Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Whimsical (Faux) Dreamcatcher

Jessica Smith

I found a bunch of unused ribbon when cleaning my craft room a few weeks ago and decided to put it to use by turning it into a whimsical dreamcatcher.

For this project I needed:

  • 1 small embroidery hoop
  • Lots of ribbon
  • Tape
  • Embellishments
  • Thread
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Steps:

  1. First, separate your embroidery hoop. You only need the inner circle.
  2. Take ribbon and wrap the embroidery hoop. Secure the ends with tape or glue. Mine didn’t meet up, but it didn’t matter.
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  3. Create a hanger for the dreamcatcher by knotting a piece of ribbon in the empty area or where your ends meet. Wrap that ribbon around to cover the tape/glue used to secure the other ribbon. Knot to secure the hanger and tuck and excess ribbon  and the knot underneath ribbon wrapped around the hoop.
  4. Hang your colorful ribbon in random lengths along the bottom of your dreamcatcher, opposite the hanger. Depending on the style of ribbon, I either knotted the ribbon to keep it secure, or simply looped it through itself to keep it attached. (Tip: The thick, wavy ribbon was really hard to knot, so I looped this to secure. Thinner strands knotted and likely would’ve fallen off over time. I basically judged by the style of ribbon.)
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    I wanted more color and more volume, so I ran to Michael’s to grab a few more spools of ribbon.
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  5. Add any embellishments you want! I made a felt flower for mine. You can see a tutorial for that here. To secure it to the dreamcatcher I simply stitched it through a few strands of the ribbon I’d wrapped around the hoop.
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  6. Hang and enjoy!
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It’s not a real dream catcher because I didn’t add strands of ribbon through the middle of the hoop to catch dreams, but it’s so charming nonetheless.

Pro tip: Ribbon is shockingly expensive. I had a bunch in my craft room, and for the extras I hit up the ribbon dollar bin at JoAnne’s (pre-project) and the $0.50 ribbon section at Michael’s (mid-project). Overall, this cost me $3.50 for the extra ribbon and $1.17 for felt — I had the rest of the supplies on hand. It’s even cuter since it cost under $5!

Craft Projects

DIY Yarn Tassels and Branch Art

Jessica Smith

I’ve needed a craft project in my life. I’ve spent a bunch of time cleaning up my craft room (which quickly becomes our crap room), and noticed that my work bench needed a little something. After perusing Pinterest and taking stock of my supplies, I decided to try my hand at making yarn tassels.

Tassels are super easy to make– the perfect, mindless craft to do while watching a movie or a preseason football game. Yes, I just finished this as we watch the Ravens preseason game, which started a few minutes ago. Can you believe it’s football season already? Me neither.

Anyway, here’s how I made the tassels. First, I took my yarn and grabbed the end in my hand. Then, I wrapped the yarn from my hand to my elbow, back and forth in circles, until I’d circled my arm 15 times. This created a good length of tassel for what I was looking to create.

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Next, I took the yarn off my arm and cut at the top and again at the bottom. Now I had about 30 (if I counted correctly as I wrapped… and let’s be real, I’m easily distracted) strings of yarn about the same length as each other.

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After this step, I cut a piece of yarn and wrapped it around the cut bunch of yarn, knotting it securely at the midpoint of the group of yarn. I also knotted it at the top.

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At this point, I had an unruly yarn octopus. Time to tassel. I cut another piece of yarn and knotted it around the yarn, which at this point has folded in half over the hanger I just made.

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I left a little tail of yarn, then started wrapping the long yarn around the yarn until it was at its end. Then, I knotted the end of that string with the tail I’d left earlier. I trimmed the leftover yarn and tucked the knot under the freshly wrapped yarn.

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That’s it, folks. Each tassel takes a minute or so to make. They go really quick!

I had light pink, coral, teal, white and gray yarn, so I made tassels for a few days as we vegged on the couch. Then, when I had more than I needed, I grabbed a birch branch that I brought back from Maine last year and strung the tassel along the branch. You can easily go in and shorten the length of your tassels if they are too long by tying a knew knot and trimming the excess yarn.

When I had the branch filled to a capacity I was happy with and in a pattern I liked, I wrapped gray yarn around both ends and created a hanger for this new tassel art. Then, I hammered a nail into the wall above my craft room workbench and hung up my masterpiece!

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How cute did that turn out!? It’s just the pop of color and texture my craft room needed. That teal wall had been empty for too long!

Furniture

Fixing up a busted dresser

Jessica Smith

Gosh, it’s been at least a year, if not more, since I fell in love with this antique dresser at a thrift store near my house.

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The zebra(ish) wood was to die for and the price was right, so I scooped it up and let it sit sit sit for a long while. Even though it didn’t work well (broken drawer pulls & drawers that slid too far in or sat unevenly), I still stored lots of goodies in it. Last night, I decided to take advantage of my break from grad school to fix up the piece. I almost died doing it (OK, not really… but take your time with mitre saws, people!).

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The main issue with the dresser was with the top two drawers. Over the years, the center support had fallen out. This caused both drawers to lean into the dresser and into the drawer beneath when pushed all of the way in. You could get them to sit right, but one nudge would send both askew and all of the things you were storing crashing to the back of the drawer.

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To fix this, I cut down some scrap wood to fill the gap from the front of the dresser to the back. I screwed in two support blocks, one at the front and one at the back, to nail this makeshift rail into. Then, I glued and nailed a thin piece of wood to act as the rail guide so one drawer couldn’t encroach on the other drawer’s space (my sisters and I could have used something like this in the back seat of mom’s car growing up!)

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I let that dry overnight because I used WAY too much wood glue. This morning I put all of the drawers back and fixed some busted hardware, making for one beautiful, well-working dresser!

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The dresser still isn’t perfect. There are nicks along the edges and a few chips in the top. But it’s GORGEOUS! I can look past the imperfections (OK, I love the imperfections) now that it’s working good as new.

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I mean, just look at those curves! Ow owwww!

The one remaining thing to figure out is if I want to replace the top two drawer pulls. They don’t work the best and only one set had the decorative washers to hid the hardware — if you look close you can see dar circles around the top left drawer pull. Other than that, this dresser is good to go!