Home Decor Craftiness

Hello! So I partied hard with my mother in Vegas this past weekend and haven't had oodles of time for crafting or baking. Therefore, I thought it would be a good week to show some of the crafts I have made over the years that I currently have in my house to give you all a little more insight into my style of crafts.

First off, we have a "Beach Days" sign in the bathroom:

This sign was fairly simple, just a square piece of wood, some paint, shells I had collected, scrabble tiles and high strength glue. Looks great in our beachy bathroom! I have collected so many shells over the course of my life so I am happy to put some to good use on a craft. I could genuinely re-shell a whole beach with my stash. No joke.

​Also in the bathroom are a few succulents I made:

The larger succulent was bought for me from Francesca's, a small boutique-ish store that we have in the northeast (not sure if they are a regional or national chain), but the two small ones I made to match. I made these at separate times, but the supplies were basically the same for each: a jar or plastic container, hot glue, small rocks, greenery, plastic succulents and, for the smallest one, some cute pink ribbon!

Next, we have some of the easiest crafts known to man: 

These are just pretty sheets of 12 by 12 paper that I put into simple black frames. Most large paper pads have a few pages with full-sized patterns or sayings like this. I just picked some of my favorites and framed them. How much easier could you get? The coffee and autumn pages go in the kitchen and then seashells are in the bathroom. 

Now for an older project that I still very much love. My dresser!

This dresser was bought probably five or six-ish years ago at an antique/vintage little shop and it was originally a darker shade of grey (you can still see the grey coming through in some spots). I then painted the whole dresser with cream-colored paint, not worrying about perfectly even coverage. I sanded away on the edges of the drawers and the base, revealing some of the grey. I then used various shades of brown to antique the dresser even further, painting on streaks, splattering the paint across the drawers and letting it drip down the dresser at some points. I loved the hardware that was on the dresser, but several of the holes in the drawers had been made so big that the screws would no longer hold, so a few of those drawer pulls have been glued on the front to stay put!

Now we have a fall craft that's one of my boyfriend's favorites. 

This fall sign is up on our porch and although it was a bit time-consuming, its still pretty cute! I took a large canvas and covered it with old book pages, using Mod Podge under and over the paper to stick it down. I had some falls leaves that I had previously pressed and used the same method with the Mod Podge to stick them on, once the paper layer had dried. I added some jewel and pearl accents and my "Happy Fall Y'all" phrase to the middle and once again slathered on some Mod Podge. The copious layers of sealer is what makes this craft take a decent amount of time, but every layer is important if you want everything to stay sealed in!
​
This next craft I must admit I'm pretty proud of ...

A cute little flower bed in front of the kitchen window! The kitchen in our apartment used to be a bedroom because the house was originally a single family with all of the bedrooms on the second floor. Then the second floor was turned into a separate apartment so one of the bedrooms had to be turned into a kitchen. Anyways, this means that there is a weird section of our kitchen counter that is lower that the rest, which is probably where the original vanity in the bedroom was. See what I mean? Spot my attempt at making healthy breakfast cookies cooling on the wire rack.

Behind this little vanity section is couple inches wide rectangular space. I honestly have no idea what purpose this ever had, but since we are in the kitchen and it was in front of the window, I figured it would be cute to turn it into a little flower box that would never die. For this I used some styrofoam that I cut to the right size and painted green. I stuck this down into the window box and then pushed in some fake flowers and greenery that I had bought at Hobby Lobby. Voila!

Next up is a key holder for right beside the door.

This little wooden sign with nails already attached came from (I think) my mom's extensive stash of random things yearning to be turned into crafts. I painted it white and streaked on some other paint colors. I cut out circles and squares of colored cardstock, attached them with some glue, added some jewels because sparkles are life and then attached some scrabble letters!

Now for a chalkboard cabinet door, again in the kitchen!

This was an easy and extremely functional project. I took the door to our coat closet in the kitchen and used black chalkboard paint on the top, inner section. I just followed the rules on the paint can (you have to follow special steps before you can write on it) and now we have a excellent place to keep our weekly grocery list! Yes, the things on our list right now are cinnamon and maple syrup. Don't judge. 

Finally, since it's basically Christmas and the boyfriend and I have already decorated, here are some little Christmas trees I made!

These pictures don't show this very well, but the tree on the right is taller and bigger than the one on the left. Big surprise, but these Christmas tree forms, which are made of cardboard, came from my mother's crafty stash. She has all the things. I then went on to wrap them with green yarn which literally took a million years and was painstaking, but it was worth it right? I added some bells, bows and sparkly snowflakes to finish them off!

I am so happy to share with you all some of the crafts I have made over the past few years to give you a little more insight into what I love to do. I gave a brief description of each craft, but if you are interested in learning more about any of these, please leave a comment and I will be happy to share more details. I may not know exactly where each supply came from, but I will give you any information that I can. Have a lovely evening crafty ladies and gents!

 - Rebecca