DIY Scripture Cover w/ Handles

 

 

 Delia Creates shows you how to make your own scripture covers!

 Scripture Cover Tutorial

I especially love the handles so you don’t have to carry around a separate bag!

Easy Maxi Skirt

 

 

Create this comfortable, stylish maxi skirt with Abby at Sew Much Ado…

 Maxi Skirt Tutorial

…I love how super long this is!!

T-Shirt Headband

 

I have a hard time finding comfortable headbands! Most of them give me headaches if I were them for a couple of hours!

Well…Sara at Craft Snob shows us how to create these headbands out of t-shirts…

T-shirt Headband Tutorial

Comfortable & Cute? My kind of headband!

Li’l St. Patrick’s Day Gift Idea

 

 

Need a fun li’l way to tell somebody how much you appreciate them?! Kirsten from The Crafting Chicks shares this awesome gift idea and printables…

 St. Patrick’s Day Free Printables

Creative Guest: Flower Pillow by Attempting Aloha

 

 

 

OK, would it be appropriate for me to tell you that I almost wet myself when Kari responded to my email and said she'd like to feature one of my ideas? No? Well then, I'll leave it at "I was really super duper extraordinarily excited". ;)

 

UCreate? Are you kidding me?



 

I'm Charlie (pink...not blue), and I started my blog Attempting Aloha last October after purchasing our first home here on Oahu. I know you're a little jealous that it's 80 degrees and lovely today, and we're heading to the beach this weekend, but can we still be friends? ;)  Anyway, I'm a crazy crafter and DIY'er with a ginormous "honey-can't-do" list (the hubs is in residency right now, so we rarely see him), so I'm learning to get it done myself! But I'm trying to relax a bit and learning to live the Aloha life.

 

Today I'm going to show you how to make a Full Flower Pillow.  I made the one pictured above as a tester with some cheap fabric, so I could eventually chop up my wedding dress and make this one for one of my three girlies (I'll be making two different styles of pillows for the other two girls with more of my dress later on):

 

This tutorial will be featuring the first pillow, though. Here's what you'll need to make an 17" square pillow: * 1  yard of fabric - at least 45" width * 17" square pillow form * Sewing needle and thread * Sewing machine for pillow form * Scissors *Chick flick Optional: * Button or other embellishment for center Step 1)  Cut out the pieces for your pillow form. I used a tutorial from Brooke from All Things Thrifty to make my pillow form. For our 17" pillows, we will need one 18"x18" piece and two 18"x12.5" pieces. Step 2) Tear your strips of fabric for the flower. I did mine up the 36" side, and if you've never torn fabric, it's typically easy depending on the fabric you've chosen (the satin fabric I had on my wedding dress pillow was MUCH too strong to tear, so I had to cut that one and then fray the edges by taking out strings from the edge).  For regular cotton fabrics, cut a small snip at 3", and just go ahead and rip straight up the fabric! I ended up with 6 strips were 3"x36".

Snip

Rip!

Step 3) Start your rosette bud. Fold the end of one of your strips of fabric and then strat rolling it up as you bunch the fabric slightly to give it more fullness. Once you have a good start, hand stitch the bottom a few times to secure it.



Step 4) Attach the rosette bud to the center of your 18"x18" piece.

I hold on to the rosette and the fabric and flip it over to stitch it with my right hand. Here's a pic of the reverse side:



Step 5) Start stitching the rest of the flower. If you want to be precise, you can take a pencil and draw a spiral pattern on the reverse, so you can follow that while stitching. I think flowers are naturally imperfect, so I just kind of wing it (I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda gal anyway). My rows are about 1"-1.5" apart. Just scrunch/bunch as you go!.

Mine looked quite messy from the back once finished:

But no worries...she's just lovely on the front! Step 6) Add your center embellishment. I used three small buttons for this one.

Step 7) Use Brooke's tutorial to finish the rest of the pillow, and BE SURE to tuck in your flower edges when you're sewing, so you don't accidentally sew the "petal" into your seam! Since my flower was a slightly imperfect, my pillow ended up being more of a rectangle than a square. I stitched up the side of my pillow form and cut the excess right off. Not bad for a tester project! I thought she might want to live in the master bedroom with our wrought iron headboard:

But she asked if she could chill in my Mom Cave, so I let her stay in there instead. ;)

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me (or an hour or so if you're making your own!). And a ginormous MAHALO to Kari for letting me spend the day here on her blog. She's a supah star. If you're freezing your buns off and need to spend a day in Hawaii, you now know where to find me! Stop by Attempting Aloha and soak up some sunshine!! Aloha, Charlie

The Knotted Headband

 

 

Check out this awesome headband by the super creative Cami over at You Seriously Made That?!!

 Knotted Headband Tutorial

I want one!!

Gorgeous Mixed Chain Necklaces

 

 

I had the opportunity to meet some of the creative gals behind the fabulous Making Memories company this week!! I was cruisin’ along their awesome blog and look what I found! These gorgeous mixed media necklaces…

 

 Mixed Chain Necklace Tutorial

 

 Romantic Necklace Tutorial

 

Jill shows you how to create them with easy-to-follow video tutorials!

Simply. Gorgeous.

DIY Front-Facing Book Shelves

 

Do you have a blank wall in a child’s bedroom or playroom that needs spicing up?! Create this fabulous book shelves with Helping Little Hands!!

 Front Facing Book Shelves

What a great way to organize all of those fun books!!

Custom Printed Shower Curtain!

 

Spice up your bathroom with a customized shower curtain!

 The Crafty Cupboard screen printed this beauty and shows you how…

Screen Printing Tutorial

…so fabulous!

Cute Tops for Girls!

 

So today I’m on a little clothing kick!!

This super cute scallop shirt is created by Craftiness is Not Optional! She shows you how to make this at Project Run and Play!

 Scalloped Top Tutorial

Adorable!

 

Check out what iCandy Handmade did with a stash of buttons she received as a gift!

 Button Explosion Tee Tutorial

Ooo…just think of all the buttons and different styles you can create!!

Spring Fever Dress

 

Create this beautiful spring dress with Me Sew Crazy…how fabulous is the back of this dress!?!

 Spring Fever Dress Tutorial

Crazy. Cute.

DIY Headboards {using shutters!}

 

Kiki at Kiki Creates is super talented and I’m crazy about her newest DIY project…

 Headboard Tutorial

…I love everything about this room. The bright colors, the classy back, and you’ll want to see her gorgeous duvet cover tutorial, too!

 

 

I’m also loving this version by Girl in Air!

 Old Shutters Tutorial

The gray, white, and green color scheme is incredible! The trees are gorgeous and I also love everything about this room!!

Creative Guest: Crafts by Amanda

 

 

Hi everyone! I am beyond thrilled to be guest posting here at the fabulous Ucreate. I can't thank Kari enough for inviting me! My name is Amanda Formaro and I blog my projects over at Crafts by Amanda and my edibles at Amanda's Cookin'.

I'm the mother of four wonderful children aged 12 through 18 and am happily married to my high school sweetheart. I love to create, there are always ideas bouncing around in my head! My biggest love is painting. I love to distress things and give them character and showcase those things throughout my home.

Today I'm going to share with you how to distress a piece of wood using some acrylic paint and a sander. You don't need power tools, this can certainly be done by hand, but every woman should have a sander in her craft room (in my humble opinion). :) It speeds up the process and is so much easier. Sometimes I use masking tape in the distressing process too. You can see that technique used on my Distressed Eat Sign (pictured below).

While I used a big chunky piece of barn wood for the eat sign, I used a simple piece of thin plywood for today's project. I picked the "family definition" vinyl from Say it on the Wall, which is 24" x 24". That's a rather large piece of vinyl, but I knew exactly where in my living room it would be going!

The first thing I did was lay out the vinyl sheet onto the board to see if I needed to trim the plywood at all.

I used my Ryobi hand saw to trim off the excess and then sanded both sides and all the edges smooth.

Then I used white acrylic paint. This doesn't need to be pretty, just squeeze some onto the board and spread it around with back and forth strokes.

I purposely don't cover the board completely because when I'm all finished I want some areas to show bare wood, some to show bare and white, and some just white. Let the white dry completely.

When the white paint has dried, paint over it with your dark color, in my case a dark brown.

For my secondary top coat I chose a dark burgundy red. You don't want a really wet paintbrush for this step. Dip the brush in the red then dab off some of the excess.

Brush the red on lightly in random areas, keeping it in the same direction as the brown brushstrokes.

You'll want to let this dry completely, so go eat some brownies. :)

Now it's time to rough things up a bit. I use my handy dandy Ryobi sander and a medium grit sandpaper. Sand with the grain of the brushstrokes and use a light hand. You want to sand off the color in some areas down to the white, and in other areas just lightly. There's no perfect science to it, just sand until you're happy with it.

As you can see, I sanded harder in some places than in others. Some areas you can even see the bare wood.

Next I used some antiquing gel over the top, especially where the white was showing, to tone it down and give it an aged look. You apply the gel with a paintbrush and wipe it off with a dry rag.

The harder you rub the more will come off, so you have the ability to change the aged look as you go. Work in small sections at a time.

Let the antiquing gel settle and dry a little bit, about 15-20 minutes.

Pull out your sander again and rough up anywhere you see fit, but especially on all the edges. If you have any areas that the splintered like mine, be sure to smooth those out to avoid splinters. Dust the whole thing off to remove any loose particles left over from sanding.

If you are using a large piece of vinyl like this one I recommend having someone help you. It can be challenging to hold one end of the item still while peeling the other. Prepare your vinyl by rubbing a straight edged item (credit card, jumbo craft stick, etc) all over the transfer paper backing.

Carefully peel back the transfer paper a little at a time, watching to see if any letters come up with the paper. if they do, simply rub that are with your stick and continue until the transfer paper has been removed.

Position the vinyl on your sign board, again with the help of a friend if you can. You'll want to hover it over the board until you are ready to set it down as it may stick once set in place. If any letters came off during the peeling process, just carefully set them aside and add them last (see the word "group" fourth line down from the top?). Use your straight edge to rub the vinyl letters onto your board, rolling the backing back off as you go until all the letters are stuck to the board. When you are all finished, give the entire project 2-3 coats with a clear acrylic sealer in matte finish. I attached a very simple hanger to the back using a piece of twine, some scrap cardboard and some Gorilla Glue super glue.

Hang! I hope you enjoyed this project. I am so happy to have been able to share it with you, thanks for allowing me in to your inbox and thanks to Kari for having me. :)