Loosen Up My Buttons table

One of my favorite things to hear when I pick up the phone is "I found something I need to give to you." People know I want their trash. It's the best.

This coffee table was one of those items, another piece salvaged for me by Lady Bird.  It was a sad, ugly piece of rubbish that had sustained water damage from being outside in the rain.  But somehow, it evolved into a thing of beauty, a conversation piece, and a labor of love.  I had a hard time painting the thing black.  After I had put on a coat of white primer, it looked so clean, so uniform, that I almost couldn't do it.  And it looked so good in all black that I didn't know how I could mar that in order to make it special, only giving in to the idea of covering the top in buttons because the surface of the table is a little warped.  But look at her now!

Each button was individually hand-glued onto the surface of the table.  I didn't time myself, but I estimate that between primer, two coats of paint, and all the buttons, it was double-digit hours of work, for sure.  The final step, covering the top in a clear, even coat of lacquer, is yet to come (that stuff is expensive).

This is perhaps my favorite piece to date.  Do I always say that?

More Pictures:

Shameless Self Promotion

So I'm in a swimsuit contest somehow.  It wasn't planned, but sometimes you have to ask yourself, do I want to be someone who has appeared in a swimsuit contest or someone who has not?  You can vote for me here and maybe I'll win $500 and bragging rights until the end of time.   Or you can vote for somebody else, just as long as you don't remember to do it every day.

And GO MAVS!

A Pineapple for Chance

My friend Chance is sort of into pineapples.  Yes, this is Chance for whom I made the Same-Same Picture Frame.  Chance is intoxicatingly specific, which translates to very easy to make things for - or at least very easy to come up with ideas for.  I'd say he's most well-known as the purveyor of the pineapple, and so I made him one.  

That's the Purveyor of the Pineapple in white,
my beloved Markasaurus Rex is in blue,
and of course, yours truly on the left.

I cut about a hundred 1" diamonds from an array
of different hues of yellow and green, and
layered them from the bottom up, filling in blanks as I saw them.

Rainbow Paper Flower Wreath

I'm so not over my paper flower kick.  In fact, this has only piqued my interest more.  New favorite-est thing I've ever made?

This was actually a wooden picture frame that never really panned out.  I found it at Walmart months ago for $4, and I never could quite make it look as good as I wanted.  Finally, that has happened.  This is another piece for my rainbow-themed studio/office at the new apt.

These flowers come from this Paper Flower Tutorial, and I glued them to the frame using a hot glue gun.  I ended up needing many more flowers than I originally thought, but isn't that always the truth?  I could have made the surface area more crowded or made the flowers into looser rolls to cover more.  That would probably also make the colors show more, although in the pictures it looks like the colors are showing more than it seems like they are in real life.  I can't wait to see this hanging up!

Tons more pictures:

Rainbow Alphabet Wall Art

So Mom got me a Cricut for my birthday, and I finally had some time to make something using it (other than the Quilt bulletin board)!  I'm a little bit obsessed with rainbows and the color spectrum lately - ever since I've decided to use them as the color scheme for my studio at the new apt.  This combines several of my loves, including typography and a reused frame I got for next to nothing at a garage sale.

Yep, those are paint samples from Walmart.

Lots more pictures (as always):

Yarn Wreath for Nana

Nana gave me this multi-colored yarn, so I made her something
out of it.

I used the ugliest frame I had (so what if I sort of capitalized on an excuse to get rid of that thing) and leftover felt from a project my students were working on.  It was perfectly serendipitous because I had been waiting for an excuse to make a wreath with the yarn, but I wasn't sure exactly which colors would be right.  When I looked down today and those 5 colors of felt (green, blue, light blue, khaki, yellow) were all that was left, I knew it was meant to be.

I love all the flowers!  If they didn't take so long, I might have made a wreath like this that I will love forever and ever with my whole heart.

Dahlia Tutorial

Rosette Tutorial

Carnation Tutorial

Inspiration Flower

Dandelion Tutorial

More Pictures:

Map of Mexico - Wall Art

I have a thing for maps.  I'm not sure if it's that I love what a map symbolizes - places you've been, places you want to go, places you've never heard of - or if it's just that I think the colors are pretty, but I like them.  I love art that's visually stimulating AND has meaning.  So I made this map frame collage.

4 Different Recovered Frames - 1 Map of Mexico

This  map of Mexico had been hanging out in the garage with several other random maps. Dad also loved maps, and atlases, and books (in fact I even got him a Big Book of Maps one Christmas not too long ago), and he and Mom had been on a romantic vacation to Mexico every summer for the last few years.  Mexico has a special place in the hearts of everyone in our family, I think.  We all have tons of Mexican and other Spanish speaking friends, and Tyler has a Spanish minor.  Mom and Dad worked with mainly Mexican men in landscaping, and Dad had a soft place in his heart for 'the brown man' especially.    Mexico is where we are going to spread his ashes someday, so it seemed like the perfect place to frame and put on the wall.

I cut along the center fold in order to divide the map in 4 pieces.  It was about 20" x 24", so I had to trim off some of the edges to fit it into four 8"x10" frames.  Pair with some frames I already painted black, hang in collage-like fashion, and voila!

For More Pictures:

Red-Headed Wild Flower - Kitchen Chair

This is one of the chairs that go with my younger sister Val's kitchen table.  She is moving into a fantastic new place soon, and I am her interior decorator.  

I am so lucky that I have a sister who's basically my muse, who completely indulges my creations.  Ever since I can remember, she's been the one to bounce an idea or a joke off of, and she's basically the intended audience for any and everything I create.  I am extremely lucky in that she has let me complete freedom with her new apartment. She gives me the materials, be it old furniture or home decor from college, or a new table and chairs she got for $50 on Craigslist.  She didn't even know I was going to make her chair into a little slice of adorable, but she knew that whatever I did, she'd like it.  I could totally fuglify her new space, and she trusts me to give her something she'll like.  Now that's support.  In turn, I made her something. :)

For tons more pictures, including Before/After

When Life Gives You Scraps Bulletin Board

And when your mom gives you a Cricut machine for your birthday, make a bulletin board about it.  :)

This is the first of very many, many paper things that will be made by my new pet, Jiminy Cricut.  So simple, just picked out 24 squares of paper and push-pinned them in place at first.  Then I stapled across the seams to make it look like stitching and used adhesive backed paper I got on sale at Joann's for the letters.  I just had to get one more board in before summer.  :)

All the Time Actually

Gifts for My Lighthouse Student Tierra

Each teacher at my school gets to choose one student to recognize as their Lighthouse each year - a student who is a beacon of light whenever you see them.  There were no parameters - it was totally up to the teacher as to whom and why they made the decision they did.  I picked Tierra!

Her favorite color is purple.

Tierra is my Lighthouse because: She's in this class whose general attitude is usually "Meh", but she's always interested, always has her ears perked up for what I have to say, and laughs at the stuff that is supposed to be funny.  She works hard, never writing off work in my class as unimportant (as they all do from time to time, because it's an elective).  She always seems to be in a cheerful mood.  AND she's the author of this gem:

At the beginning of the year, Tierra and 2 other girls and I got into a shouting match -
back before I was as wonderful a teacher as I am now - and I had to send them to the
office.  Our relationship has recovered nicely though!

We got to give them a little silver lighthouse pin, a certificate, and a photo of us together.  I put ours in a frame and slapped this lighthouse scrapbook sticker on there, and voila!

But since I'm always looking for someone to make stuff for, I had to do a little bit more.  I used one of my garage sale frames (RRR!) and a wooden letter T from Michael's to make this little diddy.  I hope I accurately judged the tastes of a 16-yr-old.  Your dorky teacher thinks it's cool Tierra!

She liked it. 

Earring Holder from Wooden Picture Frame

If you want something done right - make it yourself.

I've been looking forever for a good way to store my earrings.  Coincidentally, Jen at Glam Or Sham just made two accessory holders that I love.

All earring holders I find either are expensive and/or ugly, or couldn't possibly hold all my swag, or would require me to have restrictively small earrings.  Please.  I'm like Dolly Parton, except with earrings as the focal point instead of bosom (too. many. obvious. jokes).  Well, and my lashes.

Anyway, I couldn't find any mesh at Michael's but I saw this on the embroidery aisle for $.29/sheet.  Consider it done.

Beautiful earrings - less than $10 at Forever 21 or Target. :)

Picture Frame (one of 4/$1 I got at a garage sale) - $.25

Plastic Mesh (I don't know what the real name of this is) - $.29
TOTAL: $.54 

Crayon ABC's for Baby Tarpley

I am not going to lie, I completely and totally stole this idea from my friend Lynden Haley. She made crayon initials for her brother Will's baby girl, and she lives in Houston so I knew she wouldn't be able to do anything about it! :)  I give her all the credit for this fantastic idea.  And honestly, hers are much more beautiful and precise than this... But the people I'm giving these to don't know that!

  

Not quite as easy as 1-2-3.

My friend and (class)roommate at school, Adam Tarpley, and his wife Carolyn are having a baby this month!  They have not found out the sex of the baby, so I wouldn't have been able to give them the gift before the baby was born if I had done initials (which is what Lynden did for the set she made for her brother and his wife).  Luckily, I found out that their baby nursery is going to be done with the Dr. Seuss ABC theme - eureka!  That decision was as easy as A-B-C.  The color coordinating, the cutting, and the gluing weren't quite so easy, but it was totally worth it!

Baby Tarpley's Bedding

I found these instructions online, and this is the original as far as I can tell.  I hesitate to put it on here because hers are so beautiful, but hey, these were my first try.

Shadow boxes - $5/ea on sale at Michael's

64 Crayola Box - Free

TOTAL PRICE - $15 

Not too shabby for a custom baby gift!

PS I hope they don't read my blog because it's tacky of me to tell them how much their gift cost.

Lots more pictures after the jump.

Wiz Khalifah Yarn Wreath for Mom

I'd heard of yarn wreaths before, but it wasn't until I saw my friend Kim's adorable one on FB that I decided to go for it.  I made it to match all the other cute office stuff I've been making for Mom.  She's the perfect recipient for things I've made.  Have you ever met her? She's so sweet and kind and beautiful and friendly.  Maybe you exchanged pleasant small-talk with her at the grocery store.  Anyway, she's pretty swell.

Small Wreath - $4.99

Yarn - $2 (lots left over)

3 Sheets of Felt (black, white, green) - $.59/sheet

TOTAL PRICE: about $10 after tax

Not the cheapest craft ever, but I love the whimsical look of the yarn and the felt flowers. It makes me nostalgic for a time I don't know if I even remember... like in the movie The Virgin Suicides (which sounds morbid, but if you saw it you know what I mean).

Tons more pictures after the jump.  Because I'm a tiny bit obsessed with my Hipstamatic.

TV/Media Stand

I salvaged my brother's TV stand and experimented a little.  That's wrapping paper covering the shelves.  Even with some mistakes, it still looks pretty sweet.  I like the colors because they're not too manly or too girly.

Some Things In the Works

I've been working on some stuff for my new classroom and my new apartment - eagerly anticipating both. :)

My favorite thing right now: Antique 3-Mirror Vanity, $75.

My other favorite thing: 2 box speakers, $5 at a thrift shop.

Los stools de la Markasaurus Rex.

Color scheme for next year's classroom.

Wiz Khalifah Inspirations

Wiz Khalifah Dahlia Table

Wiz Khalifah Black Lamp

Wiz Khalifah Yellow Lamp

Wiz Khalifah Black Lamp

$8 Goodwill lamp, painted black, with B&W paper.

Decoupage Tissue Box

Finally, a tissue box holder for my classroom.

Wall Art and Coasters - Markasaurus Rex's Belated Birthday Gift

Floor and bathroom tiles become home decor.

 I found this stack of extra kitchen floor tiles that were 11"x11" and these 4"x4" white bath tiles and I thought how simple they would be to cover in paper.  Such perfect shapes and straight edges, with smooth surfaces.  I chose this blue for Markasaurus because it's exotic, manly, and a little sassy.

I've been dying to use more of this great peacock paper.

Love the contrast of the patterns.

Wiz Khalifah Dahlia Table

Black and Yellow

Inspired by Jessica at Juicy Bits, I created my own (smaller) version of the Dahlia Decoupage table.  I had found this yellow paint in our garage, and I liked the idea of getting to use B&W paper and doing some more shiny black painted pieces - maybe so I can use some other colors to POP with.

This is just one of those 3-legged side tables you get for cheap and cover with a marginally cuter tablecloth.  I found the top separate from the legs, and I'm still not totally sure I will attach them.  I think they cheapen the piece.  Juicy Bits used a table from Ikea with a much cuter base than this table.  And honestly, it's not terrible as wall art.  We'll see.

The papers I chose at first.
I ended up making a couple of changes throughout the process -
you really have to see it all laid out to be sure it looks right.

After I cut out all the "petals", I laid them out on the table top.
I drew super light pencil lines through the diameter, making 16 points around the edge.
Then I laid out the outermost petals first , making sure to keep both points on the line.
Then I just worked my way in.

With the Wiz Khalifa Lamp