Barn Window Jewelry Holder

Happy One Week until Thanksgiving!! Are you getting excited? Planning your menus? Well I'm doing no planning, since we are going back to my parents' house for Thanksgiving this year, and my mom takes care of the food shopping and menu hoopla. We haven't been at my parents' house for Thanksgiving in several years, so I'm pretty excited.

Also, since I don't have any hostess planning going on right now, I've had some time to get some more homemade Christmas gifts made. This week I made jewelry holders for my mom and my sister. They both love jewelry, I am the odd one out there. They also both have a vintage-y, country-chic decorating style, so I decided to combine those two loves and create country-chic looking jewelry holders for each of them.

I started with two barn window frames that I got from my parents' stock of "treasures," as well as some chicken wire that Handy Andy had (obviously he has that lying around, don't you??).

I removed some old nails that were still sticking out of the window frames, and then sanded the frames down. Then, I spray painted them -- man, I love spray paint, so easy.

 

They were a little splotchy, but that's fine because, after they dried I sanded them again and brushed some dark wood stain over them. (No, I did not do them Christmas colors on purpose, thanks to Handy Andy for asking. Those are colors they each use to decorate with often).

Once the stain dried, I finished them with Minwax Finishing Paste (love that stuff). Rubbing that on them lightened up the stain a bit too, I really like how the colors turned out. After that dried, I added the chicken wire to the back with a staple gun -- I suggest wearing gloves, I didn't and my fingers were killing me when I was done.

To finish them off, I added some lace and burlap embellishments, and some scrabble tiles to my mom's and...

Done!

These were pretty simple to make, and I think they will really love them...AND they are useful - score! I also bought some little hooks to add for them to hang their necklaces on, but I haven't gotten around to putting them on yet.

 

Are you making progress on your family Christmas list this year?

Thanks for stopping by!

 

For the Birds...

Hey All! I think summer is officially here. The weather has been so nice lately! This weekend Handy Andy and I took advantage of the nice weather on Saturday and spent some time outside. We decided to make some birdhouses to put up around the yard to replace this rundown little house that was hanging on our tree when we moved in.

What a sad little bird abode!

So Handy Andy went to work with the table saw cutting out the pieces we needed, based on the design of the old one. We started with a pile of 1x6 boards [which are actually 5.5 inches wide].

Here are some rough measurements:
Top: 7 inches long (make sure to cut the top end at an angle to fit against the back board)
Back: 14 inches long
Sides: 12 inches long on the tall side, 15 degree slant for the roof
Front: Cut to match the short sides of the side pieces
Bottom: 5.5x7 inches

Then we started putting the pieces together. First we used wood glue and then we nailed the pieces together, using vise grips to make sure the glue did it's job first. [I promise I did some of the work, even though all the pictures are just of Handy Andy...]

And then, we had a new house for the birds!

This was such a simple project, and it would be great to do with kids, because they could paint the houses after you're done building them!

I hope you're finding ways to enjoy the weather as well! Have a great week!

Pinterest Thursday: I tried it!

The room where my craft table is located is affectionately called Sparty's Room due to the Michigan State decor and the large MSU Spartan fathead on the wall.

Sparty's room is my craft room as well as our office. There's a lot going on in Sparty's Room and it's not a very big space. I'm always trying to figure out good organizational methods to make the most of the space I have in there, so when I saw this on Pinterest I got inspired:

Cute. Simple. Cheap. Now it's my turn -- I think I can make that!

Over the course of about two weeks I gathered eight empty cans and peeled the labels off and washed them. I decided that I didn't want to put the cans directly on the wall so I picked a piece of wood from Handy Andy's wood scraps to mount the cans onto. After that, I got some green and white spray paint and gorilla glue (from Handy Andy's adhesive collection). I painted the board and four of the cans white. The other cans got painted green. Once they dried I used the gorilla glue to mount the cans on the board. Gorilla glue expands, so it was good for the skinny bottom edges of the cans. This glue  takes between 4-6 hours to completely dry, so I patiently waited and then...

 Eureka!

If you look closely, you can see where the gorilla glue expanded outside of the cans and I was too lazy to fix it didn't fix it because it gave it more personality...or something. I still need to do something with my ribbons, but this lovely can creation cleared up some space on my table, so I'm happy!

Well, maybe you can't tell that it helped to organize my table, but it did. I promise.

P.S. To see more Pinterest-inspired projects, head over to By the Book Paper for Pinterest Thursday posts.