Very Valentine

I am getting the flu and have 15 minutes to kill before my preschooler's bus gets here and then I can climb into my bed for a couple hours while my boys watch Netflix. Happy Valentine's Day! My husband is amazing and deserves so much more than a sick wife who has been too busy to do much for him. I did buy him a gift. It is shoe laces. Long story but I know he loves them! We are going out to celebrate for reals next week.

I love doing elaborate Valentines with the kids because it's like justified crafting for me. I found a couple of cute airplane valentines online this year. Both were cute and required much folding. Incidentally, I'm all caught up on my Hulu shows.

But Alden looked through my Valentines Pinterest board and wanted something like this:

We decided to glue mechanical pencils to the backs of the arrows and stick them into pink erasers. But did you know those erasers are like 50 cents each? And mechanical pencils aren't cheap either. So I opened up Illustrator and designed my own Valentines. And ended up with these. Hot glue holds the pencils on and suprisingly holds the arrows straight up too.

Roland was willing to practice his writing and addressed and wrote individual notes on 18 Valentines for preschool. He would tell me what he wanted to say, I'd write it on scratch paper and he would copy it onto the Valentine. That kid is going to write for Hallmark someday. Some of my favorites were:

You are kind of tough.
Sometimes I like your shirt.
You can do an awesome flip.
I like your voice.
I like that we are both 5.
Sometimes you say oopsy daisy and I like that word.

Man, I love that kid.

Pinterest Project 02

It's time for a Pinterest Challenge from Sherry at Young House Love and her pals. I love the inspiration I get from Pinterest, but am often overwhelmed by how many projects I want to try out. I've even stopped pinning new things (mostly) because I don't want to forget about all the great things I've already pinned. You can see all my boards here.

 

For the past year we have been renting our own little room in a great house that my in-laws are staying in. It is in Northern Arizona and we love it there! I wanted to decorate our room a little, mostly to distract me from the 80s wallpaper. I decided to use some of my favorite Pinterest pins as ideas for some graphic art to liven up our space. I know the pictures aren't great, but in person I am very pleased with the view.

 

 

 

Here are my inspiration pins:

 

 

from mer mag

 

 

from susanna vento

 

I even did up one other print, to greet us as we walk into our room.

 

 

 

 

 

Craft Night: Giant Cross Stitch

I am finally getting around to posting about our craft night, thanks to The Pinterest Challenge, hosted by Sherry from Old House Love and her posse.  I was very inspired by a lot of pins I saw on Pinterest, I listed them in my last post, but here are a couple of my favorites again.

 

 

I think this is such a modern, fresh take on the time-old tradition of cross-stitch and it seemed perfect for DIY. I jumped on the computer, made myself a design, and got started. I used Adobe Illustrator, set my artboard to the size of the canvas I planned to use, chose the number 5 (for 5 in my family), and added crosses until my eyes couldn't see straight. I put the number 5 on one layer, in the font I liked, and then made my crosses in a layer on top, matching them to the number below as best I could. I used 3/4 inch crosses. After I chose this project for craft night, I helped my friends design their projects too and generally used the 3/4 inch crosses again. Even with a large canvas, 24" x 36", I found anything larger gave me not enough control over detail. And for some designs, like the chicken below, I used smaller crosses for some detailed area.

Next I spray painted my canvas, although most of my friends used craft paint and a foam brush. I would love to try one over fabric, like a burlap or a small-print flowered muslim or something. It would be harder to mark where the stitches should go, but I did buy a fabric ink pen, with disappearing ink. I'm anxious to try it soon. I would recommend wrapping and stapling the fabric to a canvas, just to keep the structure and make it easier.

After the paint was dry on my canvas, I printed off my design, which necessitated multiple pages taped together sometimes, and attached it to the canvas with some of my washi tape, whose low-tack & removability were perfect for this project. Then I took a needle and drove it down through the paper & the canvas below. The hole remains in the canvas to show you where to stitch. That's where fabric would be a little trickier than the canvas, although that disappearing ink pen must be so much easier on the fingers than stabbing through the canvas with a needle. A thimble helped. I learned a few things on the first row. Don't stab through the middle of the Xs, only the corners. I made that mistake on the first row, but the holes were covered up when I did the stitching. Also, my design ran fairly close to the edge of the canvas, over the wooden supports, which made it pretty hard to put a needle through. You might keep that in mind when creating your design. My friends poster-size canvas had a support right up the middle too - which made it difficult to stitch around, but canvas is flexible and we worked around it.

And then we got to stitching. Some used yarn (for the big canvas), some used embroidery floss, the white one was a thick baking string, and I used a hot pink mason twine, which is nylon and sold at Home Depot. Long needles worked well, although I had to use one with an extra-wide eye to keep my mason twine from unraveling. Which made it quite hard to punch through the canvas. I was getting blisters before I heard about the idea of using rubber gloves. I felt pretty silly wearing my long, yellow dish gloves, but it worked like a charm. You just follow basic cross-stitch principles, tie a knot, come through from the back, and get to work, tying off in the back when you run out of string. You'll have to find better instructions elsewhere.  ;)  It took a few hours to complete, but Netlix helped while the time for me, and my craft group is always happy to use the time to catch up on each other's lives, gossip, and discuss important philosophies. Here are some shots of us working, and a few of the finished projects.

I am so thankful to Pinterest for keeping me appraised of great art and projects, you can follow me here. And I'm glad for Sherry's Pinterest Challenge and for my turn to host craft night for impelling me to actually complete some of the things I pin. My friends' projects turned out so cute too & I'm sure they are livening up their houses by now.

A New Project

I love our "formal" living room. I never thought we needed or wanted one, but now that we have one we use it so much. I think much of our successful use of the room stems from it's location and our floorplan. We have a continuous loop from foyer to family room to eat-in-kitchen to dining room to living room. And the boys run that loop often. We use it for reading, playing games, spreading out large sets of toys that need floor space, entertaining, and just relaxing. We have a couch and a loveseat and that works perfectly for our family but anytime someone else is over I always wish we had more seating. The dining room is part of the same room, so we have all those chairs, and we use the piano bench when we have to but I have been keeping my eye out for a couple of matching chairs to add to the mix. And recently at Saver's I found them.

Perfect wingback lines, classic legs, and comfy cushions - still in good shape despite the dirty exterior. Truth be told: I love the flame stitch pattern! And I don't completely hate the color. It matches our rug perfectly, which is unfortunate since I'm not fond of the rug & would like to get rid of it. But it also matches the pink in our artwork, which matches the green in the couches. But eventually I'd like to replace those couches too so we have a lot of scheming to do.

I have convinced myself that I can recover these chairs at home, after reading a bunch of posts like this, this, and this. I certainly can't afford to have them professionally done, so we'll be on the hunt for fabric soon. When my Mom asked what my husband wanted for his last birthday, I convinced him that his fondest wish was for new chair fabric. And the next month I asked my Mom for the same thing for my birthday so between her contributions and a little scrimping of our own we will start shopping soon. And I told Aaron that what I wanted for my birthday is for him to go fabric shopping with me. (I'm sure that gift will be coming along soon - 5 months later!) I have no idea what we're looking for... but I know I want a pattern, and probably a bolder color choice. Now if we can only figure out what that color might be.

We need to come up with some overall design decisions for our living room; things like color and style. I started Pinterest boards for ideas for the chairs and the entire room. Any suggestions?

Putting my party hat on...

Apparently after 21 days of daily blogging I needed a break. For a month. But I am still trying to put together decent outfits (most of the time) and I am thinking a lot about a 30 for 30 Remix. I want to do one but I want to take pictures of my pieces first & somehow that just hasn't happened. Maybe after I get though this next weekend. Last week my dear grandmother turned 90 years old! And my parents, aunt, sister, and I are throwing a big birthday bash for her this Saturday.

My Mom takes care of the food, my Dad did invitations and all the coordinating, my aunt is making a video and will be the resident photographer, which leaves my sister and I to do the decorating. Naturally I turned to Pinterest (my boards are here) for a wealth of inspiration. After a little searching we decided on a metallic color palette - mixing gold, silver, copper, bronze, and whatever else we might find. Here's my to-do list:

1. create a crossword about Gram
2. centerpieces
3. balloons
4. food table decorations
5. make a photo backdrop to document the guests
6. party favors
7. decorate a comfy chair for Gram to sit in during the party
8. make a pretty crown for the birthday girl

I'm trying not to add anythingelse to the list, as that's a lot of work for my sister and I already. I loved the recent post on Living in the Family Room about the birthday party Darcy Miller threw for Martha Stewart. It was such a fab party and I wanted to copy every detail but limited myself to the monogrammed balloons and the crossword puzzle, which I finished last weekend. It will be a fun, personal detail that my grandmother and all her guests will enjoy.

All day yesterday I made paper rosettes to put together into a photo backdrop to help Gram remember the people that came to her party. I am using the ideas from here and here. I have learned a few things about making these pinwheel rosettes. Last weekend I bought a bunch of metallic papers, alarming my husband by how much I was spending ($11 whole dollars!). But once I started folding and looked up some directions I realized that I needed three to five sheets of each paper to make a pinwheel. Which takes my costs up quite a bit. I chose a few of my favorites and will take the rest back. And then I found a cheaper source - spray painted paper! I grabbed my silver, gold, and copper spray paints and my big roll of kraft paper and was able to make some very large, shiny rosettes. The kraft paper was brown, so the metallic effect over the top is a little subtler than I wanted so I turned to plain, white printer paper next. The metallic paint shows up much better over the white.
Tomorrow I'm working on centerpieces - stay tuned for more inspiration pics and a few of my own too.

DIY Bead Necklace

As I searched for a suitable necklace for my April Outfit, I couldn't find anything that was what I wanted, but my mind kept going back to a post from the Martha Stewart craft blog. They highlighted a project of dyeing unfinished, wooden beads and stringing them together to make long necklaces. I love this picture:

I had wanted to try this project and this week seemed the perfect time, so I could add the necklace to my April Outfit. I ran to Joanne's to buy beads, dye, and cord to string the beads. The instructions were easy, and by the end of the day I was wearing my necklace. See full directions on the Martha Stewart site here.

Here are some shots of my process, along with details of what I did. I used the following beads:
14    1/2"
24    9/16"
14    5/8"
22    3/4"

You string them on floral wire first to get the length you want and them dye them on the wire. The beads cost me about $10 total and the Rit dye was $2.50. (A sweet woman offered me an extra coupon for 25% off my purchase, which I was glad for because none of my items were on sale.) The MS website recommends using leather cord, which you can dye to match the beads, but I am cheap and bought a waxed cotton cord. I'm sure that would have dyed well also, but I didn't bother. The total cost was around $13 without coupons or sales. (Love my sweet neice as a model!)

I used Rit dye in Teal and was happy with the color, although the tutorial used mostly teal, with a little taupe or grey mixed in. I can see that would give them a more muted look, but I skipped this too. I used my large, non-stick, dutch oven pot and was worried about ruining it, but it was no problem at all. The beads stay in the dye 5-10 minutes, depending on how dark you want them - just agitate throughout and check them often. Dry the beads on an old towel. They took much longer to dry than I thought, and the color lightened as they dried. It would have gone much faster outside. I was worried about the dye rubbing off on my clothing without some kind of rinse or finish. I wore my necklace the next day with an already stained shirt and didn't have any transfer of color. I've worn my beads several times since and I think they look great!

In the end, I couldn't dump out 8 cups of beautiful blue dye, so I ended up dipping a bunch of paper coffee filters. I've seen a lot of amazing crafts made from these and had previously grabbed some at the grocery store so I dyed a few dozen, let them dry upside down to keep their shape, and stashed them away for the next project.

Why Do I Love Him?

There's a link I've been saving on my computer for about a year. Swiss Miss blogged about a poster that says, "i love you because" and then leaves a blank for you to fill you your reasons. You frame it and then use dry erase markers to change your reasons whenever you feel the urge. I've been wanting to flat-out copy this idea and gift it to my husband because I'm not always great at telling him how wonderful I think he is.

I finally put this together in Illustrator (though the simple design could have been completed in any word processing program) and had it printed at Kinko's. I took my own paper - textured, watercolor paper that prints beautifully on my home printer. But it looked awful on their fancy printers & I had them print it again on plain, white card stock. And it looks so nice! I put it in a simple frame and hung it up to surprise my husband for Valentine's day. And of course, part of the gift is that he gets to hear different reasons I love him every day. Which he seems to like.

Naturally, as soon as I finished my husband's gift for Valentine's Day, I've been seeing homemade versions of these all over blogland. But I'm pretty sure my sweet hubby appreciates his own anyway.

Stencilin' Craft Night

I am a member of a small, monthly craft group that in the past year has become one of my favorite things to look forward to. A few months ago it was my turn to host, and I chose freezer paper stenciling for the project. I thought things went very well, because with the same supplies we made so many different projects. Personally, I completed three items: a shirt for my sister (the hairdresser) that had been in the works for six months (copied from here), a tie for my sweet hubby for Father's Day (copied from Dana), and a tote bag for my Cub Scout materials (my own idea). I was called to be a Webelos leader a few months ago & am having lots of fun. And it's nice to have a cute tote bag to haul my stuff.

We mainly used tutorials & tips from Jess at How About Orange, and Dana at MADE. Specifically, I copied the Father's Day tie idea from Dana.

   

Does this make me look like a good photographer?

I read about a free downloadable program many months ago on several different blogs. I starred in my reader and finally found it again the other day. Check out Poladroid for making any image look like an old Polaroid shot. And the interface is the cutest! If I was really ambitious I would take a video to show you the process, but I'm not. Take my word for it.

Here are a few shots I transformed:

You can change settings to make it more look older or more rustic and you can capture the image at any point in the "development" stage.

They even have a Flickr group.

Tiling the easy way

I've been slowly fixing up the boys' bathroom - I painted, repaired a hole, and then finally got around to changing the flooring. We had linoleum, which I hear is making a comeback. I love linoleum - it's durable, environmentally friendly, one-piece (no water seeping into cracks, great for bathrooms), and comes in tons of looks and patterns. Check out this article about linoleum on This Old House. Unfortunately, real linoleum is quite expensive and most dealers and big box stores just stock vinyl, which often gets called linoleum too (even though it's not).

My family is not sure how long we will be in our house, but it could be several year still. We wanted different flooring in the bathroom, but didn't want to spend a lot of money. In the end, I opted for vinyl tiles. They are cheap (around $1/sq ft), easy to install (self adhesive), and durable enough for us. They also come in lots of patterns, many mimicking the popular ceramic and slate tiles.

I chose to install the vinyl tiles right over my linoleum for a couple reasons: if water seeps between the tiles, the linoleum underneath is seamless and the water won't get to the foundation, but mostly because I was too lazy to rip out the old flooring and scrape glue off the concrete underneath.

When laying vinyl tiles over existing flooring, you have the choice to butt them up against the baseboards, or remove the baseboards and replace them again afterwards. I wanted new baseboards too, and since the cost was minimal in a small bathroom I ripped mine out. I did it during nap time one day on a whim. It took about 5 minutes. Unfortunately I didn't get around to installing the tile and new baseboards for about a month, but baby steps, right?

Here are the steps for removing baseboards:

1. Cut through the caulk between the baseboard and the wall. If you don't do this you can peel the paint right off the wall, or even the paper off the drywall. You can do the whole wall at once or work in 2-3 foot sections.

2. Use a tool to pry the baseboards from the wall. I use a special, angled screwdriver with a claw tip, but a regular one will do in a pinch. I use a hammer to wedge it in, then push out the moulding. You just have to be careful not to damage your wall. That's why I like the angle of this tool, because I have more room for leverage. Some people want to save the baseboards to re-install, but I was tossing mine, so I didn't worry about them cracking, splintering, or breaking. Demolition is very satisfying.

3. Vacuum up all the detritus that ends up underneath your walls. Are you sad that I'm covering up this gorgeous linoleum?

On to installing the new tile:

The first step is to make sure the floor is clean and dry, no matter what you are laying the tile over. The vinyl tiles have adhesive backs, so you just stick them down, but if there's dirt or dust they won't stay down well.

It is important to map out how you will lay the tile before you start. It's nice to start with one tile in a corner, to make for less cutting, but that's not always the best idea. You need to make sure your last row of tiles isn't less than 4 inches or something (whatever the directions say). Here's an example. This is my bathroom, roughly. I actually laid these tiles out, without attaching them. The figure on the left shows that the last tile will need to be cut a little. The figure on the right shows that the last tile will be a little short. And rather than have a small tile, it is better to cut the tiles on both ends of the row.


Do you have this?

You need to do the same for the width and length of the room. If your walls are not square you can end up with rows of tile that don't align with the walls. This is a bigger issue when you are tiling a larger room. With vinyl tiles that just match up to each other in the seams you can start in the middle of the room if you want. You don't have that luxury with tongue and groove flooring like laminate.

I started in the middle row, but next to my tub. I wanted a full tile next to the tub, where we stand a lot - even if that meant a slightly shorter tile on the opposite side (but still more than 6 inches). Basically I have the figure on the left and just cut down the last row of tiles a little. I laid the row next to the wall slightly past the linoleum underneath, so that they would extend about 1/2 inch underneath the new baseboards. This did make for a short row next to the wall behind the toilet - but no one walks back there so I didn't mind.

Now you just peel and stick. You have to peel the paper backing off slowly, so it doesn't rip. The adhesive is pretty good, but not like glue where you couldn't peel a tile up and reposition it. Place the tiles as close to each other as possible, keeping the seams exactly square at the corners. Once you put a tile down, secure it all over by applying pressure. Here's a shot of my first few tiles.

And now comes the cutting:

It's pretty satisfying to lay down whole tiles and you cover the area very quickly. And you can do all the whole tiles first if you want. But at some point you will get to the edges and need to cut a tile to fit. Vinyl tiles can be cute with heavy scissors, a utility knife, etc. The scissors worked the best for me. But even with a small bathroom my hands were sore and almost blistered the next day from the cutting - it's hard work! Straight line cuts are pretty easy. I used a measuring tape, a dry erase marker, and a straight edge. You can just measure the area you need to fill, mark it on the tile, and cut.




The official method of cutting tiles (of any material) is as follows:

* Lay a loose tile directly over the last tile in the row
* Lay another loose tile flat against the wall/bathtub/flat edge, overlapping the first loose tile
* Draw/cut along the line where the two loose tiles meet

* See the cutaway diagram below

The hardest part of laying tile comes when you need to cut for irregular objects. For bathrooms the round toilet base can be tricky. Vinyl tiles have an advantage over other tiles because you can do a curved cut. I will tell you how I fit these tiles, but I'm sure there are better ways. I was glad my tiles were only $1 each because I did start over a couple times.


I cut the tile down to roughly the correct size if necessary, then cut out the curved shape I needed. I totally free handed it, drawing the shape as shown, and then cutting in down again and again until it fit well. This is why my cutting hand was sore. Does anyone know a better way than this? It was labor intensive, but it worked for me since there were only a few tiles to cut this way.



When you finish all the tile, you can choose to caulk the edge in some spots. I caulked along the tub and around the base of the toilet. i just bought white bathroom caulk and followed the instructions roughly, although I use my fingers to smooth.


Here's a shot of the finished product. The new baseboard against the right wall was just laid in place to see how it would look. Watch for my upcoming post on installing baseboards! It's already half-way written.

Please check out my other Do It Herself projects. I'm very proud of them!

I submitted this post to DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land.