Mother's Day Gift

Create your own Mother's Day gift. Below are the steps for this 3 panel personalize photo collage.

Don't want to do 3 panels? Just do one!

Materials:
Boards - I used 3 but you decided (I would stick with an odd #; 1, 3, 5)
Matte Black Spray paint 
Pictures - I was able to find three photographs from my childhood with my brother and sister. Print these pictures on thick paper. I used Card Stock.
Mod Podge
Eye Hooks - You'll need 10 if you create three panels
Twine

Start with the boards. Either buy some precut boards or cut them
down to the correct size.

Spray paint your boards. Be sure to cover the sides.

Once your paint has dried grab your eye hooks. I drilled a few
holes in the top and bottom of my boards to ensure they were
all in the same place.

Screw them in

Cover just the board with Mod Podge (without your picture).
Then place your photo on the board and cover the photograph
with Mod Podge too.
**** I used my inkjet printer but I think it would be better to
use a laser jet if you have one available.

Let the Mod Podge dry for about 12 hours. Then sand down
the edges. I roughed up other parts of the board and some
parts of the photograph too.

Use your twine to connect all the pieces. This was the
hardest part of this project for me. You want to make
sure the twine on each side is the same length or
your photos will hang crooked.

Here are my 3 photos: Summer time in the backyard

Building a snowman!

Summer vacation

And you're ready to wrap it up.

Animal Coat Rack... for the kids

Need a unique coat rack for your kids? I saw something similar to this on Pinterest several months ago and thought of my nephew. He loves animals so I'm hoping he enjoys this.

The directions for the original website I found are on Apartment Therapy. Unfortunately I had to modify her instructions so there was some trial and error involved.

Find some animals you like. I wish I had found a few more.
As morbid as it seems, use a saw or utility knife and cut
the heads off.

Still think it's not morbid? Unfortunately a new dog sitter came
over to meet my furbabies with these out on my counter. I'm
hoping she didn't call an animal abuse hotline.

I bought a 1x4 board and cut it down to about the size I wanted.
I then sanded, painted.... sanded.... painted until I was happy.
I basically went with a white wash look on the front and then
painted the sides black

Here's the tricky part. Apartment Therapy must have bought
a different kind of toy animal than what I have here. The inside
of these heads were completely hollow. Long story short, I
eventually used some epoxy and glued around the neck of the
animals. TIP: the elephants ears kept pushing his head off the
board. I couldn't sit holding an elephant head to a board for 24
hours so I grabbed a juice cup, stuffed a plastic grocery bag inside,
flipped it over on top of the elephants face and then placed a
large book on top of the glass for extra weight.

And here we are!

Apparently I did a pretty good job arranging the animals
without even knowing. My nephew's fav animal is the
elephant. Front and center!

Song Lyrics Artwork

Have a favorite song? Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is a favorite of Jason and I. (Video's at the bottom of the blog. Watch out it's catchy and gets stuck in your head!) We love the lyrics and usually catch ourselves singing a line or two... or whistling it. So I thought I'd make some artwork.

You don't need many materials for this project: A piece of wood,
some lyrics, paint, exacto knife and contact paper.

I had this piece leftover from my Scrabble Board project

I typed the lyrics out and designed them to fit within the right size.

I taped off my border

I laid down the contact paper and then the lyrics

I started by covering the back of the lyrics page with
graphite and then traced over the letters.

You can see it transferring over here. But I soon learned
just cutting out the letters of the paper with an exacto
knife will transfer the graphite too. For an easier way
to transfer your lyrics view Living with Lindsay's blog

I'm pretty sure I just about broke my fingers cutting
these letters out.

And if the last step didn't break it then going back
over the contact paper to ensure the cuts were all
made correctly definitely broke my fingers

The fun part... peeling the contact paper off to leave the letters

I ran my brayer over the letters to make sure they
were nice and snuggle against the wood before
I started painting

I brushed paint on but I think I would use spray paint
next time, for one, it would be a faster way to paint. But
also I noticed the paint I used was a little too liquidy
and ran under my letters

I wanted the black paint to pop so before I pulled up in letters
I sprayed the board with a glossy clear coat

Here you can see where some of the paint seeped
under the contact paper.

Definitely like it though. Now I just need
to figure out how I want to frame it.

Trying to sleep... custom pillow cases

Since Jason's been gone I've found myself falling asleep holding a framed picture of him that usually sits on my nightstand. I thought creating these pillow cases would be a good alternative to save me the bumps and bruises from smacking my head on the frame after I've fallen asleep.

I found a couple of my favorite pictures and quotes

Materials you'll need:

Pillow cases

Iron on Transfers

Pictures

Quotes

Fabric marker

I started by following the directions for the iron-on transfers.
Sorry there are no pictures. I then printed out my quotes (in
reversed) and traced over the backside of the paper in pencil
(your quote will look correct)

Flip your page over after you've traced the quote and center it
on your pillow case. Now trace over the correct side of the paper.
I used an extra fine tip pen. It's a little hard to see but the pencil
will transfer onto the pillow case.

Use your fabric marker to fill in the letters.

Here are my iron-on photos

Still working on a quote for the back of this one

And before I can even try them out my little Nate snuggled up
next to them. He sure misses his best friend. Hurry home Jason!

My Scrabble Board Project

Words with Friends is going crazy and there's a sudden popularity with using scrabble letters as art so I thought I'd make an art piece that works for us in the house.

Here are my materials:
Scrabble game; old Dictionary ($1.00 at Goodwill!), magnets,
24"x24" sheet metal, frame

I glued the magnets to the back of each scrabble letter

I used some Mod Podge to glue some dictionary
pages to the sheet metal

One layer of pages done. I added a 2nd layer to make sure all
of the sheet metal was covered.

I created my own scrabble board and printed it out. I didn't
see any free printable scrabble out there though so maybe
 you can make a photo copy of the board if you don't want
to make your own. I then went over all of the pages with
a coat of Mod Podge to protect the pages.

I bought a frame you can put together yourself. It's a little thin
so I may still look for a 2'x2' frame or maybe make my own.

Hang it up!

Then write your own message or have an ongoing game.