teal – A Smith of All Trades

Teal Ruffled Shirt

March 23, 2015March 22, 2015 Jessica Smith

We all have old clothing that we no longer wear or should no longer wear because they are old and beat up. But for some reason, it’s so hard to get rid of your favorites, no matter how rough shape they are in.

My white ruffled T-shirt is from Target and I love it. I have it in navy, too. The navy shirt has held up great, but I cannot say the same for the white. Although it’s hard to see in the photo, the shirt had seen better days. Plus, I’m just messy. Messy Jessie. A lot of the ruffles had dirt on them that I just couldn’t get out.

Instead of tossing the tee, I bought some Rit dye off of Amazon and changed the whole look it.

It’s important to follow the instructions on the dye bottle. I opted to dye my shirt in a bucket, not my machine. I didn’t want to deal with the cleanup of my washing machine after the fact and I have a million large buckets.

I wet my shirt and mixed the dye in the bucket per the instructions (half the bottle w/ 3 gallons of hot water).

Then, I added the shirt to the dye and let it soak it in for about an hour. The bottle suggests keeping it moving the entire time. This was the one instruction I didn’t follow.

When the shirt was finished soaking in the dye, I rinsed it out until the water ran clean.

Then, I threw it in the wash, all by itself. Don’t wash your newly dyed fabric with other clothing because it will run and turn your other clothing colors, too.

After the washer, I threw the tee in the dryer. And then I tried it on!

Voila! In about 2 hours, my shirt was brand new. You can’t see any of the old stains and it brightened up the shirt. You can also see that every third ruffle is a little darker. I hadn’t really noticed before, but there are two different materials in the ruffles. Fun!

Too cute! I like how it matches my phone, too.

So next time you don’t want to throw away an old shirt, think about using Rit dye to change the whole look.

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE

Pallet Tree

January 3, 2015January 4, 2015 Jessica Smith

The hubbs brought a few pallets home from his mom’s house and they’d been sitting out back waiting to be turned into something awesome. I used a ton of the wood for gifts this year. The first project I’ll share is the pallet tree I made as a decoration for our house.

I used a reciprocating saw to remove the flat pieces of wood off of the pallet in between the supports. I didn’t care about the pieces of wood being even because I planned on trimming them further.

I lined up four pieces of wood, and screwed them all together from the back, leaving a portion of the back support uncovered so it would act as the tree trunk.

When all of the horizontal slats were secured, I flipped it over and traced a tree onto the front. To make it perfect, I measured the center point at the top of the tree, then traced straight lines to each corner from the top.

Once the tree was traced on, I used a circular saw to cut along the lines.

The final tree was adorbs, but still missing something.

I thought about staining it, but opted to leave it plain. Instead, I created bunting out of cardstock, twine and gold paint. So stinkin’ cute.

Of all the things I made this holiday season, this is one of two things I kept for us. I just love it. I made it right before Christmas, so it wasn’t displayed for long. When I find a better spot for it next year, I’ll probably add hangers to the back so it can hang on the wall.

All in all, the only took about an hour from start to finish. Super easy project and would make a great gift! Now pin it for next year since I didn’t share until after the holiday. Rookie move, I know.

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wreath

Another floral arrangement

July 9, 2014July 8, 2014 Jessica Smith

I got into another floral project the other night that was inspired by the arrangement I made last week and the boring TV show that was on right next to it.

Brian was watching Pardon The Interruption, which I actually enjoy during football season but find less interesting in the offseason (Sorry Tony and Mike!). So instead of watching TV, I started admiring my new arrangement. And then I noticed my other arrangement that I’d thrown together a while back on the other side of the room with additional flowers just waiting to be added. What better time than during PTI!?

My vase already consisted of these flowers…

… and these flowers…. err, branches….

… and the flowers on the right. But I wanted to add in the flowers on the left and a few more colorful sprigs of pink and purple flowers (kinda pictured below, and kinda pictured above).

The vase I wanted to use was a clearance score at Michaels. I paid less than $3 for this teal vase.

The vase is short and the mouth is narrow, but since the base is wide all of the flowers tend to lean to one side.

Much like the other arrangement, I started by cutting the ends of the wire off to shorten each stem. I did random lengths to not everything was the same height. To do so, I cut them with wire cutters/strippers. (Apparently, this might not be the appropriate tool to use since the top circles are used to strip the protective coating off of wire. But the bottom 3/4 inches are used for cutting wires, which the flowers are made of, so I stand by my choice! Plus, it was wayyyy easier than using traditional wire cutters. Ladies, if your hubby looks at you like you are crazy for using wire cutters, just ignore him :p)

Once all of the flowers were trimmed and re-trimmed, I started to assemble everything back in the vase. I ended up leaving out the accent branches — they have more of a fall color scheme to them anyway, so maybe I’ll be making seasonal arrangements later this year!

Unlike the other arrangement, I didn’t want to add filler to the vase, so the flowers had to stand on their own. When I had an arrangement that I liked, I gathered it up out of the vase and wrapped thread around the base where the lip of the vase would cover. This secured everything together, making the flowers stand tall instead of leaning to one side or the other.

Then, I filled in the opening of the vase with a few short, pink sprigs that weren’t tall enough for the arrangement. They add just a little more color and oomph to the arrangement.

As you can tell, I really like wispy arrangements.

This guy lives on the other side of the room on a game cabinet. It creates nice movement in the room because your eye is drawn from one arrangement to the other. I am thinking about moving the purple arrangement closer to our bar — the vase is filled with corks after all — and creating one more for the television cabinet. We’ll see.

Even though I love to garden outside, I am not very good at keeping things alive inside. These fake flowers are a great way to bring the feeling of the outdoors inside without having to remember to water them!

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