One a Week

One-a-Week / 11

May 22, 2013 · Leave a Comment

It’s been a little bit difficult to get my one-a-week projects done these days. We had a house full of sick (ick?!) and are just about now getting back out of bed to live life again. This project is so sweet and easy! If you remember, we made a doily lamp a million years ago and we have a bunch of left over doilies! We were thinking of things Atlas liked that we can make and he can look at, and we decided on using the doily to make a dreamcatcher!

I like this project because the rules aren’t hard and fast. We used old materials from our wedding and only had to order/buy a few things!

Some basic items you will need are:

feathers
gold paint (we used Martha Stewart from Home Depot)
string
a doily
a round metal hoop (we got ours here for $0.85 each)
fibers and fabrics
super glue

We simply used the string to attach the doily to the gold metal hoop and put a dot of super glue at each point to keep it attached and sturdy.

I know most people cover their loop in fabric, but I liked to gold, so I kept it raw. I dipped the feathers in the gold paint to give the dreamcatcher more shine.

After this point, you can basically let your imagination take you where you want!

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One-a-Week / 9

March 26, 2013 · 1 Comment

I love this one-a-week project because it’s so quick and cheap, yet yields such impact. I collected some geodes over time on ebay and just used super glue and some tiny mighty magnets I got at the craft store.

And there you have it! fridge magnets that are fresh and look more like art than something forgotten to hold up your to-do list.

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One-a-Week / 8

December 5, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Ohhhhh, this one-a-week project was a three week long ordeal! I tried to make air dried porcelain from scratch with zero success. It looked great, but was just too tacky to work with. Twice. An hour of work at each attempt, and eight white glue containers later, I had this glob ready to rest for 24 hours. I took out a chunk to air dry and test. Not loving what happened next.

When it dried, it looked like this crusty yellow mess. Not exactly what we had in mind when we had the idea to make some handmade gifts for family this year.

So, we went and bought some sculpy, and tried again. With the right material in hand (by all means venture and try and make your own air dried porcelain, but we loved the sculpy results!) this project was pretty fun! What you’ll need is:

1 lb of sculpy. We got it for $10 with a 50% off coupon on Michaels.
a template of a house (we drew ours)
a sharp knife
rolling pin
parchment paper

It’s all pretty simple, and we had a fun afternoon making these houses and some other fun stuff we are excited to share later! After you have your supplied gathered, kneed your scuply until it’s smooth and easier to work with then roll out your sculpy to about 1/4 or 1/8 of an inch. You will need it to bake 15 minutes for ever 1/4 of an inch, so keep that in mine when you are rolling out your clay.

Once rolled to the thickness you like, place your template on top and use your sharp knife to cut around.

We made our template with using the little house as a place to put a tea light or small flowers, so we didn’t add a roof on purpose.

We made little snakes and pressed the sculpy up and out and into the cracks to help weld the corners together and waterproof it.

After you spread the clay in the cracks, you are ready to bake! Sculpy is 15 minutes for every 1/4 inch, so we put these in for 20 minutes and it worked great. It bakes exactly how it looks. So if it’s got dust or fingerprints on it when it goes into the oven, that’s how it’s going to come out. Another word to the wise is, it’s slightly soft when it comes out of the oven, and hardens as it cools. We didn’t know this and burt our test piece. Oops.

Joey made this kind-of-like-our-house house “the big house” and I made two smaller ones.

We are super happy with the results and plan to buy another pound of clay this week! We have some ideas for the nursery we are going to try and tackle.

Have you every worked with clay? Let us know what you made with it!

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One-a-Week / 7

November 27, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Good morning lovlies! Did you get a chance to check out some nursery progress a la Joey yesterday? I am wildly in love with the campaign dressers he refinished! Today’s one-a-week is super easy and fun. I am obsessed with super big pom poms. Actually, I really like all pom poms. Our Christmas gifts are looking a little something like this:

I love the hot pink and kelly green thing for Christmas. Pom pom’s just make everything happy, so why not pop some on a pillow (and gift wrap, and to just play with)? The pom pom above is your average size run of the mill pom pom, but the ones below are super extra large pom pom’s you can fit in your fist and I used super soft yarn.

The pom pom maker I got for about $5 and I picked up a bunch of yarn at Michaels. The image above shows an extra large pom pom maker and a super tiny pom pom maker. I also picked up a plastic yarn needle at Michaels in the yarn section. This will make threading your needle through your pillow so much more graceful. You’ll need some good fabric scissors to cut your pom poms in the pom pom maker, it’s just easier. Way easier.

Here is a really good tip. Double and tripple wrap when you use your pom pom maker – you will get the fluffiest funnest pom poms ever! You can even make multi-colored pom poms if you wrap in bits of other colors. We went solid yellow because the pillow I made already had a yellow pattern on it. Make four of the same size pom poms.

See how big and awesome they turn out? I trimmed them a bit and left two long strings (like above) so I could thread into my pillow case and tie the two strands together on the inside of the pillow.

This is a shot of the pillow inside out and how I threaded the yarn through. I just tided a double knot to keep the pom pom in place.

That’s it! It’s super cute an fun and cozy, and going in the nursery!

Like small projects? Check out other one-a-week posts!

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One-a-Week / 6

November 2, 2012 · Leave a Comment

*For those who have asked, we are totally fine and so is the baby! Right now the major struggle is gas (as it is for EVERYONE!). Our house wasn’t ruined as far as we could tell and just some branches and leaves to clean up. We hope you all got out of this safe and sound*

Where did October go?! For a week we were down in Florida, and now it’s been a week of hurricane prep and figuring things out (anyone know any gas stations with gas?!). We hope all of you and yours were safe from the blow of Sandy, and you get back to normal soon. As we slowly get back on track, I wanted to share a project Joey and I split in half, that I am so in love with. The whole thing cost about $15, which I love even more, and is perfect for Winter decor.

This project was inspired by all the antlers I see for $50+ in all types of stores. We got our little antler/skull for $10 at a flea market. I am not quite sure what he was, but let’s pretend he was a very cute jackalope. It was super simple to spruce him up and make him wall ready. I decided to make the tips of his antlers gold. The supplies I used were: gold ink (pregnancy has me doing creative alternatives to spray paint lately, but you can totally use gold spray paint), painters tape to make that super straight line, I used 3M blue and it worked perfect, and a cheapy paint brush. Here is a close up of what happened:

I loved him so much right away, I needed to alter the original plan and talk to Joey about a mount. Joey had some scraps from this insane table he built (for $40 BTW!), and he just used a jigsaw to cut the shape and some 3M sandpaper to mellow out the edges. It was a good call on his part, because I think it turned out exactly how I wanted.

Mounts are relatively cheap and easy to find, but I wanted a true weathered wood look, and we had just the stuff on hand – so why not? Right now he is living on the mantle in our bedroom as we wrap up the legnthy discussion of where are we hanging all the art we have? talk.

Like small projects? Check out other one-a-week posts!

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One-a-Week / 5

October 2, 2012 · 1 Comment

I am in baby stuff overdrive right now. I am gushing over every miniature thing I see, especially things like business suites, loafers, and glasses. Our poor child. We just bought him a green plaid suit jacket, so naturally I needed to make sure he was wearing a real tie under that thing. Surprisingly enough, Joey is totally into the whole “dressing baby up” thing, so I am just going to go with it. This project wasn’t found by any particular pinner, but more of a combination of inspiration from some bow ties pieces I stumbled across and some flat tie shapes sewn on. Below is more up my alley. Vintage ties, edited down and then sewn on the onsie. We did long sleeve because our little guy is being born late January and it will be cold out. You can also pop this on a bib. I think velcro may be your best bet if you do the bib though. And if you are crafty and giving, this would be a super cute gift, no doubt.

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One-a-Week / 4

September 24, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Happy Monday! This weekend it really started to feel like Fall was here, total sweater weather. The puppies have their finest knits on! It was a less than subtle reminder that the holiday season is upon us, and with that comes the parties. This project is so perfect for quick and easy dramatic lighting for a party. Think of a cluster of these above a dining room table, or hang them all choppy for a great photo back drop! They are defiantly sturdy enough to use in every day life, but cheap enough to do a bunch for an event! I can’t lie, I love lighting! Whenever I see a DIY lighting project on Pinterst, I jump to it. I found this one here. You can buy a template, but I didn’t realize any of that until I was curious about taping it all up and actually read the article.

The supplies are pretty simple. I used chipboard, gold ducktape, a hanging light kit from Ikea, and I sprayed a couple of the chipboard triangles with primer and silver spray paint to add a little reflective fun. The trim is a vintage find from our trip to Brimfield, but I actually found it in a little shop in RI.

If you can figure out basic math, you can skip the whole template thing (I think she charges $20 for just the template) from the link above and pop over to ebay (or wherever) and buy some precut chipboard triangles for a couple bucks. To make this size, I needed 16. I will stress, those triangles need to be perfect!

See what I mean? This is the top of the hanging lamp before you cut the triangles to fit the electrical. If they aren;t perfect, it looks like crooked teeth.

I think this was the easiest part, up until this point. I ripped my ducktape town the center to thin it out and give less of a chunky look. I used the Ikea hanging light kit as a template to draw how big I needed the circle to be before I cut it out and installed it. Then me and the tape got into a fight with all the wrinkles and I realized a metallic tape may not have been the best bet for doing this for the first time. Next time – vibrant color tape or vibrant color painted chipboard – and there will be a next time!