Ladies Christmas craft party

Mother Daughter Craft night @ Faith

Lucy and I enjoyed craft night together at church making a Mary/Joseph/baby Jesus craft.  It was fun making memories with my girl!

The Power of Pinterest...

I admit I am no super blogger or super crafter by any stretch of the imagination.  That's why I can totally laugh at this....crazy!

As you know this past Spring I did some renovations to my home in a few weeks time.  I happened to pin several of my DIY projects because...well that is just what you do.  And I wanted easy record for my own sake.  Hopefully a few people could benefit from the easy methods I myself had found and copied from...Pinterest of course.

There was one pin in particular that has blown up on Pinterest, the DIY curtain rod hanging frames.  It's totally crazy to me because it wasn't anything too fancy-schmancy or out of the box.  

However I was shocked today when I was reading my blogs in google reader when I came across this picture below.  It is from Country Girl Home and she was talking about how her pin was so popular on Pinterest that an online company was started from her pin!  This pic was also my inspiration for my curtain rod hanging frames as well.  Then I looked closer and realized MY PIN WAS ON THERE!

This is the actual pin and the cut-off picture that you see in the above snapshot...

I have no idea how many pins it has on Pinterest (I know it is in the thousands), but I have had at least 50,000 hits on my blog just for this one single pin!  Who knew that curtain rod hanging pictures would be so in demand?! Ha!

It's crazy what all the Internet has brought to our fingertips.  20 years ago we were in libraries, encyclopedias and catalogs to get our info and no telling what the information will be like when our kids are our age!  Kinda scary actually!!

DIY Jewelry holder

Ok this is the last of my craft posts for now although I have a few more projects I will be working on soon. I must take a break my house is needing some attention!  I saw one similar to this on Pinterest and was able to reinvent in my own way for, get this....ZERO bucks.  FREE!  I had this old gold frame in the attic and the wire was some leftover from something Jay had done.  I used key rings and (sorry don't know the official name of them) those hooks that you can open up (for like note cards) to hang my necklaces and bracelets on and it turned out pretty neat!

Crafting is fun (especially when it is super cheap or even FREE!)...have you caught the crafting bug yet?

Trash to Treasure

This is something else I found at the thrift store last weekend and I had a vision with this piece of trash.  I didn't take a before picture unfortunately but you can envision this beauty in a gold scratched plastic frame...yuck.  It was bad.  But I painted this background pic black, the frame black and then just covered it with burlap and hot glued my painted red "L" to the center of it.  Easy peasy...rags to riches...trash to treasure!

My inspiration for the project...

Source: loveoffamilyandhome.blogspot.com via Amanda on Pinterest

Here is the pic I found at the thrift store....

And I didn't even realize until right now as I am posting this that the random frame that I found at the thrift store is the EXACT one as in my inspiration piece!  Cool!

8 dollars total

I was at the thrift store the other day and found these gems for $3.99 a piece!  They are probably $40 baskets easy and I got them for a steal!  I didn't necessarily like the color and it doesn't really match anything I have so I decided to paint them black.

I did two coats, the one on the left had 2 while the one on the right only had one.

Finished product (I took these at night and lighting was really bad)...

Love a good deal!

Curtain rod hanging frames

This is my inspiration and I got it from this website...

Source: countrygirlhome.blogspot.com via Amanda on Pinterest

I happened to have an old curtain rod that I wasn't using.  I bought the 8X10 frames at Dollar Tree and printed the pics for about $2.  So this cost me less than $5!

This scripture on the left...written on painted insulation that I mentioned in my last craft post.  SOOO many things you could do with this stuff!

The whole thing put together...

Faux Canvases

I found on this site the idea of using foam insulation as a faux canvas and I have used it for several things over the past few weeks, other than just these canvases.

This was my inspiration and it can be found here....

Source: sugarbeecrafts.com via Amanda on Pinterest

I did make a few changes though.  First of all, couldn't ever get the Office Depot "Engineer's Print" to work.  I took my flash drive up there twice and still couldn't get it to read for some reason and it was NOT the price she indicated on the blog...more like $30 at my store.  So I opted to do the 20X24 at my local Sams instead for price of $7.99.  I did mess these up once and had to completely redo them because when I put modge podge on them I did it with a roller and the air bubbles beaded up on them and I had to tear the picture part off and start over.  But I do love the end result.  Each picture to complete cost me about $10 so for the three of these $30 total.

I do love these and will definitely be doing more of these.  They are so cheap you can change them up often to update them!

Letter Photo Art

Another super fun craft project that looks expensive but truly easy and very simple to make...letter photo art!

First of all, this was inspiration and it can be found here...

Source: shanty-2-chic.com via Amanda on Pinterest

I bought a 1X12 board (instead of the 2X12) and enough small frames at Dollar Tree (7 for our family name) and then downloaded the letters free from here and sent them to one hour photo at Walmart.  You could just print them but we were out of ink.  Then just paint everything and I glued the frames onto the board with wood glue (instead of hot glue like the instructions said...mine kept falling off).

The run down...

1X12 board-$5

Dollar Tree frames-$7

Letters at one hour photo-86 cents

Paint and supplies-about $3

Grand total of about $15 for this project

Oh and I made my mom one too...

Crafting

I started a couple of craft projects a couple of weeks ago and am just finishing some and getting around to posting about them.  None of them are my creations but ideas off of Pinterest I wanted to try.  Jay asks me why I am getting into crafting so much and other than it being fun and really cheap, I am "making my house a home!" :)

I have several posts coming in the next few days that I am scheduling.  I would hate to have too much fun in one day haha!

The first is a cheap, easy monogram wreath that I found here.  The whole project costs less than $10 and now I have something to hang on my back door!

This was my inspiration...

Source: tocrave.blogspot.com via Amanda on Pinterest

And this was my creation....

Crafts are fun!

I saw several of these crafts on Pinterest and have wanted to make them for a long time so this is the first of many I have started and finished.  This was super cheap, probably $7 to make.  And it only took about 2 hours to complete.  The original tutorial can found here.

All you need is a (white) wreath, 2 packages of coffee filters, and a hot glue gun. 

It is super full and takes up alot of space, not to mention super cute!

Also for another project (that I am still working on), I bought this styrofoam insulation from Lowes.  Seriously it is now one of my favorite things.  This pic below is only half of it (I had to cut it in half just to get it in the car) and the whole thing was less than $20.  It is kind of like a really cheap canvas.

There was so much of it, I was able to do LOTS of stuff with it. In this pic below (under the coffee filter wreath), I painted some insulation black and then wrote in a white sharpie paint marker our family name and one of our favorite verses Psalm 40:5.  It seriously took 5 minutes to paint and 5 minutes to write it (with drying time in between).

I also covered this big "L" in twine...super easy project as well.

I also painted some little bird houses and cheap fruit white.  Karis also helped me do some of the painting.  :)

Another insulation painting that I found here...

These projects have been really fun!  Thanks Pinterest!