Recycled Crow

Sometimes a creative thrifter has a vision of an object's potential that only they can see. Such is the case with my Recycled Crow.

I am working on my Halloween display and added my recycled crow. I first found the tattered crow at Goodwill back in March. The original photo below shows that it was kind of sad looking. The wings looked really bad and it was missing its tail but it had Halloween potential.

Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop - August

Welcome to the Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop for the month of August. This month's theme is Crafting with School Supplies. My favorite school supply is vintage wooden rulers. I love finding old wooden rulers and yard sticks at estate sales because they are everyday objects that have so much design potential.

My School Supply crafting project is an easel and slate chalkboard both made from thrifted, vintage rulers.

I started with a small vintage chalkboard and cut two rulers to frame the edges of the slate. I glued the rulers to the existing wooden frame and rounded the corners to match.

The easel was made with three more rulers as the legs and an architect's ruler as the tray that supports the slate chalkboard.

This side view shows how the architect's ruler supports the slate chalkboard.

The chain helps to stabilize the easel.

I hope you enjoyed my vintage, thrifted school supply project. Please use the DCC blog hop button on the right to continue through to visit all of the amazingly talented designers involved with this blog hop.

Designer Crafts Connection Blog Hop - April

Welcome to the Designer Crafts Connection Blog Hop for the month of April. This month's theme is "Handmade Flowers" with an added challenge to create with things around the house. A perfect combination that is dear to my heart. I started looking through my stash and came across something I had been saving for a "someday" project, the pretty fabric bag that held my shabby chic duvet cover.

The finished project is a canvas tote decorated with the Tattered Floral Sizzix die. The lining of my bag is the intact duvet cover bag {see the floral bag below}. For the outside of the bag, I used leftover painter's drop cloth from previous projects here and here. I first cut and sewed the drop cloth to match the size and shape of the duvet cover bag.

Next I die cut some Tattered Florals out of more drop cloth material and applied a little Worn Lipstick Distress ink on the petal edges. This created the outer part of my flowers.

I wanted to use a different material for the center of the flowers to add texture and interest. I found a vinyl bag of decorative sea shells sitting around. I cut a different flower shape out of the vinyl and used Cranberry and Butterscotch Alcohol Ink to color the narrower petals.

I used embroidery thread and thrifted pearl beads to attach the flowers to the bag. At this point the flowers started to look like climbing Clematis. Using Broken China Distress ink, I added a hint of blue behind the flowers to tie in with the colors in the lining.

I sewed handles and then stitched the bag together. This entire project was created using only items that I had around my house. I love doing projects like this.

I hope you enjoyed my Handmade Flowers. Please use the Forward/Back button on the right column to continue through the DCC Blog Hop for more amazing floral inspiration.

This is linked to:
DIY Home Sweet Home, Homemaker on a Dime, Making the World Cuter, Sew Can Do and Skip to My Lou

Designer Craft Connection - August

Welcome to the Designer Craft Connection Blog Hop for August. This month's theme is designing with school supplies. This was an exciting challenge because I happened to have a lot of vintage school supplies gathered from my thrifting adventures.

My favorite school supply that I collect are old wooden rulers. They look so lovely as they age and are quite varied in their appearance. I began with the idea of covering a lamp shade with rulers but with a bit of luck at my local Goodwill my project became more unique. I began with 24 vintage rulers and a boxy, pink polka dotted lamp {sorry there are no "before" photos} then using hot glue, I attached the rulers to the sides.

Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop – May

Welcome to the Designers Craft Connection Blog Hop. This month's theme was either Jewelry or Flowers. I had an idea combining the two but ran into a bit of a time crunch at the last minute with some additional freelance work. So I moved on to plan B which is technically my plan A since I have been meaning to do this project for some time.

I have been slowly decorating my work area in the office. It is a typical "cubicle" with dull gray fabric partitions and boring office supplies. My first project was purchasing a painter's dropcloth from the hardware store to cover the dull gray fabric walls. I bought the lightest weight dropcloth, 8oz. and 4 ft x 15 ft worked for the size that I needed.

I trimmed the dropcloth and hemmed the edges. I didn't want to attach the material permanently to the cubicle walls so I used the odd clips that they supply to hold things to these walls. But these clips looked horrible so this is where my Flower project came in.

Not-so-corporate Nameplate

When you work in a "cubicle farm" you are usually issued a nameplate so that people know where your desk is if you're not there. But most nameplates are plastic with a name carved out and quite boring. Since I work in a creative environment, I decided to do something to change up my nameplate.

I began with all thrifted items which included a Scrabble tile holder, some Scrabble tiles, a vintage yard stick, old lace and a piece of rhinestone jewelry that I found recently. I cut the yardstick to the same width as the Scrabble tile holder and sanded the edges.

The wood pieces did not look old enough so I rubbed them down with some Feed-n-Wax that I bought at the local hardware store. You can see the difference in how rich the color looked after I applied the Feed-n-Wax.

To make the lace and rhinestone embellishment, I used a needle and thread {also thrifted} to gathered some lace and tied that off. I used a wire cutter to remove the pin backing on the rhinestone brooch. I glued them together and then glued them both a little off-centered on the yardstick piece.

I glued the embellished yardstick piece to the tile holder. Finally I glued the Scrabble tiles on the yardstick piece. And now I have a not-quite-standard corporate nameplate.

This is linked to:

All Thingz Related, Between Naps on the Porch, FaveCrafts, Home Savvy AtoZ, Homemaker on a Dime, Keeping it Simple, Life Made Lovely, Making the World Cuter, Marvelously Messy, Mod Vintage Life, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Rook No. 17,  Running With Glitter, Sew Can Do, Singing Three Little Birds, Skip to My Lou, Sugar Bee Crafts, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, The DIY Home Sweet Home Project, The DIY Showoff, The Girl Creative, The Southern Institute, Type A and Vintage Wannabee

Fused Bag Art

A few months ago I had seen a technique of fusing layers of plastic grocery bags together but I didn't have any idea of how I would use it. Recently I experimented with a lot of Tim Holtz's products and a little idea started to grow.

I started with eight plastic grocery bags, cut open and laid flat into layers. I will be posting a tutorial on how to fuse the plastic bags but this post is about adding art on the plastic before fusing.

Because the plastic bags are non-porous it was the perfect surface to use alcohol inks. I applied the inks directly onto one layer of plastic. Next, I used permanent black ink and rubber stamped several designs. Here is how the art started off.

Since the plastic is translucent, I used French ephemera from the Graphics Fairy printed onto vellum and layered it behind the inked layer.

Once I had the art completed I fused the plastic layers together to create a large piece of Fused Grocery Bags. "Fusing" involves ironing eight layers of plastic between sheets of parchment paper. I highly suggest practicing with scrap plastic until you know the correct temperature to use. Too hot and it melts the plastic. Not hot enough and the layers do not fuse. Most tutorials suggest the Rayon setting on your iron.

My original idea was to add a layer of plastic over the artwork so that the finished piece would have softer colors. Looking back, I love how vibrant the original artwork was that I wish I hadn't covered it with the final layer of plastic. 

Once I had the large piece of Fused Grocery Bags, I cut it into a folded rectangle, sewed up the sides, added a gusset, sewed seam binding along the top edge and added a handle. Here is the finished piece both front and back.

It has a distressed look which is created from the fusing of the plastic. Perhaps if you use the perfect heat setting then it might not wrinkle as much. Now I'm thinking that maybe the muted colors work better with the distressed plastic. This was my first attempt with this technique. It is a great way to recycle your plastic bags and create some unique art.

I am honored to be featured at:

Thrifty Decorating

Rook No. 17

This is linked to:

504 Main, A Little Knick Knack, Be Different Act Normal, Between Naps on the Porch, Cherished Treasures, Chic on a Shoestring, FaveCrafts, Finding Fabulous, Frugalicious Me, Just a Girl, Homemaker on a Dime, Keeping it Simple, Life Made Lovely, Lovely Crafty Home, Making the World Cuter, Marvelously Messy, My Romantic Home, Not So Simple Housewife, Paisley Passions, Rook No. 17,  Running With Glitter,  Sew Can Do,  Simply Designing, Skip to My Lou, Somewhat Simple, Sugar Bee Crafts,  Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Tatertots & Jello, The 36th Avenue, The DIY Home Sweet Home Project, The DIY Showoff, The Shabby Nest, The Southern Institute, Thrifty Decorating, Truly Lovely, Vintage Wanna Bee and What Allie's Making Now