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.
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.
And then it was ready to hang!
It’s a little touch of the red, white and blue!
This is a quick and easy craft, but looks great and shows you are ready to celebrate our freedom and our country.
Thank you so much for coming by today! I appreciate each and every one of you! Have a happy 4th of July!
Here are a few more patriotic posts you may enjoy!
Good morning friends! Can you believe we are in September? 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!
Good morning! How have you all been? I have been good, but so busy with a new project! I’m so excited about this one! My husband and I bought a new travel trailer and are doing renovations on it! I’ve wanted to do this for several years and now I finally get the chance to do it!
I loved our last little trailer, but now that my kids are adults, it was just too small for all of us. You can see a partial makeover I did on that trailer here.
As you can see, this trailer is much bigger! It’s actually bigger than what we were looking for, but the timing and the price were right, so we couldn’t pass it up.
I was specifically looking for the separate bedroom so I wouldn’t have to make up the couch or table every day. I love all the storage too! These pictures were from the sales ad. I love the walk around bed!
Can you believe the size of the bathroom? Most trailers with this layout have the bathroom split with the hallway down the middle, but this one is all on one side, so it is quite large. There are two doors into the bathroom, one from the bedroom and one from the hallway.
Are you loving all the brown!? The couch and the table are part of the slide-out, which gives so much space! I really like this type of dinette because it goes room for more people to sit around it. You can see the arm of a chair at the bottom corner. There are two swivel chairs that sit in front of the big window in the back of the trailer.
More brown! It is so depressing! But here is the kitchen, with so much storage and even some real counter space! It has a nice size refrigerator too.
While I love the layout of the trailer and the space we will have, I was not loving all the brown. 🙂 So here is where the makeover comes in! The first step is to clean. Ugh! Prepping is the worst, but so important! Don’t skip this step!!
CLEAN
I washed down all the walls and wood with a mixture of TSP and water. Anything you are going to paint, wallpaper or add peel and stick tile to, needs to be cleaned. Our trailer was pretty dirty, so it needed cleaned anyways.
REMOVE EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO GO
After cleaning, we removed all the cupboard doors, drawers and anything else that had to go. We took down the valances over the windows and doors, a shelf, and took off the outlet covers to get ready to paint.
SAND
But before painting, everything needed sanded. Even the walls! The ‘wallpaper’ isn’t really wallpaper and it’s not worth trying to take it off. You don’t need to sand down to bare wood, but rough up the surface so the primer and paint have something to stick to.
TAPE AND PRIMER
Once everything is sanded, you need to tape around anything that isn’t going to get painted. We didn’t paint the ceiling, so we had to tape around the whole top edge. We also taped around window and door frames. Finally, it is time to use primer. I used my favorite, Kilz. On the walls we did one coat of primer, but for the dark wood, it needed two coats. Be sure to let each coat dry in between. All the cupboards and drawers were taken off, cleaned, sanded and then primered in our garage.
I took off all the knobs and drawer pull and handles and spray painted them gold. I even did the screws! Crazy, I know.
PAINT
Now it was finally time to paint! I had found a big 5 gallon bucket of Oops! paint at Home Depot a few years ago and I had plenty left. It is Behr, Swiss Coffee. It was the perfect color for a big freshen up! Again, we painted 2 coats of paint all over and some of the dark brown even got 3 coats. I went around after everything was dry and used a small paint brush to fill an any areas that were missed.
Yes, this is a ton of work, but so worth it!! The trailer looks so much lighter and now I have the fun of decorating! I’m going to give you a sneak peak, but I will post the whole thing in a couple of weeks. We are going camping in it and I can’t wait to try it out!
Here is the bedroom after primering. The cupboard doors were taken off to be painted in the garage. You can see the tape all around the top edge since we weren’t painting the ceiling.
Eeekk! Doesn’t this look so much better!!! I can hardly believe how much brighter it is!
One more peek! The dining area is all painted but no curtains or many accessories yet!
I can’t wait to show you the finished trailer in a few weeks!! It was so much work, but I am so glad we took the time to do it right and now we can just sit back and relax!
Have you ever redone a trailer? I loved looking at all the ideas on Pinterest! See you in a few weeks!
Good morning! I was hoping to have this out earlier today, but that just didn’t happen! But this is such an easy project, you can definitely finish it in time for St. Patrick’s Day! Also, it could easily be changed for other holidays, like Easter, which is just around the corner!
I started out with an old canvas I had. This actually had a picture on it and I painted it, but picking one up from the store is super easy. I also had some burlap squares on hand.
I cut the burlap a little larger than the canvas so that I had enough burlap to wrap around the sides. I did iron my piece too. 🙂
I used Elmer’s Craft Bond, which is a spray to attach my burlap. I sprayed it on the front and sides of the canvas and then laid the burlap on top and smoothed it out.
I folded in the corners as tight as I could and used hot glue to secure them.
Now I have nice smooth surface!
I dug through my fabric and found two green ones I thought would work. You could also use scrapbook paper or a thick wrapping paper.
I printed out two different sizes of shamrocks I found on a Google search. Then I cut them out and laid them on the burlap until I found the way the right layout.
I used chalk to trace around the shamrock onto the fabric and then cut it out with fabric scissors.
I used the spray glue to attach the shamrocks and then pulled out my buttons to add some accents to my shamrocks. I played around with them a bit, starting with green and gold, then some yellow and finally decided it needed a little bit of black to really stand out. If the button is the type with a shank on the back, I cut it off with wire cutters.
I used tacky glue to attach the buttons, layering some on top of each other and setting others into little groups.
I placed it on my mantle with a few other spring items.
What do you think? Pretty easy, right? I might even make a few more for other holidays, I hope you have a great week!
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