Chalk paint recipe and before and after

I loved the final product of this chest.  It was an item that was always in our house growing up so when my mom gave it to me, I wanted to give it some new life. I love how chalk paint is a different texture than paint so it seems softer and the brush strokes don't show. See the recipe below.  On furniture it can be sanded on the edges to distress or just leave the full coverage.  It is good to cover it when it dries with a layer of wax and buff the surface. If you want to paint several items, you can save alot of pennies by making your own chalk paint.

Chalk Paint:
1 part plaster of Paris with water to mix
3 parts paint

The paint must be flat paint.  Other paints clump up and if they have a sheen in them it doesn't look like chalk paint anyway. I used plaster of Paris from Ace hardware (in a milk carton shaped box). Mix with water till it is smooth before adding the paint.  I used a whisk to combine.  You want to make sure there are no lumps.  I also used Olympic interior flat white paint from Lowes. It's best to only make as much as you are going to use to paint an item because it starts to clump up and change consistency.  I did save some overnight in a jar and it worked just fine. You may want to sand edges and then buff with a light coat of wax. On this item I didn't sand at all and just waxed it (Briwax from Ace) when dry. 

String Art!

This was such a fun craft we did at my Mom's group this week.....wanted to share!

Super simple but so fun to just get out a hammer and pound away! And then using whatever string or yarn you have on hand to finish up this project is a really quick process! This would be a really great project for kids too....fun with String!!
You need:  A small piece of ply wood, a printout pattern of a letter or shape, string, hammer and nails.

1. Print out an outlined letter or a shape: such as a heart or cross. The more space in the middle, the more area for string.
2. On a small piece of ply wood, hammer small nails along the edges of the shape in various spots. More nails mean it is easier to string back and forth and cover all the spaces.
3. Tear out the PAPER!  I forgot to do this step and it was really difficult to get out from underneath the letter.
4. Tie a knot around one nail and just start wrapping the string around nails, up and down, back and forth and all around until the string in the middle is as thick as you want it. 
5. Tie off the string around another nail.

I used a variegated string, because I didn't want to have to change colors, but you could switch colors and keep tying off the previous one.

Here is the letter before I got the paper out from underneath.  Ugg, tweezers and little tiny pieces of paper were involved!  But, yay, now I love it!

Christmas Centerpiece

Merry Christmas from Traffic Stopping Threads! Easy Christmas Centerpiece idea: Use cuttings from your Christmas tree (preferably you cut these before you decorate the tree, but there are always a few branches that are too long, right?). Use a basket that you have around or get one at a thrift store and paint the end of some pine cones white. All other items here like the red berries are from the dollar store, so this is relatively cheap and so pretty...and smells good too! If you want it to last longer also get some floral foam from the Dollar Tree and put the branches into the foam (which you soak with water).

More gourds!

I'm having fun experimenting with all my dried gourds.  These are dipper gourds, named because the native Americans used them for spoons and dippers.  You can see that they are large enough to be made into a ladle.  One of the gourds that I dried out cracked and I am going to see if I can make it into a ladle that just hangs on the wall.  

These really were fun to grow. They grow large and fast so they are fun for kids to watch and count because the plant really goes crazy, with alot of gourds coming from one plant. I had mine on a dripper system so it got plenty of water. You can see we got a ton of them once we finally picked them all!!  

You can't eat these so it is more of a fun thing to grow and watch and hopefully have some for drying, painting etc.  

So then we tried drying all of these.  Sadly out of all of these, only about 10 were dried successfully. I followed the same procedure as the smaller gourds for drying...(see last post)...wiping them off with a bleach/water mixture about once a month.  All these types of things take a little experience I think and this was the first time I tried it.  Some of them just got soft and I had to throw them out, but others dried inside and out.

I spray painted this one with some white paint....Ace brand spray paint is not very good by the way! Next time I will use a different one. Then I used some masking tape to spray on a gold stripe and added some glitter paint circles after using a milk cap and pencil to make the circles.

Drying Gourds!

It was super fun to harvest all these fun gourds last fall.  I just bought a random assortment of gourd seeds and planted them and didn't really know what would come up.  These little guys were my favorite!  We got some bigger gourds too, but these little ones were so cute.

We picked so many of them.  The kids were amazed when they kept finding more and more as they picked them.  

We gave cute little baskets full of them to neighbors, teachers and friends.  After some had sat on our own Thanksgiving table, we decided to dry out the ones we had left. Then it took an entire year to dry them!  I put them in the basement on some newspaper (so they wouldn't get the carpet yucky if they did get soft and squishy) and then every month or so, I would wipe them off with a rag dipped in a solution of water (a few cups) and bleach (a teaspoon)...not because I knew how to do this, but this is what google told me might work.  This would remove some of the dark spots or any mold that was forming.  Some of them got soft regardless and I had never done this before so I probably wasn't doing something right.  I just threw those ones out.  But others stayed hard on the outside and just dried out. Maybe it had to do with some of them not being as ready to be picked when we harvested them all at the same time.  Anyhow, a full year later, this is how they looked:

And I couldn't wait to spray paint them so this is what they look like now!  Why is spray paint so darn fun?  I think that if you dry these out completely and cover them with varnish or spray paint, they will last for a long, long time....next year these same ones may even be a new color! 

Transforming Thrifted Treasures!

I'm having so much fun lately scouring the Goodwill and my local Thrift Rite store for items that need a little TLC.  Amazing what a layer of paint or fabric can do. I love to see pictures of things people have gotten for pennies and then changed to something different.  I haven't gotten too drastic in the transformations yet, but I recently saw a old dresser that had been painted and changed to be a bench with drawers on the bottom and sides on facebook.  It was super cool.  I am hoping that one day I have even more time for such things.  But for now, I am having fun with these little changes that make a big difference.  Covering something with a new layer of fabric is quick and easy if it is just a cushion that can be removed.  Upholstering a piece of furniture is a whole different story but a cushion that can be unscrewed makes a fun and easy project.  Here are the steps:

1: Unscrew the screws holding the cushion on the piece of furniture...save 'em out of little people's reach.  2: Use a staple remover from a  craft or teacher store to remove any staples holding fabric on.  This ottoman had a fabric backing and I needed to keep it in the same position in order to screw it back on in the right places. 3: Either remove the old fabric or just leave it on and put the new stuff over! 4: Wash and cut the new fabric and staple it on with a staple gun. Screw the parts all back together.

Yay, so much better and only 9.00 spent!  Here are a few other projects I've been up to.  My sewing room is finally getting color coordinated!

$4 table for displaying a sewing machine my mom gave me.

I forgot to take a "before" picture of this shelf:(, but it was a really dark wood, was scratched and looked like it needed refinishing, so I painted it my favorite color!

Finally a place for some fabric piles! The thread storage above the shelf was a little oak spice rack that I spent $3 on at Goodwilll and painted also. Getting a room coordinated and made into a space I like has always been a slow process for me...as in it takes years. But, I am often inspired by pictures or other people's resourcefulness. Man, working in small time increments does wonders too!  A revelation for me instead of trying to finish all at one time! If you love it too, Happy Thrifting!

Spice Rack Surgery

Anyone have a spice rack that looks like this?

Well I've had mine for going on 17 years and it was starting to look pretty grungy as you can see.  All the labels were stained looking and starting to peel off.  I KNOW it's bad to keep them near the stove, because the spices don't last as long near the heat, but I do it anyway.  Maybe I have a rebellious streak! Actually, I just like them there when I am cooking and I tend to go through the important ones pretty fast anyway.  Here is a similar one that I keep hidden away in the pantry for when I need a replacement bottle and it was looking bad too.

I was tired of looking at the dingy labels so I painted all the lids with Chalk board paint:

I was originally thinking I would label them with chalk, but then I realized that was silly because it would be getting smudged all the time.  You could also use acrylic black paint, but mine didn't have as shiny of a finish as the chalkboard paint did.  If I started this project over, I would just use spray paint because it would be faster, but the chalk board paint worked well.  I used a white paint pen (found at any craft store) and labeled each lid.  I like the ending result, but there are also many cute printable spice jar labels online and on pinterest etc.  

Now to label containers in my pantry...have never done that...but I think I am getting closer.  After looking at all the fun labels out there, I'm getting inspired! Labeling things in my pantry has been a goal for a long time.  I'll let you know if I ever get that one checked off the list!  Fixing the spice rack was long enough in coming.

Super Easy Curtain Panels Tutorial

I am going crazy with curtains in my house lately!  When we first bought our house 6 and a half years ago, it was a foreclosure so there were no window coverings at all, let alone anything pretty on them.  Just getting blinds on everything took me awhile, but now I am having fun finally putting some fabric up!  This is such an easy process and I wanted to share it because curtains are one thing that are worth making yourself.  Window coverings are so expensive to buy, so you really do save money when you do it at home.  I would recommend using home decor fabrics because they are thicker but you could use just cotton too, especially if you lined it with a sheet or a second layer (or if not they would just let more light in).  The home decor fabrics are often more pricey, so make sure to use a coupon to make it worth your while.  Some are washable and some are not (dry clean only).
The curtains I am showing you here are dry clean only, but I don't think it's too big of a deal since I am not found washing my curtains very often anyhow!  You can always vacuum them, which is what I do to get any dust off.

The things you will need:

Sewing machine and thread color that works with your fabric
Dritz curtain grommets (Jo Ann or online from Walmart.com)
Fabric (to create 2 panels) 
Everyone's measurements will be different here.
(measure the window and add some extra inches for width...you want to have more fabric than just the width measurement of the window....I would say at least 12 extra inches. You will also need to account for how long and high you want them to hang.  If you want to hang the curtain rod up near the ceiling, not right over the window, add that into your measurement.  If you want them to almost touch the floor, you will have to measure from the top to the floor. And then there will be just a little extra for your seams:  Add about 4 1/2 inches for the top and about an inch for the bottom.  Side seams need about 1/2 inch.)

Once you have the two panels laid out you will just seam them up!  Do the sides first (fold over a quarter inch and iron and then fold again on top of that and sew in the middle of that fold all the way across). Then seam the bottom edges (this time fold a half inch and iron, fold over again and sew.

For the top edge you want to do a wide seam for the grommets to have a double layer.  I did about a 3 1/2 inch area.  (So, for the finished seam, fold over about a quarter inch and iron, then fold over your 3 1/2 inches and sew.)

Now they are almost done! The wider fold where the grommets will go is at the top.  This is what they look like at this point.  The backsides and then the front sides:

Now trace the template that comes with the grommets for evenly spaced grommets at the top.  Important:  you also need an even number of grommets on each panel.  I didn't realize this the first time and it makes one side of the fabric flip out and one side flip under when the panels are hanging if you don't do an even number.

Did I say that these are super easy to put on?  There are two sides to each grommet and you just snap them together.  They are plastic, but they look like metal and they come in all different colors, such as brushed bronze or shiny chrome.  Ready to hang (below)!!

And here they are.  I love how these brighten up the room!

Here is a picture of the ones I made for my bedroom.  These ones went to the floor unlike the ones above, which are in my guest room/sewing room.

If you make any curtain panels for your house send me a picture please!!:)