Quick, cute centerpieces

Here’s a super-quick idea I created back in December. I needed centerpieces for the banquet tables for a local Harley Owners Group (HOG) Christmas party. The party theme was “Hoe-down,” and the audience was motorcycle enthusiasts. Here are the materials I used, no more than $1 for each item:

Small glass container
Florist foam block
1 stem silk flowers
1 Bandana
1 fistful of craft raffia

Starting with a small glass candle jar and “country-looking” silk flowers, I first pushed a chunk of florist’s foam down into each jar. (You can hot-glue it if you like; I left mine loose because I wanted the flowers to be removable.) I separated the blooms on their stems from each bunch of flowers and arranged them in the foam so they created a nice “poof” over the top of the container:

To decorate the jar, I wrapped each one in a brightly-colored bandana. This fit right in with the barn-dance theme, and bikers use them all the time as head coverings. I folded the corners of each bandana in so it made a smaller square:

Then, I gathered the folded bandana up around the jar and tied it together using a couple lengths of raffia.

The result was a cute, quick centerpiece that fit the theme. And, when we gave them away at the end of the evening, 22 bikers each got a new bandana out of the deal!

“Turkey in the Straw,” anyone?

More soon!

Monkey see, monkey paint

First of all, just in case there was any doubt that my cat actually likes the romantic office desk makeover featured in my previous post, here's the evidence:

Side note: he SNORES!

For today's post I thought I would go out on a limb and share some of my "art." I don’t make any claims to being an artist. From piano lessons to desktop publishing and everything in between, I consider myself a bit of a trained monkey (and I mean that in the nicest possible way - “monkey see, monkey do, sometimes with passable results!”).

One of the artistic endeavors that I’ve practiced quite a bit is the art of decorative painting. While I have never been able to re-create to my complete satisfaction the designs and strokes of published teachers such as Priscilla Hauser and Donna Dewberry, I’ve nonetheless been pleased enough with my results that I actually painted a variety of items one year as Christmas gifts - which means that I was for once not entirely horrified by my own efforts - and those items actually saw the light of day in someone else’s home.

Here are a few samples of my many painting projects, starting with one of my favorites - a brag book/photo album with roses and greenery:

Crackle-finished plaque for my grand-daughter:

Romantic Christmas ornaments (given to a complete stranger in an ornament swap!):

Another photo album, this time with geraniums and hand-painted calligraphy:

Glass creamer painted with lilacs and filled with hand-poured soy wax candle:

A curb-find cabinet that I painted pink, embellished, and then hung on my old patio, pre-flood:


Tableware caddy painted with cherries and given to my mother-in-law (she's still using it!):

I haven’t painted since we moved to our new house, but I DID rescue my rack of craft paints so I really have no excuse. One thing I lost, though: my original sketchbook full of practice strokes and pictures, which I lovingly called "Bad Art." Here are a couple of surviving images I had scanned out of it for other uses before it was destroyed - a "signature" graphic I used in an online forum with magnolias and my username, "Janetgia"; and below it, a baby robin I painted, then scanned and used as an avatar in another forum:

I've certainly got to spend some time practicing my skills before I feel confident enough to give something away again!

Have you ever tried tole, One Stroke, or any other type of decorative painting? What did you think of the results?

More soon!

Romancing the desk

I don't know what I was thinking when I outfitted my office/dressing room with this new glass-top contemporary desk. I guess I was thinking I needed to waste a few hours of my life assembling something. Or maybe, I was thinking I needed a lot of work area. Certainly the desk was a success on both of those fronts, and it also met the full approval of the cat - who won't sit on things he doesn't like.

But, not long after I bought and assembled the contempo-desk, I realized that what I wanted in here was something old and cottage-looking, with chippy paint and antique hardware on the drawers. Since I couldn't justify replacing a brand-new desk (and because, now that it's assembled, it's REALLY hard to move), I started to think about how I could make the desk look a lot more romantic, and still be functional. My first idea was to soften up the lines by making a table skirt, which had the added advantage of creating concealed storage space underneath:

I thought the result was "okay," and although I liked the fabric I'd used, I knew that ultimately I was going to repaint this room a light botanical green. That fabric wasn't going to work anymore with the new color. So I set about making a different skirt and figuring out some way to make the glass desk top fit better into my vision for the room. The skirt was easily removable, attached as it was to the framing of the desk with adhesive Velcro.

For the new skirting, I purchased two floor length ivory window sheers (which match the simple window treatment in the room). I folded the first one horizontally to get a double layer (not as sheer that way - still trying to conceal the stuff stored underneath), attached pieces of Velcro to the back of it, and stuck it to the desk frame. It wasn't long enough to cover the whole front of the desk, so I cut the second sheer to the proper length and attached it in the same way, overlapping the first one by a few inches. I hot-glued some non-functioning buttons down the front of the overlap just for a tiny tailored detail. Next up was the desktop. I wanted to cover it with something, but didn't want to lose the smooth, solid surface, so decided on adhesive/removeable Contact paper. After a little cussing to figure out how to apply the Contact paper with as few air bubbles as possible, I had the job done.

The remaining task was to create some sort of "transition" between the solid surface of the desk and the softness of the skirt fabric. I chose a length of silk greenery, applying it with zip-ties so again it would also be removable. Here, as they say, is the big TA-DA:

Although the end result is a little more "storybook-looking" than I was intending, I still like it better than the bare desk and better than the floral skirt. Here are a few of the details, starting with a home-sewn reversible "cozy" I made years ago for a desktop copier - now used to cover the all-in-one printer:

Here's a bit of the button detail on the overlap of the skirt:

And, here's the chair cushion, a nice thrift-store find - Laura Ashley floral toss pillow:

The nice thing about this project, other than the very low price tag, was that the whole thing only took me about 90 minutes from start to finish.

And of course, the fact that the cat still likes it. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

More soon!

The Lavender Shelf - and missing violets

I’ve been trying to find a way to display some of my favorite treasures in my office/dressing room, and this weekend I decided to paint and “set” a little shelf I bought recently at a thrift store. Here’s the project:

Starting with a small wooden shelf, I spray painted it in a gloss ivory tone and hung it on the wall. (Note: the previous sentence does not even begin to capture my complete and utter ineptitude in the two tasks described.) I was certain that over the years I had collected more than a few items with lavender hues, so this was going to be my Lavender Shelf. I started by softening things up with a pillowcase hung on the rod. This pillowcase had been embroidered by my great-grandmother. I also added a pretty floral hanky to the shelf:

Next, I spent some time looking for a teacup I have around here that has a really pretty pattern of violets on it - I’ve been saving it for just such a project as the Lavender Shelf. So naturally, I couldn’t find it. I settled for this teacup instead, which is just as pretty (if not as violety) and has my own hand-poured soy candle in it. I also added two vintage postcards as part of the backdrop:

Next up, while looking for my violet teacup I found this 3-paned photo frame and decided to use that on the shelf as well. I sought out fun favorite photos of my hubby, myself and our daughter, printed them out, and then cut them to fit the frame:

Finally, I decided that instead of the teacup I would use one of my favorite pieces from my clay project collection - you can read a little more about him on my clay project website, but the short version is that he is a flea-market find and certainly falls into the “lavender” category:

The finished project looks like this:

What I love about creating a little vignette like this is that every item here is either special to me personally, or is something I bought simply for its beauty and the faith that someday I would be able to make something enjoyable out of it.

More soon!

My cottage reading corner

This little corner is quickly becoming my favorite spot in the house. Our 50's ranch isn't the best backdrop for the shabby/comfy/cottage style, but when we moved into the house in 2008 we quickly discovered that the master closet wasn't big enough for all our clothes. I gave that one over to my hubby and told him I would be happy to use the closet in the third bedroom, since that was also the room I hoped to use for my office & crafting space.

Over this past long winter, I began to put together a reading corner in that room. I at first thought that I needed an over-stuffed chair, but with everything else that's in the room (corner desk, printer stand, secretary desk, etc.), there really isn't room for a larger chair.

Then I remembered: I had rescued my old glider rocker, purchased when my daughter was born, when we cleaned out our old house after the flood in 2008. The chair was out in the storage shed. So one day I traipsed out through the foot-deep snow and carried it into the house, where I cleaned off the remaining "flood crud" and painted it white.

The cushions of the original chair had been ruined, so I bought a large chunk of thick dense foam to make a new seat. And, I had plenty of standard sized bed pillows that could be covered with a pretty sham for the back.

The chair isn't really functional with all those pillows on it, but I've learned something: if there is a soft flat surface available, the cat will lay on it. And of course, that means a coating of cat hair is left behind every time he lays there. So to make the chair "sittable" whenever I want without having to clean up cat hair, I decided to stack it with some pillows so he'll be discouraged from hopping up there. So far, so good - he seems content to lay on the hooked rug instead, and I'm happy to move the pillows when I want to sit in the chair.

The only things missing from the reading corner at this point are a floor lamp for over-the-shoulder lighting, and a footstool.

Here are a few pictures of the vintage treasures displayed with the chair, starting with the thrift-store finds: the blue-and-white pillow in front, and the eyelet sham, which was perfect to cover the pillow I'm using as a back cushion.

One of my favorite things to collect is vintage table linens. Here I've used one Ebay purchase to cover the seat cushion (it's a no-sew, "loosely pinned" project - LOL), and another Ebay find plus some eyelet trim to sew a homemade pillow.

This little homemade quilt has been in our family for many years. It was used in the baby crib by my older sister, myself, and my younger brother.

Here are two close-up pictures of the baby quilt. The little cat was always my favorite panel; the angry goat just makes me smile!

More soon!