hobby lobby – A Smith of All Trades

Paper flower arrangement

June 26, 2014June 26, 2014 Jessica Smith

I went to Hobby Lobby to buy one knob and left with my knob and a ton of fake flowers. Hobby Lobby has the best flowers. I especially love their paper flowers, which don’t look real, but also don’t look like they are supposed to be real.

The best part about the flowers was the price! Each sprig was 80¢ on clearance.

I scooped up all of the clearance flowers to make an arrangement for our family room. I wanted to use the vase that we used as our unity candle for our wedding. It’s been sitting in our guest room with the half-burned floating candle collecting dust. Instead of filling the vase with the glass marbles that often accompany floral arrangements, I decided to use corks. We got married at a winery, so it made sense to use corks with the vase for that reason. Plus, I have so many corks! So, corks were both creative and cost effective!

I tried out my plan before cutting any of the flowers down.

Once I decided that I liked the cork and the flowers in the vase, I cut down the stems to fit.

Then, I started to put everything together in the vase. This was easier said than done because the corks didn’t really want to fall nicely in line. First I tried stacking them so everything was in a vertical line. Five tries later… I gave up on this method.

I opted to stick the flowers in first, then just toss all of the corks in and let them naturally fall into place. It seemed like the only other method to try, so I just did it over and over again under they fell a way that I liked.

Here’s what I came up with:

This picture took forever to take because someone kept getting in the way….

This was after he stole a cork and ran away with it, forcing me to chase him under our kitchen table. The joys of having a mischievous dog. Thanks, Rem.

Anyway… I love how this turned out and that it is secretly sentimental. If you look close you can see the inscription from our wedding. You can also see little specs of the green stem.

For now, the arrangement is living next to our television. I want to jazz up this space a little bit so it is less black.

We’ll see if it drives Brian nuts having a few sprigs in front of the TV.

If you see any clearance sprigs at your local HL, pick ’em up! They add such a nice pop of color and a fresh look to a room.

Craft Projects, Wreath

Twig Wreath

September 9, 2012October 22, 2012 Jessica Smith

So I’ve already admitted my new addiction to making wreaths, but today I’m going to show you how to make an inexpensive wreath — really! The only thing you absolutely need to buy is a single bunch of flowers from any craft store. I’d say this one cost me about $10. All of my other supplies were lying around the house or the yard — yes, the yard.

To start on my wreath, I found a cardboard box for the base. Using a bucket from Home Depot, I traced a circle onto the cardboard and then cut it out using a box cutter.

Then Remmy and I wandered the yard collecting small twigs for our wreath. We filled the bucket and headed back instead to start gluing our sticks to our wreath.

When the whole piece of cardboard was covered in twigs, I flipped the wreath over and reinforced the cardboard circle with small strips of cardboard. Then it was time to add flowers.

Before I was able to add any flowers, the hubby came down to my crafting area and asked me what the heck I was doing. He suggested I toss my twig wreath, and at first I thought I should. It was a rather odd-looking wreath before I added any bling.

Using the leftover flowers and tulle from my Ravens Wreath, I started adding things to the twigs. First, I pulled off all of the fake leaves from the remaining purple flowers I had purchased for about $5 for the bunch. I had enough leaves to cover the entire inner circle of the wreath, effectively covering all of the glue marks on the twigs and cardboard. Score!

As I glued, Remmy supervised. “Yes, Mom. That leaf looks great right there!”

Once my leaves were secure, I added little white buds around the edge of the wreath.

I really like these little flowers and they came in a huge bunch, so I had a lot left over from the Ravens Wreath. Perfecto.

With the background flowers in place, I started adding the larger purple flowers to the wreath. On my first purple flower I also added my last bit of black flowers, a little bit of black tulle, and a thick black ribbon to hang the wreath.

The tulle was a lucky addition for this wreath, but I really liked how it looked. So, with each extra purple flower (five in total) I added, I made sure to tuck some black tulle underneath. It provided a really great texture to the wreath.

The final two touches to the wreath were these little crystals that I picked up from Hobby Lobby for $1.47 a pack and a black bow to match the wreath hanger.

I let the glue dry, then hung my beautiful twig wreath on my craft room door. Take that, hubs. That is one pretty twig wreath 🙂

No worries, after seeing the whole ting completed, the hubs said he did like the wreath after all. Ye of little faith!

So with a bunch of leftover supplies and a little bit of hunting through my yard, I was able to make this beautiful wreath!

Hope you all had a great weekend. Happy football season!

Craft Projects

Smith sign project

July 23, 2012 Jessica Smith

Hey blog world, heyyyyy.

The hubster and I had a lovely weekend at the beach hanging out with some of our best friends, but today it’s back to work and back to crafting 🙂 Oh darn.

I’ve been slowly working on a project, revamping a Smith sign my mother-in-law gave us that she had hanging out around her house. It was pretty ugly — the font is just horrifying — but I figured I’d give it a go.

Um yeah, talk about not matching much that we own. So, I primed the whole thing with white paint, which took a few coats. I then stopped my project altogether because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next.

When I was finally inspired to take the next step on this project, I started taping off stripes horizontally on the sign. I then painted every other section Behr’s Contemplation, the same color we have in our family room. I had to be really careful around the edges of the word, which I left white.

When I started this part of the project, I figured this would also be where I left it. But sometime was definitely missing. So again, I let my project sit until I had more inspiration.

Finally I figured out what I wanted to do. I’ve been playing around with EnviroTex Lite, which is a gloss that hardens on whatever surface you pour it on. I really like the way this stuff looks (wait until you see the other project I’ve been working on!), so I decided to fill the letters of our last name. So, I mod podged a single line of beads in every letter, then poured on the EnviroTex and waited for it to dry.

In the meantime, I ran over to Super Hobby Lobby World Land (that’s Brian name for it) and picked up some sweet ribbon with a silver accent in it. I pulled out my glue gun and started striping the ribbon in between each green and white stripe.