5.

Don't shoot, shoot, shoot that thing at me

The gun and text on this 5-by-5 canvas came from a Shooter's Bible catalog from the 1970s.  

Door decorating

I've been looking for a wreath for a while, but I couldn't find one for less than $20 (which I think is the most God intended us to pay for a wreath). Plus, all the ones I came across had way too many flowers/fake fruits/wooden cutouts in them. I was just looking for something simple and cheap. So I finally broke down and made one with a simple twig base ($4.99 at Michael's) and some crazy fake orchids ($3.60 at Michaels).

I started by having my cat inspect the wreath base for flaws. She declared it satisfactory. 

Then I cut up the orchids. They came in bunches with leaves, so I pulled off all the leaves and saved just the flowers.  

Finally, I hot-glued it all together and hung it on my front door. In all, the project took about 5 minutes. :)

Flashbacks from Sunday school

My mom recently gave me some old Sunday school worksheets from when she was a little girl. I paired cut-outs from them with backgrounds from an old hymn book.

PG-13!

This lady was cut from the front of an old sewing pattern for lingerie. The background text is debating which is stronger: the drive for food or the drive for sex. 

Eight Is enough

I nicknamed this guy Spud. He's from a children's book, and the background is from a science and behavior book.

Meet Paul

Paul is on a tiny 4-by-5-inch canvas, made of clippings from a children's encyclopedia and a science and behavior book. Meet him in person at Artpool.

Good boy

See spot, peck

The background text on this one is about an experiment involving a pigeon in a box pecking at a spot for food.

I heart micro-organisms

This one's on a 5-by-5-inch canvas. It's up at Artpool, too.

Recycled bottle cap necklace

My goal was to make something crafty with the bottle caps I amass throughout the week. I found some old Life magazines at a thrift store recently, so I cut some tiny pictures from them to use inside the bottle caps. I connected the caps with silver jump rings and just added a chain.

Recycling soda can tabs

This is my first experiment with using soda can tabs to make jewelry. I just connected the tabs with silver jump rings and added a silver clasp at the end.

Full metal jellyfish

I went shopping for wind chimes recently and was horrified to see how much they cost. We're talking $10 to $20 here, people! So I purchased a bag of stray utensils from a thrift store, strung them together with some spare beads, and BAM! A wind chime that looks like a jellyfish!

Awesome wolf-on-wood action!

This beautiful wolf painting is preserved for all time on a slab of tree trunk. All it needed was a caption.

The Blond Bombshells

My friend Emily and I tackled the Great Urban Race last weekend, scouring the city in search of fame and fortune. As part of our costumes (our team was The Blond Bombshells), I constructed turtle shells out of cardboard boxes and felt. They held up well considering we ran around town in them for five hours, cramming into trolleys and competing in soccer and cornhole challenges.

Here's the final look, with instructions below:

I started by cutting an octagon from a cardboard box:

Then I cut two slits on each side:

I shaped the cardboard into a shell, sliding the top flaps underneath the side flaps and taping the whole contraption until it was sturdy:

I then added straps made of spare ribbon and covered the whole shebang in felt:

This photo was taken after the race, so the shell had a few dings by then:

In the end, slow and steady did not win the race, but we definitely had fun!