Heirloom Wreath How-To

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! Best wishes to you and your family during the holiday season!

I love wreaths! They are great on front doors and interior walls alike and fun for all seasons. I saw this amazing beaded wreath in a Martha Stewart Magazine and knew I had to have it.  I can't really imagine Martha sitting around and stringing hundred of seed bead but I suppose one of the advantages of being a billionaire is that your have minions to do these things for you. This isn't a very difficult project, just a time consuming one, so pop in your favorite holiday movie(s) and get to it! I have included the directions straight from the source here:

I followed these instructions completely but if I were do this again I would make the ring that you attach the leaves to out of a less malleable/ larger gauge wire because the ring has a tendency to become slightly ovoid when hanging under the weight of all the beads. 

All of the leaf and pearl bunches ready to go

Just tie a bow on the wreath and hang it up!

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Polar Vortex Craft: Little Glitter Village

For years my mother, our neighbor and I would gather around the Holidays to make a little glitter house/church/barn/store. We first saw them in an old Martha Stewart magazine, though you can find abundant examples in the world of Pinterest. This is a multi-part project. The first step is to make a pattern. Here are the two original Martha Stewart patterns, which can modified to make your dream house:

This pattern is one I modified to make a church for the village.

Make your pattern on regular paper or if you are feeling brave draw it right on to your light weight cardboard. Use an exacto knife to cut out the house and windows/doors and score the folding edges to facilitate folding. Next, it's time to fold and glue. If you have a LOT of patience feel free to hold it together yourself... me, I prefer a good rubber band after a minute of hand holding. 

After a few hours of drying, it's time to spray paint it with primer and pick out what color your house will be. The first year I chose to paint my house a bright pink (of course, this is me) and my fellow crafters looked at me like I was out of my mind. They shouldn't have... it turned out great and didn't look out of place with their tamer pastel houses. 

After the paint is dry, you can apply fake snow (see below). After that dries it is time to do the all-over glitter. Paint on a light coat of thinned modge podge or elmers craft glue (watered down) and lightly pour very fine glitter over the wet glue, collecting excess to be reused. 

The middle glitter is coarser and used for the roof, the left glitter is for the rest of the house, and the Snow-Tex gives a snowy texture to the roofs. 

After you are done with the painting and glittering, it's time to place little pieces of velum behind all of the window openings (you can mark mullions on with white pencil) and mini wreaths (trimmed down greenery or mini garland). 

That is pretty much it! As the years have gone by we have made our patterns more and more complicated and added little winter accessories like trees, which can be found in the home decor area of most stores around the holidays. 

Happy Holidays!

Snowballs and Sleigh Bells and Schnitzel with Noodles

It's that time of year - holiday party season! Mull the wine or apple cider, pull out the candy canes and deck the halls! We typically get 2-3 weeks off from school around the holidays so our holiday parties have to be a bit early. During grad school and the first year of med school I had holiday parties for some of my classmates.

I included the invite which can be modified in Illustrator/Photoshop/PPT
(obviously omitting my address and phone number)

 The first year I had a soup party (chili, butternut squash soup and chicken & wild rice.) The second year I did bruschetta and some appetizers, including my popular blink-and-it's-gone brie (space unwrapped caramels cubes out evenly on top of the brie, sprinkle craisins and diced dried apricots on, pop in the oven until the caramel melts). Here are some of the other recipes that were a hit:

This is my Grandma Miller's recipe and it is wonderful!

This one is courtesy of my mom and also fabulous

 These are chewy and delicious! Don't expect them to last long :)

These literally melt in your mouth thanks to the powdered sugar. Courtesy of my neighbor.

As gifts, I gave out these cute little cocoa balls:

You can google drink mixes. I didn't love the one I used so that's why I'm not posting it here.

To make the cocoa balls: Buy clear ornaments and rinse them out. Pour in your mix.  Place half of a candy cane in the ball with a mini marshmallow on the outer end (to prevent mix from coming out) and secure the gold ornament top back on. Use ribbon to tie on your drink instructions.

I'm off to go light a pine candle, make some mulled wine, hang the mistletoe and wrap some presents!

Happy Holidays! Thanks for reading and be sure to subscribe!

Break Out Your Friendship Bracelet Box

Do you remember when the best way to show who your friends were was by exchanging friendship bracelets? I do. It was circa 3rd grade and there was always a bit of friendly competition to see who could come up with the newest coolest style or pattern. All the girls would bring their boxes full of floss to recess and try knots until the bell rang. Times have changed and we no longer need some string on our wrists to validate a friendships but that doesn't mean that our old friend, embroidery floss, is obsolete. So dig out your box (I know you still have it) and get ready to craft. 

Stop by your nearest hardware store and pick up a nice piece of wood. Make sure that it is even with as few knots as you can find.  The men working there are always happy to cut down the piece to your specs. I primed and then painted a single coat of white paint. 

I then found a font I liked and blew it up to fit on the wood. I printed it out and taped the printed papers to the board and then set to nailing in nails about every inch. I used white nails but any would work. I just didn't want to have to paint my nails, too.

Once all the nails are in place, rip off the paper template. I decided to draw a quatrefoil border on as well.

To sting your letters, make a knot at any spot and cut the tail short. String as lightly or densely as you want and then tie off as you tied on. 

Once I was done stringing, I filled in the quatrefoil with basic black craft paint. 

That's it. Just throw some picture hanging hooks on the back and hang. 

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On ne voit bien qu'evec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

When you have a big white wall like I do that you can't paint, what's a girl to do? Big art - that's what! When I was at Michael's craft store the other day I spotted a large canvas in the clearance area. The catch - it had a giant zebra head on it. Apparently this was appealing to some, as was evidenced by the women who fawned over it when I was taking it out to my car, but it wasn't really by style and didn't go with the french theme I have going on in my living room. 

This project starts as almost all of mine do - with primer. I primed the canvas (front and sides). You could probably skip the primer if your base spray paint is darker but since mine was silver I wanted to make sure nothing showed through. 

Then I picked out one of my favorite quotes from the French book Le Petite Prince. I used a Xylon cutter to cut out my letters in the font I wanted, though you could probably go to any scrapbooking store and use their die-cuts. Or, if you have a lot of patience, you could print them off the computer and cut them out. I would suggest using a card stock thickness so that the edges don't peel upwards with they get wet with your second coat of paint. I then used Krylon Easy-Tack (a semipermanent / repositionable adhesive) to place the letters. I am a bit OCD so I used masking tape to help keep things level.  If you're going to go something, you should do it right, right?

Then it was time for the second coat of spray paint. I used Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Satin but you can use anything! Some brands tend to have more variety in color selection. I wanted to keep the sides silver so I used masking tape to protect them. 

I peeled off the letters and masking tape and c'est fini!

"One can only see clearly with the heart. Everything essential is invisible to the eyes."

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Flea Market Finds: Magazine Rack

I love magazines but I have this bad habit of getting behind and letting them build up. Do you have this problem too? There just don's seem to be enough hours in the day! This post is in celebration of being done with my 10 weeks of my surgery clerkship. Now that I'm in my third year of med school I am in the clinics/hospital full-time (40-80hrs/wk) and then I have to go home and study and prepare for the next day so I am ready to be pimped (med school lingo for attending physicians drilling you with questions to make sure you have read the appropriate journals, books, etc.) This leaves little time to read about the latest celebrity gossip, check out the fashion "Do's and Don'ts," let alone actual magazine articles. My pile was getting quite large so I decided to do something about it. I had seen something like this on Pinterest before so I can't claim to have originated this idea. 

I had been keeping my eye out for a fun shutter for this project but hadn't found anything yet. Then my mom went to the Springfield Flea Extravaganza and found this salon-style swinging shutter door for $5! She's the best! 

I forgot to take a before picture but it looked something like this but with a worn varnish instead of paint:

I sanded it down to a even surface and sawed out every other slat with a small hand saw. I then painted it with primer followed by two coats of paint. And that's it! Just make sure to let it cure for a few days so that the print from the magazines doesn't transfer to the rack. Just slide in some magazines and Voila!

Here's the final product:

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Baby, It's Cold Outside! Crocheted Infinity Scarf

I'm a summer girl through and through but living north of the Mason Dixon means that I can't escape the snow. The best thing I can do is dress warmly (quite a challenge during last year's polar vortex and record snow fall) and hope that Punxsutawney Phil declares a short winter. Speaking of last winter, I had a lot of time where I didn't want to brave the sub-zero temps which left me lots time for girls nights, movie nights and crafts.

That brings me to today's post: The Fast & Easy Infinity Scarf.  This a super easy project, even if you are new to crocheting, and will only take an hour or two. It makes a great quick and inexpensive present (it only costs about $5 for the yarn - Hobby Lobby, Michael's and Joann all have good selection) and what girl (or guy) doesn't love a scarf in the dead of winter to protect what their parka won't cover?

So let's get to work!

You will need to pick up a "bulky" weight size 5 yarn (this one is really soft and has nice depth) and a size M or N crochet hook. On subsequent scarves I used other brands but tried to stick with size 4 or 5 and the same or longer yardage. One of the things to remember as you do this is to keep your stitches loose! For this pattern you will work in rounds. You may have to do one less row/round depending on how long your yarn is, or you can make a wider scarf by using a skein and a half. 

Here is the pattern (click the stitches to see how-to videos):

~ The first Chain 2 or Chain 3 of each round counts as the first stitch

~  Round 1: Loosely Chain 78 & Join chain with slip stitch

~  Round 2: Chain 2, half double crochet in next chain and each chain after all the way around. Join with a slip stitch to the first stitch of the round. 

~  Round 3: Chain 3, double crochet in the next stitch and each chain after all the way around. Join with a slip stitch to the first stitich of the round. 

~  Rounds 4-9: Repeat Round 2.

~  Round 10: Chain 2, half double crochet in each stitch all the way around.

~  Finish off and weave ends in to hide tails

Here you can see the difference between using a skein (grey) and 1.5 skeins (purple). The wider and looser you want your scarf to be the more yarn you will need.

This was my first crochet project in a few years so I had to Youtube how to do the stitches again but this is a really easy pattern for beginners because there are very few different stitches required for this project.

I ended up making like five or so of these as Christmas presents, for my family and myself last Christmas break while watching Ally McBeal (I know, I'm about 2 decades behind the ball here, but it's great!)

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Flea Market Finds: Tufted Chair Reupholstery

Don't you love flea markets? You always feel like you are getting a great bargain and you are excited to see what the next booth holds! It's not like going to the mall where you know what each store has to offer - at the flea market you get a new experience every 20ft!  Of course you can find new items but the hard core flea market shoppers scoff at the new in favor of that vintage something or that item the seller underpriced because they didn't know what they had. My mom picked up a beautiful teak outdoor dining set for 10% of it's value ($2000+). One of the things I love about flea markets is the imagination that they require... Which brings me to today's post!

A few years ago, I was at the Springfield Flea Extravaganza and found this adorable (again, imagination) chair. I wouldn't claim to be a good bargainer but I ended up buying it for $20! I could already see beyond it's torn '70s fabric that it was going to be great. I mean, who doesn't love tufting? (And it swivels!)

Then it was time to go fabric shopping! I found this really fun thick green and blue leopard print (I know that sounds really tacky but prepare to be surprised) at Jo-Anns in the clearance for $5/yd! 

After what felt like hours of staple removal this is what it looked like:

I thought it was really helpful to take pictures as I was deconstructing so that when I later upholstered I had a reminder of how it all went together.  My particular chair had a detachable back which made my project much easier. So after I took the back fabric off I unscrewed the back and removed the seat and skirt fabric. Save all of the fabric you take off and don't cut it apart if possible.

If you are going to reupholster you may as well go the whole 9 yards and replace the batting and such. Here you can see that I used a bumper too to make the hard edges of the wood less noticeable when you are sitting (This went on before the actual batting). 

This chair was a challenge in that it was fitted and required some piping and other sewing but with a bit of help from my mother (sewing extrodinaire) I was able to do it. The easiest thing I found was to use the pieces of old fabric as a template/pattern (this is why you want to rip the seams rather than cutting the pieces apart). If you are struggling to figure out how much fabric your chair will need (esp. if you care using a high-end fabric) you can wait until you have deconstructed and have your pieces laid out. 

 This project could have been really painful if I had had to nail or staple without an electric staple gun.  I LOVE my Craftsman cordless staple gun! My mom and I have tackled many upholstery projects with it and there is no going back! I'm not sure if they still sell it but this is what it looks like:

To begin, decide which pieces need to be sewn together or have piping and sew them together as if you were making a slipcover. For example, the whole back needed to be sewn as did the seat cover. The skirt had to be be given a clean bottom edge and ironed into pleats. After I had my pieces, I tackled the seat and then slid the "slipcovered" back onto the form. Because my chair had tufting I had to make some buttons (with a simple button making kit from the craft store) and do the actual tufting before I secured the back panel of the back. I should note that some of my project required hand sewing while on the chair to get a tight fit.  After I hand sewed the back panel around to the sides, I screwed the back to the bottom. Then I smoothed out the back, hand sewed it to the seat on the sides  and stapled the skirt around the bottom. The key to a great finished project is making everything tight and keep tension as you staple. 

And the finished product:

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