Quick and easy repainted resin crosses

I liked the detail on these resin crosses, but not the color.

I spray painted them a flat brown.

Then lightly sponged on some black (craft paint) to highlight the detail.

Now they look great with the Paris apartment decor in our booth at the antique mall!

 OUR WEBSITE: www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

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Another quick re-do

Wall word updated with a little bit of ’stippled’ on blue paint.

The blue paint just makes it feel ‘dreamier’!  This got hung on the same wall arrangement as the blue shutter.

Sweet little spring boxes

VERY simple project!  I just picked out some pretty spring colored scrapbook embellishments and put one or two of them on the top of each of these little mullberry paper covered boxes with sheer ribbon handles.  (the boxes came with the paper covering and ribbon handle)

These embellishments are from “K & Co.”.  I sooooooooooooooooo wish I could stock their stuff in the store!  Just don’t have the room for the minimum order quantities some of these bigger suppliers require.  I just buy the ones I use at the craft store.  Michael’s stores usually has this brand.  And sometimes I see them at Target.

I only put one simple decoration on the lid of the box, (since I was doing so many of them to sell in the store, and wanted to keep the price down) but these would be cute to add ric rac or beaded trim to, to dress them up more.  And the lids could be made into a more elaborate altered art collage.

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

FREE image sheet

Click on the link to download and print.

http://www.instantprintables.com/product/732/FREE+Vintage+Labels+n+more+Purple

Captured fairy jar video

I sooooooooooooooooo want to try making some of these!  The one in this ‘how to video’ is a LOT more involved than many that I’ve seen.  A lot of them that I’ve seen pictures appear to just be the fairy and stuff in the bottom of the jar.  This video does a lot of embellishing to the jar, inside and out. 

Lots of possible adaptations too!  A cupid looking one for Valentine’s day.  A bunny in grass with eggs for Easter.  Here’s the link to the instructional video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Paami1K0IM

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Quick and easy Valentine wreath

My best wreath making tip is to NOT ‘permanently attach’ your decorations to your wreath.  Why, you ask???  Well, by leaving  your wreath embellishments easily  ’removable’ , you gain a LOT of flexibility!

You can take ONE grapevine wreath and re-decorate it for different seasons and holidays, instead of having several different wreaths to pack up and store. 

Here is a Valentine wreath I just made for the store:

I simply took this purchased glittery ‘love’ garland and cut the pieces apart and tied them onto the wreath!

BAM!  Done in 60 seconds! 

After Valentines day, just untie these embellishments and pack them away and add on something for spring or Easter.  Berry picks and pips are very easy to do.  Just ‘tuck them in’. 

You can also use your grapevine wreath ‘as a frame’ of sorts.  First hang something like one of these hearts and hang it on from your nail; on the wall or your door:

Then hang your plain grapevine wreath so that it ‘frames’ the heart. 

You can also wrap the wire hanger around the wreath to have the heart hanging form the top of the wreath.  I use ‘rebar tie wire’ on all my hanging things, and it’s VERY durable and can be bent and un-bent and re-bent many, many times.

Quick and easy!

If you can;t find any of the clear boxes, here is another idea for a Valentine goody (or gift) container.  I got these little metal mail boxes at the craft store.  Tied a bow around it and put a Valentine scrapbooking sticker on the front! 

Valentine goody boxes!

Okay, remember those spools of pretty ribbon in the last post????

Well, they came in these little clear plastic boxes.

I take them out of the boxes because I like how they look piled into clear glass bowls.  But I just hated throwing away all those cute little boxes.  So, here’s what I did!

Cleaned them up real good.  Put some assorted candies (candy corn and jelly beans) into little plastic zipper bags and put the bags of candies in the clear plastic boxes.  Since the chocolate kisses are individually wrapped, they did not need to go in the zipper bags.  Then I taped the boxes shut and tied on a pretty red ribbon!  Well???? Whaddya think????

I want to print up some tags to put on the bows.

Cupid corn on the candy corn

Cupid kisses on the kisses

But I don’t know what to put on the jelly bean ones?!?!?!  I’ve seen them done as ‘cupid poop’, but that is one idea I’d rather NOT use.  Any suggestions?

Here they are all piled onto a cake pedestal:

And a box of the kisses in a ceramic heart dish in a table setting:

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

From the “I’m so far behind that I’m a year ahead” file.

Been working on a few Christmas things the last few weeks.  Intended to have gotten them done in time for THIS Christmas, but, oh well!  Now I’ve got a head start on next Christmas!

Here are some of the ‘almost finished’ stuffed homespun stars that I started on a while ago:

They’ve been stuffed and stitched closed and stained; and could really be used ‘as they are’, but I plan to embellish them a little by tying on some of the little round metal rimmed tags, or pinning on a stained strip of muslin with words stamped on them.

Got a whole bunch of rag ball ornaments done too.  These still need to be stained.  (Since I don’t need these till next Christmas; I’ll wait until summer to stain them so I can set them out in the hot sun to dry) They have a string hanger attached so they can be hung on a tree.  I want to do a ‘homespun holiday’ theme tree next year.

Here are the rag garlands I did for the homespun tree.

First I picked out five fabrics that I wanted to use, and cut 1″ wide strips.

Then I cut each strip into 8″ pieces, and placed them in rows according to the order I wanted to tie them together.

Of course now I can’t remember how long I ended up making the finished garlands!  (and they are at the store and my computer is at home!)  They went together pretty quick and easy.  Cutting the fabric into strips and then pieces actually took longer than it did to assemble the garlands.

I still need to think of a couple more coordinating decorations to round out the tree.  Any ideas?????

OUR WEBSITE:   www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Monogram tags

I made up several batches of these simple ‘monogram’ tags last week.  Fun to use to tie onto gift packages.  And they sell for just $1.00 each!  (I did add strings to them after I took the pictures)

These are VERY easy to make!  I used coordinating scrap paper sets (which we sell in the store) that have four pages of paper and one page of the alphabet cutouts.

Cut out all the letters.  Glue cardboard to the back of the sheets of paper you choose to use.  I recycled the cardboard that comes in the inserts of picture frames!  Six, 4×6 inserts fit just right onto a 12×12 paper page. 

In the photo, I’m showing the recycled cardboard inserts FACE UPand on the patterned side of the paper, just so you can see how they fit onto the paper.  But I actually glued them FACE DOWN to the BACK SIDE of the paper, so the back of the tags  is just the gray cardboard side.  I used glue sticks to adhere the cardboard to the paper.  Let it cure overnight.  Cut each 12×12 sheet (with six, 4×6 cards on it) into 12 tags.  Then I glued on the cut out letters with tacky glue.

They are fun to display in wire photo holders.

I also made some using chipboard letters that I purchased.  On these, the letters are more dimensional and some are glittered.