Tag: embellish

Craft Projects, Paint, Quick and Easy Crafts

Painted Frame Mats

Jessica Smith

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

I have been trying for about a year now to accessorize our house with adorable and mushy pictures of us, cutesy pictures of our pup, and wonderful photos of our families. Last night, in between cleaning out a hall closet and playing with my pup, I attempted this feat again. I broke out my stash of picture frames and rearranged a few shelves in our living room. I set my sights on this trio of white frames — I love the white frame with the patterned, yellow mat that I bought from Target a bajillion years ago. The other two frames are just… meh. Boringggggg.

I picked them up from the thrift store last year and never did anything super exciting with them. Last night I changed that.

I pooped the mats out and dashed off to my craft room to unearth some paint!

One mat got a green polka dot treatment using the end of a pen.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

The other got a blue chevron stripe. I did both by hand and just eye-balled in. After all, the other side is free for painting if I screwed it up!

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

Once my mats were dry, I popped them back into the frames and set them on a shelf in our living room. Lord knows this won’t be their last home, but for now they are quite the colorful and cheery trio.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

Cute, huh? Now I need some purple and orange and I’ll have a whole rainbow of frames.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

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

Burlap Rosette Candles

Jessica Smith

I am excited to share that I’m participating in a craft fair in a little more than a month! On Nov. 10, I will be at the Watkins Nature Center partaking in their Fourth Annual Trash to Treasure Green Craft Fair! I’ve done this fair two times in the past, but missed it last year. I’m excited to go again — it’s the coolest fair I’ve ever been to and I am really looking forward to it.

Anyway, my new few weeks will be spent making crafts out of recycled goods, scraps, trash, etc. The goal is to repurpose things you might otherwise throw away into something neat and useful again.

For my first project, I made a set of candles using fabric scraps or burlap that were barely big enough for the task at hand. I also used old buttons and thrift store glasses. The only “new” supply I used was some pink ribbon.

My piece of fabric was about 9 inches by 7 inches, so just long enough to wrap around my candle. I cut out a strip and placed a dab of hot glue midway down the glass to secure one end of the fabric to the candle holder. Then, I placed Mod Podge beneath the fabric as I wrapped it around the glass. Once it was in place, I slathered on another layer of Mod Podge on top of the fabric.

I let this dry, then added a skinny pink ribbon through the middle of the fabric. For the ribbon, I secured it to the glass only with a few dabs or hot glue.

After the ribbon was on, I started to make a few rosettes out of the burlap fabric. (Note: It’s not actually burlap, but it looks close enough so that’s what I’m gonna call it.) To make the rosettes, I used skinny strips of fabric and Mod Podge.

To make the rosette, I twisted on end of the fabric in my fingers and added some Mod Podge. This is the center of the rosette.

I kept twisting the fabric, winding it around itself as I twisted and all the while adding Mod Podge. Once the fabric ran out, I was left with a cute rosette that I set aside to dry.

Fast forward: The glass is dry, the rosettes are dry — time to combine!

I pulled out my hot glue gun to add the rosettes to my candle holders, along with some buttons.

I glued two rosettes to one glass and on onto the other. Then, I added buttons in the center of each rose, and a few alongside each.

Ta daaaaa! Two candle holders made out of fabric scraps and buttons 🙂

What a cute pair!