Personalized Clock

I made this project as a gift for a bridal shower recently. I found the tutorial long ago and finally decided to make it.

With the hubby's help of course...I don't touch the power tools :)

My friend, who is the bride and the recipient of this gift loved it. In fact everyone at the shower was amazed that I made it myself. The mother of the bride was almost in tears over how much she loved this gift. I even had a little old lady (friend of the bride's family!) that wouldn't leave until I gave her my contact info so I could make one with all of her grandkids on it.

The tutorial originally came from Rosy Red Buttons.  I will give you my .02 worth on this project too.

1. Sam's Club does not offer a 12x12 photo size. They don't offer any 'even' (8x8, 12x12) prints that I could see. I had to order it as a 12 x16 and cut four inches off. This was ok since my photo was 'artsy' anyways and it didn't matter if I cut it apart. But, for a family photo or something with subjects all the way to the edges you may have to work on it. I really wish I had photoshop!

2. Sam's club does have the cheapest prices. My poster cost $3.14 after taxes and it was ready in about an hour. The next lowest price was $6.99 at my Walgreen's and the prices went up from there. I looked into having it done as a engineer blueprint at Staples but they start at $9.99. I wanted to keep this cheap!

3. PicMonkey is a great site. I never really got into Piknik so I was not too sad to see them go. Maybe I just didn't try enough. I didn't really 'get' it. But, I tried PicMonkey and it was so easy and I loved how the picture looked.

4. I bought my clock set at Hobby Lobby for $4.99 and bought an extra set of longer clock hands that were black for $3.49. The set comes with short gold arms and they didn't go with the image in my head.

5. I bought my numbers at Jo-Ann's for $2.99 in the Scrapbook section. Hobby Lobby has a much better selection. And, better prices. I originally bought some there but I didn't like the way they looked once I was done with the clock. Since Jo-Ann's is closer and the shower was two days away I didn't have much choice. They still looked nice but they were flat and I wanted them to 'pop' off the face a bit.

All in all once my husband cut the board for me it went really fast from there. I was so happy with how it turned out and so was everyone who saw it. I LOVE this idea and am so glad I found the tutorial!

My finished product:

This picture is one of their engagement shots and sums up my friend's personality well. She has had this shot as her profile picture on FB for months so she was excited to see it as the clock I think too!

Thrifty updates

The big girl bedroom was finally finished a few weeks ago!

I decided to post all of my halloween crafts before revealing any new projects though. But, with Christmas projects on the horizon I have to get them in now. Plus, everyday gets me one day closer to my due date and I have so much to do before then :)

I bought this bookshelf storage thingy at a garage sale for $3 about 2 years ago for my mom. She had those colorful plastic bins on it to store toys in the playroom in her house. But, as the number of her grandchildren grows, so does the number of toys! We had been looking for something to use as a nightstand of sorts in Miss C's room when we were at their house one weekend and it was sitting in the hall. My mom said she was waiting for someone to take it to the curb. It was pretty beat up when I bought it and our kids had added to it so she was just going to trash it.

It came home with me and we got to work. My before picture was taken AFTER my husband had sanded it down:

We painted it white to match the other furniture and I found some scrapbooking paper I liked and Mod Podged it on there. This was a big project for me. I had never done such a big area of mod podge before or on something that I needed to be perfect. I re-did the top twice-thank goodness it's water soluble! Then I did research and got out an old credit card and used that to smooth it out and I was happy with my second attempt. I really love the overall final look of it:

It has many more of her books and trinkets on it now and is the perfect size for what we wanted. That pretty cool lamp was found at a mom2mom sale and I think it adds the perfect bit of diva :)

The last project for the big girl room took me forever to finally get to. And, it was the easiest-there is no method to my craft madness!

I found a 52x90 curtain panel at Salvation Army a long time ago. It was $2.99 and I thought it was beautiful and of course a great quality; very thick and sturdy. I really had no idea what I would use it for but I thought it would come in handy eventually.

I had brainstormed over a few ideas of how to use it in the BGR and finally decided to just use it as a window treatment just like it was intended. Except I needed two short panels so I cute it in half and made a spot for the rod to go through on the bottom half and just did a basic hem on the top half that I cut. I added some pink rick rack along the bottom that I got for $3 at Jo-Ann's. For $6 I got beautiful curtains for my daughter's room.

Haunted house and a Treat Bag!

These, again are both crafts that I made last year...when I first got back into crafting. And went crazy with it.

But, since I didn't have a blog I can feature them now.

The haunted house was originally a unfinished bird house from Michael's. I don't remember what I paid for it though. I painted it black, mod podged some halloween themed scrapbook paper on the two sides of the roof and added some other embellishments that I found in the scrapbook section. I thought about putting it on a candlestick or something this year to give it height but I never did. Maybe next year. Or the one after...

I made this treat bag that I originally found here at eighteen25 (one of my first craft blog obsessions!) As you can see from the picture on the website and my picture I didn't get too creative with mine. I made mine look pretty much just like the one they made. I love it and hope my daughter uses it for years to come and am planning on making one next year for her sibling. It folded up nicely for storage this past year and when I pulled it out of the box and fluffed it up a bit it looked as good as new. So much easier than trying to store those buckets!



A ghostly re-purpose

This is one of my favorite Halloween decorations this year and I don't know why. I made it last year-maybe it's because it was so cheap and easy. Or maybe it's because it's spooky but in a cute way.

I'm talking about that ghostly guy on the right :)

He started out as a $1 purchse from Salvation Army-it's a sconce cover, I think.

I simply painted the inside with mod podge and then sprinkled it with TONS of white glitter-be sure you do this over a piece of paper or a box top or something because this project got extra glitter everywhere! I used my black paint pen again to make the face and tied some halloween ribbons around the little piece at the top and was done. So quick and inexpensive. I put one of those LED battery operated tea lights underneath him too...that's the best part! My daughter makes me turn him on everyday...she even wants him on during the day when you can't even really tell he is lit up but he's cute nonetheless so who wouldn't want him glowing? :)

Master Bedroom Decor

 I have been married for over two years and in that time I have managed to change the entire color scheme of the master bedroom. It used to be a room my husband slept in by himself but I started making it ours as soon as we chose our bedding together. I had him paint the walls and build me new valances. We bought new lamps and throw rugs. In all that time I had never changed the picture above the bed. It used to be a painting of some type of nature. I think it was a tree. Or maybe an eagle flying in the sky. I don't remember and I didn't take a picture before I tucked it away.

I finally got around to changing what went above our bed after brainstorming a few ideas and adding bits of each of them together to come up with this.

 I love everything about it. The fact that I made three of the elements in it makes me love it even more. The canvas of a rose I bought for 60% off at JoAnn's for less than $5. For that price I bought it thinking if I didn't hang it I could turn it into something better. When I ran out of ideas after deciding on the other pieces I decided to throw that in there for good measure. And to save my sanity.

The wreath I originally was going to make to hang on my door for Valentine's day. It did actually hang there for a while until I got around to putting a nail in the wall for it. The idea had been all around craft-blog-world on the internet but I got the instructions right from The Idea Room. The whole project cost me around $6 and I had the ribbon I used for the hanger on hand in my stash. Much less than I would have spent on a lot of the wreaths out in stores!

The 'B' is for our last name. I luurve anything that involes initials or our monogram. I can't explain it. This project cost about $2. I bought a chipboard 'B' at Hobby Lobby and picked out some scrapbook paper with a red/brown theme to it. I used one of my FAV craft discoveries: Mod Podge and stuck the two together. I did paint the outer edges of the B in brown though since I was only covering the face of the letter.

The center piece is my favorite. Even though it turned out the worst :( I meant to just 'age' it a bit by applying some light brown paint and then wiping it off. I wasn't too careful with my hand and then the rag was more full of pain then it should have been...you get the idea. Not my best moment. Anyways, I got the canvas months before I actually got around to turning it into this. It was 50% off at the Hob Lob so it only cost me $4! I put the words on it by using simple iron on transfers printed using my own inkjet. I wish I would have tried some more research on how to do this since if you stand at a certain angle you can tell it's iron-on. But, I still love the outcome. The designs are actually rub on flourishes I found in the scrapbook section of JoAnn's during a 40% off sale so they were pretty cheap too. My favorite part of this one is that it's the second reading from our wedding day.

 

I've actually already had two requests to help people do this for their own homes using their favorite pieces of scripture or passages from their own weddings. I'm keeping this one filed away for future wedding/shower gifts.