Gettin' Crafty

Since my big announcement, Fridays are now craft day. (Attention Brook! Come on over!) Uh, and laundry, but that's another story. Anyway, yesterday was spent doing a few fun projects to get started. These are not projects that will be for sale.

This is an example of some of the fun signs I've been making. My cousin got married in November (yes, it is January and no, I haven't sent her gift yet) so I made her a sign with her new last name and their first initials. It wasn't until I had the letters glued down that I realized it spells Ed. Emily and David. I should have done them the other way around. Oh, well!

This is a project I did for my own house. Can you believe it? I usually give it all away, but my sweet hub asked I going to make anything for our house. So, since the lovey-dovey day is right around the corner...

It was a lot of fun making something for me! Wanna know how easy it was? And cheap?

Ingredients:

wood scrap (we all have them)

cardstock from stock on hand

vellum from stock on hand (if you don't have any, get a package of it from Walmart in the stationary section)

wood heart from Micheal's wood shapes row ($.49 or so)

red paint (on hand)

furniture tacks (Joann's - $1.49 for a pack of 100 or so)

ribbons and twine (on hand)

button

hot glue

spray glue

Mod Podge (or Elmer's glue watered down a little)

paint brushes

paper trimmer

Measure block of wood. Type word "love" (or whatever suits your fancy) on Microsoft Word in Rage Italics font. Size it appropriately and print on vellum. Trim cardstock and vellum to size. I left the cardstock a little larger than the vellum for matting. Paint wood with mod podge, apply cardstock and cover with mod podge again. You don't have to wait for it to dry before you add the second coat. Now you do have to wait for it to dry, so at this point, paint the heart. Now the glue should be dry. Spray the backside of the vellum with spray glue and center it on your cardstock. Put nails in the corners. If you are a perfectionist like me you will measure and mark to make sure they are all even. I know. I can't help myself. Now take that cute heart and wrap some ribbon around it. Futz with it till you love it and hot glue it into place. Add a little button (or whatever) for detail, and hot glue the whole shabang on. Don't be shy with the glue. Unless you don't have kids. I always try to imagine how it could be destroyed at my house and that makes me add more glue.

Viola! An adorable sign to decorate your home and make you feel accomplished! Okay, that's what it did for me at least. So fun!!

I also put up a montage of temple pictures on my wall. I tried my hand at photoshop a little and I don't think I'm a photoshopper at all, but the frame looks fab. I borrowed some photos from Flickr. I hope they weren't copyrighted...