Saturday, 19 January 2013

With Love From The Dollar Store

You gotta love a challenge and using materials from the Dollar Store is an economical way to make a super gift box.

 



I bought this great box for $1 and then typed out a page of the word "LOVE" in all different fonts.  I made a few copies and then used a wet tea bag to stain the pages to look old. 


I was going to use modge podge, but the cost seemed a lot so I used plain white craft glue and watered it down.  After adhering the words I gave it one more coat of the watered down glue and left it to dry.  It's now the perfect box to wrap homemade treats, jewelry or any other gift for that special someone.




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Thursday, 10 January 2013

Have a Drink On Us

You might have seen the stool my youngest son made and finished titled Bird On A Stool (okay so it wasn’t the most original name I came up with).  Now my eldest son who is soon to be 16 finally completed his stool that he also made about three years ago (we’re not actually very good at finishing projects in a timely fashion as you can see).


Matt was not about to spend a lot of time sanding or prepping the stool so homemade chalk paint seemed like the obvious answer.  He came up with the design and painted two coats of red paint, sanding lightly in between. 


Next, he took the logo we had photocopied and covered the back with chalk.  He secured it to the stool and traced the outline of the logo so that it left a chalk outline on the stool when he removed the paper.  Then he filled in the outline with white paint and touched up the red.  To make the stool more durable we used two coats of polyacrylic in satin finish.



I hope you agree it looks good enough to drink!! 
 

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 What about you, do you try to get your kids involved in your projects?
 
 
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Friday, 4 January 2013

American Girl Crocheted Hats

My neices were over last weekend to celebrate Christmas with us and my mom and they brought along their new American Girl dolls. When they went out tobogganing I thought I would quickly crochet a hat for one of the girls. Of course if you make a hat for one doll, you have to make it for the other doll too. Then we had the brilliant idea of making hats in the same style as my neices which required a total of six pom poms. At one point my sister, my mom, my 15 year old son and my neice were all working on these hats with my husband making the pom pom forms!

crochet American Doll hat



I think they turned out great and as we used leftover wool the total cost was $0 so you can't get more budget friendly than that!!



crochet hat American Doll



American Doll crochet hat

Have you made any "family" projects lately?


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Saturday, 29 December 2012

Top Furniture Projects for 2012

Having only started this blog in November I don't have many projects to choose from, but I wanted to look at the best of 2012.

 





Bird On A Stool which was made and finished by my 12 year old son, Justin is a favourite.
 

And My Take On The Union Jack Craze as I was so pleased with how it turned out and it had the most views of any of my projects.


Wishing you and your family good health and great happiness in 2013.
 
 
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Friday, 14 December 2012

PB Inspired Christmas Ornaments

I messed up.  Yup, I was so excited to participate in my first Knock Off link party that I didn't read the instructions properly (another newbie mistake).  I went online and found something that I wanted to use for inspirtation, bought a few supplies and rounded up the rest from our house.  I went full steam ahead and finished it and then went to post.  As I wrote the name of the link party, I realized that it was Holiday Knock Off Decor Party and I hadn't made anything holiday decor-ish.  Back to square one and only a few days left....

I came up with these two Pottery Barn ornaments that are about $17 each for inspiration.

 
Off to the dollar store and down to my basement I went for supplies (in a family of boys you would think I could find some old toys, but no, nothing).


I bought two plastic cars, drilled a very small hole in the middle of each and screwed in one of the eye things you put on the back of pictures to attach the wire to hang them with. I then gave them each two coats of spray paint and left them to dry. next I threaded the ribbon through the eye hooks. I used my finger and white glue, covering a one to two square inch area and then putting glitter on and repeating the process and left them to dry.

I found a spare piece of square wood dowling stuff (this is not the term to use if you go to buy this in the lumber store unless you want them to laugh at you). I cut some small pieces off and painted them to look like gifts and hot glued them on the back and this is what I came up with...even my kids and husband were impressed!
 
 
 
 

 
 
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Monday, 10 December 2012

Bird On A Stool

My 12 year old son and his brother, Matthew, both made a stool like this at a wood working course a couple of years ago.  (See Matt's stool HERE).  It sat in our basement unused until now.  He has been watching me refinish furniture and blog and I finally convinced him to work on it.  I Googled some pictures for inspiration and he set to work.

 

 
 

 
 
 
 


















 
First he sanded it smooth.








Then he stained it using Special Walnut colour.








 






Then we found a bird image online, enlarged it to the size we wanted it and printed. We cut the bird out and he put in on the stool and traced around using chalk.








We were going to use homemade chalk paint, but we found the exact colour of paint he wanted in artist acrylic paint and it only took one good coat to cover it.  After we left it to dry overnight two coats of polyacrylic were applied with a light sanding with 220 sandpaper in between.

I hope you agree the finished product is something to be proud of. 


Before




 

  
 


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Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Dollar Store Christmas Word Tree



I'm always looking for little crafty things to do which don't take much time or money. I bought three packages of plain wood words and simply painted and added some glitter I had on hand. Hanging from branches from my neighbours tree (shush, don't tell them) they add a little touch of sparkle to our Christmas decor


 
 
Here's a close up of the words

 
 
 

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