Easy spring gifts

Here's an easy and inexpensive gift you can make with the kiddos to give to teachers and friends to celebrate all the wonder of spring. My boys love to see their hard work and patience go from seeds, to sprouts, to fruiting plants.

Egg Shell Planters

Begin by cracking your eggs carefully with a butter knife along the top of the egg. remove the top portion of the egg and dump eggs into a bowl. It takes a few days of omelettes for breakfast and dinner to save up enough shells but it is well worth the wait. 

Make sure you wash your eggs well and allow them to dry out for a few days before planting in them.

Once you have enough shells saved up it's time to plant. I like to cut my egg cartons in half, but a full dozen would be great too!

Spoon sterile organic potting soil into your shells and sprinkle 4-5 seeds in each shell. Lightly cover the seeds with about 1/8 inch of soil and sprinkle with water. Make sure to mark the bottom of the egg shell with the initial of what was planted in it. I used Cherry tomato, Basil and parsley seeds for my gifts.

Place in a sunny window and wait 5-10 days for your sprouts to appear making sure to keep the soil moist.

In a few days you'll have these adorable little sprouts

Then all that's left to do is place markers in your plants and maybe even add a fun bunting!

Happy planting!

Peace don't forget to water the plants!

Silhouettes (the low tech way)

For my guest room/studio space I wanted to do silhouettes of my boys for a little pop. There are about a million ways to make silhouettes, here's how I did mine...

Silhouette Tutorial 

First start by taking a million profile shots of your subject, I put my boys in front of a very contrasty background and since I live where the sky is almost always foggy and white I just do it in front of our glass doors. 

Then upload your photos to your computer and go to you basic photo editing application, I use picasa, if you have it you could use photoshop, but then that's a whole different tutorial isn't it?

Once in you editing program crop your photo and turn the shadow scale all the way up until it looks all silhouette-ish like my darling boy there.

Print photos in black and white and cut, cut, cut

Once your silhouette is cut out lightly tape it to your cardstock.

I used the traditional black but they come out really fun if you use a brightly colored paper. I wanted to do mine in yellow but the Mr. didn't like the idea as much as I did.

Apply mod-podge or regular school glue to the back of your silhouette and place it on your background. I used those boards I painted to match my dresser.

smoosh (that's the technical term) out the wrinkles and bubbles. if it seems really wrinkly then place a sheet of wax paper over it and place it under a stack of books for a day or so to dry.

find something oval (because they are really hard to draw freehand!) and trace it onto your plaque

then with a sharpie paint marker, draw over your oval. I drew a little box on the bottom for a label too

I decided to write no. 1 &  no. 2 for my boys but you could always put their names or the date, whatever strikes your fancy! I might go back and add a little more embellishments to the oval, but I think I'll live with them for a while to decide what I want.

It may be low tech but it's still super cute!

Peace and paper scraps!

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The Ma'am Cave revealed!

The lighting is, well, not great but I just can't stand to wait another moment before I show you my crafty space. Maybe tomorrow I will show the "guest room" part of the space

It's a long one so get ready for a gazillion photos of my new room!

yay!

My Ma'am cave is a collage of everything that inspires me and makes me happy.

After all isn't that the point?

Like most of my rooms, there is no real theme, it's more 1 part Alice in wonderland, 1 part shabby chic, and 3 parts re-purposed thrift store Junque! 

The lady glowing from the corner is June. Because I think that when you take a dress form, cover it in white fabric and put a light up it's skirt that it looks a lot like June Cleaver. 

The shelves have jars and canisters with thread, buttons, glitter and other supplies.

Everything is neat, organized and easily accessible. 

Desk junk just looks so much better when it is in pretty containers and corralled onto a rusty tray

The desk was built by my darling husband which you can read more about here.

 The shelves under my desk house new canvases, burlap, twine, my favorite books, and my keepsake boxes.

The mushrooms are left over from the original mural that came with this house when this was a nursery which you can read all about here and there. When I painted the chalkboard wall is simply painted around them,  I just loved them so much!

The dresser holds more of my supplies like paints, paper, tools and the like.

The white frames were all thrifted or ones that I had on hand that I simply spray painted white and distressed. I'm am patiently awaiting the arrival of some other art so for now much of this is stand in stuff.

Here's a closer look at the homemade pin board above my desk. I hot glued some batting onto a piece of cardboard cut to fit a large thrift store frame then I covered it in my favorite fabric. A few left over curtain clips and the some special mementos give me something pretty and useful, much better than cork board.

The suspicious looking things inside the top frame are part of a jewelry collection based on kaleidoscopes I made a few years ago. The piece in the smaller frame is a driftwood and diamond cocktail ring. I like to keep these close to me not only because I love to look at them but it also inspires me to get back into metalsmithing.

It's a small room but it has a lot of love and hopefully a lot of beautiful creations packed into it. I hope you come back to see the other half of the tour soon!

Peace and chalky hands!

Linking to:

Cozy

It's storming today and I cannot take pictures of my fab guest room/ crafting space conversion. The weather outlook is all black skies and rain for about the next hundred years so I doubt I'll get good enough light to ever take my photos, which means you'll probably end up looking at so-so photos of my new room, eh.

I figured I'd share a photo of my cozy bedroom with you instead. It's that kind of day that makes me want to go back to bed, which I think I'll do as soon as I finish up here...I love my bed, if I had to equate it to a food it would be whipped cream!

I just submitted a fewof these photos photos to my favorite new blog Favorite Paint Colors. If you haven't checked out Kristen's blog yet you should hop on over, and maybe even submit a few of your own faves.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Peace is a good book and a cup of tea!

My happy lamp

Isn't she wonderful? Here is my cake carrier I was asking you about the other day. even though it's a yucky gloomy day outside, I have a shiny little spot of happiness right here! I cannot believe how exactly the yellow spray paint (I had on hand!) matches the top and inside of my cake carrier! The Mr. thought it was gonna be a flop but even he admits that it came out pretty neat. 

And now for something completely different...

After posting my very favorite new stripey dresser I have had a few people ask exactly how to stripe a dresser. Since I was planning on doing a few matching art pieces for above the bed I figured I'd do a tutorial.

First you sand, clean and prime your piece. What ever color you prime with will show through a little when you distress the edges so prime with a contrasting color

After applying several coats of light blue paint mark off your stripes in pencil.

I find it works best to findand mark the center of your board and then measure out from there.

On my dresser I did 4" stripes but on these small boards I did 2" stripes

 Carefully tape your lines, tape just off the side of your pencil line that way you paint over the pencil leaving you nothing to have to go back and erase.

apply a few coats of white paint

Once the white paint is just dry remove the tape

 I like to lightly sand the entire piece smooth, then I go back and distress all the areas that would naturally distress with age like the the edges and all the raised areas

My panels have no raised areas but here is an example of the raised areas on the dresser.

So there is is let me know if you have any questions. 

Sorry it took me all week to get this up. My husbands darling Nana passed away this week so everything is a little behind. She was greatly loved and will be dearly missed...

Peace.

Late nights

Currently I am writing to you from my very own space! My fantastic (or at least I think so) brand spankin' new creative space! everything is organized, Diana Krall is quietly singing to me, everyone else is all tucked in and my greek yogurt has never tasted better! Seriously, the only thing that could make this better would be if I had 30 Rock re-runs playing in the background!

I can't quite show you yet, but I am just so excited that I have to share a little something, right?

a little peek of my desk, of course there's a succulent on it!

And a pretty little peek of June, you'll meet her soon I promise!

I cannot even begin to explain how inspired I am just by going through all my stuff and organizing it. I had sorta forgotten that I am actually a  jeweler and a painter! I came across so many sketches and ideas for pieces I never got around to. Hopefully this year will bring me back to a few of my true loves.

Well I better run, it will be a long day tomorrow working in Orion's kindergarten class and finishing up my space. Plus I have to get around to the rest of the house which I may or may not have completely ignored so far all week...

Peace, no boys allowed!

Ma'am Cave/ Guest room progress

I'm humming along (quite literally) on getting my ma'am cave/guest room all finished. Last week I showed you my dresser so I thought I'd show you how my new desk is coming along too!

I started by finding a simple but very pretty desk plan at Ana White's amazing site here

We modified ours a little to make use of what we had on hand

I'm almost finished painting, I can't wait to get it in my room!

many apologies for the cruddy pic!

Here's a little glimpse of what I've done to the top of my chalkboard wall

Yay! for Mhendi Art!

Peace and Chalk dust in my hair!

Cowboy art

What better way to display my dads old belt buckles

than to paint a few canvases with brown, gold, bronze and crackle medium

 and affix the buckles with hot glue

So simple and nearly indestructible

perfect art for any little cowboy's room

It only cost me $6 bucks and now my boys can share their rootin' tootin' papa's mementos

Thanks Daddy!

*If your dad does not have a dusty old box of buckles they can easily be found on ebay for just a few bucks each : )

Peace Partner!