Craft Projects, Jewelry, Life

Ravens Win the SUPER BOWL! … and another set of earrings, too.

What a SUPER weekend (pun intended)!

If you follow my blog, you know my husband and I are really big Ravens fans. Now we are Super Bowl champs!!! So exciting. We spent all weekend getting ready to host  a few friends and mentally preparing for what was an awesome game. We are even going to the Super Bowl homecoming parade tomorrow in Baltimore!!!!

Even Remmy had a great time during the game. He scored lots of delicious treats and got to pretend he was a person, which is pretty much his favorite pastime.

Remmy Ravens Jersey

While not in football mode, we also helped my mother-in-law paint her textured ceiling in a room she is redoing. The ceiling was dingy from years of fireplace soot hitting it, and now it is bright and white as snow. I much preferred painting her ceiling than ours — the texture really hides any imperfections.

Textured Ceiling

OK, let’s talk about this room. 1. The ceiling is beautifully white, right? And isn’t the texture awesome?! I really like this kind of ceiling versus the popcorn ceilings. I’m not a fan of those. 2. Look at that fireplace. It is gorgeous. And, my MIL just had a gas fireplace retrofit into her existing fireplace that is absolutely stunning. I have fireplace envy. I wish we could flip ours on with a switch, especially since our family room is so darn chilly.

We’re going to help paint the walls soon, too. This room is going to be so pretty when it is finished! BTW — it used to be covered in dark paneling! You’d never know.

To round out this completely all-over-the-place post, I wanted to update you on the earrings post I did on Friday. I am totally ecstatic about making my own stud earrings now — I should have made them forever ago!

Anyway, I wanted to show you all another fun way to make these button stud earrings. As I was making a bunch of new pairs this weekend, I found that you can take  buttons with the attachment on the back (I swear I used to know the name of these) and use it with a button with holes to make a combo button earring.

Find two sets of buttons you’d like to combine…

Button earrings

… then cut the loop off the back of the button that will go on top.

Button earrings

Put some E6000 onto the button on top, then line up the two prongs of the top button with the holes in the lower button. Then, press them together and let the glue harden.

Button earrings

Attach a stud with the same glue and let it dry overnight.

Button earrings

OHMYGOSH Are these cute or what!? I made them for my friend Amy. Love love love them.

Button earrings

I also made a set of sister earrings 🙂 Mine are on the left, Em’s are in the middle, and Allie’s are on the right. So cute!

Button earrings

I’ll post pictures from the parade tomorrow!!!!

Craft Projects

Chess set makeover

I started this project forever ago and just recently got around to finishing it. We have three chess sets, all of which belonged to Brian’s dad. Brian really loves the nicest set — all of the pieces are metal. The two other sets are really unique — one is all wood and plain-looking, and the other are these giant, ornate pieces that are chipped here and there.

I thought it would be fun to breathe new life into the plain wooden pieces, and what better way than to make them football themed.

Using a throw-away baking tin, I took one half of the chess pieces outside to spray paint Ravens purple.

Chess pieces

Two coats later, I had a vibrant half set of chess pieces to go along with the black pieces. IF you attempt to spray paint your own chess set, it would be a good idea to somehow tack them down before spraying them. Several of my pieces fell over from the spray paint, which scuffed up their paint job a bit.

chess

So that part… well, that was months ago. I finally got around to painting numbers onto each piece, starting with No. 52 — Ray Lewis.

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Each purple piece was painted with a number corresponding to an actual player’s jersey. Too fun!

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I think they turned out well. I’m not sure how often we’ll use the set since we have the other set Brian likes so much (that and we don’t often play chess)… but it sure is a little more exciting than the boring brown pieces.

chess

Happy Saturday!

Craft Projects

Jersey Scarf

This summer I bought a super cute, but super cheap, dress from WalMart that slowly but surely fell to pieces with each wear. It finally got to the point where I just couldn’t wear it anymore with all of the holes it kept getting, so I got ready to toss it. Then I remembered seeing an adorable scarf my cousin made out of a T-shirt, so I figured I’d try it out.

My scarf was really easy to make because the dress I cut apart already had all of the pieces. I simply cut the bottom ruffle off of the dress and the braided straps off the top, and started to stitch it back together.

The ruffled bottom of the dress was large enough to wrap around twice, and the braided straps went around the scarf one time perfectly.

I removed the excess thread from each piece of te dress, then got to sewing. With the ruffled part looped twice, I stitched the two pieces together where they crossed over one another. Then, I added the braid to the same intersection so all of the pieces came together in the same spot.

When everything was sewn together, I cut a small rectangle of the jersey fabric out of the remaining dress and sewed it around the scarf so you can’t see the stitching.

Then, I was finished! Too easy! The best part… my scarf looks adorable with my Ravens tee 🙂