Tag: craft

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Floral Mason Jar Wall Vases

Jessica Smith

I never really hung up all of our photos and artwork in our bedroom since I painted it, oh, a year or two ago. I love our wedding pictures, but I wanted more color on the walls. And it’s basically taken me forever to do so.

This is what our bedroom looked like in February of 2015.

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_bed before

We slapped some brighter paint on the walls and got a new bed frame…

A Smith of All Trades_Master Bedroom_final2

Redid the hardwoods and moved around furniture….

Bedroom_final2

And that’s where it’s been since March of this year.

I’ve moved photos around to different walls and our floral painting that used to live in our room now hangs beautifully above our new sideboard.

It was time to make something to fill the empty walls on either side of the window behind our bed. I have wanted to make my own version of these glass bottle wall vases for quite some time, but I didn’t want them white, I didn’t want to use plumbing hardware and I don’t drink Starbucks bottled drinks…. 

So I made up my own. I started with scrap wood that I cut to similar sizes on my mitre saw. I eye-balled the sizes because perfection is overrated.

masonjarflorals_scraps

Once I had the pieces cut, I drilled two different sets of holes in each piece: Two at the top for the hanger and two toward the middle to secure my jars.

masonjarflorals_holes

Then I smoothed each piece down with some sandpaper before throwing a quick coat of stain on them.

masonjarflorals_stain

I let these dry for a hot sec, then started adding hangers to each mason jar floral.

masonjarflorals_twinehanger

Once all six had hangers attached (just some knotted twine), I threaded twine through an upholstery needle and stared attaching the mason jars.

masonjarflorals_twineloops

To do so, I looped the twine through the pre-drilled holes so I ended up with four loops.

masonjarflorals_twinejar

Then I stuck my jelly jar into the loops and started tightening the twine. I am only planning on using these for faux florals, so they don’t have to be able to hold anything heavy. The twine keeps them taught to the wood and they don’t seem to have much risk of coming loose. I’ll let you know if they come crashing out in the middle of the night (that would suck!).

masonjarflorals_twine

Once I got the jar settled, I tightened and knotted the heck out of the twine on the back side.

masonjarflorals_knot

The first one I did wasn’t tight enough, so when it hung I could wobble the jar. I got all of them tight enough so when I wiggle the board, no jars move around. If you have a curved upholstery needle, I think you’d be able to actually do this easier because you could tighten the twine as you loop through the drilled holes. But I wasn’t able to do that with my straight needle.

Once I had all six of these made, I took a bunch of leftover florals and cut them down to make six jar fillers. I made three sets of matching florals for my set of 6 wall vases. I found it was helpful to tie each floral bunch with twine at the base to keep things together since mason jars aren’t really vases.

masonjarflorals_2

Then B and I hung them up on either side of our bed!

masonjarflorals_3

I think they are adorable! Brian had the idea of putting tea lights in them instead, but I don’t think we’d light them often enough to make it worth it. Plus, I like the pop of color.

masonjarflorals_4

Since I had all of these supplies on hand, these didn’t cost me a penny. It took me about 2 hours to make all six, including staining them and making the florals. Not bad!

masonjarflorals_5

Now I just need to find a few more spots in our room to add in some extra color! These little wall vases were a great place to start for sure.

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
    Dreamcatcher1

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.
    Dreamcather_2
  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.)
    Dreamcatcher_3
    I wanted more color and more volume, so I ran to Michael’s to grab a few more spools of ribbon.
    Dreamcatcher_5
  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.
    dreamcatcher_6
  6. Hang and enjoy!
    Dreamcatcher_Final

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!

DIY GIFT GUIDE, Gift Idea

Bridal Shower Gift: Kitchen Towel Cake

Jessica Smith

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_Final2

While pinning the heck out of some awesome fall bridal shower ideas I stumbled across a cute idea to do a version of a Diaper Cake with kitchen towels and other utensil. If you want to see the original, here was my inspiration.

I went to Home Goods, Target and Amazon for my supplies:

  • Normal dish towels
  • Microfiber dish towels
  • Scrubby dish towels
  • An apron
  • Cloth napkins
  • A pie plate
  • An oven mitt
  • Wooden spoons
  • Measuring spoons

I bought what I thought I needed, returned the extra sets I didn’t use, and gifted Dana a bag for the odds and ends that didn’t work. Depending on the size you’d like your cake to be or the size of your pie plate (which the cake sits in), you’ll need varying amounts of each.

I started on the bottom layer and wrapped up the largest, “normal” towels. Then, I tied them together with some twine. When that was secure, I folded the apron, which had beautiful fall colors throughout, and wrapped that around the towels to beef up the bottom layer. I knew I wanted the oven mitts on the bottom layer, so I took twine and tied it around the apron and the oven mitts to keep the entire bottom layer together. Then, I broke a plastic hanger and stuck it in the middle so the remaining two layers would have support when I needed to move the cake around.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_step-1

I probably should have added more towels to the bottom layer since there was such a gap between the edge of the pie plate and the bottom, but the cake was already so full of towels. I ran back out to Home Goods and picked up a set of burnt orange cloth napkins, rolled them up and stuck then around the base of the cake.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_step-2

For the second and third layers, I went through the same process. Choose towels, roll towels, secure with twine. I stuck each layer onto the hanger to make sure the sizing was appropriate. Then, I took the top layer off and added the wooden spoons into the second tier of the cake. I simply stuck them into the folds of towels, then angled and shoved until they were secure and looked right. I did the same thing for the measuring spoons, too.

kitchen-towel-cake_step-3

Once I was satisfied with layer 2, I added the top layer. I did redo the layers three or four times until I thought they looked right, so don’t get discouraged if your towels don’t look amazing on the first go around.

Kitchen-towel-cake_step-4

Pretty cute, huh? All I needed was ribbon to cover the twine and the cake toppers 🙂

For cake toppers, I ordered this adorable set of pumpkin salt and pepper shakers from Amazon. They barely fit on the top of the cake, so I was glad I went with this set instead of other sets that had two of the stumpier pumpkins. To make sure they didn’t fall off, I removed the stoppers (put them in a baggie or you’ll lose them!) and stuck each shaker on a skewer I’d shoved into a fold of the top tier.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_top

I love love love this as a gift for a shower — especially for a bride who is a baker-chocolatier-chef extraordinaire like Dana is. It was a lot of fun to make.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_final

It certainly is charming, isn’t it?

What clever gifts have you made for a bride-to-be? There are so many cute ideas out there!