Old footstool

I've had this old stool sitting around for a few years and now have finally gotten around to doing something with it. It was from a thrift store and I scored it for $5.00! It was covered in ratty old blue velvet, had dark wood legs, and had springs popping out.
I fixed the springs with my trusty staple gun, stapled burlap over the velvet and pieced together this awesome French repro grain sack together and used some old tattered curtain fabric I'd found in my sweet Grandma's stash. I love it!

button letter art: Pinterest inspired

Millie and I had been inspired by some images and tutorials we've seen on Pinterest such as

this:

source:American Crafts Studio

and this:

source:Pinterest

so we decided to make our own. She actually did most of it

herself.

I helped pick out buttons, mostly vintage, that would match her

room.

Millie did all the placing of the buttons herself.

We repurposed an old print and frame that I'd bought a long time ago

from Bed Bath & Beyond and we had a ton of  buttons from 

Grandma's 

stash.

Gma would love what we'd done with them :)

snowed in projects

with all this cold weather & snow & having to stay in (because of  the

weather and taking care of two sick girls-blech!), I've been able to get

some things done. This is one of them...

I spent hours dying and drying coffee filters in the oven.

{my family keeps asking why are we having filters for dinner}

trying to achieve the perfect shades of blush-y pink and coffee-stained cream

hung with off-white vintage-y looking seam binding

I think it was worth the effort...

love it

I'll be adding one to my shop

& putting one in Millie's room

an old project

this is a project I LOVE that I did a long time ago but have never shared.

The chairs were found at Curb-mart (i.e. fancy way to say the curb) via my mom. Good eye, Mom!

I set them up and took a picture to give you the visual...

oooh! Someone's throwing away those chairs!

My amazing daughter could do something sweet with those!

Thanks chair-throwing-away-people!

I'll take 'em!

I put them side-by-side & gave them a light coat of matte mod podge

to keep the paint at just the right chippy-ness.

I found the perfect board/door thing combing the my grandma's attic

I added some padding and fabric to the board and finished it with black braided trim.

I bought this great black & white houndstooth suiting fabric at a

garage sale and covered a rectangle pillow form.

I love the way this pillow turned out.

Is this not the cutest little bench?!

male chauvinist book trashing~a wreath tutorial

I've seen all of these book page wreaths and I absolutely adore them so I decided to make my own Ginnie-fied version and share a tutorial so you can make your own. Honestly, it was a bit more work than I thought it would be....

You'll need:
a wreath form (mine was about 15 inches across at the widest point)
an old book (mine was over an inch thick and I used all the pages)
some patterned scrapbook paper and/or vintage images (check out The Graphics Fairy)
a hot glue gun and lots of glue sticks
burlap (about 4 yards of 4inch wide strips)
ribbon or seam binding(which is what I used, not sure how much)
Tim Holtz Distress Ink

First, you'll take your wreath and if it's like mine and you bought it for $1 at the thrift store (I seriously cannot believe anyone would think this was pretty! UGH!), you'll take all of the ugly junk off...

{click pictures to enlarge}

until it looks like this~

Next, you'll cut your burlap into 3-4inch strips (they don't have to be perfect or measured)

Using your glue gun, glue down the beginning end and start wrapping, overlapping as you go...

Overlap your strips and every so often put a little glue to keep it from sliding around. If your strip isn't long enough, just glue down another and start wrapping some more. This is not really going to show much.
Now you should have a wreath that looks like this...

Then you'll take your old school male chauvinist pig book...

and tear the crap out of it. It doesn't matter if they look "torn" when you tear them out (mine came out in neat sections), you can do that as you go...

When you start to make a roll for a bundle, take your Distress ink and 2 book pages or a book page and a piece of copied scrapbook paper (it's more pliable) or vintage image.

rub your stamp along the torn edges or you can use the neat page edges to age the paper

take your 2 pages and run a small line of hot glue (glue stick took too long to dry) along the top edge and stick them together. They don't have to be perfectly lined up and I actually prefer them to be uneven. It adds character :) Start rolling the paper into a loose roll.

When the paper is almost rolled up, run a line of glue so that the roll stays rolled up.

What you will have is this...

Again, take your ink pad and rub it on the end of the roll. You'll do this about 100 times!

Next, you'll begin combining random rolls together and tying them with your ribbon or seam binding. To make the best parts of the rolls show, I added a little glue to what would be the bottom side of the bundle.I made bundles of various numbers. I wrapped the seam binding around 2 or 3 times...

Begin gluing your bundles onto your wreath. If I did it again, I would probably glue single rolls around the whole wreath so there would be no gaps, then glue the bigger bundles on top. I wound up having to squish them in on the ends that were toward the center.

I wound up with spaces like this...

so I made some single rolls and cut them until they were the right length to fill in the space

and glued them into the space...

Keep making bundles and filling in the spaces....

until you have this! I love it's imperfect beauty~

you can see pieces of vintage ledger paper, french notes and labels...

I tried to give it an overall unifying neutral palette~

I love how the seam binding crinkles the more it's handled...

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and if you make one, I'd love to see pictures!

Edited: I'm linking this project up here!

DIY Day

I'm linking up here with one of my old projects

Go check out the other amazing ideas and projects on A Soft Place to Land!