I designed the pattern, and drew the fish freehand.  As well as all the cutting, foiling, and soldering too.  It is still one of my favorite pieces I have done.

MATERIALS:
stryofoam balls in varying sizes
glue
jute twine
toothpicks
twig

COST: $0.75   TIME: 15 minutes

Start by picking out part of the styrofoam on the smaller ball.  Use some toothpicks to connect the two balls together.

make a hole inthe top of the small ball with a pencil or scissors.  Put some glue in there, then use a twig to jam inthe end of the jute twine. 

Start winding around and around.  You will probably want some thick white glue, or spray glue on the styrofoam to help the jute stick to it.  When you get to the middle of the joined balls, just wrap the twine around again to build up the centre.  Keep the jute wrapping in concentric circles though.

The most difficult part is when you get past the larger white balls midpart.  You need lots of fingers to make the juste stick to teh ball, and keep tight together in the rings.  You may want to use a few straight pins to help the jute stick tight to the styrofoam until the glue dries.  Squish the bottom of the styrofoam in to make a flatter base for the pear to sit on.

Here are the final pears.  Make a nice arrangement of differing sizes of pears. 

I also found some cute gingham in the fabric closet.  See, even when I am not at home with my fully stocked craft closet, I can manage to pick my families homes for craft materials!

The small one is the one I found in the basement, and I loved it so much, I did another one that I purchased from the dollar store.  It was a gross smoky plastic grey, but had great form to it. 

I made these by cutting a piece of carpet padding that fit inside the frame opening, and spray gluing it onto the frame backer board.  I then layered thick quilt batting on top of that, then the final gingham fabric layer.  I wedged it into the frame.

This one is for my mom. 

This one is for my aunt.

Yet again, I got more ideas from Pinterest.  I loved an argyle wreath that I found on there.  So I made one.  It wasn’t too difficult either.

MATERIALS:
styrofoam wreath (the smooth white ones are the best)
about 1/2 skein yarn in base colour
2 sheets of craft felt (1 in each colour)
6 yards of accenting colour yarn
spray glue
straight pins
ribbon

COST: about $9  TIME: about 1.5 hours

Tie your yarn onto the wreath and start wrapping it around the styrofoam.  Make sure none of the yarn overlaps itself.

Slide your yarn up tight together.  Then twist the yarn as tight as it will go around the wreath.  This is why the smooth white styrofoam is best for this.  The yarn slides on it really well.  It takes about 30 seconds per inch of wreath to wrap which is pretty fast.  Make sure it is nice and tight so none of the white shows through.

Then cut out a bunch of diamond patterns.  Lay them on your wreath to make sure you get alternating colours over the whole wreath, and all the diamonds are touching each other.  You may need to adjust your diamond sizes if it doesn’t work evenly.

Then spray a light coat of glue on the back of the felt and attach the felt to the wreath.  Place your diamonds exactly touching corners of the diamonds together, and that they are all centered on top of the wreath.

Tie a knot in the end of your yarn.  Use a straight pin to pin through the knot and into the back of the wreath.  Your yarn will also end here.  In total there will be 4 separate strands of yarn around this wreath.

The first strand will wrap through the red diamonds only.  The second strand will go through the blue diamonds only as shown below.

The third strand will go around the red diamonds in the opposite X direction, and the fourth strand will go through the blue diamonds in an X pattern.  Tie a knot in the each end of the strands and just pin them to the back of the wreath.  Make sure your yarn passes directly through the centre of the diamonds.

Use some straight pins to attach a nice hanging ribbon to the back of it too.  Here is the final product!  I love it.  I wish I could have gotten a thicker styrofoam form though to have a chunkier look.  I have also seen these wreathes using a heart instead of the diamond pattern which looks really good too.  The porch at our family cottage is currently getting a huge revamp and addition, so this wreath will really go well on the new porch door!  I can’t wait!

MATERIALS:
3/8″ plywood
1″x6″x5′ board
Carpet Padding
1 pkg of thick Quilt batting
2 yards of plain broadcloth
2 yards of final fabric (possibly more if you need to match a pattern)
13 packages of nailheads (if 25 nails per package)
staples and staple gun
hammer
spray glue
long metal yardstick
pencil
exacto knife
needlenose pliers
rubber mallet
1 1/4″ screws (screw hanger board to headboard)
2″ screws (screw hanger board to wall)

TIME TO COMPLETE: 6-7 hours, cost about $60

I first researched headboards online.  Pinterest, Flickr, Google Images, Houzz all give you great ideas, but I didn’t love any one of them entirely.  So I sketched out my favorite parts of all of them. 

A queen headboard is 60″ wide (Twin is 39″ wide, Full/Double is 54″ wide and Kings are 76″ wide).  I measured on the wall how tall it should be at the center, which was 40″.  This allowed for quite a bit of the headboard to be below the mattress line too.  I bought a piece of 3/8″ plywood from Lowes, and got them to cut it to the 60″ width.

At home, I drew out my pattern on my plywood.  To draw the round parts, I used a pencil, nail and a string to make a large compass.

I then cut out the pattern with a jigsaw.  I always use a fresh blade, and go slowly to prevent ripping and tearing of splinters on the edges.

For the upholstery, I used a scrap piece of carpet padding I had.  I used spray glue to glue it to the plywood.  Lay your padding over the board, then lift half of the padding, and spray, then lay down the padding.  Then do that for the other side.  This way you can easily keep the padding centered to the board.

I then trimed the padding 1.5″ on the inside of the plywood with an exacto knife.  Since I want to use a nailhead trim, I don’t want to have the nails go through such a thick layer of padding.

There is a layer of carpet padding, a trimmed layer of thick quilt batting, and another layer of thick of quilt batting that will wrap around the edges.  All of these layers have spray glue between them.  Then I put a layer of plain broadcloth on top of that, and began to pull and staple the edges.  The broadcloth is a wrapping base under my final fabric.  You don’t have to do these two layers, but the two layers will help me get a very smooth front.

I cut strips of cereal box cardboard to help me staple and pull the fabric taught.  I intended to fold it inside the fabric, but there wasn’t enough fabric around the edges to do that.  I still used the cardboard though so the broadcloth would be less inclined to rip under the pressure of the staples.

HINT: make sure the staples you use are not too long (or too short) for your thickness of wood.

HINT: you must hammer in every staple as far flush with the headboard as you can.  You don’t want to cut your hands on the staples sticking half way out.

Here is how I folded my edges to show as little bulk as possible on the corners.  I wanted really sharp corners.

When you are wrapping an inner curve, you have to clip the fabric.

Since my headboard is 60″ wide, and the fabric is only 54″ wide, I needed to seam together some pieces.  I did not want a seam down the centre, so I seamed two small pieces on either edge.  Since this is a patterned fabric, I made extreme caution to match together the pattern in my seam. 

I took my stapler, and stapled the final layer of fabric.  Make sure you are pulling the fabric as taught as you can with every staple.  Also ease the fabric around outer curves.  Put a staple about every 2″ all the way around the headboard.

This is the first project I have ever done with nailheads.  My only mistake was beginning a the top centre of the headboard.  I should have started at a lower edge that wouldn’t show.  Within 10 nails, I was doing them perfectly.  You MUST use a rubber mallet to hammer them in as a regular hammer will marr and destroy your finish on the nailhead. 

In the above photo you can lightly see the pencil line I traced with a ruler on the fabric for my target line.  That helped tremendously.  If the nails bend at all, or aren’t perfect, take it out and do it again.  One badly placed nail will make your line look worse and worse as you go.  Use needlenose pliers to hold the nail straight as you LIGHTLY tap each nail in.  You do not need hard pressure at all.  In fact hard hammering, will almost always bend the nailhead onto an angle and it won’t look right.

The nailheads took me a lot less time than I thought it would.  Probably 3.5 hours but I still did have very sore knees and back.  You can also get readymade nailhead trim where you only have to nail every 5th head in, but up close, you can tell it just doesn’t look nearly as good as the individual nailheads.  Plus that type of trim cannot go around curves like I have here.  I probably could have done mine a touch closer together.

To hang the headboard onto the wall, I cut a 1×6 board in half lengthwise with a 45 degree bevel.  One half of the board gets attached to the headboard, and the other half gets mounted to the wall.  This allows the board to hang onto the wall.  I also cut a few square pieces of board to prevent the headboard from bending up or down if someone was to lean on it, or the mattress jammed up against it. 

Here is the board mounted to the wall.  Also, note the crackle wall finish I did about 12 years ago! 

Here is the final product. This headboard was for my old bedroom in my parents home.  It needs some further updating too.

Now I just have to sew some accent pillows with my leftover fabric, pick something else for above the headboard, but lets stick to one job at a time!  I am just happy that stupid brass headboard that creaked soooo loudly everytime I turned over in bed is GONE!!!!  WooHoo!

I immediately thought of my sister, the knitter, and told her we were going to make some wreaths.  She brought over here baskets of yarns.  I bought a bazillion styrofoam balls, and we started.

First of all, this is NOT a simple craft.  It is extremely time consuming to wrap yarn around 30-40 styrofoam balls, and waiting to glue gun them all to the wreath form, AND it takes one heck of a lot of yarn to cover every part of the styrofoam.  So buy the cheapest and largest yarn rolls you can.  Luckily I had a few rolls from the dollar store, and got a few big, cheap skeins from Walmart, as well as 3-4 balls from my sisters stash.  I used a straight pin to “tack” the start of the yarn to my styrofoam, and begin wrapping.  I also pinned the end of the yarn and tucked in the tails.

I used a wire coat hanger for my wreath form.  I attached the balls to the form using U shaped paperclips.  I later used a glue gun to glue the U shapes into the balls, and prevent the balls from spinning around the wire hanger.

 I just kept adding balls, and when I started gluing them, I really squeezed them together. This wreath took 40 balls of varying sizes.

 And the final product…

Now for my sisters wreath, she wanted a larger wreath than a regular wire hanger could provide.  Again, I found an idea on Pinterest that could help.  Use a copper tube insulation wrapper as a wreath form.

I used duct tape to secure the ends and used a piece of wire hanger to make a hook.  I attached the balls to the wreath two ways.  First I used straightened paperclip wires, and I glued them into the styrofoam balls.  I then put glue on the other half of the wire, let it cool a bit (because hot glue melts and deteriorates this foam insulation form pretty easily, but after it is cooled, it does stick well) then inserted the other half of the wire into the insulation.  As more balls got attached, I hot glued them to each other too to give the wreath more firmness and rigidity. 

I thought it would take a lot more balls to make this wreath and cover all of the grey foam, but it wasn’t too bad.

Here is hers.  This one took 53 balls of varying sizes.  She loves the more vibrant colours.  We just need to add some bamboo knitting needles to this one.  I love they way both of them turned out. 

WooHoo!  This craft will be featured at J&M’s Eye Candy this Friday! Check them out!

Last spring, I took a pottery class in which I made bowls, and plates, and a firebowl.  I also made a knitting yarn bowl for my sister whom is the big “knitter” in our family, but it unfortunately had an accident with my husband.  Ok, my fault too, I shouldn’t have put a delicate leather-dry piece of work in my car not surrounded with massive padding and yellow fragile tape all over it.  How was I to know that he would toss 2×4′s into the car without looking what they were landing on?

Here is the front decoration of the bowl…..

…and the cut out where the yarn draws from the back of the bowl.

And here is what happened.  Clay this dry is too difficult to repair, and if I put the pieces in the kiln, then glued it together, it probably wouldn’t have fit together.  So this went into the recycling clay.  I am so sad, this would have been a gorgeous piece.  I will have to try another one if I take pottery again.

Also, here are some pendants I made of the clay.  I had some rubber stamps that imprinted the design on them.

We have these all over the front and back porch, and I always hated the 70′s orange glass in them.  So finally, I am going to revamp these things!!!!!

I got a piece of glass from the lamp, and took a pattern.  I cut 4 pieces per lamp.  I took my silhouette cutter, and cut out lots of stars out of label paper. 

I stuck a star on each piece of glass and then sprayed the lot of glass with spray-on glass frosting.

The frosting does leave a dust like, matte film on the glass.

However, the other side is the side that I will put on the outside of the lamp. 

Now I could have left these clear, however with the new CFL lightbulbs being so ugly, I decided to frost these panes of glass.  A bit of black spray paint cleaned these beauties right up and brought them in to the new millenium!

And this is what I ended up with.  I am very happy with them too, and saved the cost and labour of replacing all of these lanterns, and I saved them from a landfill.

See, before and after.

I also went to my favorite Canadian Dollar Store, Dollarama, and picked up feather boas and other glitter Halloween skulls and spiders and made a Haunted Hollywood Halloween Vignette.

We also had a contest at our Halloween party to see if anyone knew who the actresses were.  To the best of our knowledge, they are Betty Grable, Veronica Lake, Judy Garland, Lillian Wells, and Dusty Anderson.

More and more every year, I am loving vintage Halloween items.  I am starting to get to the age that vintage items I find are FROM my childhood.  How sad!  I was in an antique store in Port Perry, Ontario, the other day, and found a bunch of items (like my barbie carrier suitcase) that I had when I was a kid was in the antique store!  I am only 36!!

Last year, Sunny organized a Halloween Pet Parade for a local retirement home.  She asked us to bring any dogs (fosters or furever dogs) and dress them up for Halloween, and we shall brighten the day of the residents of Sterling House in Fort Myers. 

The parade was a great success, and we got lots of smiles and the residents loved to ask questions about the pets.

Of course, I couldn’t resist dressing our family up as well.

Nala did not appreciate the grapes in the smoking hot Florida weather!  It was her first costume party.  She eventually got into it when she saw her dad got dressed up too!

The family all ready to go out to the parade!  We were Brian (from Family Guy), a circus ringmaster, Grapes, Bumble Bee, and a fairy ballerina.

Here are some of the other participants in the parade, and how the crowd reacted.

May I make a suggestion to readers.  Why not contact a dog rescue group, or even go to a popular dog walking park and ask people if they would be willing to do a dog parade.  Then contact your local retirement homes, and ask if they would like to host a parade.  Our event actually had about 3-4 shelters and their volunteers participating in this one.  We will be having another one this year.  Even post an ad on Craigslist (under volunteers) asking if regular pet owners would be willing to participate.

Put a number on each dog or pet owner, and ask the residents to vote on their favorite costume to get them engaged.  The winner was the Shit-Tzu in the lobster costume, and the runner up was the Old Man Bloodhound.

Most of these people had to give up their pets to go into a home.  It would make them to happy to have the pet companionship and laughs once again.

This is one of my favorite family photos taken in the garden of the retirement home! AND who doesn’t love a husband who gets fully engaged in my silly events!