For Those Times When A Picture Frame Just Won't Work

When my mom redecorated her living room one of the items that I just fell in love with was a wrapped canvas of me and my cousins walking down the beach. Now the picture itself was a little cheesy but I loved the idea of a wrapped canvas to break up the picture frame monotony.

While I loved this idea I quickly realized $20 a piece was not gonna work for my post-grad slightly better than Ramen noodles budget. So crafting became my option! After a search on pinterest I found that it was full of ways that this can be accomplished. After combing through several posts I found one that was both simple and I thought would turn out great, not to mention looked simple!
http://www.literallyinspired.com/2012/02/picture-perfect.html

The necessary supplies are 8X10 canvases, 8X10 pictures, modge podge, xacto knife (or scissors although scissors are slightly harder to work with) and paint (if you want to paint the edges and not leave them a blank color).

I started by painting the edges black. Once those were dry I placed some modge podge on the back of the pictures and placed the pictures to the canvas. I then modge podged a layer over top. Once that first layer was dry I used the xacto knife to cut the edges so that they matched up with the canvas. You could also do this prior to modge podgeing however I choose after to make absolutely sure they matched up.

The last step is to apply several more layers of modge podge until they pictures are secure and you are done! Now you have some great pictures to hang up!

A Little Reminder Never Hurt Anyone

So living with roommates, well roommates you like, can be an awesome experience. It gives you someone to come home to and do things with as well as someone to cook with, cause lets be honest cooking for one sucks!

One small problem with living with roommates can be communication. Now hopefully this does not apply to big issues like missing food or broken items but small things like say are the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty can be a common problem. Now if you have a great dishwasher that there is no need to pre-wash and is spotless whenever it is done running this might not be a huge issue. You might get an occasional "oops I thought that was dirty" but for the most part you need a subtle reminder of when they are clean or dirty.

My creative and crafty way to accomplish involved a cute wooden plaque, paint, stencils and magnets. I picked colors that were bright and eye catching and matched well with our color theme. Next was to paint the background colors and stencil the words clean and dirty on opposing sides. I then hot glued the magnets to the back.

Now when we empty the dishwasher we can switch it to say dirty and when we run it we can switch it to clean, so no more oopsies for the dishwasher!

Monogram everything!

Upon moving I realized that I wanted to completely reorganize and decorate my bedroom. One of the things I knew I wanted to incorporate were monograms because I just think they are the cutest! Originally I was thinking I wanted a large vinyl monogram above my bed but I wanted to add more color to it so I decided that I was going to use a canvas. So off my favorite store, Hobby Lobby, where I bought a canvas and wooden letters because originally I was going to wrap the canvas in fabric and glue these cute curly letters to it, but upon looking at it I realized the colors of the fabric where not what I wanted and the monogram looked weird with all the letters the same size.

Rethinking my current project I looked through my craft closet, yes I have a whole closet dedicated to crafting supplies, and decided to just use a stencil and some paint. 

Step one was painting the entire canvas a solid color. You can choose to do some shading or ombre or make it unique but since I was going to use a pretty busy stencil I decided to go simple.

Next was the stenciling. I am not a fan of the whole painting over the stencil so I decided to move it and traced the design and then painted it following the pattern. 

While that was drying I painted the two outer wooden letters a coral color and found a font that I liked and traced the middle initial onto some tissue paper. Once all the coats of my stencil were dry I placed the tissue paper in the middle of the canvas and using a sharpie, traced over the letter leaving a faint marking on the canvas. Using this outline I painted in the letter using the same color coral that was on the wooden letters. The final step was hot gluing the wooden letters on either side of the middle letter and Voila I have a pretty monogrammed canvas to hang over my bed.

Sometimes You Just Need A Little Help Up

Last Christmas I acquired a yorkie puppy named Simba. I say acquired rather than adopted because he was unwanted by a family member of mine and since at the time I was thinking about adopting a dog of some sort I was asked if I would take him. Of course one look at the precious little baby and I just fell in love.

How can you not love that face!

As great as the love and attention is I quickly became annoyed when after a few nights I realized that my bed was simply too high for him to easily jump into bed with me (yes I am one of those annoying people who sleep cuddled with their animal). So my next step was to acquire some sort of step or steps to allow my little king to jump into bed by himself saving me from constantly bending down to pick him up. 

I quickly discovered that most steps are quite expensive and really not that cute. So I used a plastic crate that was no longer serving a purpose and a blanket to cover the holes and make it look slightly cuter.

Now that worked great in my last place but since I have moved I am trying to make my room look more cohesive and grown up so the blanket over the crate look was not going to work. This lead me to come up with a more permanent solution and while searching through the fabric at hobby lobby one day I found this adorable multi colored chevron that I felt would go well in my room.

After purchasing the fabric and a little extra foam to give it some padding and stability it was time to assemble my step

I bought two yards of the fabric and used a majority of it. The crate you can get at walmart. The foam was bought at hobby lobby and the pillow was just an extra one I had lying around.

This was the easy part since I just measured out the amount of fabric it would take to cover the crate with the padding and pillow on top and stapled the fabric to the inside, bottom of the crate.

The end result is an adorable step that looks awesome and so much better that the blanket or those generic store bought one, but then again I may be a little biased.

Excuse the things in the background it was a crafting kind of day.