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!

Photo Challenge

10 weeks ago when Jason left for Basic I knew I would miss him like crazy.... but I thought there might be a few things he would miss too. So everyday I took a photo of something that made me think of him... I should say, I took a photo everyday of ONE of the things that made me think of him. We finally got to see each other so I put the finishing touches on the book to give to him.

I had this pic laying around but I'd like to put one of us from
his graduation.

My 1st shot at binding. It was actually pretty fun once I got the
hang of it. Sorry there's no tutorial with this blog. This book came
together in a rush and I wasn't quite sure what or how I was going
to make it.

My stitches need to be tighter but still fun.
I found instructions by watching a video
on youtube.

Pic of the beautiful flowers he sent

Mail from him!

Some of my messages for him

I miss having a glass bottle with him

I miss watching the sunset with him

While he might not admit it I think he misses his little girl

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!

Letter Art... with a twist

The alphabet letter art is huge right now. I wanted to create a more personal one with my soon-to-be new last name! ;)

I realized how light the H and M are once I stepped back and
snapped a photo. I'll have to go back and redo those.

I took pics of some of our important items

W - Our first engagement gift! A large W to display
O - The logo from my Christmas boots Jason bought me. I love them!
O -  I kept a charm that was from the first wedding Jason and I went to.
D - From our WorlD Series tickets from 2011. Go Cards!
H - Stole this image from my Beach Table.
A - From one of Jason's National GuArd bags.
M - Go Mizzou! Jason's favorite college team.

From a previous project I had an extra board and an extra dowel
rod. I purchased a smaller size board to glue to pictures to. I
cut them down to 4x4 inch squares and also cut the dowel rod at
varying lengths.

WEAR EYE PROTECTION! I'm not sure if I didn't have a good
hold of the rod when I was cutting or if there was a bad spot but
my saw kicked this piece up at me. Luckily there was no injury!

Let a piece of Steel Wool soak in Apple Cider
Vinegar overnight. Then scrub your board and
let it dry. Instant aging

I used Contact Cement to glue on the 'nubs'
but eventually I switched to an epoxy. I was
afraid the contact cement wouldn't hold the
weight. It was soaking into the wood too much

Missing a photo here but I printed out my pics and
glued them to my 4x4 pieces of wood. I then glued
the 4x4s to the nubs.

Almost done!

I drilled two holes (equal distance from the sides)
in the top of the wood

Screwed in two eye hooks

And thread some twine through. I went back
and forth 3 times but that adjustable.

Ummm... back to work. Need to fix
the H and M. It'll drive me nuts otherwise.