decor – Page 4 – A Smith of All Trades

Bird Wall Sconce

October 7, 2012 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!

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Stuffed and sewn fabric pumpkins

September 30, 2012September 30, 2012 Jessica Smith

Are you ready to see the cutest fall decorations yet? My girlfriends and I were browsing the interwebs for ideas for our upcoming craft night and stumbled upon the cutest fabric pumpkins that a woman bought online. I immediately thought they would make a great project for craft night, so when we gathered on Saturday night for fall crafts, we pulled out our fabric and got to pumpkin makin’!

Here’s what you need for this project:

Fabric (I used three different types for my trio of pumpkins)
Stuffing
Yarn
Wire twine/Floral Twine
Hot Glue
Needle & thread

I started by cutting a square out of my fabric and placing a good handful of stuffing into the middle of the square.

Then, I sewed a stitch into one corner of the fabric and knotted it. Once that corner was secure, I sewed through the opposite corner, and then through the remaining two corners. It made a bit of a floofy square.

To round out the pumpkin and make sure no stuffing could escape, I started gathering the outer edges of the pumpkin with stitches. Once all of the edges had disappeared and I could see no more stuffing, I knotted the thread in the center of the pumpkin and fluffed it a bunch.

With everything sewed up, it was time to add yard. I doubled up my yarn, then tied it in circles around the pumpkin. I didn’t do this for my small pumpkin, so I don’t have a photo of just this step — sorry! For my larger pumpkins, I did four circles of yarn. My friend Amy only did three and hers turned out great, too. It is totally up to you. When tying your yarn, make sure you tie it tight enough that the pumpkin fluff can ooze out — this will make the pumpkin look like it has the ridges of a natural pumpkin.

Now it is time to add your stem. For this, I used twine-wrapped wire that you can find in the floral and wreath section of any craft store. There are two ways you can add this to your pumpkin deciding on which side you choose to be the top. You can wrap the wire around the yarn and then twist it around itself to create a stem. Or, you can weave the wire through the fabric, then wrap it around itself. I tried both ways, and both work great.

I also added little spirals of twine to each pumpkin, along with a few fabric leaves. I hot glued these onto the pumpkins. With that, your pumpkins are done! I’d say each pumpkin took less than 10 minutes to make, making this a super fast and super adorable craft.

Here’s my set of three:

So cute! I just might have to make more.

Hope you all are having a great weekend!

Thrift Store Finds

Thrift Store Quick Fix: Silver plates and trays

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 Jessica Smith

I’ve been toying with decorating ideas and am really getting into rooms with silver accents. I was at the thrift store last week and I found these wonderful silver plates. I’ve seen a lot of neat ideas on Pinterest using these plates. Here are a few of my favorites:

Silver plates on wall — Silver plates mounted as wall decor.

Silver plate with chalkboard plate — Silver plate with chalkboard paint.

Anyway, I picked up these four plates from the thrift store for about $10 — what a steal! The only downside was that the plates were filthy. You can’t quite see it in the first photo, but every single plate was tarnished. I had silver jewelry wipes, so I wiped down the frames a bit. That helped, but it didn’t quite do the trick. So, I bought silver polish at Target and scrubbed away. This stuff is very easy to use. Squirt it directly onto a silver surface or into a paper towel, then rub until the tarnish comes off. Take a clean paper towel and remove excess polish.

Check out the difference: After I buffed the polish off, I washed the trays with dish soap and hot water. Wipe the water off, and the tray is as good as new. Here’s the tray all cleaned up: