Project two COMPLETE! Knife Block

Ok...took me longer than I thought...but I blame my husband for dragging his feet to varnish it! LOL
I didn't stencil it with a letter like the craft called for cause I was just happy with the colour. So here it is...the original...


And MINE!

Project two almost finished!

My second project I completed mostly but then my husband said it should be varnished and offered to do it...so who knows when it will be finished? LOL But MY end is complete.
I wanted to try to do projects that I could complete without having to buy anything. Something simple, easy, that wouldn't take a long time...so I had seen this one idea on Pinterest that I knew I could do easily.
See below:

So since I too had a boring old knife block, I thought I should try painting it and see what happened. I ended up painting it a green shade cause it goes with my kitchen colours pretty well. Then I hadn't read how the girl distressed hers so I tried to mix a few colours together and used a plastic fork to give wavy lines...yeah it looked that stupid too...so I repainted over it (I just used acrylic paint cause I have tons) and then read how she did it and went "OH!" borrowed some sandpaper from my hubby and voila! It now looks like it's supposed to. But my husband wants to varnish it to protect...ok, good idea...so once he does that, I will post the final pic. Another mini project done. I just bought all the supplies and fabric for my upcoming "big" project that I'm going to start working on tonight (if I don't fall asleep too early!)...stay tuned!!

Project one complete!

So after promising myself I would complete a project I started, I actually did it...I had it done by Saturday afternoon, which impressed me!
Step one, find the wooden "A" I had bought for Abby for Christmas two years ago...

Step two, paint the wooden A all white. I thought about using a funky colour but with me using cool buttons, I was worried it would mess up the look. I was trying to keep it simple. (*mental note: when painted something wooden and having to paint all over, don't use newspaper! I ended up switching to aluminum foil instead)

After that, I got out my trusty glue gun and, making sure Abby was occupied and NOT going to try to grab anything from me, I set to work, gluing yellow and pink buttons to it in a random (yet making sense) way. I added the ribbons first and then glued the button over top. It took no time at all. I added a little colourful glitter glue to a few buttons and stacked a few buttons for a layered look. I think it turned out pretty good and though I'm sure I won't be doing a craft every weekend, I finally accomplished a craft that I'm proud of! And it cost me $0 to do it since I already had all the supplies! Here is the end result!

First challenge

Ok, so I love decor, pretty things and have no money to buy that stuff. So what I am going to attempt to do for my first project (on this blog) is to take what I already have and do something crafty. I always tend to get excited about something, start it and then peter out, so I'm hopefully going to alleviate that by sticking to small projects that don't take me oodles of time.
PROJECT 1:
I bought this "A" wooden letter for Abby for Christmas when she was like 3 months (I got it at the dollar store and thought I'd do something crafty with it...yeah...two years later). I recently came across it and thought I should really do something with it. Then I saw this:

I thought, "Ok, I have the letter, I have paint to paint it with and I have a ton of buttons that I could decorate it with."
So this weekend, I will attempt to recreate this for my girl. I shall take a picture of the completed project and post something (victory hopefully) on Monday! Wish me luck!

My creative goals

I've always had an interest in crafting. As a kid, I always loved drawing fashion, I created my own paper dolls and made my own "clothes" for them. I tried my hand at cross stitching, embroidery, painting, watercolours, and yet, I never seem to be happy with my results, get frustrated and give up. Yep, I'm a quitter. I remember making doll clothes for my step daughter's Barbies and sometimes they turned out pretty cool. But I was no master sewer. I even have my crafty books. I have scrapbooks (constant work in progress), my little scraps of words and images that I want to put in books, clothes ideas for my "look book", images of home stuff for my "home wish book". People see me with magazines, hear me tearing out pages and don't even blink anymore. My glue stick, scissors and books come everywhere with me, hoping for a chance to put them together. And yet, I constantly feel like I'm not completing things.
I have super cool ideas and horrible follow through. I don't know HOW to fix it, but I have been toying around with the idea of doing a blog about my experiences and trying to be crafty...maybe even getting better at it along the way and documenting my successes (and failures). Here's how THAT started: First, I joined Twitter (still can't remember why), then I was looking for famous people to follow and found Lauren Conrad (of the Hills, which I loved watching). I followed her and even though I didn't do much "tweeting", I liked reading her tweets. I followed one tweet link to her site and started reading her blogs. Finding these interesting, I read one about her addiction to Pinterest. I had never heard of this, so of course, being the journalist I am (three years of being a reporter and now anytime I don't know something, I Google it!), I Googled it. Then I realized you had to join to be a part of it. So I joined (it was free, otherwise I wouldn't have) and became HOOKED. There are all these images of stuff (clothes, hairstyles, home decor, colour options, funky stuff) and you "repin" it to your page and can go through the stuff anytime you want. It's like someone went inside my brain, realized how hopeless I was and took all my little scraps of paper and put them online (my husband would be SOOO proud!). I repinned half the board and then realized I needed to organize my pins...I was in heaven. I could add, move, delete my pins and man, it was addictive! So I would click on others' pins and then end up following the link to their blogs and most of what I was clicking on were people's experiences with crafting. I was so inspired. I have so many ideas. Now, I have to find the motivation to do them.
First one...I found an image of this Heart shaped image with words written in it. I thought it looked so cool. I figured out how to do it...harder than it first looked...and went out, bought a frame and printed the image out...and it looked like a fourth grade project. I had planned to give it to my mom for her birthday but honestly, I couldn't...it sucked too much. I'll attach a pic of the project and then my version. I haven't given up on it...but it needs serious tweaking to make it way better.
So I plan to use this blog to blog about what I am inspired by and then to post what I have accomplished (or haven't).
Right now, my focus is on Abby's year 1 scrapbook (and yes, she's currently 2 years old and almost 2 months...I told you I suck!) and the frame for my mom.
Abby's scrapbook—I have 6 pages done (I'm using a friend's template, with each page representing a month, plus the day of her birth and me preggo). I will post pics as I get them done...
Here's page 1

Wish me luck!