Five Easy Valentine Ideas to DIY

January 18, 2024January 11, 20242 Comments

Good morning! This is a post from a few years ago, but I still think these are all cute projects to make for your special Valentine!

I’ve enjoyed seeing some of the Valentine ideas I have been seeing, so I thought I would share a few of my own. I am even adding a new DIY for you!

Valentine Gum and Candy Basket

Get your Valentine’s favorite gum and candy and put it all together in this cute little basket! Add some pretty ribbon as an accent.

2. Valentine Pixie Stix and Flower Vase

Here is another candy idea, but with flowers! It’s a great way to up-cycle a tin can too! This would make a great teacher gift!

valentine mantel pixie stix flower vase 2016

3. Faux Flower Heart for Valentine’s

Here is another project with flowers, this time shaping them into a heart! Of course, you could use any color you want!

4. I Love You Wooden Blocks

This is a little simple project to decorate your home for Valentine’s Day! You could use blocks and letters to spell out whatever you want.

5. Stamped Heart Treat Bag

Here is another sweet idea to make for your Valentine! You could fill the little bag with stickers, jewelry or candy!

I started with a plain muslin bag, pink paint, heart shaped cookie cutter and foam dauber. I wanted to use a rubber stamp, but I couldn’t locate one in my stash, so a cookie cutter was my next choice. It worked great! Just make sure to wash it well before you make your Valentine cookies! 🙂 I added a little bit of paint to the foam dauber and added it inside the heart. Be sure to put a piece of paper or cardboard inside the bag so the paint doesn’t go through.

Once the paint was dry, I got out my letter stamps and some black ink. I picked out the letters I wanted to use. I started with the word ‘love.’

I pressed the stamp into the ink pad and then pressed it onto the bag and the heart. I didn’t worry about keeping the letters straight or even. Obviously!

Don’t they look cute! They are perfect for adding just a little something for your special valentine!

Aren’t these fortune cookies the cutest!! I found them at the Dollar Tree and they come with a special fortune inside. I can’t wait to see what the fortunes will be!

pink painted valentine bags fortune cookie

pink painted valentine bags i love you be mine

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day! If you create one of these projects, I would love to know! Have a great week!

Parisian Halloween Witch Hat

October 12, 2023October 1, 20238 Comments

Hello! I remembered I had this Halloween Witch Hat post from last year, and it turned out so cute, I thought I would share it again! Enjoy!!

It’s time again for the witches, ghosts and goblins to come out! I don’t decorate much for Halloween anymore, now that the girls are older, but we did when they were little. Planning the costume was always a big deal. Then there were the pumpkins to carve or decorate. I have a couple boxes full of foam pumpkins that have been made into elephants, dragons, Garfield, and our dogs! I even have a light up hedgehog! I will have to show you that one sometime. It’s pretty cool! Even though I don’t do much Halloween decorating, when I saw this cute witch hat over at Madeinaday.com, I knew I wanted to try one too.

I didn’t make mine quite as large as Kim did. I wanted to make one for Lauren, because she collects these little decorative hats to display in her bedroom and I thought this would make a nice addition. Here is the list of the supplies:

Supplies:

Floracraft® Make It: Fun® Foam, (2) 3inch discs, (2) 6 inch disc and (2) 17 inch cones
1 sheet of black poster board
2 7/16×36 inch dowels, cut down to around 19 inches each
Black & white contrasting fabric, 1/2 yard of each
Black fuzzy fabric, 1/2 yard
Coordinating ribbon for base
2 flowers
Roll of black tulle
Hot glue & gun, low temp
Black acrylic paint and brush
Black aluminum floral wire 4.6m
Scissors

The cones I bought were only 6″ tall, so then I needed less fabric too. I only bought 1/4 of a yard. I used felt in place of the fuzzy fabric too. In other words, there are lots of ways to make this!

I started out by painting the foam disks with the black paint. This gave them time to dry while I worked on the other parts. I also painted the dowel black.

I traced around a bowl to make my circle (I forgot to buy black poster board, so I just used cardboard, but I did have to cover both sides so the cardboard wouldn’t show). Then I cut the piece of sparkly felt a little bit larger so it could wrap around the edges and be glued down.

I added another piece on this back side to cover the cardboard.

I cut about 2 inches of the styrofoam off the end of the cone. This gives the wire more room to bend once you add the fabric. Poke the piece of wire down into the cone until it feel secure.

Here is the fabric I bought. You could never guess who this was for, right?!

I wrapped some around the cone just to see how much I would need, and then cut a piece off the end of the fabric. After I figured out just how I wanted the design to go, I glued it around the cone. See how the tip bends over? Make sure you have enough wire so you can make the tip of the hat floppy!

After the fabric was glued to the cone, I glued the sparkly felt brim to the bottom of the come. Now for the decorating and embellishing! Here are a few of the things I found: glittery tulle, a feathery ponytail holder and a pink flower clip and some black and silver ribbon.

I don’t have pictures of adding this to the hat, because I couldn’t glue and take pictures at the same time! I first added the tulle in ruffles around the middle, then added the feathers with the flower on top of the feathers. I added the ribbon around the edge of each of the black disks. Once everything was ready, I Poked the dowel through the disks first then the brim of the hat. I had to use a sharp tool to get through the felt. Then I pushed the cone onto the dowel. Once it was far enough on, I put glue on the brim and pushed it up against the cone and let dry.

Here it is!

I think this came out adorable! I want to try one in more neutral colors too. I would love to see yours if you make one too!

How to Make Spooky Books for Halloween

October 5, 2023September 29, 2023Leave a comment

Hi all! This is a post from a couple of years ago. Enjoy!

Good morning friends! Can you believe we are in October? Are you ready for fall? We will have some time to go here before it gets cool. It doesn’t get cool here until about Halloween. But, I have a wedding to plan and it will a traditional wedding, but then a gothic pirate themed reception. So this is the time of year to find the perfect items to decorate with. It’s also fun to find different things I can make ahead of time. Today I am showing you how to make spooky books!

Item List:

Hardcover books
Plastic bin that the books will fit into
Tea
Paper towels
Mod Podge and brush
Bleach and water
Stickers, wood decorations, any other decorations you want to use
Black, gold, and silver paint and foam bruss

I found some outdated hardcover books at a thrift store. It doesn’t matter how new or old they look. Just find the size you like. Next, make yourself some tea! Not to drink though! I made some sun tea and then poured it into a plastic bin. Now, dip your book in! I just did the pages, not the covers. You could also use a brush if that is easier. I dipped in all the sides, letting them soak for about 5 minutes. Then I set them out on a towel to dry.

If you don’t think they are dark enough, go ahead dip them again. The pages get a little wrinkly, but that’s ok. It gives it an older look!

Now that the books are dry, you can move on to the next step. Take your pieces of paper towels and trim them to fit the book. I cut the top and bottom of the paper towels the same size as the books, but I folded in the ends. The books won’t be opened after I am done.

Fill a spray bottle with water and spray down the paper towels on the books. Crinkle them up a bit once they are wet. This is going to give you the old weathered look you want in the end.

Once you have the paper towels the way you want, brush on the Mod Podge. I poured some onto the book and then used a foam brush to spread it all over the book on all sides and edges. Let the books dry. I let them dry overnight.

Now you get to decorate the book! I am making these for the wedding, not just Halloween. I found the scrolly piece and wood piece at a thrift store. So I laid them out the way I thought they would go. I also added stickers. My stickers go along with the wedding theme and last name initial. It won’t matter the colors you use because you are going to paint over it all. Once you have your pieces how you want them, glue them on. I even glued on the stickers so they wouldn’t fall off later.

Once your glue is dry, paint the book. I used black spray paint, but you could also paint the books with acrylic paint. Make sure to get in all the nooks and crevices. Now you can see how the paper towels give it that old look.

Just the black looks kind of boring, but now you get to add the finishing touches! I used a silver paint and lightly went over the raised areas of the book. I used a little gold paint as well. You don’t want too much gold or silver, just some slight touches.

I also bought a strap to keep the book closed. I found it in the fabric department at Hobby Lobby. I glued it on the front and back of the book.

Here are the stickers once they are painted. Looks good, right? Since I didn’t want the books to open, I used some rope, also tea dyed, to tie two of the books together.

I placed the books on my mantle along with some other black and spooky items. Some of them I have also made over.

I love how they turned out! I’m just waiting for a date to be set so I can put it on the third book.

So what do you think? Would you do this to a book? I’m so glad I gave it a try!

DIY Wooden American Flag

June 28, 2022June 23, 20222 Comments

I created a little flag from some of the scrap pieces of wood I have laying around. This one was already painted red, so I figured that would work well for the stripes. Now, I made two mistakes on this craft. 1. I forgot to take pictures of all the parts of the process. It’s not too difficult, so I’m sure you will be able to figure it out. 2. I forgot to paint the star part of the flag white before I painted it blue. But I did come up with a solution.

Like I said, my wood was already red, so I taped off the part for the stars. If I had been thinking, I should have painted this square white before putting the stickers on, but, alas, I didn’t.

I found these stickers at Dollar Tree and stuck on 50 of them. That’s when I realized I should have painted it white, but I really didn’t want to have to redo the stars again. So I just spray painted navy blue over everything.

Once it was dry, I peeled the star stickers off the board. I have a white Sharpie paint pen, so I colored in each of the stars. It really didn’t take too long since the stars are small.

I didn’t get the pictures of the white stripes, but they are book pages with torn edges. I wanted 6 white stripes, 3 short ones and 3 long ones. For the long ones, I had to put 2 pieces together. I used Tacky Glue to attach them.

Really pretty easy! I know you got this!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Dollar Tree Patriotic Basket for Your Front Door

June 22, 2022June 23, 20222 Comments

Good morning! How are you doing today? Have stores and other places started opening up in your area? We were able to travel out of town this weekend! This was the first time since the beginning of March, so we were more than ready to get out of town!

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The basket had a couple of wooden pieces glued on. Not quite the look I was going for. 🙂 I tried to come up with a way to remove them.

So I thought I would try a blow dryer first. It did work, but it didn’t get the glue all the way off. I removed the wood pieces but ended up using the other side of the basket for the front of the basket when I hung it up.

I added some green foam into the basket to secure the flowers. I just cut it with an old knife until it fit.

Next, I cut all the flowers off the big stem until I had individual flowers. I pushed up the leaves too so they were closer to the flower.

I pushed the flower stems in the green foam at different heights and making sure that the same colors weren’t together. I even added a little pinwheel!

I wanted to add one of the wooden stars to the front of the basket so I chose the ‘God Bless America’ star. I feel like our country needs lots of blessings right now. I thought it still seemed a little plain, so I added a piece of red and white polka-dot ribbon around the top of the basket. I also added a piece of ribbon for hanging the basket. I used hot glue to attach both the ribbon and the star.