Make it Pinteresting!

Some awesome ladies from my online book club came up with an idea to start a blog inspired by all of the fun things they have pinned on Pinterest. I am a contributing writer for Make It Pinteresting! I posted today with my s'mores pudding shots. You should go over there and check it out, and while you're at it, become a follower!

My First Freezer Paper Stencil Tutorial

I was finally able to sit down with my Silhouette and start to figure it out. I decided that an easy starter project would be a t-shirt made with a freezer paper stencil. I saw this great onsie on Pinterest and knew I would want to make this for friends who love all things Potter.

To get started, I downloaded a Harry Potter font on dafont.com, which is one of my favorite sites for free fonts. 

I then measured my shirt to determine how big I should make my stencil.

I opened up Silhouette Studio and created a new project. Since the shirt measured about 10 inches across,  I decided the stencil should be 7 inches wide.

 

I then cut my freezer paper just a bit larger then my stencil using a paper trimmer and placed the paper, shiny side down on the cutting mat. I tried to use the sticky mat and had horrible results when trying to peel the stencil off, so I switched to the less sticky mat.

I used the settings for vellum, and told my Silhouette to cut.

When it finishes, just peel the stencil off the mat. You'll have something that looks like this left on your mat

You will need to peel out the center of the remaining letters and use those to fill in the stencil on your shirt.

Before applying your stencil to your shirt, make sure that you have pre-washed and dried it in case it decides to shrink a bit. You should also iron your shirt before applying your stencil.

To apply your stencil, simply place it on your shirt and iron it in place using medium-high heat, until you are sure it is nice and secure. Then add the centers of your letters and iron in place. Make sure you are not using a steam setting on your iron, as this will mess up your stencil.

You are now ready to paint! I used Tulip permanent fabric paint, which can be found in a wide variety of colors and finishes at any craft store. I got mine during a sale a JoAnn's for around $1 for a small container. I then used a foam brush to evenly apply the paint.

To get the look I wanted, I applied 2 coats of paint and waited a couple hours for each coat to dry completely before applying the next. I also placed a piece of cardboard inside the shirt in case the pain decided to bleed through the fabric.

Once both coats were dry, I simply peeled off the freezer paper to reveal the finished product.

The instructions on the paint suggested that you heat-set the paint, so I took a dish towel that I folded in half, and placed that on top of the shirt and ironed it using high heat for about 30 seconds.

All in all, this was an easy project, and I'm sure I'll be making plenty more of these in the future.

A Coat of Paint

We've been working little by little on adding some color to our kitchen. When we moved in, we liked how it looked, but knew over time that we wanted to change things up a bit. We're still trying to determine what color to paint our walls, but I wanted to add a nice punch of color to go with our new Fiesta Ware. I found a picture of this great kitchen cart through Pinterest (yes, I know, I have a Pinterest problem) which added a nice splash of color and knew that I wanted to do this as well. 

 I already had the cart, which I bought from IKEA and have had for years, so I just needed to determine a paint color. Actually, that part was easy. I am in love with the combination of red and aqua, and since we received the Martha Stewart blue KitchenAid mixer for our wedding, I really wanted to paint the cart red to house our mixer. I made a quick trip to Home Depot and purchased Rustoleum's apple red latex paint, and also bought a small can of high gloss polyurethane and got to work. I made sure to wash the cart well with soap and water and applied 2 coats or paint and one coat of poly to get the results I wanted, but I LOVE how it turned out. 

 before

 after!

Pinterest Addiction, and a Pretty Wreath

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who has been sucked into Pinterest. I have found a whole heap of ideas and recipes thanks to this site and have spent hours looking at pins, re-pinning, organizing, and re-organizing my boards. Thanks to Pinterest, I have added a few tasty recipes to my rotation and have successfully executed a few new craft projects (yay!)

One of these craft projects was a wreath for our front door. I might add that I'm not really a wreath person. I don't know what it is about them that really bugs me, but I irrationally dislike them. I broke down and bought a cranberry wreath from Michael's on Black Friday and it hung on our front door from November until around April. I'm surprised that the wreath police didn't knock down my door since said wreath was definitely not "in season" at that point.

I decided to create a wreath out of leftover paper flowers from our wedding. It looked nice, but since the flowers were made of paper, they didn't hold up so well to the rain and the humidity of summer in Cincinnati, but again, it hung on our door for quite a bit longer than it should have.

While perusing Pinterest, I found this lovely wreath on Teach. Craft. Love.:

I loved the look of it and decided that this may have just converted me into a lover of wreaths.....well, maybe not a lover of all wreaths, but at least a selective lover of wreaths. I made a trip to Hobby Lobby during one of their 50% off floral sales and bought everything I would need to make this baby. Here is how mine turned out:

Not too shabby, eh? Yep my numbers are a little crooked, but so what?? That just adds to the charm of it being homemade, right? I'm glad you agree with me.  Luckily, I already had the tools on hand to assemble this (hot glue gun, wire cutters, floral wire) and it only took about 20 minutes total. All in all, it was an easy, inexpensive project and I wouldn't mind making more in the future.
If you would like to follow my boards on Pinterest, just click on the pretty icon......you know you want to.