Tag: Frame

Graphic Design

Smith Family Tree

Jessica Smith

Are you ready for the most adorable thing ever? Are you really ready? OK, here goes. LOOKATTHEADORABLEFAMILYTREEIDESIGNEDFORMEANDHUBS!!!!! *breath*

I am so very pleased with how this project turned out. In fact, it might be my favorite thing that I’ve ever designed. EVER. (EVAAAAAARRRRRR, right sisters?)

*drumrollllllllllll*

Welcome to our “family tree!” It’s not a real family tree because those follow some sort of genealogy structure, but I love it just the same.

I designed this print in InDesign using five different fonts (the hearts are a font!) and three different colors (brown, green and pink in different transparencies). InDesign has this great feature where you can draw a line and then make your text curve to the line, so I used that to get some of the names in our tree to curve like tree branches.

The Fonts:

I only did our immediate families because once you get past that we get wayyyyyyy to crazy. Already we have three sets of parents! I had to contain our crazy somehow 🙂 Our parents are in brown and paired with one another and a small pink heart. The dark green names are those of my siblings. The hubby has none, so they are all mine *evil laugh.* Then the lighter green font are the various last names of our family. I am a Bauer turned Smith. My older sister is a Rivera. My dad is a Bauer and my mom a Rowicki-turned-Brown. Tierney is my mother-in-law’s maiden (and now middle) name, and Shaffer is my step mom’s maiden (now middle) name. The date is our wedding date, when our families became one big happy family (our one-year anniversary is coming up so soon! Holy cow.).

I absolutely love how well this print turned out. This might be the first of my designs I have professionally printed for us. It is just perfect.

Do you have a family tree in your home?

 

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Sentimental Map Art

Jessica Smith

I love maps. There’s something about a map that is so interesting and pretty… it’s probably because they are often blue, and that’s my favorite color. And even though I can’t read a map to save my life, I’ve been into repurposing old maps lately and have used them in several recent projects including decoupaging my craft room drawers and revamping an old silver tray. There’s one project I’ve been saving my State of Maryland map for (the other projects were from thrift store atlases), and it was inspired by Everything Fabulous’s post on map art. I love what they did with their frames, so I was hoping to get a chance to make my own.

Instead of having several frames, I picked out one frame for my sentimental map art. It took me a little while to figure out just what places to cut out, then I decided on four: Fenwick Island, DE., where the hubby and I met; Bowie and Crofton, Md., where the hubby and I first lived together; Mt. Airy, Md., where the hubby and I got married; and Columbia, Md., where the hubby and I live in our first house! So cute, right?

Once I figured out what locations to use, I cut up my map into four hearts, each one surrounding the name of the city.

I then grabbed my backless frame off the wall — I hung it already in our bedroom with nothing in it so there would be a spot on our gallery wall for it. I cleaned the frame really well since you can see pretty much any and all smudges on these types of frames.

Next, I put painters tape on the backs of the four hearts. Painters tape is great with paper because it’s less likely to rip it. It made the next step really easy.

Once all of the hearts had tape, I arranged them in the frame, sticking the tape directly to the back pane of glass. I was able to easily adjust the hearts without ripping the paper because of the painters tape.

With all four hearts in place, I put the frame back together.

I made sure to tape down the little levers holding the frame back on because they move occasionally and I didn’t want to be able to see them through the frame once it was hung on the wall.

And voila! Super cute 🙂

{A Smith of All Trades} Map Art

It’s a really simple decoration, but I love it. Yay!

Craft Projects

Lampshade refab

Jessica Smith

My coworker had a cute lamp in her office that another coworker left behind when she left. She loved the shape of the lamp and the shade, but the colors didn’t match the rest of her office’s blue theme with small pops of red here and there. The shade (I have no Before picture, sorry!) was covered in a bright red, orange and yellow paisley fabric.

In an attempt to redo the shade, she tore off that fabric, leaving the white backing in tact. I offered to help her refinish it because I have a problem and can’t say “no” to craft projects. So I stole her unfinished shade and took it home to make something purdy.

Here’s what I started with. Pretty bare boned, huh?

I had lots of ideas on how to redo her lamp shade. I ultimately decided to recover it with fabric because I thought it would work best in her office that way.

I grabbed a neutral fabric out of my fabric stash and started recovering the shade. I chose to use a dark stitch because I thought it would be a cute accent. I started at the top of the frame, stitching the fabric right through the white backing. I went around the top twice with the chocolate thread.

I don’t have a picture of this next step because I needed both hands to do it. Once the top was sewn onto the frame, I stretched the fabric as taut as possible around the bottom of the lamp and stitched it. Since the shade is smaller at the top, I needed extra fabric for the bottom half — this left me with an overlap of fabric. I didn’t want the unsightly seam to ruin Amy’s shade, so I added five grayish-blue flower embellishments.

For each flower, I cut a circle out of my fabric. I then pinched it in the middle and sewed it to the shade, folding the flower to get more creases as I sewed. Once each flower was on the shade, I sewed a chocolate-brown button to the middle.

I’m very surprised with how well this turned out. I thought for sure I’d be delivering bad news to Amy that I killed her lamp shade, but it’s alive and well!

What do you think? I think it’s pretty stinking cute, and much better than the bare naked shade!