Ombre ruffled bed skirt

So, I told you in yesterday's post that I've been working on the girls rooms for when we do the big room switcheroo when the baby comes. I was able to cross off another project from my to do list. 

Jasmin hasn't had a bed skirt on her bed. Partly due to laziness and not wanting to spend the money, but mostly because all of her toy tubs are under her bed and I wanted her have easy access. 

Since we will be putting Ava's toys in the closet instead of under the bed, I thought it was finally time to work on a bed skirt. I combed through Pinterest, and originally planned on doing a tutu tulle bed skirt. But after seeing this one, I knew that ombre ruffles were the way to go. 

The first thing I did was measure her bed from the top of the boxspring to the floor, which measured 15 inches. I ended up having to go back to the fabric store when we were about to put the ruffles on the bed skirt. I knew I wanted to cut the fabric into 6 inch strips. So, me with my preggo brain, figured 6+6+6=18, so it'd be long enough. But I didn't factor in the fact that after I double rolled one edge and ruffled the other, they only measured about 5 inches. So back to the fabric store I went. 

So, pretend we have 4 colors here. I bought 1.5 yards of each (I used broadcloth from Hobby Lobby for $2.99 a yard). Then I cut them into 6 inch strips, and sewed them together to make one long piece of each color. Then double rolled one edge under and sewed it.

Now, I know when some people make ruffles, they do one long stitch, and then grab the ends and scrunch the fabric and then sew on top of that to secure it. I would highly suggest a ruffle foot. It makes making ruffles SO easy, they're all the same size, and they're sewed and secure in one step. You can adjust the amount of ruffle by the tension on your machine.

I attached my ruffles to an old bed skirt that my mom had. It's one of those pleated ones. I didn't want to have to worry about the pleats or how that would make my ruffles lay, so I sewed the corners together.














Now, your measurements might be different, depending on how long your drop is. For my 15 inch drop, I knew I wanted my ruffles to hit about 14.5 inches. My bed skirt already had a 15 inch drop, and since I didn't want the purple to show, I hemmed up the bottom a couple of inches. Then I laid the ruffles on the bed skirt to figure out my spacing. I ended up putting marks at 3, 6 and 9.5 inches, and that is where my three bottom layers would line up.

I sewed from bottom to top so I didn't have to worry about the layer on top getting in the way. I put marks every 6 inches or so, lined up the ruffles and sewed. I just lined up my ruffles on the marks, and sewed right on top of the ruffle. Since it's covered by a couple inches of the ruffle on top, I didn't worry about hiding the stitches. I also only sewed the ruffles on two of the three sides of the bed skirt. I ended up with enough ruffles to go all the way around, but I wanted to have some fabric left over to redo her lamp shade. I did wrap it around the third side by ten or so inches just in case it was visible. Make sense? 

On the top layer, my mom sewed the ruffle as shown. I didn't want any of the stitches to show since it was the top layer. So she laid it on the bed skirt with the wrong side of the white to the right side of the bed skirt. Then sewed just to the side of the ruffle stitch. That way, when it's flipped down, you don't see any of the stitches, it's just a nice pretty ruffle.

See? Nice ruffle with no stitches showing. If I had planned it better, I would have sewed a strip of white fabric to the edge of the purple before doing the ruffle, since you can see a sliver of purple on the finished bed. But live and learn.

Here is the finished bed skirt.













And our finished product! My mom and I made the quilt last month, based on a free pattern I found online. I'll do a tutorial on it soon. 

Not bad for $17 worth of fabric and a few hours of time! 

Let's party...

 

$5 engineering print + $15 window frame = a whole lotta awesome

Hi, my name is Jennifer, and I'm a pinterest addict. I have a crap ton of stuff pinned, and have actually been getting things crossed off my pinterest to do list. Woot!

I know by now you've heard all the cool bloggers raving about how you can get an engineering print at Staples for under $5, right? It only prints in black and white, but I happen to think black and white pictures are classy. You can get up to a 3x4 picture printed, which is awesome, and they'll even trim it for you. 

I saw this picture on pinterest, and fell in love with the idea. I have a favorite wedding photo that I've been wanting to get printed and framed, and this looked like the perfect idea. 

http://pinterest.com/pin/144678206749363135/

So, first thing first, I had to find an antique window frame. Which is harder than you'd think. Ebay was a bust unless I wanted to spend a ton on shipping. The one store around me that had some wanted $40, no thank you. So I enlisted my friends on Facebook. My buddy Julie told me about some she saw on a local FB board, so I joined their group and called dibs on one of the frames. $15 and two days later, I picked one up. I tried to take into account the picture I wanted to use, so I wouldn't have a slat going across our faces. 

Hubby and I went to pick it up (it's 2x3 feet and heavy). There were a few old nails sticking out of it, but thanks to hubby and my dremel, he was able to cut all of those off. 

Then an hour, a razorblade and a spray from the hose later, I had it all cleaned up. Some of the larger chunks of paint came off when I was cleaning it up, so since my wood glue had all but dried up, I just hot glued them back on there. 

Hubby took photos of the next part, but a certain 22 month old figured out how to delete photos off of my iPhone, so we'll use our imagination here. I had the picture printed off, and I added an inch to my window pane measurements. I figure it'd let me move around if need be so the post in the middle wasn't in an important spot. Probably not an option if your photo is an extreme close up/crop, but I had some background to play around with in my photo.

So, I started with one side, lined up my photo, made marks of where to trim on the left, top and bottom side, and trimmed those off. I had to cut about an inch out of the middle of my photo, since it's two pieces of glass and not one, and I wanted my photo to lay flush against both panes of glass. Make sense? Then I just taped them down, and laid some cut out cardboard across the back so my picture would lay flat. And voila!

I chose to attach the picture on the outside of the glass. The inside had the some really cool hinges and hooks that I liked (you can kind of see them at the bottom of the frame under Jake's foot). Then had hubby attach some heavy picture hangers, and attach them to the wall into a stud. It's at the end of the entryway hallway.

Now, I will say that the print isn't 100% perfectly clear, but it's close. Also, there are watermarks on the paper that you can see if you're standing at an angle. However, it was much more noticeable on Jake's black suit than on the gray stone background of the ceremony location. The Staples employee was really cool and printed it for us a few times so we could get the watermark in the least noticeable spot.

For $20 bucks though, I'm super thrilled with how it turned out. 

Partying up in here...

A Father's Day gift for Grandpa

So, like most crafters, I'm big into making handmade gifts. So with Father's Day coming up, hubby and I thought it'd be a nice idea to make something handmade for his dad. Wanna see what we came up with? Forgive the not so great pic of it. A certain 22 month old has figured out how to delete pictures off of my iphone so I'm missing the close up pic of it. Grrrr.

It was super easy to make. I got a wood plaque from Hobby Lobby for a couple of bucks (don't forget to use your 40% off coupon). I went through all of them until I found one that I liked the wood knots on it. 

I started off with painting the front of it with vintage white craft paint, it's a pretty cream color. When that was dry, I sanded the edges, and then used my favorite product. 

It's a nice, thick glaze made for antiquing. I painted on a layer, and then used a napkin to lightly remove some of it until I liked how it looked. I like to keep more of it along the edges than in the middle. If it has started to dry and I can't get it off with a napkin, I use a baby wipe very lightly to keep wiping. Then let dry. I spray on a couple of coats of matte clear sealer at this point. 

At this point, I didn't like how dark the glaze filled in the crack, so I just went back over it with some watered down white craft paint until it toned it down a bit. 

Hubby designed the text, and sent me the jpeg. I took that jpeg and opened it in Silhouette Studio. Do you know how to use the trace function on the Silhouette?

It's at the top, it's the blue square inside the yellow square. You first hit the "select trace area" and draw a box around your jpeg. Then I adjust the high pass filter until the entire letters are solid yellow. Then I hit the "trace" button. Your letters will have a red outline around them, and then you just drag off the original jpeg. 

Now, I will try and explain this the best I can. I don't like having to deal with trying to line up the middle of letters that get cut out (like inside the b, the D, the a, etc). So, to get around that, I connect them to the sides. 

I first ungroup my letters (on my Mac, it's command and G). I open up the modiy window (it's the M on top of the gray rectangle by the top arrow). Then I draw a rectangle over the letter's center, and then hit subtract. I do this for all the letters. Then I'll cut it out. I like to cut it out on freezer paper with the vellum media setting. 

Then I just lay it on top of my wood, and trace it with a pencil. 

Once it's traced, I'll paint it with black paint. Sometimes if I can't get the edges to look clean, I'll take a black sharpie to clean up the edges of the letters. And voila! 

  
If you'd like to make one and want my husband's design, shoot me an email (you can find it under the harass me tab up top) and I'll send it over to ya. 

 

Distressed sign board

So, I saw this sign a billion years ago, and have always loved it. The colors, the size, the distressing. So gorgeous! So I finally decided to do my own version.

I started off with two boards from Home Depot. I went with 1x12x6 boards, which cost me $11 each. I knew I was going to distress them, but still had hubby pull practically every board off the shelf so I could find perfectly straight (and pretty) ones. 

First step? Let's distress these bad boys. 

 I took a hammer and a screwdriver, and went to work banging these up. Well, I did the screwdriver part, since Ava refused to give me back the hammer. I have no idea what kind of wood it is, but it was soft enough for Ava to mark them up with a hammer. Who knew?

Next, I aged them with vinegar and steel wool. You grab a bowl, dump some vinegar and a steel wool pad in it, something magic happens between the two, and after a while, you rub the liquid on the boards. Some say to leave the steel wool mix sitting in the bowl for 24 hours, some say half an hour. I think I let mine sit for an hour or two. Long enough to go satisfy my Taco Bell pregnancy craving. So, however long that takes. Then rub it on (wear gloves!), give it some time, and voila! I used white vinegar mixed with balsamic, only cause that's what I had on hand.

So here are my two boards. They are attached in the back with metal brackets that I bought from Walmart. Think I spent $6 on 3 of them? And get the long ones, don't get the short ones like I originally did. These boards are heavy.











Now, I had a LOT of trial and error on this project. Luckily it all worked out in the end, but if I can save you some headache and hassle, then of course I'm going to share my mistakes. 

I took a pizza stone and drew on my sun circle. Originally, I made a mark along the circle every 4 inches, and from the center of the sun, across that mark, and to the edge of the board, drew the sun rays out. You remember how you did perspective in art class, right? Now, unless you WANT a ton of the same color, then don't do that. Does that make sense? Here is a crappy, 5 minute photoshop job of what I'm talking about. 


A mark every 4 inches around the circle = too much color on the longer rays.

So, of course, I didn't realize that until I drew out all of my lines in a red sharpie (don't use a sharpie, it'll show through your paint if you change your layout later. Use a pencil)

So, instead of the 4 inch marks, I did some marks an inch apart, some two inches, some 3, some 4. I just eye balled it. I didn't want to get confused with my old marks, so I squiggled those out. Again, don't use a sharpie. It'll show through your paint. Luckily I was able to cover all of those with my red rays later, but it limited me on where I had to put them.

Next, it was time to paint. I didn't have a pattern I followed, just placed the colors where I thought they looked pretty. 

I did a combination of blues, greens and yellows. Ignore the blue painters tape on the board in the pic.

While my reference pic had the red lines the same width from beginning to end and made it look fabulous, it didn't look right on my board. So, again, no pattern, just put some tape on there and tried to keep a good angle from thin to thick. 

I painted white paint on the lines before I did the red. The red just wasn't covering up the color transitions. And it worked out, since when I sanded it down, some of the white showed through the red, and I really liked it. After I painted it, I then taped off the center and painted that too. 

And here we are after it's painted.

I sucked at making this tutorial, and forgot to take pics of the next step. I sanded it down to wear down some of the paint. I also white washed it (mix white paint and water, smack it on your board, rub it around and wipe it off) and then did some stain in the hammer marks and wood knots to really bring those out. Just did that over and over until I was happy with it. 

I will say that when you sand it, don't do circles or back and forth like you'd normally do. Sand in the direction of the rays. It really brings them out and accents them nicely. 



If you don't have access to a projector like I do (ask your church, your child's school, the library), it shows on the original blog how he got around that. Print the words out, shade the back with a pencil, trace the words on the board, and the pencil shading on the back will transfer the words to your board.

Then I painted those in with white paint. Don't put it on too thickly, as you'll be sanding these down too. The font I used is called miserably lose. I didn't want a font that I'd have to be super worried about straight lines and perfection.

Here is before and after I sanded the letters. At first, I just sanded down the whole thing, but it was taking down my sun ray paint too much. So I tore off little pieces of sandpaper, and sanded just the letters themselves.






Once you're happy with it, add some hangers on it (I wanted mine to show), have your hubby hang it up, and voila! I love how it looks old and sun faded.

Hope you like it! I've been wanting something to go above the couch for a long time, and now I have the perfect piece. 

Let's party