Scarf Holder

I know you've been waiting for it.... here's the first of the finished projects from my DI run a couple weeks ago. The other projects are "on hold" temporarily while I

a) wait for the weather to warm up so I can spray paint again

b) figure out a way to rescue the dress I was attempting.

ANYWAY,

Here's the FHE board redo: As a scarf holder for my cousin. Let me just tell you about my cute cousin Emma-- she's 16, red hair, cute glasses, recently went to London and came home in LOVE with scarves. I think that at our family Christmas party she got 4. At one party. She's also our favorite babysitter, so I wanted to do a fun bday present for her. Here we go>

The Before PictureFirst I removed the knobs and painted the whole thing black. I used acrylic paint, as it is too cold for spray painting right now. Also, acrylic painting can be done avec children while spray painting is more of a sans children activity.Sorry, my craft table is also painted black. I know, you're thinking I live with Edward Scissorhands or something with all the black I have. I promise it's balanced with color here and there.Then I cut out some fabric to match the raised portion of the board and Mod Podged it on there.

It was looking a little blah so I also stained it with my favorite wood stain. This made the black look shiny and gave the fabric a sort of tea-stained look. Not what I had planned on, but loved the result.

Can you just imagine it hanging on the wall with cute, colorful scarves hanging from it? So fun!

Girl's Bow Holder

With three little girls in our family, we have A LOT of bows/flowers/cutesy things for hair. They have been sort of floating around between bedrooms, but I wanted one central location for all of them. And, I wanted it to go in the bathroom, since that is where I do their hair each morning.
Here it is!

I'm killing myself for not taking a before picture. This was one of those dry erase calendars that I got off freecycle. It was ugly, but I knew that I could cover it up and give it some new life.

New life almost always starts with Mod Podge! I covered the surface with a layer of Mod Podge, laid the fabric down on top of it, then coated that with Mod Podge and let it dry. I think I did 2 coats.

Then I laid out the ribbons so they were spaced the way I liked it. I hot glued each ribbon in the middle of the board to hold it in place.

And glued the ribbons to the back as well.

All done! This is what it looked like before I added all the hairbows. Now you can barely see the ribbons because the whole thing is covered up!

This project was 100% free to me (except that I ran out of Mod Podge and had to get some more). The board was from freecycle, the fabric was from last 4th of July, and the ribbons/rick rack were left over from other projects. I think it turned out pretty cute for "use what you have" crafting, but I envision it being much cuter with zebra print fabric and hot pink ribbons. I'll save that one for you to do!

Roadkill Rescue: Bookshelf

I'm participating in Roadkill Rescue at Infarrantly Creative. The rules are that you have to redo something that you acquired for no cost at all.

My project was these bookshelves. It was free to me because my parents bought them when I was twelve and they have stuck with me. They're just cheap, white bookshelves. Not real wood, just that plastic-y stuff. And after all these years, they were starting to look pretty bad.

First, I had to take the back off the bookcase. It was easy to remove the little nails and cart it downstairs, where I mod-podged some cool wrapping paper (from Walmart, $3) onto it. Mod-podging that large of a surface was tricky, so I cut the paper into smaller squares. It still ended up with wrinkles, but it will be covered mostly by books anyway, so I'm not too worried about it.

Next, I spray painted the body of the bookshelf. It was just one of those cheap, plastic coated plywood bookshelves to begin with, so I wasn't too worried about ruining it with spray paint. In fact, I love spray paint because it's cheap and can totally transform something. After about 4 coats, plus a coat of polyurethane to keep it from scratching, it was finished.
Nailed the mod-podged back onto the newly black bookshelf
(Close up)

Voila!

I put them in our loft, which has become the reading/creating zone. If I homeschooled, I would do it in here. So yes, I know that there are cute ways of arranging things on bookshelves, but right now the primary goal in arranging is to keep important stuff away from my 11 month old.(Honestly, in the middle of writing that sentence I had to run over and take some chalk out of her mouth. Sometimes it's dangerous to have big sisters who leave their stuff everywhere!)