DIY - Easter Centerpiece

Easter is around the corner and here in Southern Oregon, the spring flowers are in full bloom! With all the daffodils and tulips displaying their finest colors, I felt inspired to create an Easter centerpiece.

Take a narrow clear vase and put it inside of a taller and wider cylindrical candle holder/vase. I then bought some of the small chocolate Easter egg candies and poured them in-between the two vases. (I would totally recommend putting the candy in BEFORE you put water in your smaller vase, otherwise you have some water-logged chocolate and a difficult time getting the candy out!)

Last, but not least, add and arrangement of fresh-cut spring flowers!

A word of warning, the earlier you put out your arrangement, the more likely you'll be buying some more chocolate eggs before Easter!!

Spring is here!

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.
Isaiah 40:8

Country Christmas Holiday Bazaar

The countdown is on - there are only three more months until the holiday bazaar season kicks off! I am thrilled to announce that I will be a vendor at the Country Christmas Holiday Bazaar at Medford First Church of the Nazarene! (http://www.medfordfirstnaz.org/)

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but it is so exciting to look forward to being a part of such a popular event in the Rogue Valley.

In addition to handmade greeting cards and photo coasters, I will also be debuting numerous framed prints in various sizes!  Plus, there will be several cards, coasters and prints that are not listed in my Etsy shop.

This is a great bazaar, full to the brim with local, strictly handmade items - so mark your calendars: Friday & Saturday, November 2nd and 3rd. 

I hope to see you there!

I may be level headed, but...

I despise hanging shelves. Floating shelves to be exact. I may have a level head, so to speak, but I cannot - I repeat CANNOT - hang shelves level to save my life!

They do make this nifty little tool called a level, but I am pretty sure mine is broken and I have several cock-eyed shelves to prove it.

They aren't so crooked
you take a photo a just the right angle!

My life is often like my crooked shelves. At times, it can be a bit off level, and I try to improve on those things everyday. In terms of the shelves, I tried putting a taller item on the "low" end of the shelf in a desperate attempt to make it look like it's the same height as the other side.

It didn't work. But, I don't care, I am not putting more holes in my wall and I don't want to throw another drill across the room!

Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration...


When it comes to the things in my life that aren't quite level however, I won't give up.  God has given me a heart to improve myself, so I will continue to put holes into the walls of the things of my life that need improvement until they seem level to me.

---

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding;" - Proverbs 3:5

DIY - Laundry Room Vinyl Decal Picture Frame

Laundry. It consumes most of our lives and seems to grow exponentially when we aren't looking. That being said, I honestly think we spend more time in our laundry rooms than we would like to admit. Why then, should those rooms not be aesthetically pleasing?

For instance, I have a sign in my laundry room - which by no means looks like something out of Better Homes and Gardens - that reads "Drop your pants here".

I have found that I really like laundry humor. It's dirty, but in a good way...

While perusing a local craft store, I came across vinyl decals. "Wash - Dry - Fold - Repeat" one decal read. Enter my "ah-ha" moment of adding photography to the laundry room using an image that I took of some weathered clothespins that had been left outside near a clothesline.

The vinyl decal, the photo and a floating picture frame - that I already had at home - lead to the following idea for sprucing up your laundry room.

How To:


1)   The trick with floating frames is trying find the center of the frame to place your photo. Now, by no means am I going to offer any advice as to how to find the center, as I am sure that I did it in the most backwards way possible. Although, you want to mark and adhere the photo onto the back piece of glass.

I did find that using a dry erase marker to make the marks on the glass works wonderfully, and comes off easily!

I may measure badly, but I did want to
take a picture of the tape measure ;)

2)   Use photo safe double stick tape to adhere the photo to the glass. (Again to the back piece of glass, and obviously this would be a good time to wipe off the marks)

3)   As for the decals, just follow the directions that come on the packaging. Tip: I did find that using a popsicle stick to press firmly against the bottom of the clear adhesive sheet as you are pulling it back helped to keep the vinyl on the glass. 

This is an 11 x 14 inch floating frame with an
8 x 10 inch photo.

As a smaller option, I do sell this image in my shop in the form of a handmade greeting card, which you could frame in a 5 x 7 inch frame and put in your laundry room as well!

Now, google laundry humor, and you can find fun sayings like: "Laundry today, or naked tomorrow!"

A dog and his boy

Recently, I ran across a quote that I knew I had to remember. It is a simple concept, and one very true in my house:

"Every dog needs a boy." 

This quote inspired me to re-vamp a picture frame that I have hanging next to the back door. The frame has three hooks and it has been used as a convenient place to hang the dog's leash.  All this time, I only had one photo of the dog gazing out at a pasture of cows, but I had never put anything in the two spots flanking that photo.  To say that this looked extremely tacky is putting it mildly, unless seeing the heads of the screws on the backboard of the frame is considered art.

I decided that this would make for a simple project that is both practical and thought provoking. I'll bet some of you have similar inspiration in your house too!

Before I get into the step-by-step, I want to say something about the photo, here's what I have in the frame now:

At the time, these two stared out the front window often. 

Photo tip:  There is a trick to photographing subjects that are "back-lit".  Your camera, on an automatic setting, will want to meter off of main light source - which is coming from outside in this case - and will underexpose your subjects.  If you have a simple point-and-shoot camera, the best thing you can do is make sure that your flash is on and fires when you take the photo. That way, your subjects will be properly exposed and the background will end up slightly over-exposed, which is fine. 

If you have a manual setting on your camera, or an SLR camera, set the Tv (shutter speed priority setting) to 1/100 second and pop your flash, so that it fires as well.  This does the trick! 

You would kick yourself if you missed this kind of "Kodak" moment when it presented itself, so practice taking pictures of your kids, pets, anyone who is willing, with the window directly behind them. (In daylight of course, it won't work the same at night!)

After I found this quote, I knew what to do with those two empty openings. I split the quote in half, hand-writing one half on one piece of textured scrapbook paper and the other half on the opposite piece using a thin-tip black marker.

Now onto the frame. Here is the super-simple photo tutorial:

Textured scrapbook paper. (Paper cutters are a life saver!)

Paper alone was too bland, so I found some thin ribbon
and added it to the bottom of both pieces of  paper.

I simply attached it on the back side with transparent tape.

"Every dog needs a boy."

There you have it!  I can't believe I hadn't thought of this sooner, but I think it was one of things that required a little bit of inspiration to come up with the perfect use for something that I already had. 

Here's to inspiration!