2 Minute DIY: From Tank Top to Framed Art

April 6, 2015October 7, 2016 spcountrygal Craft, Decorating, DIY, Home Accessories, Quick Project, Recycling Craft, Home Accessories, Quick and Easy, Re-use, Recycling, Thrift Store

Got an extra 2 minutes? It’s time for some lightning speed DIY!

We have all heard it said that sometimes you’ve got to think outside the box. True in so many ways, including home décor. Case in point, this black tank top with a cool metallic gold American Flag detail:

I added the frame in this pic as a clue to my “out of the box” idea. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are, you smartie!

This tank was a child’s size that I got at my local thrift store in one of those “as much as you can shove in a bag for $5” sales. I love those. I can shove a LOT in a bag. I have seen similar tank tops in my days of perusing thrift stores and garage sales. My guess is that if you frequent these cheapo shopping venues, you are sure to run across frame-worthy art, as well.

You will notice that my frame in the above pic is black. I just applied a couple of coats of off-white paint and scraped off bits when it was still a bit damp to reveal the black beneath. FYI: I am not going to count that in my 2 minute (see my title) time frame. My blog, my rules! My thought is that you may already have a frame that you love that you don’t need to paint. 2 minutes: Ready? Begin!

Take apart the frame and use the glass (carefully) as your pattern to center your tshirt art. Trace around it with a pencil, pen, whatever (a white colored pencil works great on black), then cut it out. At this point you can just discard the glass, or keep it. Your choice. I tossed mine. Now, just adhere the fabric to the cardboard back of the frame, making sure that it looks centered in the frame. I used spray adhesive, but you can tape the edges down or in all honesty, you can just center it on the cardboard backing,

…then stick it in the frame. Voila!

Makes me feel patriotic, just looking at it! So, what are YOU going to frame as art?

**********Linking up to these awesome parties!**********

Tips&Tricks-LP-FEATURED

Thanks, to Brenna from Life After Laundry for picking this project as her favorite for Tips & Tricks week 10! Another big “Thanks!” goes to Nemcsok Farms and Witty Hoots for picking this project/post as a Frugal Family Linky favorite!

Recycled Jeans Satchel

April 2, 2015April 9, 2015 spcountrygal Accessories, Craft, DIY, Girls Camp Crafts, Quick Project, Recycling, Super Saturday Accessories, Craft, DIY, Fabric, Girls Camp Crafts, Quick and Easy, Re-use, Recycling, Super Saturday

At this very moment, do you have any jeans in your home that really should be in the trash? I’m talking holey, stained, terribly out of style jeans that you know will never be worn again? I recently came across some jeans destined for landfill and I decided to check out Pinterest (of course!) to see what I could make with them instead. Although I found some really fun projects, I didn’t see anything that screamed, “Make me!”. Not knowing what I was going to make, I started cutting and this is what I ended up with.

I kind of love them! Think of it as a satchel for putting your phone, lipstick, or whatever you need, in. Do you ever find yourself wearing an outfit that doesn’t have pockets? Maybe a dress, skirt, yoga pants? It’s kind of a pain. Make one of these simple satchels and you won’t need to carry your stuff in your hands or have a full on purse when you really don’t need it. Ready? Set? Go!

First step, cut off the pockets. Easy! Cut only the bottom layer (not the finished pocket edges) and leave a bit of fabric on the top.

Flip it over and hot glue the top edge down so you can have a finished-looking front. Back doesn’t look too bad, either.

For the flowers I did an internet search for “flower template”. Here are the two that I used: 4-petal-heart-template and Flower-Pot-Card-Template. It is best to have at least 3 different sizes, so I had to do some re-sizing in Word. Once you have a paper pattern, cut it, then trace it on your fabric,

then cut out the fabric. Might as well cut out two layers at a time, right? I wanted the denim to looked a bit frayed, so I just scraped the fabric edges with my fingernail to get that effect.

To assemble the flower, grab some thread, a needle and a button and sew the button through all of the layers…or…hot glue each layer and add the button to the top. Then just hot glue the flower to the pocket. Play around with positioning before gluing.

For the strap, cut out the inseam starting up one leg and once you reach the crotch, going down the other leg, then back up and down the other side. Most, if not all jeans have double stitching for the inseam so just cut near the finished edges on each side of the stitching. Easy-peasy!

And this is what you get:

At this point, determine how long you want your strap to be, cut to size, then hot glue on the back like so:

Done! Check it out!

I have been asked to be in charge of crafts for a young women’s camp this summer and this is definitely one that we will make. My goal is to have the girls create items that are useful, not something to shove in the back of a drawer once they get home. I think that they will like them.

What do you think?

Linking up to these awesome parties!

Pastel Tissue Paper Spring Sign

March 16, 2015March 25, 2015 spcountrygal Craft, Decorating, Home Accessories, Spring Craft, Super Saturday Craft, Home Accessories, Spring Craft, Super Saturday, Tissue paper

Has Spring sprung where you live? It has here and I love it! The trees all blossomed a few weeks ago and flowers are coming out and everything is SO green.

The phrase, “A breath of spring” certainly comes to mind. I wanted to make a little something today to celebrate spring. I knew that I wanted to make a sign of some sort with a length of 1×6 pine that I had in my garage. I originally thought that I would make an Easter sign of some sort, but Easter will be here and gone before we know it. I wanted something that can stay out for a couple of months or so and this is what I came up with:

I love this phrase. To me, it means that where you are right now in location and life circumstances is where you are planted. You might be thrilled with where you are planted like a sunflower planted in good soil with ample water and full sun. Yep, it is easy to bloom well in those conditions. Maybe right now you are planted in not so perfect circumstances. Bloom where you are planted means that even if your part of the world right now is weed infested with poor soil and very little sun, do your best to bloom anyway. Basically, think positive, be happy, take life as it comes and pull out those weeds if you can. If you can’t, then you be the best bloom you can be to brighten up your little spot in the garden.

Of course I could have whipped out a can of paint as I usually do when making similar signs, but this time I decided to try something new. Want to see what I used instead of paint?

Tissue paper! I love the mint green that came with this pastel tissue paper set that I got at little old Dollar Tree. The steps were simple:

Crumple up the tissue paper to get it all wrinkly, then semi-flatten it back out
Using a regular paint brush, paint a layer of decoupage medium on the bare wood, top and sides. Another option would be to paint a base color similar to your choice of tissue color so you don’t have to do as many layers.
While the decoupage medium is still wet, lay a sheet of paper slightly larger on all sides so you can wrap it around the edges. As you lay it down, encourage wrinkles but attach it securely.
Immediately (meaning that the layer below is still wet) brush decoupage medium on top of the tissue paper layer. Apply to all sides (except the back). On each corner edge you will have an excess of tissue…just tear it off and lay the remaining down with the decoupage medium. You won’t even be able to notice it.
Wait until the layers are dry before adding another layer. My bottle says to wait 15-20 minutes. I broke all rules and used my hair dryer to speed up the process and it worked just fine. I’m such a rebel.
Add as many layers as you want. I added 3, but if I would have painted the board first, I would have just added one, maybe two. Maybe next time I will paint with one color and tissue with another just for fun. Maybe white with one layer of pink tissue on top for a sheer color effect.
If you get any tears, that is okay. Just tear a piece of tissue (straight edges will show up more than torn) and decoupage right over it.
If you want the back to look nice, decoupage it as well once the front has completely dried.

Really, the process is super easy and adds a different look. For added effect, rub a little stain or dark wax on to accentuate the texture. Hmmm…maybe this Fall I will try that.

I cut out the vinyl lettering with my Roland Stika vinyl cutter, but you could easily just print this Bloom pdf out (the font is Café Rojo) on paper (maybe with a cute print) and decoupage it right on your sign, leaving some space so you can see the your wrinkled tissue border around it. (Do a test run with this method…some printer inks smear with the decoupage medium. If yours does, I have heard that if you spray your printed page with hair spray, it will fix the problem.)

So, there you have it. Simple, yet profound at the same time.

Unfortunately the pictures don’t really show the fun texture, but I really like the effect. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think! Now, go BLOOM!

(This project was featured as one of 6 Spring-Inspired Projects at the Do Tell Tuesday Link Party! Thanks Lisa, Diane, Cassie and Tori!)

Giant DIY Satin Flowers

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 spcountrygal Craft, Decorating, DIY, Home Accessories, Pillow, Super Saturday, Thrift Store Craft, Decorating, DIY, Fabric, Home Accessories, Pillow, Super Saturday, Thrift Store

Remember this post where I showed you how to make adorable satin flowers? Well, I love those little flowers so much because they can add cute touches to anything from hair, to clothing, to home accessories, to purses, to gift packages. To be honest, though, they are a bit small to add a lot of WOW to a room. You know the theory that “bigger is better”? Well, it is if we are talking about bigger budgets, bigger backyards, bigger pieces of chocolate cake. Bigger thighs? Maybe not so much. An-y-way. I thought that I could take this idea of making satin flower up a notch and make one, well, bigger. The process was pretty much the same except I added more layers. Eleven, to be exact:

For a base, I covered a circle shaped pieced of cardboard with fabric (to keep it pretty) to add stability:

Of course I glued the flower layers to the ugly side so the bottom looks nice and finished.

This finished flower turned out to be about 8 1/2 inches wide. Big enough to make a statement in a frame that I backed with unpainted textured wallpaper:

I thought that it turned out pretty good, and I’ll admit that I excitedly thought, “I MADE that!” every time that I walked past it. The above picture just doesn’t do it justice. The satin is so beautiful and I love the color that the fabric turns when the flame melts the edges. Come to my house sometime and you will see.

After I had walked past it a hundred times or more I got thinking again. Dangerous! I adopted a new theory, ” If bigger is better, gigantic is the best!”. Are you with me?

I looked in my fabric stash and found this lovely blouse that had been purchased and cut up for my daughter’s school project last year. This little number set me back probably $.50. Way cheaper than fabric store fabric. I didn’t want to ruin good fabric if my big idea didn’t work.

I totally know what you are thinking. “How could you cut up such an stylish blouse?” I know, right?

As I started cutting I realized something awesome, this 100% polyester fabric tears really easily. In no time at all I had a large stack of fabric squares. The largest squares were cut out of the back of the blouse, but I was amazed at how much fabric was in each sleeve. I didn’t even try to count how many layers this flower has. I just know it was a lot because I wanted my gigantic flower to be nice and fluffy.

Using the same process that I showed you in my Super Simple Satin Flower tutorial I started melting my edges. Unfortunately, my hubby was working at home when I made this and I knew that he would not welcome the thought of me putting fabric over a flame in the house so I did it on my front porch. Trust me, it is much faster to do indoors. Every little breeze makes the candle flicker.

I made a cool little video to show you a way that I found to speed up the process, but ding-dang-dong, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to add it in WordPress. I will keep trying to figure out how to add the video, but basically, just take one side and simply fanfold the edges (maybe a 4-6 inch section) and hold the fanned area vertically about the candle’s hot spot to melt a larger section at a time. Quickly spread out the fanned out area just in case parts fused together and then melt any sections that might have been missed. Again, don’t put the fabric IN the flame, just OVER the flame. We are melting, not burning the edges. It probably took me an hour to melt all of my edges.

Once all of your pieces are melted, start stacking, largest on the bottom and work your way to the top. Many of my pieces were similar in size and that is okay. Just do this:

See how I put the glue down and scrunched the fabric to make sure the layers beneath can be seen. This also adds wrinkles which help add volume.

When I got to the center area, I took 4 of my smaller melted shapes, pulled the center down to form a cone shape and glued them down to hide all of the hot glue spots. At this point, I still had some extra melted fabric sections so I folded them in half and glued in the bare areas.

Ta-dah! This baby is about 14 inches across! It’s gigantic!

Here, you can see how I added it to a throw pillow:

And here I attached it to a framed mirror:

In all honesty, this bright blue doesn’t go with anything in my house, BUT, my daughter is going away to BYU this fall and this BYU Blue gigantic flower will go with her. Now that I know that it IS possible to make a Gigantic Satin Flower, I’m making one for me!

So, whadda-ya think? Was my $.50 investment + 1 1/2 hours of my time worth it?

(Here is a different blouse makeover project that I made)

DIY: From Blouse to Pillow in 10 Minutes Flat

February 26, 2015September 19, 2016 spcountrygal Craft, Decorating, DIY, Home Accessories, Quick Project, Sewing, Thrift Store Craft, DIY, Home Accessories, Quick Project, Thrift Store

Do you have pillow forms hiding at your house? Maybe in your garage? Closet? Craft room? Yeah, me too. And when I say “pillow form”, I am also referring to ugly throw pillows that just need to be updated. Like the ugly hunter green checkered pillow that I adored in the 90’s. It has been hiding in the garage for the last 10+ years. Well, I resurrected it today with this:

I know what you are thinking… that is one stylish blouse. Am I right? Or am I right? Or am I right? The fabric is a really shiny rayon/polyester mix that doesn’t photograph well, but you get the gist. This blouse came from my local, small town thrift store that likes to do deals like “as many clothes as you can stuff in a bag for $2” sales. Yep, I shoved this in my bag, knowing that I wanted it for the fabric only. I wanted to see if I could use it to make some of these silk flowers:

Unfortunately, my gray shiny blouse was an epic fail for that project. Caught on fire! Luckily, I was near the kitchen sink. I know that polyester fabric melts, so I just “Bing”ed the question, “Is rayon flammable?”. The answer, “Yes. Very much so.”. Perhaps I should have checked before I lit it with a candle. Hmmm…you learn something new every day.

I couldn’t let the blouse go to waste, I mean, it cost me a quarter. I got my thinking cap on and thought of my ugly hunter green checkered pillow hiding in my garage and out it came. Remember this pillow tutorial where I made a heart-shaped pillow out of a sweater with buttons? Same concept here. I just cut out two rectangles just a bit bigger than my pillow form using the front and the back of the blouse and then sewed around all four sides. No need to leave an opening so I could shove the form in and hand sew it shut. No way… that is where the buttons come in handy. Check it out:

Can you see how I made the buttons (which were purposely hidden on this particular blouse) off center. Much better than sticking them smack-dab in the middle. Don’t you agree. I made a floppy bow using one of the sleeves and just safety pinned it on. That way I can reposition it later if I want to. I will show you how I did the bow some other time. Promise.

Since it is a rectangular pillow, it can sit either way:

Now you can see why I just pinned the bow on… I might want to change the position depending on which direction the pillow faces.

I seriously spent more time getting my sewing machine set up and then put back away than I spent making this simple pillow. You have GOT to try one for yourself. Resurrect an old pillow of your own. Time to do some blouse shopping.