Flower Headbands

So camp week on the blog got a little derailed due to other work obligations - but it is kicking back off now and will bleed into the beginning of next week. My sister, mom, nieces, and I are traveling to the Big Apple for the 4th - so I am sure I will have lots to report about that when I return. So anyway, at camp I helped out in the jewelry making class with the very creative Miss Chelsea Nimmo - she found all these ideas online and orchestrated the whole shebang. The first day of jewelry making we made these whimsical flower headbands.

Yes, I am wearing a flower in my hair in the woods. :-)

Chelsea bought strands and stems of flowers from the craft store, felt, and bunches of headbands and hair ties for this project. If you want to make these you will also need a hot glue gun and sharp scissors to snip the stem of the flower. Read more about how to make this project with a little different twist here - or read on.

I started with a black headband, then picked out the flower I wanted to use. I clipped the stem of the flower super close to the base so it would sit flat on my headband. Next I cut out two pieces of felt (the felt can either match your hair, the flower, or the headband) about the size of the base/green part on the back of the flower.

Next, I glued one circle of felt to the base of the flower with hot glue. (Thanks goes to the lovely camper who is demonstrating the process here.)

Then I held the headband up against the first piece of felt and hot glued the second circle of felt to the first one so the headband was sandwiched in between the two felt pieces. I was careful to not get too much glue on the elastic so that it could still stretch, but I think it would be ok either way.

That's it! Super easy. Here's the jewelry making class rocking our new headbands!

Camp Week

 I just survived another week of camp counseling... out in the woods and the elements and mud and dirt... you get the picture. But I love it for some reason (love, relationships, some may say God :-)). This year I ended up in the newest cabin which was nice, it still smelled like wood instead of stinky teenagers :-).

This week I will be blogging all about what I did at camp... which is surprisingly very DIY related. I was assigned to teach Fashion Design and I helped out in Jewelry Making and T-Shirt Time. I will share my adventures in each. To kick things off though I have a project I did before I left to help decorate my cabin. I whipped up these pennant flags a few days before I left. I took whatever felt I had laying around and cut them into triangles using a pattern I free-handed (on the back of a Joann's ad).

 

I tried to lay them out in some sort of pattern that was pleasing to the eye.

Then I took a hole punch and punched each edge at the top of the triangle. The punch wasn't strong/sharp enough to punch all the way through, but that ended up working out perfectly, it made a little half circle flap instead. I picked out thickish ribbon and strung it though each half circle - you can see the flaps on the light pink one below. 

I tried them out in my kitchen first...

And here they are in my cabin... I was a little worried the parents dropping their kids off would think I was unstable (a.k.a. pink crazy) but it must have been ok because they all left their kids!

Adventures in Jewelry Making on Wednesday, be sure to check back!

The Art of Dress(ers)

My poor husband has been using a podium shelf for a dresser for almost a year. When I saw a gaudy bright yellow dresser at Goodwill for $7, I thought I might know just the man who could use it. But the yellow had to go. I collected inspiration photos for what I wanted to do on the dresser for awhile before I finally decided to go with inspiration that was already in our bedroom - our bedspread.



Here's how the magic happened. Check out what the dresser looked like before:

When we took the drawers out to sand them we found this message inside:

Baby D - 1982. I have some 30 year old baby's dresser. :-) I actually really appreciate this little note. It makes me imagine an expecting couple out in their garage getting their new nursery ready - such a cute picture, until they chose this way overstimulating yellow. I wonder if that baby ever slept a wink. Where is Baby D now??

The knobs were all painted on so I had to knock them off with the end of a screwdriver. TJ had to fill some holes in the top of the dresser with wood filler to level things out.

I love the stark difference in the color comparison in these pictures. The gray is just so much more relaxing!

After the dresser was all painted gray (the same gray as the walls in our bedroom - Behr's Gentle Rain) it was time to make some artsy magic.

Needless to say I was very anxious especially when it comes to painting skinny lines. I took solace in the fact that the flowers on our bedspread look sort of wiggly and hand drawn so if it turned out awful I could just claim it was the look I was going for. I decided to just go for it and made a quick drawing of a flower on the bedspread to use as a reference as a drew the flowers out on the drawer fronts.
 

I used pencil first, then went over my lines with metallic paint and a skinny paintbrush. I used a polka-dotter (seen 2 pictures down) to make the dots in the centers.

The last step was painting the knobs and putting them back on. I used Krylon metallic silver spray paint to quickly cover them.

See the resemblance?

I think the actual drawers are much appreciated in TJ's closet - not to mention how much cleaner it looks to not have open shelves in there any more! And it sure looks good with that swanky new floor. :-)

Our Elegant New Floor

 Here is what our floor looked like before, after we tore up the carpet and T.J. painted the floors white:

I knew we wouldn't keep it that way for long, but it was a nice substitute until we had the time/money to put in the real stuff (and by real stuff I still mean fake - we bought snap together laminate). We were way sick of the carpet that was in there when we moved in. Now we have something much more beautiful and "elegant" as I like to call it. Here T.J. is putting in the first couple boards.

 

We decided to purchase the flooring from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore - we had found some at a similar price at Menards, but ultimately went with the ReStore after one of my students gave a speech about the great things the ReStore does with the money they make. I was sold (needless to say he got an A :-)).

T.J. was totally convinced this dark wood color would make our house look like a museum.  I knew dark was what I wanted though so I stuck to my guns. I think he has warmed up to it now.

By the end of the first long day we were 1/2 way done (below) - before we could even start though I spent 2 days painting all the trim white. It was worth all the work. I love the way the white trim pops against the dark floor.

I think T.J. would tell you it was a pretty easy job, just time consuming. We watched a couple videos before he started to figure out how this whole thing should go down. This Old House has a good one, but really just getting in there and figuring it out on your own seemed to work best for T.J.

 Almost done! It was quite a messy process.

And then... after 2 long days, it was done! Only one more long Monday night of installing the quarter round and we were able to move our furniture back in and enjoy.

New curtains too!

Lola likes showing it off too. The dogs have struggled a little with how slick it is - but they are getting used to it. The floor makes me smile every time I go into the bedroom now and especially when I get up in the morning. Definitely worth the cost and the money!

Outdoor Pillows

In light of my other recent backyard projects (like this flower pot holder and the garden) I thought it was high time for some more fabric outside. I picked up this cheerful yellow, green, and pink outdoor fabric at Hancock fabrics back when I lived in South Carolina. I had promised T.J. I would make him a hammock pillow after I got him a hammock for his birthday in April, so I cut two pieces of fabric - one rectangle for an Adirondack (I am shocked at the spelling of this word) chair pillow, the other longer rectangle for the hammock pillow. I just sort of eyeballed the size for hammock pillow and used a pillow form size + 1/2 inch on each side for the square pillow.

T.J. caught me trying out the new pillow shortly after I put it out there -

 I made it long enough so we can share if we need to!

I think they really help brighten up our outdoor space. I like to think about our backyard as another room in our house, and adding fabric touches makes it feel more comfortable and homey out there.