Office Ugly to Office Pow

We recently went through a massive cleaning in our department and lots of offices put their excess furniture up for grabs. I grabbed a chair that had good bones and style, but was just blah. This is the before:

 Nice style, well made, and in great shape. Other than the stained seat (I don't want to know where that stain came from) and the dust in the tufts, it is looking good.

Close-up of the dusty tufts. Ewww. Gross.















and the after... I went for a spunky chic look, very different from what it looked like before.

I am in love! I took the seat off and covered it in a really pretty black and white print (Walmart) and spray painted the chair Ocean Breeze Blue (love that color). I know absolutely nothing about reupholstering furnure, so the tufted part wasn't going to get changed.  I decided to just paint it! I used good old acrylic craft paint to which I had added some fabric medium. Recovering the seat was easy enough. I simply traced the seat onto my material and made a pattern from that. She's a cutie, right outside my office door, a little "waiting area" as it were.  :)

Beach Inspiration

Having my button stash and crystals and findings at the beach = pretties to take home. Three more bracelets to add to my collection. The first was inspired by the ocean colors. Beautiful blues, greens, aquas and turquoise.

I took the picture on the balcony on a wine glass, and yes, the wine glass had its share of activity this weekend. This morning it was full of a Mimosa with breakfast: Scrambled eggs, sauteed mushrooms and a fresh fruit salad of blueberries, mango and blackberries. Life is good at the beach.










The next bracelet is pale pinks, and salmon, and peachy colors, with pearls and crystals. Beautiful as well.

The third one is made with vintage off-white buttons and I used champagne crystals and pearls. I ran out of clasps, so it isn't completely finished. I'll photo it when it's done. I think it's my favorite.

K

I'm at the beach with my crafting buds and brought one of my K's from my collection to embellish. I rediscovered a pile of vintage buttons in my stash, and thought the two would go well together. I found this particular K at Hob Lob 1/2 price (booyah!) so the whole project cost me $1.50.  Love it!

A little E6000 and it was done. More button crafts to follow : )

Bead Break!

Jan is here visiting and she is helping me take a break from sewing (phew!) by making some jewelry. We both have a huge stash of just about anything you can imagine in a craft room, including buttons and an endless supply of crystal beads. We both love, love bracelets so today we made two each. The first is a bead/button one in shades of lavender and vintage off-white.

 

Wowzers! How beautiful, I can't wait to wear it.

The second was a steampunk bracelet. Jan has tons of little trinkets including old game pieces that she drilled for wiring. Very cute too. Fun, fun, fun!

 

 We used old Monopoly pieces, vintage wooden Bingo markers, old metal bobbins, subway tokens, dice, pieces of an old wooden ruler cut into small sections (I chose a 5 and a 2 for the year I was born), an old metal pen nib, vintage buttons and beads. The large glass turquoise and white bead on the end is one I made in a class a couple of summers ago. That one keeps me humble. Although I admit, I do well on most crafts, making glass beads is not easy, takes a lot of skill and patience and practice. I gained a tremendous amount of respect for people who make them.


Fun day, Jan! I love you, thanks for the break. Tomorrow we shop.

Bunting

Bye, baby bunting
Daddy's gone a hunting
To get a little rabbit skin
To wrap his baby bunting in

This is another project I finished and I used the same fat quarters from the owl project. I plan to put the bunting all the way around the ceiling of the nursery. I photographed it outside on my fence until I can put it where it belongs, in Tater's room. Very cute, very simple.

I ironed the fat quarters then folded them into fourths. I cut the folds ending up with 4 separate rectangles. I had 16 different materials to use, so I got 64 rectangles total. After cutting a cardstock triangle to use as a pattern, I drew that triangle on a piece of white muslin the same size as the 64 triangles. I paired one muslin piece with one fat quarter piece and sewed on the line of the triangle pattern. I used my new pinking shears to cut the triangles. I had 4 pale yellow bias tape packages to use to string the triangles. I sewed them on with a zigzag stitch. 

Oh, we're getting closer! We find out next month (Aug 8th) if Tater is a boy or girl. Woohoo!

Sew Busy

I am enjoying a 10 day holiday from my main job, so I am taking advantage of the crafting time available to me. I have several Tater projects I want to finish and have succeeded in completing three. Yippeee! The first is a crib mobile. I found this black and white one at Junior League Thrift Store for $3 and thought I might be able to create something a little "sweeter" than the graphics that look like they'd hypnotize anyone who stares at them for more than 2 seconds.

It gave me a headache just looking at it, and I know that's not what I want to happen to my tiny, sweet new grandchild. I am leaning towards a woodland, or forest animal theme in the nursery, and for this project, I went with little owls instead of scary black and white stripes and circles.















 I bought some black, white, and yellow fat quarters, and black felt and designed a pattern to make my own owls.




Here are the materials I chose:

I even bought a pair of pinking shears. I didn't have any that were worthy of cutting through felt, and since JoAnn's had them 50% off plus a coupon for 20% off the total purchase, I splurged.

My design pieces...

and my design

I used Wonder Under to attach the eyes, beak, and belly, then I sewed 2 owls back to back and stuffed them with fiber fill.  Here's the final result.

That's what I'm talkin' about!