My first festival

I am so tired. I feel like I have to start off with this because I feel very delusional, and may not make much sense. So today was the first festival type fair. I did it to raise money for my brother. Can we just talk about this first. So I wanted to say that my brother is recovering from surgery to have the tumor removed from his colon. It apparently was in a really hard spot, so it was kind of a difficult surgery. He was in quite a bit of pain, and had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days. He is out now, and seems to be doing well. Its funny because I think he is really facinated by his cars. Showing them off as much as possible to us. Its very cute. So they found some lymphnods that looked suspicious in his rectum. And they tested it and found out that the lymphnods were cancerous as well. Thus being colorectal cancer. On the 18th of this month they are going to take out his entire rectum, which according to his daughter is a serious surgery. Im scared to death. Its hard enough not bawling my eyes out when I see my brother and sister in law. My heart really feels broken for them. Someone told me tonight that Im such a good sister for doing this. I don't feel that way. I feel like as his sister this is my job. I have to make sure that he is okay. I mean he is my brother. We may not have always been close, but i would give my life for anyone in my family. If I don't do this, who will? Their world has come to a screeching holt, and now I make it my mission to make my world stop. Until they are good again im gonna work my butt of to help me. I hate to think that he is fighting this disease, and his wife is trying to care for him and work, and they have to think about bills. Bills, and money, and how are we gonna eat, or how are we gonna keep on the electricity. It should be the LAST thing they have to worry about. They need to worry about eachother, and their situtation....so i don't feel like im doing anything other than what im supposed to be doing. Anyways, now that I vented, and I really needed that, let me tell you about the festival. We went to the fronteirs day festival. I only started on this monday, which meant I had less than a week to put everything together, and believe me it took every minute of those days. I was wore out, and my hands hurt, and my eyes are so tired that I can barely see. Anways, but we did so good. We did really well, and it felt good to give my brother some money to help them out. It felt good to think maybe I took some stress off his shoulders. But here are some pics.. :D

Hanging reinactment

 Baby Kangaroo that stole my heart.

Isn't she the cutest thing ever..............

My midget friend...so adorable. Total snob tho.

Super easy, affordable and cute Halloween Candles.

First of all, I would like to say HAPPY FALL!!! Yep, that's right. Tonight at 10:09pm, it will officially be fall. And though I just recently set out my fall items, halloween decor will soon be followed. I def. love to find cute, cheap, and unique things to decorate my house. Whether I buy, or make, doesn't matter. Just as long as it catches my eye. So yesterday I was at Michaels, and found a pamphlet for an adorable halloween candle holder. And of course, I had to put my little spin on it. 

So here we go. We are going to be doing two different candles. the ghost, and the pumpkin.

Supplies we need for the ghost.

Round glass votives

Frosted glass finish-white

Indoor/outdoor spray paint-FLAT white

*you can use gloss, but it doesnt work or look as good*

Black paint pens

Okay, so first you need to spray the finished glass spray around the lip, or rim of the voltive. Make sure you don't spray too much, because then it will look white. We are wanting to create a disappearing gradation of white to add to the ghostly illusion. LET DRY!

When dry, spray several light coats of white flat spray paint on the bottom of the voltive until cover is solid. We want it to look like it blends with the frosted paint. Let dry.

After the voltive is completely dry, I always wait at least an hour to do this next step, take your paint pen, or paint maker and outline your ghost face. 

Let dry, and then repaint until its solid black in your outlines.

This part you don't HAVE to do, I just think it looks cute. I just took the same paint pen and wrote a little caption on the back. Its super cute. And your finished. Let dry, and decorate. Your imagination is your guide. These are so cute, and your sure to get some great compliments on them.

The next one we are going to do is the pumpkin. My pumpkin is not as good as the ghost, but that is mostly because I wasn't able to get the proper supplies, and was quick to get this done.

So what we need for the pumpkin voltives are

round glass voltive

orange flat spray paint

spray adhesive

black paint marker (or paint pen)

So first spray the entire voltive with the adhesive. This is to make sure that the orange paint holds. I unfortunately had to use the gloss paint so it really didnt want to hold well. 

spray with orange flat spray paint. I would def. let each coat dry before adding another.

after adding the orange let completely dry. Again, I let dry for at least an hour.

Again, outline your pumpkin face and fill in. Let dry and then repaint to make sure you get all of it covered. Let dry and decorate. How easy was this??

They are absolutely precious lit up

Deco Me Crazy : FABRIC tutorial

Okay, I have had so many people ask me how in the world to decoupage. And a couple of you asked what in the world decoupage was. Im here to tell you. Decoupage is one of the greatest craft inventions of all time. With a little bit of creativity, you can decoupage anything. You can transform a boring, outdated item into something funky and modern. And you will be able to say you did that. You made that. Not only that, its also fairly cheap. You can absolutely transform a cheap piece of furniture for way less than you realize. The above dresser took me about two hours, and cost less than 30 bucks. Of course it may be more if you don't have something to decoupage. I often go to yard sales to find things to decorate. One mans trash is always another mans treasure. This dresser was free. And im totally not ashamed that I picked it up from the side of the road.I saw its potential right away. Okay so lets get started shall we??....

Items we need:

*Mod Podge

 (you can find it at your local craft store, or even some walmarts)

*Cheap Sponge Paint brushes

*Your choice of fabric, or paper. Pictures would even work.

*Scissors

*The item you plan of decorating.

This is a close up of the mod podge.

Like I mentioned above, I am decorating my daughters dresser. Im doing a princess theme. In this tutorial we will be doing a dresser.

**I must mention...before you start to do anything to your piece, please remember to make sure its washed. If you use water, make sure the piece is dry before we continue.**

If you are decorating a big piece of furniture, I suggest pouring the mod podge onto the piece. If you are doing something small I would dip your paint brush into the mod podge instead. You don't want too much on your piece.

 

Then brush on like you are painting. You don't want your coat to be thin or too thick. But enough to have your fabric stick to it.

Here is what it looks like with the coat on it.

Next place your fabric on the wet mod podge. You don't want to take your time on this step because the mod podge dries rather quickly and then you would have done the above step for no reason. I do not like to pre-cut, but for those of  you that are perfectionists, you could away measure and precut for the size you need. After placing your fabric on the piece, use your hands to smooth out the fabric. I always smooth it out from the middle out with both hands. You want to make sure there are no bubbles, cause then it would look kind of weird. Make sure the fabric is tight and smooth.

. 

For those of you that measured and precut, the next step isn't really for you. For those of you that didn't precut, just cut the fabric wherever you want it to end. I wanted me fabric to end underneath the drawer. About four inches or so. 

After its as smooth as you can get it, and as tight as you can get it, pour or paint another coat of mod podge on top of the fabric. Let dry and then add another coat. I always add at least two coats, and sometimes I use three coats. Just depends.

Now I mod podge the bottom, top and sides of the drawer.

Just use the same steps as above for the sides of your project.

And let dry for at least an hour.

If you have holes that you need opened, like I have holes for the hardware that need to be opened, all I did was take a screw driver and poked it through the back a little to find it on the front, then took the screwdriver to the front and just basically shoved it through.

Then add your hardware. I actually bought new drawer pulls for this dresser, but you could always just paint the old pulls or just use the old pulls. For the dresser in my bedroom, I actually went to hobby lobby and got unfinished balls, and painted them and found screws that would fit in the holes and made new pulls  :D

So there you have it. All I did that I didnt show you was I painted everyone on the dresser except for the drawers white. Always do your painting BEFORE you start on your decoupage. Especially if you combine the paint and decoupage on the same piece.

 Please if anyone has any questions feel free to ask me!!

Deco Me Crazy

     So I dicovered a new craft about six months ago and immediately fell in love. And I firmy believe that anyone who likes crafting even a little bit should try this craft at least once. I guarantee you will love it!!! What is it you ask me? Well if you can't tell from the title, which i tried to be clever with ;), its......

DECOUPAGE

Oh the sweet and wonderful world of decoupage. I think besides sewing, this has to be my absolute favorite craft. So I have put together a blog of things that I have decopuaged. Even though I discovered this six months ago, I have only done a few things. I have been very busy with other things, but I am going to def. start decopauging more. So I hope you enjoy, and I hope you see something that inspires you to try it out. Its a great way to update old furniture, or just give some spunk to something you use every day. So here goes.......

Okay, so this dresser was given to us by my husbands father an his wife. They gave us sister dressers. Which is my word for two dressers that are alike but one has two rows of dressers and the other is just one row...if that makes sense. Anyways, this is the one I keep in our room. And I really needed a dresser, but I really hated this dresser. So the picture on the left is of course the dresser before, and the picture on the right is the dresser after. I also did some candels to match which I featured in another post. I love how it turned out and it totally goes with our room now.

So this is a desk that I did for my husband who just recently went back to school. It used to be almost the same green as the wall that its against... :/....My husband is going to school for music so I put a music spin on the desk. And of course topped it with a yellow chair...I think it turned out great, and he likes it...hes a guy.

Here is another before and after. This is my daughters stool that she stands on to brush her teeth. I did a very cute school theme on this because she started school last year. She loves this stool. As you can see from the picture on the left, it was just a plain white stool that I think I got at Target. This def.
makes it look a lot better.

This is another decopauged item that I did for my daughter. I am redoing my daughters entire room to have more of a princess theme....and this is her little undie/sock dresser. Its actually a small dresser and I LOVE it. Basically what I did was paint it pink, distressed it with a piece of very fine sand paper and then decoupaged the top. Remember that if you decoupage something that you want to combine with paint, always always paint first. 

The last item that is in the right side, which says the name fowler is what I made for my nephew. I did a very cute robot space theme...it turned out soooooo cute. I will say that if you decide to decoupage for the first time, a name like this is NOT the way to go. Its really hard to figure out , so save this kind of stuff until you get better. And finally I want to say that decoupage is a great way to completely transform something boring, or old into something amazing. If you just use your mind, take your time, and just enjoy it you can really make something come to life. And its a fantastic craft that is farely cheap. Especially if you already have the furniture or something to decoupage. I will be posting a 'how to decoupage' blog up by the end of the week for anyone who reads this and wants to try it. I  notice a lot of people read this and comment to me on my facebook...which is GREAT!! See you next time!

Cute Candle craft

So I ♥ to be crafty. And I decided to share with you one of my crafts that I did. I have been gathering things for a benefit yard sale that I am going to be throwing in the next couple weeks and one of the donations were these very boring glass cylinders. A lot of people use these for weddings, or just as candle holders. And I thought instead of trying to sell them as they were, I would decorate and sell them that way. I think they turned out super cute. I did two for fall, one for christmas, and then just one black, white and red. Now this is my first craft blog, so im not sure how this will turn out, but I hope you like it :D

Okay first you need to get your supplies. Here is a list.

*Scrapbook paper of your choice. You can use one kind, or several different kinds

*Scissors

*Hot glue, two sided tape, or just tape.

*Glass cylinder.

*Ribbon (in some of mine I used crafters rope)

I picked these two colors. One for the background color, and one for the accent color. 

I cut out a strip of the accent color to go on top of the main fabric.

I don't like to measure too much, so what I did was just lay the glass cylinder on top of the paper and cut at the bottom of the glass. This way the paper is the same lenth as the cylinder.

Now with this step you can use tape, two sided tape or hot glue. Remember tho if you use hot glue to never put the hot glue directly on the glass as it can break it. And if you have a hot glue gun that can be adjusted, make sure its not on the highest setting. I use tape. If you use tape its easier to change out paper. If you decide you want to do it over next year or something then it would be best to use tape. So I usually tape the middle first and then tape the sides.

Then bring the rest of the paper around and tape the paper closed. You should not be able to see any of the cylinder on the outside. I do like to often use hot glue for this step, that way the tape wont be visible to guests.

Next...do the same step with the middle piece. You don't have to use another piece, you can use another piece, and you can use several different pieces. Use your imagination on this part. 

Then use some ribbon to tie around. Again, you don't have to do this step, but I think it looks better. In a lot of mine I like to use the thin crafters rope and I think its super cute. Then what I do is I either put a large candle in the cylinder, or I put sand art sand in it and then place a candle on top. Remember with any candle to never walk away from a lit candle, and always make sure to keep an eye on your candle. When these candles are lit they are really nice. These would be great as gifts. You can make baby shower candles, you can make bathroom candles. The possiblities are endless.

Im sorry if this blog isnt great in explaining, and kind of scattered, but this is my first  crafters blog so im still learning. If you have questions please let me know!!