DIY Paper Doily Wreath

May 13, 2013 By Manuela

I found a bunch of paper doilies at the thrift store a few months ago and was trying to think of what I would use them for and came up with a rolled paper doily wreath! I’ve been wanting to make a rolled paper wreath for some time now and here was my opportunity.

I think it’s so pretty and lacey looking!

As usual I didn’t have a real wreath form but honestly for this type of wreath it doesn’t mater.

I used a dinner plate and cut a circle from a piece of foam core that I had laying around. You could also use cardboard. Anything with a bit of weight to it because when it’s completed it is a little on the heavy side (unless you make a little one and then a cereal box would be fine).

Roll a bunch of doilies into a cone shape. I used a low temp glue gun to seal the cones and even though I thought I had rolled a lot, I had to roll more as I got to the end of making my wreath.

I found the center of my circle and I made another little circle the size of a tea cup saucer around that because you’re going to hot glue the point of your cones to outside edge of the small circle. I’m not giving sizes because it all depends on how big you’re making your own wreath and what size doily you use for your cones – just eyeball it. You can always lay it all out before gluing anything down.

As you can see they don’t line up perfectly (at least mine didn’t). I knew I’d be putting a second layer of cones and that would hide any gaps. The second layer is glued down in that open circle and they’re a little shorter (cut the point of the cones down). I used 42 doilies in total because I had two layers. These were 8 inch doilies.

You’ll need to hot glue something to the center to hide where all the cones meet. I used a little frame from Michaels with some scrapbook paper in it. You could make some paper fan flowers or whatever strikes your fancy.

I think this will be a fun summer time wreath! You can do the same thing with any kind of paper you have if you don’t have paper doilies. Magazine pages, book pages, sheet music, scrapbook paper, atlas pages…anything really.

Try it! It’s an inexpensive yet great looking wreath!

Linking to: Tweak It Tuesday, Inspire Me Tuesday, Budget Decorating Party,
Brag About It

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Fluffing my nest, Tutorials Tagged With: paper doily wreath, Wreaths 22 Comments

Upcycle A Light Into A Birdfeeder

March 27, 2013 By Manuela

I’m so happy to have a special guest post for you today from my very creative friend Kathy! She’s sharing an amazing upcycle project that I know you’re going to want to make. I do!

Hi, I’m Kathy from Creative Home Expressions! I am so pleased to be guest posting here on Manuela’s blog today ~ thank you so much for the invite, Manuela!

A couple of months before we moved {back in 2011} I found this light fixture at the Restore. For some reason I thought there was a light in the small entryway at the condo we were moving to {there isn’t} and I thought this would fit in nicely. It has been sitting in the attic since we moved in and I just found it again when I was getting the Christmas stuff down.

I couldn’t help but think that it might make for a good bird feeder. Especially since I’ve wanted to get a couple for the little trees outside our condo. It needs a base and I found this gold charger/tray in the pantry closet.

It hasn’t been used for anything in a long time so I thought it might work for this project.

After explaining to my handy hubby what I was looking to do, he took the glass out for me, drilled holes in the platter and was able to attach the light to the platter {using the screws that were part of the fixture}.

I sprayed it with Ace spray paint in Ivory and found an “S” hook that I had and hung it from one of the little trees in the front of our condo.

A little bird seed and it is all ready for some feathered visitors!

Isn’t that a great upcycle project! Kathy always has lots of wonderful DIY, trash-to-treasure projects on her blog. Be sure to go visit her at Creative Home Expressions!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, DIY Projects, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY projects, upcycling 30 Comments

DIY Saturday: How To Paint Laminate Bookcases

March 23, 2013 By Manuela

Happy weekend everyone! I think most of us have a piece or two (or three) of laminate furniture, especially those inexpensive bookcases. I have a brown one that I want to use in my office but I want it to be white. My desk is also laminate and it’s a maple look and I want that a different color also. As always, I have more time than money so painting those items would give me the look I want for less than replacing those pieces. Besides we’re working on repair, re-use, re-purpose this year. So this DIY fits right in.

Here’s a great tutorial on how to paint laminate (in this case bookcases) with lasting results. Meaning it’s not going to bubble or scratch if you use it.

How To Paint A Laminate Bookcase

Supplies:

Sander

Water-based Kilz Primer

Purdy paint brush & low-nap or foam roller

Latex paint (she used Benjamin Moore’s Aura line)

Directions:

See the tutorial at SAS Interiors and be sure to read the comments for more tips: How To Paint A Laminate Bookcase

If you’re reading my blog via Google Reader, remember Google Reader will end July 1.

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiration, Link Love, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY projects, DIY Saturday, Inspiration 7 Comments

DIY Saturday: DIY Natural Room Air Fresheners

March 16, 2013 By Manuela

Happy weekend everyone! Would you like to add fragrance to your home naturally without harmful ingredients? Try this easy method that uses natural fruits and spices to freshen the air in your home.

Aren’t these gorgeous! She says the jars can be stored in fridge for 1-2 weeks so you make them ahead and they can be re-heated 2-3 times. I am so trying this! Be sure you read the comments for lots of suggestions on combining scents!

DIY Natural Room Air Fresheners

Supplies:

pint jars
citrus
herbs
extracts
spices
water

Directions:

See the tutorial at The Yummy Life: DIY Natural Room Scents

Filed Under: DIY Projects, DIY Projects, Inspiration, Link Love, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY Saturday, Homemade

DIY Saturday: Paint Your Old Tired Laminate Counters

March 9, 2013 By Manuela

Happy weekend everyone! Paint is the inexpensive solution to a lot of problems and this DIY will help us deal with a problem that many of us have, outdated, strange colored laminate countertops. This tutorial shows you how to make those old countertops look like new using spray paint!

Be sure to read the comments for tips. Everyone seems to have had great results using this method!

DIY Spray Painted Laminate Countertops

Supplies:

Krylon Fusion Spray Paint

American Accents Stone Spray Paint

Brush on Polyurathane

Directions:

See the tutorial at the blog My Love of Home here: DIY Spray Painted Laminate Countertops

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiration, Link Love, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY Saturday, painting laminate

DIY Moss Covered Frame & Free Easter Printables

March 6, 2013 By Manuela

I did this quick project the other day. I made a moss covered frame and put a free spring subway art printable in it.

I’m feeling mossy this spring! This is a super easy project and is going to be part of my spring mantel! Here’s how I made it and below are a few free Easter printables I collected for you to put in your frame.

Supplies needed for Moss Covered Frame

picture frame
glue gun
scissors
sheet moss (you can use reindeer moss etc but I’ve found sheet moss to be easier to work with because it is held together by it’s grid backing. Loose moss is messier but will work also)

Steps to making a moss covered frame:

Lay your sheet moss on your picture frame and cut 4 strips the length and width you need to cover your frame. I wrapped the sheet moss around the frame on the sides and top only. Glue your strips to the frame. You can fill in any blank spots with bits of moss and trim any unruly spots with scissors.

I re-used some toile rosettes I made last year for this spring wreath.

I love using free printables when decorating my home, especially seasonal printables! Here are few to get you started with your Easter decorating.

This is the cute spring printable I used in the moss frame I made. It’s from Purple Giraffe Crafts

Easter bunny subway art from Eighteen25

Chevron Easter bunny printable from 5 Thirteen Designs

Easter subway art in spring colors from Craftaholics Anonymous

Silhouette bunny printable from Craftily Ever After

It’s so easy to decorate with free printables. All you do is print them and pop them in a frame. What could be easier and all it costs is the ink you use to print them.

You need to go to the linked source in order to print out the free printables.

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Seasonal Decorating, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY projects, Printables, spring decorating

DIY Saturday – Make Candle Plates From Old Lids

March 2, 2013 By Manuela

Happy weekend everyone! Back in December I mentioned that I would be starting a new weekend DIY series featuring ideas that I find while roaming the internet that I think are great, easy to do and helpful in some way. Either an upcycle idea, or a homemade cooking or cleaning idea, a frugal remodeling project, or a get the look for less project, you get the idea! My intent has always been to encourage you to make the most of what you have and to cultivate beauty in your home & garden through frugal means.

I think this Saturday DIY series will help you and me accomplish this while featuring some fantastic ideas from other bloggers! One request, please go to their blog to pin their photos and projects. It’s only right that they should get credit for their projects.

Make Candle Plates From Old Lids

I just think this is an adorable project and I’ll be saving my old lids to to make my own candle plates. This project comes from a Swedish Blog Pysselbolaget. She has wonderful self-explanatory photos for her tutorial and although the accompanying instructions are in Swedish, she did add some in English at the very end of her post.

Supplies:

Jar lids
Craft paint & paint brush
Ribbons & lace
hot glue gun

Directions:

See the tutorial at the Pysselbolaget site here: How to Make Candle Plates From Old Lids

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Link Love, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY Saturday, upcycling

Easy DIY Felt & Yarn Spring Wreath

February 25, 2013 By Manuela

I enjoy making my own wreaths and the other day I was feeling crafty so I made a really easy, budget friendly, felt flower and yarn spring wreath for my foyer.

I had all the supplies I needed on hand so this cost me zero dollars. You need a wreath form, felt (I think you can get it 4/$1), yarn ( have tons from trying to learn to knit and crochet), ribbon to hang your wreath and a glue gun. Optional: decorative trim, small branch of some kind of spring flowering tree or shrub (fake)

A word about wreath forms – I’ve never made a wreath that I loved so much that I wasn’t willing to take it apart and re-use it or re-fashion it over and over again. I have a few different types of forms and different sizes that I got from various places. The thrift store (just pull everything off it), clearance, purchased with a coupon, the dollar store, the dollar area at Target etc. I rarely go out and buy a new wreath form for a project. Lots of times you don’t even need a “wreath form” you can just cut yourself a circle or square from cardboard, a cereal box, or poster board/foam core.

Easy DIY Felt Flower & Yarn Wreath

1. wrap your yarn around your wreath form…yawn…watch a movie while wrapping yarn around your wreath form

2. make various felt flowers & a few leaves. You can make your flowers all one kind. I chose to make a few different kinds. If you don’t know how to make a felt flower, I show how to make felt rosettes in this post Christmas Felt Rosette Tree or you can of course just google “how to make a a felt flower”. It’s SO easy!

3. glue felt flowers onto your wreath in a manner that pleases you

4. Optional: glue your pieces of trim onto your wreath and a branch of a spring flowering tree or shrub and then hang your wreath with a ribbon.

This was a really inexpensive and easy spring wreath to make!

I like making my own wreaths since it’s usually very hard to find ones in the colors that I like.

Last year I used a green fluffy feather boa for the base of my spring wreath. You can see it here Easy DIY Spring Wreath.

Spring will be here before we know it (I hope) !

Filed Under: Budget Decorating, DIY Projects, DIY Projects, Fluffing my nest, Seasonal Decorating, Tutorials Tagged With: Budget Decorating, Crafts, DIY projects, Wreaths

An Easy Way To Make Your Own Liquid Hand Soap

February 8, 2013 By Manuela

I have a ton of little hotel bar soaps since my husband travels for work (and feels compelled to bring them & shower caps home)! So I was looking for a way to use them up and found that lots of people were making liquid hand soap from bar soap. So I thought why not give it a try.

I read a lot of tutorials before trying this and what I learned is that what type of soap you use affects the outcome and don’t make this if you’re super picky about your liquid soap! I’ve never read so many mixed reviews on a project. Some people had great results and loved it and others didn’t!

Apparently Dove doesn’t work all that well (although one post I read said to just leave out the glycerin) and Ivory works really well. So making liquid hand soap from bar soap can be a trial and error kind of project. But since the soap was free I decided to try it and happily it worked just fine for me.

Liquid Soap Recipe:

1 cup grated soap flakes

10 cups of water

1 tablespoon of glycerin

10 drops of Tea Tree Oil (or other essential oil)

I used Tea Tree Oil because it has antibacterial, antimicrobial and antifungal properties

I used my CVS Extra Care bucks so it hardly cost me anything and found both the Tea Tree Oil and glycerin there. All healthfood stores a carry essential oils and Michaels has glycerin (probably Hobby Lobby too but I didn’t’ check there). Use your coupons and you could be making liquid hand soap for pennies!

Directions:

First I used my cheese grater and grated 1 cup of soap into flakes. You could also so a food processor.

I used tap water so I started that boiling while I grated my soap. Some people used distilled water.

After my water had boiled for a few minutes, I added the soap flakes and glycerin and reduced the heat to med-low. Stir until the soap flakes are dissolved. When cool – add your Tea Tree Oil.

It started to thicken after a few hours but I let it thicken overnight because some people had mentioned that the consistency was runny or slimy initially.

Leaving it overnight seemed to do the trick! I fluffed it up with my mixer before using a funnel to put it into my ball jars (some people used their blenders to fluff and some people didn’t think it needed fluffing).

It’s not a sudsy type soap if suds are important to you (you can add a few squirts of commercial hand soap if you want suds).

We’re really happy with how it turned out and I’ll be making liquid hand soap from now on instead of buying it as long as I have free bar soap!

Linking to: The Mommy Club

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Tutorials Tagged With: Frugal Living, Homemade, money saving ideas

Easy DIY Wall Art

February 6, 2013 By Manuela

Come on over to Deborah Jean’s Dandelion House to see the easy diy wall art I made for my kitchen. I’m guest posting my tutorial today!

See you over there!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, DIY Projects, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY projects

Easy Tea Towel Project for Your Kitchen

January 25, 2013 By Manuela

I have a really quick and oh so easy tea towel project for you today. This is an image transfer process using CitraSolv. I mean this is the easiest quickest project I’ve ever done…in my life! It took me longer to write this post than it did to do the project.

1. You need CitraSolv which I found at my local health food store (also local art supply store).

It’s an eco friendly cleaner/degreaser that comes in orange and lavender. I bought the lavender because I few people said the orange leaves some color behind. Since I had a choice I bought the clear which is lavender. (maybe someone that uses the orange one can let us know if it really matters)

2. I used my favorite Ikea cotton towels – I have a bunch of these. They’re so French looking with the red stripe (and cheap). Any solid color will do. You also need cotton balls, craft stick or spoon, something to put under your towel to protect your surface and an iron to heat set it all when done.

3. You need photocopies of what you’re going to transfer. It can be one image or you can collage several images. However, they need to be printed by a copier that uses toner. That’s really important. I used my library’s copier and it worked great and was cheap! Or try Kinko/Staples/Office Max etc.

I used the “Farm Fresh 3 Hens” image from my daughter’s etsy store Digital Downloads and forgot to ask her to reverse the image so that the words “Farm Fresh” would be mirrored. So I couldn’t use that part (you’ll see why). So if you buy this image from her and are planning on using it as a transfer and not just to frame, just ask her to send it to you reversed if you don’t know how to do it yourself. Anyway, I didn’t have a car the day I did this project so I couldn’t run out and make another copy so I just cut the “Farm Fresh” out – but it would have been cute!

5. Work in a well ventilated area – it’s a bit smelly. Lay your image copy side down on your towel and wet a few cotton balls with the CitraSolv. Rub the wet cotton balls all over your image. Now you can see why letters need to be printed in reverse. (if you look at the photo above this one you will see that the rooster is on left – it’s now on the right). I let it sit for a few seconds.

6. Take your craft stick or back side of a spoon and rub over your image making sure your image doesn’t move (I just held it down with one hand while rubbing with the other but you may want to tape it down). You are transferring the ink onto the fabric.

7. Carefully remove your image. I let it dry for 1/2 hour.

8. Heat set the image – by ironing over it a good 30 seconds.

9. Wash in cold water and dry to remove any CitraSolv residue still in the fabric.

Here it is after being washed. I can’t remember how much the CitraSolv cost, but one bottle will last you forever in using this transfer method (plus you can clean with it).

This process has been around for years, but this was my first time doing it. It’s really easy and I know I’ll be making lots of pillows & tea towels using this technique.

Just think of all the pretty presents and things for your home that you could make with 1 bottle of CitraSolv and free graphics from the Graphics Fairy!