Ruffling My Feathers a Bit….

Just thought I’d share more of my ruffle creations AGAIN. I know, are you sick of them yet? Well don’t be, because I’ve got a stack of fabric and about 3 more tanks to go after these! 

Thanks again to UCreate/Crap I’ve Made and Pretty Partridge for the tutorials.

I’m trying to decide whether I want to take these and the others I’ll be making to the local consignment boutique where I sell my frames, or put them in my Etsy shop, or just give them to my friend for her little girls.  These are some of my first sewing creations, so I’m kind of nervous about charging money for them!  I’m waiting for some feedback about the other ones I made for my friend, like to see how they held up in the wash, quality of the fabric, etc.

For you sewers out there, how did you finally make the leap into selling your handmade creations?

Today’s Thrifty Treasures

I’m able to join Rhoda over at Southern Hospitality today for my first Thrifty Treasures post!  Although, I have to say it’s not nearly as exciting as hers or many others.  I had high hopes for my Estate Sale/Garage Sale jaunts this weekend since there were so many around town, but I came away with no real treasures, except for this little guy for 40 cents:

I don’t know why, but he just makes me smile.  Sorry for the fuzzy pics, I was trying to get close since he is so tiny.  He has little green rhinestone eyes and such a cute face!  I’m sure he’ll find a home on a bookshelf somewhere.

 

Other non-exciting items that I bought:

~White flat sheet for $1 (you can never have too many of these to use for drop cloths or furniture covers when painting!)

~Plastic tray drawer organizer thingy for 50 cents (never hurts to get more organized!)

~Box fan for $6 (we’re always wishing we had one of these when working on outdoor projects, and I thought that was a pretty good price)

 

It was a hot steamy weekend for outdoor shopping, but I managed to make it through without melting! Hopefully I’ll have more interesting treasures to share in the future!

She Sells Seashells by the Seashore, Part 2

Are you just beside yourself with anticipation?? I know, it’s so exciting, a bathroom post two days in a row!

I wanted to share the guest bath from our old house in New Orleans.  It was our first house we bought right after we got married.  Since the beach wedding and honeymoon were still fresh in our minds, I wanted to find a use for all those shells we collected.  My mom actually came up with the bright idea of applying them to the walls in the bathroom!

We troweled joint compound onto the walls, smoothed it out, pressed the seashells in, then painted and glazed the walls.  We just did them in little groupings of three spread out over the wall.

Here’s a full view of the bathroom.  We also used the larger seashells as a window treatment by attaching them to ribbons and then tying the ribbons to a tension rod.

And I’ve still got tons of seashells left over in a box stored in my closet!  I’ve filled a vase with some and also used some on this candle embellishment:

Now, I don’t want to go totally overboard with seashell decorating (like I have with another aforementioned object), but I’m always looking on ways to incorporate seashells into my crafts.  Any ideas?

Show Us Where You Live Friday: Bathrooms (aka She sells seashells by the seashore)

TGIF! I'm happy to participate once again in Kelly's Korner Blog's weekly tour of homes. This week's feature is bathrooms. I'm going to showcase our guest bath, since our master bath is pretty small and really not much to look at.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the beach. My husband and I were married in Pensacola Beach, FL, 5 years ago and honeymooned in Destin, FL.

So it's only fitting that the beach serve as inspiration for our bathroom decorating. My hubby & dad replaced the old ugly 1" tiles with beautiful new tile and I painted the walls (twice) after removing some really ugly wallpaper (thanks mom!). The paint color is now the same as in our living room. I'd love to eventually update the light fixture in here too. Here's the view from the hallway:

And the view standing in front of the tub:

My mother made this wreath using seashells from the beach where we were married. She gathered them when we went to pick out the beach house for the ceremony site, and she had this ready to hang in the house on the wedding day.


We picked up these prints in Seaside, FL, during our honeymoon. They are by a local Florida artist, Cara Roy.

We also bought these starfish soaps in Seaside and my mom made the initial soap. I love the large seashell candle because you put a little tealight down in the bottom and it makes it glow so pretty!

In an attempt to go totally overboard with the theme decorating, I tied seashells to the shower curtain rings.

Perhaps in tomorrow's post I'll show you the bathrooms in our old house in New Orleans. We also used seashells in that guest bathroom, but in a very interesting way. And we did a master bath re-do right before we moved that I'm very proud of. Stay tuned!

I'd like to thank God, my parents, the producers....

I am so honored that a fellow blogger, Karen from Brayton Homestead Interiors, has passed on the "ONE LOVELY BLOG AWARD" to me!

Thank you so much for reading and acknowledging my blog. When I started this blog a couple months ago, I had no idea that anyone would be interested in what I had to say, let alone over 40 people! I have discovered a wonderful community of bloggers willing to share their thoughts, ideas, tips, and tricks, and even their homes (virtually of course!) with me and the rest of the world. Here are the 15 blogs that I would like to recognize and share this award with:

1. The Nesting Place: This is a very popular blog among the DIY crafters out there. I enjoy her creative projects and witty banter.

2. One Pretty Thing: Daily updates of DIY crafts from all around the web. This is how I found the ruffle tank top and ruffle butt onesie tutorials.

3. Domestic Fashionista: Tons of home decor tips and tricks, love it!

4. Southern Hospitality: I love to read about Rhoda's latest & greatest garage sale/thrift store find!

5. Thrifty Decor Chick: Sarah shares great tips on how she makes her house a home.

Ok, this is going to be a lot of typing if I keep going all the way to 15, so I'll just list the rest. They're all great blogs, so check them out if you have the time!

6. A Southern Accent

7. Crafty Bitch 101

8. Crap I've Made

9. Create Studio

10. Embellish

11. Evangeline's Vine

12. The DIY Show0ff Blog

13. The Tipsy Hostess

14. The Pretty Partridge

15. Monica Wants It

So, everyone pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, and start perusing these "lovely" blogs if you have a few hours to spare. Trust me, you get sucked in fast, it was hard for me to choose just fifteen! Thanks again, Karen!

Success!

Ha! In your face, Sewing Machine!! You cannot defeat me!!

End of an Era

Well, I knew my sewing machine prowess had to come to an end sooner or later. I just got WAY too confident in my abilities and, silly me, decided to make another ruffle tank top with some left-over scraps from this memo board:

I should have known better! My sewing machine was not having it and refused to cooperate! The thread keeps getting caught up underneath in the bobbin housing. What should have taken about 20 minutes ended up costing me about two hours of frustration and with nothing to show for it! Oh, well, I'm going to take a break today for some retail therapy. Maybe I will start over tomorrow and figure out the problem.

Garage Sale Madness!

It seems that my mom & I have held a garage sale at least once a year for the past 5 years....between her remodeling, my dad downsizing his office, and just the general accumulation of junk, there is always a need to have one! So that is just what we did this weekend, and the turnout was pretty good. Although, she didn't get rid of some big ticket items that she was hoping to.....those items are now bound for Craig's List!

I also set up an Embellished Bayou table with my tins and frames and actually sold one to my mom's neighbor! I had several lookers and some positive comments, but most people were just bargain hunting.

Here's a peek at some of the beautiful merchandise we had for sale:

Too bad I didn't get any photos of my mom and I stylin' in our fanny packs!

The Nesting Place recently posted her tips for a successful yard sale (both as a buyer and a seller). Since we have organized a ton of garage sales in the past, we pretty much have our routine down, but her tips are helpful for both garage sale novices and pros alike.

Here are some of my own garage sale observations:

• It never ceases to amaze me what people will buy at a garage sale! Something that is totally worthless to you has a totally different purpose in someone else's eyes.
• Things that I thought would never sell were the first things to go (25 cent worn-out orange dishtowels, anyone??). And then things that I thought would sell right off the bat are still hanging around.
• I think it's so funny that we have "regulars" at our garage sales. We recognize these people and can remember if they were big spenders or annoying talkers.

Overall, our sale was pretty successful. Even though having a garage sale is a lot of work, it's usually worth it in the end, if not for the money, purely for the entertainment value of people-watching!

Show Us Where You Live Friday - Office Edition

You know what day it is!! It's time to join Kelly's Korner Blog for another edition of Show Us Where You Live Friday! This week's featured room is the office.

We are really lucky to have one room dedicated solely as our office. It's really becoming my craft room more and more since we have a laptop now, but we still use it when we need to print stuff or work at a desk.

This bedroom in our home has great built-in bookshelves and a desk along one wall, so I knew the first time we looked at the house that that room would become our office. Here's what it looked like when we moved in:

Ick! Green walls and grey carpet! I immediately painted the walls and we had enough hardwood floors from our living room left over to eventually use in this room too. Here's how it looks now:

The built-ins are not only great for storage, but for displaying all of my LSU collectibles (and a few of my hubby's NC State ones as well). Not that I have a huge collection of LSU stuff or anything. I mean, I just have a few sentimental pieces. Or ten. Or fifty.

One of the best parts is that I get a whole closet dedicated to craft and seasonal storage!

I wish I could set up my sewing maching in here, but there's just not enough room at the desk if I'm working on a big project. This room serves its purpose perfectly for now. Thanks for looking, I can't wait to see everyone else's room!

Kitchen Cabinet Re-Do DIY

I'm featured on the DIY Showoff blog! Go take a look and see how I transformed our ugly orange oak kitchen cabinets to a darker, richer finish.

Wordless Wednesday: Let the Sun Shine In

Two Too Cute Sewing Creations!

I had been struggling for an idea of how to use the leftover zebra fabric from Gidget's new dress when I checked my daily blog roll and discovered the solution! One Pretty Thing is packed full of great DIY ideas, if you don't follow it, you should! I found a tutorial for this ruffle tank top from Pretty Partridge's blog and a tutorial for a ruffle butt onesie from Crap I've Made on UCreate. I just knew my best friend's little girls would be precious in these! Of course, I had to add the fleur de lis applique to make them unique!

As promised, here are my latest creations straight from my trusty ol' sewing machine:

Both of these were relatively simple to make, since they basically just required straight stitching. Plus, I got to discover a new trick my sewing machine can do....you can't really see too well in the photos, but I finished the edges in a cute zig-zag stitch that will prevent fraying. The tank top only took me about 20 or 30 minutes, and the onesie took a couple hours, only because I was learning the new stitch and following the tutorial online step-by-step. And I traced out the fleur de lis from a wooden embellishment, then applied them using iron-on adhesive paper.

Too cute!

Sewing Overdrive

I'm glad my sewing machine and I are finally becoming friends!

My sewing machine is about to blow up! LOL, not really, but it got a work-out this weekend. I tried some new projects from some web tutorials and I can't wait to share my creations. You'll have to wait until tomorrow, though, because I don't have photos yet.

Until then, I'll leaving you with some sewing trivia.

Did you know:

• The modern Singer company stopped selling sewing machines in 1986. Today it sells aerospace electronics.

• The first tissue patterns, cut and folded by members of the Butterick family, were introduced to the public in 1863.


• Needles used for sewing have been in use since the Primeval time when they were made with bone, ivory or thorns, having a hook instead of an eye.


• The most expensive sewing machine ever sold went for a total of 23,500 pounds sterling -- that's over $41,000 -- in auction in London.

Candle Embellishments: Before & After

It's time to play dress up......with some candles! I've had fun making some new candle embellishments for my Etsy shop, so I thought I would share some before & after photos of what a grouping of candles looks like with and without the embellishments. They really add some pizazz to plain boring candles!

Before:

After:

Before:
After:

Before:

After:

I picked up a couple more black bands the other day (one leather & one suede), so I've got to get started making more. Any suggestions for new styles?

Show Us Where You Live: Nurseries/Children's Rooms

It's time for another edition of "Show Us Where You Live" over on Kelly's Korner blog. This week features nurseries/children's rooms. Since we don't have any children, I'm featuring my best friend's nursery instead (she doesn't have a blog!). She has two girls, ages 6 months and 3 1/2, each of whom have the most darling rooms! I've made several cute things for her, so I'll also feature those.

Here's her nursery:She made the personalized wall canvas herself, as well as the large shabby chic antique tin memo board.

This is a door hanging/baby announcement that I made her from antique tin ceiling tiles. She hung it on the hospital door and it now hangs on the baby's nursery door:


The first tin says "It's a Girl", the second is the baby's name, and the third is the birth info.
This is a frame I personalized and then embellished with a bow and a vintage rhinestone brooch:

These are some burp cloths my mother-in-law made and embroidered:

I painted this memory box to put all the little baby gifts in, then mom can use it for the baby's cards and mementos. I just bought a plain white photo box from Michael's, painted it pink, used a stencil for the darker pink design, then glued on a few rhinestones for some sparkle.

Here's everything all together in the box (my mother-in-law also embroidered the blanket and the bib):

This is one of my favorite DIY crafts I've done....my friend had this brass chandelier hanging in her dining room and was going to get rid of it when they got a more updated fixture. We decided to give it a make-over instead and use it in her little girl's room. You can see the step-by-step process from my feature on Spearmint Baby's blog.

Here's the chandelier before:

And after:

Here's photos of the chandelier in her daughter's room:

That's it....I had so much fun making all the little girly accents and I think she did a beautiful job designing both rooms. Thanks for looking!