Flower Ring Tutorial

I love making these rings! They are super easy, and super cute! I love them. Here's a step by step picture tutorial on how to make them.

Material needed:
Silky fabric
cord elastic
felt
small beads
a lighter
a hot glue gun
fabric scissors
needle and thread

The first thing you need to do is make a template for your circles and decide how many you want to do. I've made these with 3 circles and with 5. Both ways are really cute, but this tutorial I chose to do 5 different sizes of circles. I made my templates using Word and making circles with the Shapes option. This way you can make them as big or little as you'd like. I made a few extras just to make sure it wasn't too big or too little (just more options). Then cut out your paper circles.
Once those are cut out you place the paper circles on the silky material and cut them out. (You can pin these down, but I don't because the pins get in the way. Besides it doesn't have to be cut perfect, it almost looks better if it doesn't.)

Then you slightly burn the edges of each of the circles. Keep the flame of the lighter below the circle so the edges turn upward. Oh and make sure the shiny side is facing up.

Then just stack them on top of each other with the biggest on the bottom and the smallest on top (so it looks like a rose).

Take your thread and needle (I double threaded) and tie a knot. Then stick your needle from the bottom through all the layers and place one of the beads on. Pull your needle all the way through and then go back through the top of the material in the center so it will pull the bead tightly. Repeat this with 2 more beads. (Hopefully that makes a little bit of sense).

This is what it will look like.

Once all the beads are on, tie some knots through the bottom layer of fabric, then you're ready to clip the thread.

Take your felt and cut a small rectangular piece. You don't want it too big or else it will show. You just need it big enough to cover the elastic.

Take your elastic and wrap it around the finger you want your ring on and measure where to cut, then cut it.

Then take your felt and elastic and make a loop with the elastic and place the ends on top of the felt piece. Put a dab of glue on the other side of the felt then fold over the felt on top of the elastic and press together. Make sure to be careful cause it can be really easy to burn yourself with the glue (trust me, I've done it before).

This is what it should look like.

Put a dab of glue on top of the felt, then put the flower on top and press it down.

And Voila!! You have a very hip and beautiful add to your outfit!

Fixing the Curtains

We bought some curtains for our front room, but they weren't quite long enough. If we would've bought the longer size they would've been way too big. So I decided to just add a little extra to them to make it work better.

I bought satin binding from JoAnn's. There weren't any that matched, so I found the one that would work best with all my room colors.I flipped the binding inside out and sewed the edges together.

Once that was done I turned it the right side out sewed along the edges to help it lay flat. This type of material frays real easy, so I took a lighter and burned the edges so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

I made them all into a loop so I wouldn't have to worry about the loops coming apart when I sewed them on to the curtains.

Then I sewed them on to my sheer curtains and hung them up! They work much better then what I had before, and now they don't look like they're preparing for a flood!

A little Something Extra

When we hung our pictures up after we moved I decided to make them big collages. When I put this wall up I got it to look good on the floor, but on the wall it looked off balance to me. It has bugged me ever since (for about 7 weeks now).Finally I figured out a way to fix it. We don't have a ton of money so I used resources from my own home. I got my Cricut out, used my Home Essentials cartridge and made my own "fake vinyl" lettering! Unless you're looking really close you can't tell that it's scrapbook paper. I used white paper and cut out modern shapes using the same cartridge and first glued the lettering on that, then taped the whole thing onto the wall.

I really like how this turned out as well!

Front Door Decor

I've been trying to find something for our front door for a while now. I like the letter thing, and the wreath thing but I didn't know how to combine them. So I decided to just do the letter thing.

I found one of these wood letters at Hobby Lobby. I painted the edges first, then ModPodged scrapbook paper to it. (The letter is still wet, that's why it's lumpy. I promise it looked better when it dried!) After it dried I hot glued ribbon where the different papers touched, and also a daisy on the side.After my letter was done I hung it up on my door and hated it. It was too plain. So I went back to Hobby Lobby and found one of these "sun" wreaths and tied my letter onto it with hemp rope.

I really like how it turned out! Perfect for me!

Camera strap covers - LOVE them!

These are so easy to do! The first ones took me about 1 1/2 hours - to finish both. I had no idea what I was doing and had a 3 year old on my lap while sewing. I found some tutorials HERE and HERE for them and adjusted them to work with my camera.

While looking at tutorials, I was planning on just doing a slip-cover style, BUT I read that people had to constantly adjust the strap to stay in the middle, so I didn't do it that way - there is an opening on the seam about half way up to put the strap into. They each have fusible fleece interfacing to help them be softer - it is a lot nicer on the neck especially with my heavier lens
I finished this one for a photographer friend - it is REALLY soft! The minky material is awesome! I will definitely be making more for me with the minky fabric!

No Slip Dish Towel

I bought a dish towel from Ikea for $2.99 (it's a huge hand towel, but I thought it'd work). It's a very simple project. You just take some velcro and sew the soft piece onto one side, and then you flip the towel around and at the opposite end you sew on the scratchy side.That way you can put it on your oven with the two ends flatly together! It's nice when I'm trying to dry my hands cause it doesn't come off. The only thing is we have a different towel hiding for drying dish towels.

Wall Decor

Our apartment has really high walls (which I love), and I had an empty spot right above our TV that I didn't exactly want to hang pictures on. I saw something that Make it and Love it did and decide to copy her idea. I didn't follow exactly what she had done, I just made up something that I thought would work for me.

I went and bought 3 foam board's from Hobby Lobby. I used an exacto knife and cut the boards to 19". With the rest of the board I cut it into three strips (I didn't measure them very good at all cause I didn't think it would matter but it did when I went to hang them on the wall. So if you do something like this make sure to measure it and make it straight so it will hang evenly.) I super-glued the strips to the board. Oh and just to let you know the reason I did the strips of foam board on the back was because I was nailing the fabric on, and with just a single board the nails would go all the way through.

Then I cut the fabric to the size of the board with an added 2" on each side.

Then I took my staple gun (that my Dad gave me as a going away present!) and put one staple in the middle on all four sides. Then you go through and closely staple the fabric on pulling it as evenly as possible. You want to make sure the staples are close or else the fabric pulls unevenly and it looks dumb. (Trust me, I did that on my first project).

Here is my finished project! I really like how it turned out! The middle one I screwed up on (I cut the fabric the wrong size), but I had to make it work. Hopefully it looks alright.

A cheap Decoration

I had a little date jar that I made for Brian a few Christmases ago. Well I am making a new one so I decided to use this jar for a bathroom decoration. I took some brown scrap material I had and ripped it up into strips and shoved it into the jar.Then I used some cute ribbon and tied it around the top of the jar. It's small, and I just might add something to that corner but I don't know what that might be. But this is a start! Oh, and I don't know how I did it, but I tied the nicest bow I've ever made in my life!

Scrapbook Paper Holder

Melissa found this idea on Smart-Bottom Enterprises. I thought it'd be a great idea and wanted to make my own. I went to the post office and got 3 of the medium sized flat rate boxes. (To tell you the truth I kind of felt like I was stealing, but I was assured by many that it was OK. It must have been cause no one said anything to me, but you probably shouldn't go get 20!).

I did the project differently than Smart-Bottom Enterprises for two reasons. The first reason was because I didn't follow the directions and cut the lids off the boxes, and secondly I didn't have cute duct tape.

Anyways so I first cut off the lids on one side of the box, and the other side I put together to make the box.

Then I put the boxes on top of each other and duct taped the boxes together like the pictures below.

I used wrapping paper and wrapped my box up like a Christmas present, leaving a little hanging off the front opening.

And I didn't cover the bottom because I knew it wouldn't ever be shown.

Then I chose some scrapbook paper to cover the front with. I used clear tape on the edges of the paper so it didn't show. It was kind of a hit and miss for how it was going to work out. I just had to figure out how to make the pieces of paper work and tape them so they'd stay. I know, not much help, sorry.

But I think it turned out pretty good. The only thing I don't like about it is if you have packs of paper it bends in the middle cause it's not super sturdy. But it does the trick!

Thanks Melissa for telling me about this!