Tray Time

First I want to tell yall that I am SO EXCITED for my puppy Oreo to be the Daily Fluffy today over at Pretty Fluffy.  A BIG shout out to Serena for having such an amazing pet blog.  You can check here out here.  Make sure to stop by and check out her awesome-ness!

On to today's project!  This is a project I did before I started blogging so I dont have any step by step pictures, but I do have a tutorial I can link up for you.  I saw this on Pinterest when I first got addicted many months ago.  Turns out the project was a Martha Stewart project and you can find the link here.  I had leftover fabric from when I made curtains (you can see that post here) and I had a ton of black felt left over from when I made my pin display cases (you can see that post here).  I had spray adhesive from when I painted a room with a stencil (no post of that it has since been painted over and such a shame too it was awesome) so all I needed was the vinyl and the cookie sheet.

I am going to pass some wisdom on to you right now...DO NOT get a tray that has a non-stick surface.  I didnt even think of that when I was buying a tray I was just thinking of price.  Let me tell you it made it almost impossible to get the fabric to stay, so be careful with your choice.  Of course if you have an old ratty tray that you just want to cover thats cool too, free is free right!  I also needed to get the vinyl but I had NO CLUE where to get that from so I went to JoAnn's and bought 1 yard of the clear plastic material, like the stuff you put over tables...not a good description I know but it came on one of the big rolls as was $4/yard.  Not exactly true to the Martha version but I had to improvise people!

The below picture is a shot of the front of the sheet.  I personally think covering the whole thing in the clear plastic was a better idea in case you spill something you wont mess up the fabric because its covered all around.  

 To get this look make sure you cut out enough fabric to tuck under at the bottom.  Try and cut straight lines to make for a better fold.  Spray the tray and place the fabric on top then press down, smoothing out all the edges, making sure there are no bumps.  Let that dry for about 30 minutes then move on to the vinyl.  This was a little harder and we ended up hot gluing the vinyl to the fabric, but if you have fabric glue that will probably work too.  Make sure the vinyl is the same size as your fabric so you have complete coverage.  Once you get that all glued down you can flip the tray over and do the bottom.

This shot is of the bottom.  Since you cant see the bottom ever I dont feel bad that it looks a hot mess...trust me in person this doenst look pretty.

Try and glue all the extra fabric to the bottom of the tray before applying the felt.  Use whatever glue you want to do this since you wont be able to see it.  The black felt also covers a host of imperfections, use that to your advantage.  Our corners were a mess so the felt comes up a little to cover that.  Once you have that glued down, flip the tray back over and you are done!  Easy right!  Total cost for mine was $10, thats $5 for the tray and $5 for the vinyl.  Much better than the awful placemat I had there to begin with (I photoshopped this picture so you cant see but there is a huge wood mess in the middle of the table from where my nail polish spill removed the top layer from the table, obviously its not real wood lol)

So there you have it, a project that takes less than an hour and bring color and life to your space.

Project Housewife Out!

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Blooming Box

Today's project is a continuation of the pallet art I did last week.  I actually had 2 pallets and only used one for the project so I had a great idea to make a flower box.  I never really loved what I had for under the TV

And for a long time I have been thinking of doing flowers under the TV, I was just having a hard time finding the perfect container for the flowes.  I though of using a make travel trunk but they werent long enough, then I thought of using glass but that really wasnt the look I was going for and then the pallet art.  You can see the full article here.  Once the art was done I asked Joe my handy man husband to make me a flower box.  I wasnt thinking anything fancy, just four sides and a bottom but he decided to make it cute and give it an angle.  Now you have the back story, below is the finished project.  Ok to be honest, I have done MUCH more primping to this since I took this picture because lets be honest the green things are a little CRAZY but i was just so excited I had to share it with you!

Here is what you are going to need for this project:

• Wood (cut to your specifications, mine was 4" tall by 20" long)
• nails/hammer
• saw that can cut angles if you want the fancy box, otherwise just a regular saw
• paint, if you want
• flowers $30
• flower foam $5

Total cost for this project was $35 and that was just flowers and the flower foam, all the other items I had at the house!  How awesome, since this would cost over $100 at the store!!

First step is to cut the wood to your measurements.  Make sure you also cut a piece to fit into the bottom so you dont have the foam fall out if you pick up the box.  You can kinda see the angles here, but Joe actually had to redo this because the angles werent quite right, so not to preach to the choir or anything but measure twice, cut once.  Luckly we had plenty of wood to work with so no harm no foul.

Then nail all the pieces together.  I would nail the long pieces to the bottom piece first then close it off with the two smaller side pieces, but whatever you feel more comfortable with do that.  If you like the look of the wood and dont want to paint then skip this step, but if you want to whitewash your wood follow me to the next step :)

For this step you need your box, paint, water and a paint brush.  This is probably not the correct way to white wash but I like the way it turns out so this is the right way for us.  I had a gallon of white paint with about 1/4 left.  To get it the thin, whitw wash consistancy, we filled up the gallon with water about 3/4 full and then mixed the paint with the water. 

Now all you have to do is apply the paint to your project.  Easy peasy!  Let that sit overnight to make sure you dont get paint on anything then you can move on to the next step...adding the flowes!  Before you get started on the flowers, add the foam

Joe cut mine down a little so it fit perfectly in the box, if you did just a square box then you probably wont have to do this but with the angled box it does help to cut it do you have a perfect fit and it doesnt move around in the box. Once the foam is in start adding the flowers.  I bought bunches of blowers so I actually had to cut mine apart first into individual stems so if you bought bunches great, you probably saved money you just have to add one extra step.

 I added all my big flowers first then filled in the spaces with my smaller yellow fillers.

So what do you think, pretty easy right?!  Oh and I added a butterfly, because they are cute and I can so there!

I think it looks so much better than what I had before and it was pretty cheap too!  What do you think, is there somewhere you could put a cute little flower box?


**Update** I decided that I needed to show you the primped version of the box since the longer I look at the above picture the more I realize it doesnt do the box justice**

Much better right!
Project Housewife Out! 

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Sharing My Failures

Up until today I have shared with you all my success stories.  Today, I am sad to say I have a failure to share with you.  A few weeks ago I tried my hand at crayon art and have to say it turned out pretty well.  You can see it here.  Since those turned out so well I decided I would try one for either side of my TV.  So here is what I started with.

Thats 2 15x30 canvasas, painted with the red "basic" paint covered in glitter.  Here is another view of the canvases.

You can kinda see the glitter better here.  So in my infinite wisdom, I thought this shade of red would be a good backdrop for my crayon art idea.  The bottom 1/2 would be the grass and the top 1/2 would be the sky.  I would add flowers and butterflies to make it 3-dimensional and it would be fabulous next to the tv.  Well I started with the hair dryer and here is what happened.

I wanted to melt the crayons down so you didnt really see them but didnt think that when they melted you would see the canvas behind it anymore.  I tried to put embellishments on it to make it look better but that didnt really work out, you can see that here.

I think the major problem is the red background.  Im going to try and paint over it with possibly yellow, but right now I just put it to the side because Im mad at it!  So there you have it...not everything I make looks amazing or even that good.  This is my cautionary tale that crayon art is NOT as easy as it looks.

What craft failues have you had?  I would love to hear from you!!

Project Housewife Out!

Color Me Happy!

As we all know I am addicted to pinterest, so when I saw this I knew I was in trouble.  I never know what I get my grandmothers for Christmas and thought, why not make them some art.  So I waited for canvases to go on sale at Michaels and set about making my art.  A side note for this project, you are more than welcome to use Crayola brand for your crayons, but a 64 pack was about $7, but a 64 pack no-name was $1...thats right $1 so you can tell which one I chose.  What you will need is:

1. Hair dryer
2. Canvas size of your choice
3. Hot glue gun and extra glue sticks
4. Crayons- I used 2 boxes per 12x12 canvas (to get the colors I needed, I have the equilivant of 1 box left over, but its full of colors I didnt use)
5. Decorations, if you so choose
6. newspaper for easy clean up

Let me start by showing you the finished products to get you motivated to do your own.

Yay!  Lets get started!  I decided to do one like grass with flowers and the other like the sky with butterflies flying around.  I also thought this would be the best way to make the most of all the crayons so I ended up with all red/pinks in the extra box..what to do with those :)  To start off with, pick out all the colors you think you are going to want to use and line them up on the canvas.  I dont remember how many crayons I used but it was each color family from 2 boxes (so all the greens/yellows/brown from 2 boxes).  Once you have them all lined up how you like, start gluing them.

I dont know if you can tell from this picture, but when I glued mine down I made sure all the labels were facing the same way.  Since I didnt love the logo on the crayon I had the address line facing out as it had the least amount of text showing.  I tried to rip off the label but they wouldnt budge, you can try it buy it didnt work for me.  Once you have all the crayons glued down, set out your newspaper to start blow drying.  Warning...there is a fair amount of splatter to the back of the canvas and to the side so make sure you put enough newspaper to cover that.  I had a wine bottle that was pretty tall that I perched my canvases on to make the dripping easier for me, but Im sure you could just lean it up against something and that would be fine too.  Here is what it looks like after about 1 minute.

Since this was such a small canvas the whole thing only took about 15minutes per canvas, so not too bad and the color was pretty thick, needless to say I was happy with the results.  I did have some of the crayons get bunched down the middle and if that happens to you just run the blow drier over the parts that are too thick and they will melt down.  Also, I pointed the dryer down and towards the middle of the crayons that seemed to work best for me.  Remember that not all crayons melt at the same pace so be aware of that, I had one that wouldnt melt even after having the dryer on it for 5 minutes, so watch out for that.

Now that the color is all melted let it dry (about 5minutes, this stuff dries fast) and if you have designs, you can add them with the hot glue now.

Those are my finished projects, I love them and am a little sad to see them go, but that just means its time to make my own for my house!!  If you made some awesome crayon art, share I would love to see what inspiration you got!

Project Housewife Out!