Tag: birds

Craft Projects, Holiday, Valentine's Day

Love Birds

Jessica Smith

Red love bird

I love birds and I love Valentine’s Day, so naturally I would do a bird-themed craft project for the Feb. 14 holiday. While Valentine’s Day is still a month away (a month to the day today!), I wanted to get started early on the few projects I have planned so the decorations can be out an about for a bit. I only have one Valentine’s Day decoration — a cute wreath my step mom made me — so I need just a few more things around the house.

As I sat down to watch the football game last night, I got out my sewing kit and a few pieces of felt. To start on my love birds, I cut out two pieces to make the body.

Love bird project

Then, I starting stitching around the outside of the body.

Love bird project2

I doubled up the thread so it would show more on the stitching.

Love bird project3

I kept stitching all the way around the body until there was a small slit open by the tail. I stuffed the body using some leftover batting.

Love bird project4

Love bird project5

Once it was all stuffed, I sewed the remainder of the body closed.

Love bird project6

Time to add the rest of the pieces! I cut out a beak, wing and feet, and sewed each piece to the bird.

Love bird project7For the wing, I used a heart!!!

Love bird project8

Lastly, I added an eye using thread.

The red bird is for my hubby. Then I made a white one for me! For the second bird, I sewed all of the extra pieces on first. … the beak, the wing, the feet and the eye. That was a lot easier.

Love birds

We have the cutest love birds. ❤

All in all, it took me less than two hours to make these two love birds. Now they are sitting on our mantel — the first of the Valentine’s decor for our house.

Love bird project Mantel

L.O.V.E.

Craft Projects

Feather Coat Pins and Hair Barrettes

Jessica Smith

It’s almost coat season, and I’ve got the world’s most boring, brown coat that I’m never super excited to wear. Actually, I hate most coats…. I am allergic to wool, so I’m always stuck with the oversized down coats instead of the super stylish pea coats. Cry myself a river, right?

Anywho, I decided to try my hand at making a coat pin to jazz up my brown coat. So, I dug around in my craft room for some supplies and set to work.

Supplies: Feathers, Buttons, Pin backings, Cardboard (I used old coasters), Felt, Hot Glue, Barrette backings (if you want a hair barrette instead of a pin).

Here’s what you do:

1. Gather the supplies above, selecting one button per pin and between 4 – 6 feathers per pin

2. Cut out a small piece of cardboard (or in my case, a piece of the coaster) to glue feathers onto. It can be as large or small as you’d like, depending on how much of a statement you’d like to make with your pin. I’m not that brave, so my cutout was about 2 inches wide. Before you start gluing ( I didn’t this the hard way the first time around), cut out a piece of felt the exact size of your cardboard. This will be the backing on the pin later on.

3. Glue feathers all over your piece of cardboard. Tip: Place the hot glue on the cardboard, not the feather. It becomes almost string-like on the feather and slides off easily. When all of the feathers are on the piece of cardboard and none f the backing shows through, let all of the glue harden. Then, glue on your button. I placed my button at the spot where all of the feather stems meet to hide them. It seemed to work rather well.

4. When everything is good and dry on the front of your pin, flip over the pin and use hot glue to attach the felt backing.

5. Attach your pin backing or barrette clip to your felt with hot glue and let it all dry. I found it useful to fold up a little piece of my coaster and place it in between the prongs of the hair clip so the glue wouldn’t fasten each side to the other.

6. Your pin/barrette is done! Put it on your coat or in your hair and show it off.

I think they are adorable and will really help make my boring coat a little more exciting (whenever I actually dig it out of the closet… I’ll probably be cold for a little while longer).

I think this one is my favorite:

Craft Projects, Thrift Store Finds

Bird Wall Sconce

Jessica Smith

Holy cow, this was an exhausting weekend. As you may know, our dishwasher has been broken for what seems like ages now. We finally got the go ahead from Samsung to return our dishwasher back to Best Buy, so we went there on Saturday to process a replacement. Turns out our dishwasher is already discontinued — guess everyone else thought it sucked, too — so we had to just return the dishwasher for a refund, wait for that to go through, and buy a new one. *sigh* As if that weren’t a hot enough mess, everything in our house seemed to leak this weekend… pipes, washing machine, sink, etc. Ahhhh the joys of being a homeowner. We are hoping to buy a new dishwasher tomorrow *fingers crossed*!!! I would love to fill the gaping hole underneath our cabinets with a working dishwasher and reattach the pipes underneath our sink. Can’t wait.

Luckily, that was the only bad/stressful part of our weekend. We went to a bonfire and I did lots of crafts. Lots!

On to the crafts!!!

I don’t even remember where I picked up these wall sconces, but they were in need of some l-o-v-e love.

I was originally going to spray paint them, but neglected to do so for real. So, I busted out some of my paint samples and got to painting. I went with a light teal and a light brown.

I took off the candle holder with a screwdriver, then painted the back of the sconce teal and the candle holder brown.

After several coats of each color, I painted the outer trim of the sconce a light brown, too.

Once everything was dry, I pulled out a stencil I’ve been wanting to try. This time, I used stencil adhesive. If you use a stencil, USE STENCIL ADHESIVE. It really does help keep the stencil in place while you paint.

I placed my stencil on the sconce exactly where I wanted it, dabbing on the adhesive around the cutouts right before.

Once the stencil was secure (I only waited about a minute after placing it on), I painted the tree brown, the leaves green and the bird blue.

I pulled off the stencil as soon as I was done painting. Once everything was dry, I screwed the candle holder back onto the sconce.

Now that’s an improvement, wouldn’t you say?

I love it!

I do have a confession, though. It wasn’t until I started writing this post that I remembered I have a second sconce somewhere around my house!! Should I make a second bird sconce since it turned out so well, or should I do something completely different?

I hope you all had a great weekend. And a special thanks to those of you who checked out my blog this past weekend — I had a record number of views on Saturday and was so very excited about it. You guys are awesome and I hope you keep coming back for more!