Upcycled painting

Remember this painting I got back in April?!  It sat around forever while I came up with tons of ideas for it.  I started out intending to put cork board on the inside... changed my mind to chalkboard paint... thought about modge podging maps all over it and painting a quote... had a couple painting ideas (patterns, animals for the nursery, etc).

Finally, I remembered this wall photo college on Under the Sycamore.  Here is an updated version of the wall.  The first time I saw a picture of the collage, I fell in love and knew I would have something like this in my future home.  Unfortunately, I am still renting and didn't want to put the effort into putting the wall up and taking it down every year.  Enter giant picture frame.

I spray painted the frame with a couple leftover cans of white spray paint.  Some of the crevices are dark and it didn't get completely covered before I ran out of spray paint, but I really love the texture and depth that is added.  I painted a couple coats of white acrylic over the painting, and painted the border black.

Cloverson exhausted from all the painting

Then it sat for a couple weeks.  I decided I wanted a pattern painted on it since it wouldn't be completely filled with pictures for quite a while.  I settled on this gold chevron/arrow pattern I used on a painting for Celia.  It took me a full day to paint the pattern.  Here is what it looks like now:

I plan on printing out a bunch of black and white 5" x 5" pictures of me, Ben, Clove, and Baby (ultrasound) and arrange them in a grid.  We'll add pictures of da baybay when she comes along and as she grows up.  I will post an updated picture when I have this set up in the nursery area.

T-shirt Blanket

In last month's to-do list, number 5 was to finish my T-shirt blanket I started it in August 2008.  At the time, I had a month left of summer break and was geared up that month to get it finished... Of course, it never happened.  I finished about a twin size amount of the blanket and then gave up.  When I did get the motivation to pull out the materials, I would have problems with the sewing machine and would only get little bits of it done at a time.

Almost four years later,  I sat down and finally finished!!!

Unlike most t-shirt blankets I've seen, I wanted my t-shirt cutouts to be varying sizes.  I had a lot of tees (40-50) that I wanted to include.  I put the warm colored shirts (red, orange, yellow) on one side and the cool colors (green, blue, purple) on the other side so it would add some kind of organization to the chaos.

I cut out the shirts and made sure they were mostly the same width.  I sewed a column by itself and then added each column to the rest of the blanket.  I put the padding in and sewed it all up.  This is the first thing I've ever sewn on a sewing machine so I'm sure there is a better way to do this, but it made the most sense to me... especially with the uneven design of the blanket.

Here are some of the final pictures:

warm side

 

cool side

I still have a couple more stitches to add to keep the padding in place, but it is pretty much complete. 

I can't believe I finally finished it!!!


PS.  Happy birthday Jazz!  Here is my favorite picture of us:

Candle Recycle

I always end up having leftover wax from all of my candles and I feel bad throwing away the containers and candle wax.  This is a great way to re-use old candles.

you can also get excess wax off of the top of candles using a razor blade

 Needed:
used candles
container for the new candle
wick (I used 7" wick)
pot 'o' boiling water
oven mitts

I found you can melt down the wax by placing the container in boiling water.  Make sure the water level will be above the wax, but not too high that it will boil over. 

Place the used candle containers in the boiling pot of water.  Turn it down to a simmer once you put the containers in.  Wait about 5-10 minutes while the wax is melting.

Pour the melted wax into the desired container.  Make sure you keep the wick standing up straight up.

The wax dried in a cute little heart

Wait about 30-60 minutes between different colors so they don't mix together.  Drying time will vary depending on the thickness of the wax.  Pour gently so the wax doesn't splash up on the sides.

I used the excess wick from the other candle to make these smaller candle wicks.  In the future, I would put an anchor on these types of wicks because it is possible to just pull the wick out.

Wait about 30 minutes to an hour to let it cool and harden.  Cut off the excess wick.  

Here are the final products: