Play it Again!

If you love thriftiness as much I, you will appreciate this effortless craft. This simple record bowl just takes a few moments of your time and a little patience (for the cooling process).

Of course, I was perusing the thrift stores (my weekend routine) when I found myself aimlessly browsing through these awesome record sleeves admiring the artworks on the front and disturbed from the fact no one was using them any longer. So, I purchased 20 or so (for .25, since you really can't find a better bargain).

Have a look at the record labels:



The supplies you will need for this project are items you already have on hand; two glass bowls of different sizes, oven mitts, a cookie sheet, and a drinking glass.

ps.. don't forget the record!



Next, you will want to preheat your oven to 200 like so:


Place your record on the small bowl, which is on top of the drinking glass on the cooking sheet.



I thought it was so neat to watch the record begin to melt. Depending on the amount of "curve-age" you are looking for in your bowl you can let in drop all the way or pull it out of the oven as soon as it begins to melt.



Be careful taking it out, USE your oven mitt of course and place the larger bowl on top of the small bowl to help form the final product!







Once the bowl has cooled just separate the two and viola! A new vintage piece added to your collection (or to someone elses)! Aren't these fun?



Have a great weekend! Be sure to check LTC next week as we approach our one year anniversary!

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Vintage-Inspired Announcement

I'm really excited to show you guys my project for today because part of it I've been working on for months! It's been a pretty big project that has taken a ton of my time and energy over these past months, and I finally got a glimpse of the final product last week.

Want to see?

Isn't she lovely? :)

Yep, I'm pregnant, and we're thrilled to be welcoming a little lady to our house this summer. :)

Now, onto today's project.

I could hardly come home with sweet little sonogram pictures and not find a fun way to display them, right? Luckily, I had already been checking out Pretty Little Studio's shop months ago, so I was prepared.

I picked out these gorgeous Mini ABC Bunting Flags months ago when I knew there was a little one on the way but had no idea if it was a boy or girl.

I had all sorts of ideas for sweet words that I could frame in the nursery that would appease my nesting instincts, (a little), and change around as my mood changed. Nursery, Baby, Little One, Baby's Room, etc. But once we found out that we had a healthy little lady on the way, one option seemed to stand out more than the others.

As I said before, I had originally planned on framing the letters, but decided that the cards' vintage feel called for a bit more of a vintage frame. I thought this little antique dresser drawer separator would be a great fit.

I cut out my cards, clipped them to some cotton twine, and hung them on the frame with tacks so that I could see how long I wanted my twine to be and what sort of spacing I wanted for the letters.

I removed the twine with the letters still clipped on, flipped it over, and added a tiny dab of Elmer's glue to the cards right by the glue. The clothespins kept the cards in place and helped to keep the twine in the glue as it dried. Perfect!

I removed the clips and used the tiniest dab of hot glue to secure the twine to the frame. I just love hot glue, it can be invisible if you do a light amount and it was dry and secure within seconds. Just what I was looking for.

I hot glued a little clothespin to one of the cubbies so that I could add a picture of our little sweetie.

Just to play up the vintage charm of the display, I added these three antique blocks with my husband, son and I's initials into the third little cubby.

Now I have a perfect little display to celebrate our newest addition, to announce that there will soon be a little sister around, and to give me a fun way to show off her sweet little profile picture. I love it! It looks a bit like an announcement from our family to the world, or at least to the visitors in our home. :)

If you do decide to get some of these little bunting flags, you might want to consider ordering two sets instead of one. There are double vowels included in the set, which was obviously very helpful to me here, but once you start dreaming up words and phrases you realize just how often you need two of the consonants as well. Luckily they're not expensive at all and you'll have a ton of fun thinking of new sweet little things to say.

If you like what you've seen today, be sure to come back Tuesday and Wednesday for more projects that we've done with items from Pretty Little Studio's shop. Need even more incentive? Pretty Little Studio is doing a giveaway on Wednesday too!!

I'll be spending my week linking to these amazing parties, and...oh... occasionally looking at little girl bedding. :)

PS-I'm so excited that this project was featured on Apartment Therapy's Children's Section Ohdeedoh!! Check it out here!

Have a great week!!

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10 Tips to a Perfect Empty Frame Galley

I finally tackled something that has been on my to-do list for almost a year - my empty frame gallery!!

And I totally totally love it.

I'm not going to share it in it's entirety today, but do you want just a little peek?

The end result is perfect!

However, pulling the whole project off was a lot more tedious than I had been anticipating. My sister and I said the words, "If I ever do this again, I'll make sure that I don't..." more times than I would like to admit. And as I was putting this tutorial together, I realized that it's a bit too much for just 1 post.

So today I'm going to share my 10 best tips for tackling an empty frame wall project, complete with lovely photos of other frame walls for inspiration.

Next week I'm going to show you the detailed break down of how I did mine, with lots of lovely pictures to egg you on in the process. Sound good? Here we go.

(source here)

1.) Visualize (generally) what you want in an end result. Do you want a design that is clean and symmetrical, or a bit more random and whimsical? Do you want the frames to match precisely, coordinate, or be completely mismatched? How much of the wall do you want to cover? Floor to ceiling, just the middle of the wall, or something in between? Get some idea of what you want the end result to be before you start buying materials.

2.) Start collecting frames. You'll want to get lots of frames for this project, but don't invest too much on any one frame. Gathering the materials for this project will take some patience: check thrift stores, garage sales, the dollar store, your parent's basement, your basement...you get the idea. I even took a few frames from around my house that were ho-hum in their current location. You'll need some variety when you're putting this together and you don't want to get halfway in and have to stop to run out and look for the perfect frame. You get the picture, gather your materials first.

3.) What should I look for in a frame? You'll want some variety as you are pulling your frame collection together. Get some really large frames, some average sizes (8x10 or 11x14) and some small frames. Look for different textures on the frames: some smooth, some patterned, some rounded, some boxy, some plain and some really intricately designed. Additionally, grab different shapes of frames: basic rectangles, squares, ovals or circles, and some long and skinny frames. As with all thrift store shopping, try not to be distracted by a strange print, an ugly color or any cosmetic imperfections that can be easily managed with a little glue or paint.

(source here)

4.) Measure your spaces. Measure where you want to hang your frames, and mark out a space that is the same size on your floor where you can play around with different layouts. Arrange and re-arrange until you get a good feel for what you are looking for. Snap pictures of any possibilities that you really like, and then re-arrange just a little bit more until you find one that is perfect.

(source here)

5.) Bring a friend and plan on a break. After you are looking at frames and constantly re-arranging and re-evaluating, you will start to feel like you are going cross-eyed. Enlist a friend to come over so that you can bounce a few ideas off of them. Even if you completely disagree with their opinion, it may help you to solidify exactly what you like. It's good to get some opinions under your belt before you start putting lots of little holes in your walls. Also, plan to take a break where you don't look at the frames at all for a few hours. When you come back you will feel surprisingly refreshed and be ready to make your final cuts.

6.) Get your frames ready. If you need to do any repairs on your frames, now is the time to do it. Remove any glass, pictures, staples, backing, etc from your frames. If you want to paint the frames, now is the time to do it. If you are painting plastic frames, don't forget to use a primer to help the paint stick to the frame.

7.) Make a paper template for each frame. Lay each frame that will be going on the wall on a flat piece of paper and cut it out - now you have a template for your frames! Take these templates and tape them to the wall in the arrangement that you like. This will allow you to see the arrangement on the wall and make any adjustments before pulling out your hammer and nails.

(source here)

8.) Start in the middle. When placing the templates on the wall, start with the frame that will be at the center of your arrangement and center it on the wall. (Sounds obvious, I know, but doing this first will (hopefully) prevent you from having to shift the whole arrangement 3 inches to the left, or something like that.) Ask me how I know! When you have the center frame exactly where you want it, then add your other frames to the sides.

9.) Add nails. With the templates still on the walls, hammer a nail into each template to correspond with the hanging gear for that frame. You're almost there!

10.) Hang and smile. Take down the paper templates, and hang up each frame. Spend a considerable time patting yourself on the back. Invite friends and family over to admire your frame gallery and be modest about how long it took you to pull off. But they might figure it out for themselves when you decline to come assist them with galleries of their own.

Be sure to come back next week when I do the big reveal of my empty frame wall gallery! I took a few extra steps on my wall and I can't wait to show you how it all turned out!

Have a great week!

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30 Minute Scrapbook Valentine Wreath

I made this little wreath months ago to hang beside my front door, and though it's simple I really love it. The secret is that it was so easy, quick and inexpensive to make.

I started off with this fun piece of scrapbook paper with cursive handwriting all over it. I'm not sure what is says, but it looked sweet and a bit romantic so I grabbed a few pieces, and started cutting them into 1 inch wide strips with my paper cutter.

I got a round floral planter from the dollar store, cut it in half and started wrapping the strips around it. The glue didn't stick to the planter very well, so I wrapped each strip around the planter and used hot glue to secure each strip to the one next to it.

The back looked a little choppy...

but the front was perfect.

I then made a few pearl adorned book page flowers to attach to the front, similar to the Pearl Adorned Paper Blossoms I did months ago. I cut the scrapbook paper into a bunch of circles in various sizes, and did the same thing with a few pages from a book that I use for my book page crafts. I made sure that the circles were very rough so that piling them on top of one another would be more interesting-looking, meaning that some that were more oval than circular, and several had straight edges or points. Once I had a good stack of circles, I grabbed my brown and black stamp pads and inked the edges.

I then stacked a pile from largest to smallest, trimming up a few circles and sliding some of the “petals" out of the center a bit to make them stand out more. I poked a hole through the center of the flower and twisted the different circles around until I liked the arrangement.I then removed the push pin and replaced it with a brad to secure the blossom. I also added a little pearl embellishment to the brad to dress it up a bit.

I wanted to blossom to have a little bit of a 3-dimensional aspect to it, so I took a few of the blossoms, cut a tiny slit from the edge to the center, pulled the two pieces together until they overlapped slightly, and glued them together with a glue stick. This gave that layer of the flower the slightest “cone” look and made the whole blossom pop.

I then layered the book page circles with the scrapbook page circles until I had a fun little blossom. I hot glued a push pin to the back of each blossom and stuck them into my planter wreath.

I attached a short strip of brown twine to the back of the wreath with 2 push pins to hang the wreath from.

Then I was done!

My intention for this wreath was that it would change with the seasons. The planter base gives me the flexibility to change up the blossoms regularly, because anything that you could attach a push pin to becomes the new temporary embellishment. I could also change out the short twine for something longer and hang it from a frame or in front of a mirror.

But I haven't changed it yet, not once. I'm just so in love with those little blossoms, I don't want to take them off! The addition of the book page paper helps them to pop from the background and I just really like them. Hopefully you'll have more imagination for your wreath, but if not, you'll still really love this one!

I'm linking to these incredible parties this week. Hope you'll check them out!

Also, we have some incredible giveaways these next few weeks that you won't want to miss, so be sure to check back with us! You won't regret it!!

See you next week!

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Tag Frame

Christmas is just seconds away--(nail biting) shopping time is shorter, stores are crowded and well lets just say...I begin to get really flustered.

Sometimes I find that making gifts is always a fun and inexpensive way to shop! This inexpensive Tag Frame was inspired by all of the adorable TaGgie items I always see for little ones.

You could use any old wooden frame; mine is one of the DIY frames you get from Hobby Lobby ($.79) I painted it white.



Cut up ribbon of your choice approx. 2-3 inches long (depending on how long you want your tags to be). You will need several of each color!



First start by hot gluing to the front of the frame all the way across and then making a loop to the back and hot gluing there too! You will want to repeat this all the way around the frame.



Last, I trimmed the entire frame in this fun green polka dot and added a bow. My sister is going to love this as a gift from her daughter! I may add the year on the frame or even a monogram!

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to check out this week's link parties.

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