Fabulous, Fantastic, and Frugal Friday - Gift No. 2 - Embellished Hurricane Vases

This Friday's gift starts as a very simple find. Almost any vase will work. I used a glass hurricane for this one. I spot tons of glass vases and hurricanes at yard sales and thrift stores all the time. I don't think I've ever ran across one reselling for more than $1. I've seen these at the Dollar Tree, too.

The next step is to find something to add to the glass vase. I used clay. I rolled out the clay using a dowel and slats. That made my clay the same thickness. Then, I cut out a shape and pressed a rubber stamp into it to emboss it. You can use a cookie cutter to cut a shape out of clay, too. I put it on the vase while it dried - so that it would hug the vase. After it dried, I painted it with a shiny silver oil based paint.

You could use an ornament, wood letter, rhinestones, or just about anything. The item you add doesn't have to hug the vase. As long as you use a really strong glue it should be fine. I use E6000 when I want something to stay in place. It holds wonderfully. I don't get any money from them. I just like the glue. It took me a while before I found one I really liked but this is it. I'm never without a tube. lol.
Just be careful because this glue isn't recommended with heat. I use it but not at high temperatures.

After the glue dries, you may want to fill the vase up with some type of candy, pencils, or etc. Here's how mine turned out.

I used candy canes but how cute would this be as a pencil can for a desk or a soap holder in the bathroom? This is a very simple addition but I think it makes a world of difference.

Happy Gift Giving!

Modified Light Fixture

When the Cellula Chandelier came out I was head over heals, but buying it was just not going to happen. I can justify buying certain things; however, that was one price tag I just couldn't swallow. I immediately went on a mission to get my hands on something similar.

I know this is a far cry but bare with me. ROLF!

I rushed to the store to search for something that I could transform. I didn't think to take before photos because I wasn't blogging at the time. The before photo would have looked much like this, though - gold bars, white frosty glass shades - This one is much better than what mine looked like. Mine had gold on the frosty glass shades and an old pattern.


My $18 substitution got it's shades taken off and a layer of silver paint. Then I marched myself down to a lighting and resale shop and bought 14 strings of prisms with pins for less than $20. I had a roll of thin silver colored wire at home. I used needle-nose pliers to bend the wire and pins. I cut pieces big enough to go over the bar of the fixture and curl on each end. Under that I made an "s" shape wire to give some length and connect the two curled ends. I then used the pins but looped the end so that the "s" wire could hook in.

After adding my little jewels, I had this...


It's not exact but it's the same modern but glamorous sparkly feeling that I love about the Cellula. I had planned on buying some more glass prisms but I wanted to see how full it looked before I bought more. Needless to say, I never made it back to get anymore. Hmmm... I guess that needs to go on my to-do list.

See more blogger's projects here:

http://www.theletteredcottage.net/2009/12/favorites-of-2009-tutorials.html

Rooms... toddler boy's room

This room belongs to our 2 year old son. I may even be able to rummage around and find some before pictures later.I don't like super themey rooms in my house. I like them in the homes of others but not so much en mi casa. (It sounds odd, I know.) This was our attempt at converting our son's nautical nursery into a clean and simple pirate room. As you can see, my hubby and I tend to lean toward being minimalist. Here is how it got to this point.The first thing we did in this room, even before it was his nursery, was pull up ugly blue carpeting. The country blue carpet was probably original to this late 70's tract home. It was brown in high traffic areas with a really awesome odor. We cut the carpet into pieces and pulled it out of the room along with all the wood slats that help your carpet stay down. That left us with nails in the concrete around the room's perimeter. DIYers that we are, we figured we could cut them flush and asked about some type of saw. Nobody knew what we we talking about and neither did we at that point in time. We wound up popping them out with a crow bar and filling holes with a $7 bottle of concrete patch. We scrubbed and etched the floors. We stained the concrete slightly gray but we left it very natural by washing it off quickly. Then we put on a concrete sealer so it had a bit of shine. The smell of the sealer was so strong that we abandoned the house all day and left all the windows open. When we got back it was still terrible and it took about a week to smell decent. In my opinion, it was well worth the nostril burns I suffered. LOL. We moved the floor trim down because it was too high from being placed above the carpeting. The spots we filled in ended up being way lighter so I had to go back and faux each one to try and match the floor... around sixty nail holes later the floor looked like this. Oh, and after we finished a few more rooms we found out that what we had needed was a rotary/ cutting tool.

I got the sign above the bed at Old Time Pottery for about $5. The paddles were Dollar Tree items and the wooden wheel was a mark down from Michaels. It was unfinished wood and it was mega clearanced, down to about a dollar or two. I took those three items and painted them brown. After they were dry, I used very little white paint on a dry brush to go over the paddles and ship's wheel. The curtains and bedding were made by me. They are all rectangles. Even the striped fabric is just a rectangle with boating rope tied to scrunch it up. The appliquest are just cut outs of fabric that I zig zag stitched around. The bed was a $100 Craigslist purchase.

The bookcase is nothing fabulous but it does the job. We keep the items we don't want him to mess with up high.
This is a good shot of the chair rail that we ran around the room. Well, it's not really chair rail. It's a much cheaper trim that we used as chair rail... shhhh. We did our budget friendly chair rail as we were making the room into a nursery. The map painting was done by me. I used scrapbook stickers on it for the compass. In the other frame there are different types of knots used in sailing. My wonderful friend gave that to us. His toys are either on the bookshelf, in the closet or in/on this train table. I'm not much on dressers and chest of drawers, so all of his clothes make their home in the closet. I'm not big on rugs either. Rugs just tend to catch crumbs around here. Before I had three crumb monsters I loved rugs, now I look at them as just another thing to clean. Maybe when they get a bit older I'll get rugs again. ;) We still need to scrape those celings down and buy a few more things for his wall but I don't plan to do much else in here. I hope you enjoyed looking. Feel free to tell me what you like or hate about the room.

Rate my space here.

Room Ramblings

I'm just relaxing and feeling a bit icky so I thought I would go through some pics and ramble about what I like about each one. Won't you ramble with me?
Feel free to comment about what you like. The more comments, the less I feel like I'm talking to myself... hehehe.



credits for this photo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tammymanet/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

This picture gave me an epiphany. Can you guess why?
If you guessed the baskets neatly lined up in a row under the bed, you would be correct!

I love the fact that there is no attempt to hide the under the bed storage. And, why would you need to with such tidy little baskets all in a row... and perfectly sized I might add.
This room is functional! I like that. I like the happy yellow lamps that can lean in over a good book in the evening. I like the extra blanket lying on the end of the bed, ready for those chilly nights. The white bedding is a plus, too. (I'm a big fan of white bedding with touches of color.) The shadow boxes are another yummy feature. I've been planning on doing something with a shadow box for the bathroom. You'll have to check back to see what comes of that project. ;)

credits for this photo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cocokelley/ / CC BY 2.0

I chose this photo because of three things. One... I love how the red brings the color pallet to life. Blues and greens work great together and are very soothing but the red gives a vibrancy to the normally calm pallet of blue and green, like yin and yang. Second... I love how the black touches add a bit of class to the very colorful room. Third, I like how the thin legs of the furniture are balanced by the very squat stools. Well done!

credits for this photo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ooh_food/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

What lovely windows you have my dear! Yep... Love the windows! I also like the neutral color pallet. It would be very easy to switch out the chair and two red pillows for a completely different feeling. And before I go, drum roll please... Those floors and the ceiling are just plain gorgeous! BAM!

Fabulous, Fantastic, and Frugal Friday - Gift No.1 - Monogrammed Clay Pendants

Our first gift is a very simple project. In fact, it's so simple that my 8 year old daughter's turned out as good as mine! You may have seen similar items at craft fairs and boutiques. So what is this project that sounds so simple? Clay necklace pendants. Simple... frugal... and very fabulous!

First, start with some clay. You can use air dry clay, clay fired in a kiln, or a polymer clay - such as Sculpey. I used an air dry clay because that's what I had on hand. This big lump was $6.99 in a local craft store.

Roll it out to the same thickness for a professional look. Easy enough, right? Well, here is a trick. Take two wood slats and put the clay in between them. Use a dowel to roll the clay, making sure the dowel sits on the slats. This will make the clay the same thickness as the wood slats.

After rolling out the clay, use your slats as a guide to cut perfect squares. Lay the slat one way and cut down the edge of the slat; then lay the slat the opposite way and cut down the side of the slat again.

You will end up with this.

Then use a rubber stamp or anything you have handy to make an impression. I used a set of small rubber stamps that had letters and shapes. After that, make a hole where you would like the pendant to hang from. Be sure to check the back of the pendant to make sure the opening is smooth and won't scratch. Run your finger across the back to smooth it out, if needed.

Dry your pendant as specified on your clay. Paint, lacquer, or apply any other finish that you would like. You will put the clay back into the kiln if you are glazing.

Then get your jump rings ready. Jump rings are just wire bent into circles. I bought the whole bag above at a craft store for $2. Feel free to make your own if you prefer. Open the jump rings with needle nose pliers and thread the ring onto the tile.

Now close the jump ring and cut a bit of string that is long enough to go around a neck and tie a bow. Put the ribbon through the jump ring and here is what you have.

You can even include a few different ribbons to change out the look.

Don't forget to present it like the fine piece of handmade jewelry that it is.

Happy Gift Giving!

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