Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Floral Mason Jar Wall Vases

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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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!

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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

Bird House Floral Decor

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! I just finished my fall semester of grad school last night and actually have time to write something that won’t be graded 🙂 WOO!

My mom and stepdad moved earlier this year, and a few months ago they gave us a sideboard that they didn’t end up having a spot for in their new place. My stepdad, being the handy guy he is (and whose birthday it is today!), had built in a wine rack into the middle of it.

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Since we have a wine rack behind our bar already, we opted to remove it. After a lot hard work of figuring out how the heck he even got the shelves in there, we were able to remove them and reinstall the original shelving. I touched up the piece with some black paint, and it is looking sharp in our family room now — especially with all of the crap on it.

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It’s decorated for Christmas now, but a few months ago I made a fun little decoration to incorporate my love of all things birds. I had a birdcage that mom had given me a few years ago that I’d never had anything to do with.

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After a trip to Michael’s, I had a bunch of floral stems to play with. I started with a floral sponge thingy (that’s the technical name, of course).

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That actually ended up not working at all…. so I scratched that plan and started to layer the greenery at the bottom of the cage.

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I stuck some sprigs in and out of the wires of the cage to kid of keep everything secure, ending up with a nice bed of greenery at the bottom of the cage. Realistically, if you turned it upside down, it would all likely fall out. … so I just won’t do that!

I have this FAT mercury glass bird that I love, so I plopped him right on top of all of the floral stems.

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And with that, I had a pretty darn cute use for the birdcage and the bird, both of which I’ve had in random places around my house for years!

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It made for a cute little vignette on our new-to-us sideboard.

 

 

Canning, Craft Projects, Events

A bridal shower for my best friend

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of hosting a bridal shower for my best friend. The bridesmaids and I decided on a pumpkin/fall themed shower, and it was beautiful, as was the bride-to-be. I’ve known Dana longer than I’ve known my little sister, so she is family to me. I love her like a sister and was so excited to throw her a shower that I knew she’d love.

bride

The decorations and favors were my favorite part, which is probably no surprise. We decided on a fall/falling-in-love themed shower early on, so for decorations we used pumpkins, flowers, gourds, etc. Emma made the cutest bride and groom pumpkins:

brideandgroom-pumpkin

I carved a pumpkin (with a steak knife… don’t do that, btw) to use as a vase for the centerpiece on my fireplace mantel. And Emma made an adorable “Falling in Love” banner to hang there, too. Isn’t it adorable?!?

mantel

With decor that cute, we had to have Dana open her gifts there.

fireplace

And she got a lot of gifts. That girl is loved!

giftss
Dana is a baker & chocolatier, so food was a big deal at the shower. We had a shmorgishborg or fall goodies: mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin rolls, apple pie dip, spice cake…

food

Dana’s future-mother-in-law made a beautiful cake, too.

Cake

For games, we played the “Don’t say wedding” game. Dana’s mom, Jen, was the winner — she is a champ at that game. It is impressive!

wedding-game

We also tried a game I’d never played at a shower before, so for a lack of better name I’ll call it the “Paper Plate Bride” game. Here’s the gist. Everyone takes a paper plate and puts it on their head:

plate-game-2

Then someone (me) tells everyone what to draw. They cannot look at their plate.

plate-game-1

I had them draw:

  • a line
  • a bride standing on the line
  • a veil on her head
  • a bouquet in her hands
  • a church next to the bride

At the end of the game, we did eliminations.

plate-game

I had everyone put their plate in the air. Then started running through the elimination. “Leave your plate in the air if the bride is standing on the line.” *plates go down* “Leave your plate in the air if the veil is on her head.” *plates go down* “Leave your plate int he air if the bouquet is in her hands.” *plates go down* … and you get the idea. It was so funny to watch.

wining-plate

We turned the winning plate into Dana’s ribbon bouquet.

dana

For favors and prizes, I made canned goods. Probably not too, shocking, huh? I also design the cutest labels for them all!

CAnned-Good-Favors

I also had signs throughout the house noting the different stations. Everything matched. I loved it.

sign

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My gift to Dana was a kitchen towel cake — I’ll share a tutorial on this soon — and it was one of my the best things I’ve ever made, if I do say so myself.

prizes-cake

It even had pumpkin salt & pepper shakers as cake toppers!! OMG THE CUTENESS!

It was a wonderful day for a wonderful bride. The bridesmaids made it spectacular. Here we are with our favorite bride-to-be!

bridesmaids