How-To Make A Ruffled Collar

Add some flare to an old top, or use this to dress up a shirt that's just too plain...I chose this leopard print shirt/dress...



I took an old skirt



Cut four strips 1) 3 inches wide 2) 2 1/2 inches wide 3) 2 inches wide 4) 1 1/2 inches wide...all around 40 inches long. I used my ruffler attachment on my sewing machine on the 1 (every stitch) & 8 (the deepest setting), ruffling at the very edge of of the strip.

First I ruffled the 3 inch piece



Then I ruffled the 2 1/2 & 2 inch wide pieces. These will eventually be stacked on top of each other like so



Then I took the 1 1/2 inch wide piece and ruffled it on the same setting straight down the middle instead of on the edge of the strip. This I put directly down the middle to finish off the collar.





In the end I got this!!



LOVE IT!! Now it just needs some additional ruffles on the sleeves and hem & it's ready to go!!

Thrift Store Find!!

Oh its fun to find goodies for cheap!! Just got this neat mirror at a St. Vincent de Paul store in Mason, OH. As you can see it was marked $2, but that day everything in the store was 1/2 off so I got this mirror for $1!!

This should be ILLEGAL!

Seriously, it should be ILLEGAL for our kids to be this cute...Sometimes they are anything but angels, and then other times I catch them being....well....see for yourselves....



Who could ask for two sweeter babies?!

Faux-Finishing Kitchen Cabinets

Like many of you I'm sure, my husband and I bought a "fixer-upper" for our starter home. The kitchen was by far the room that needed the most help.

What I dreamed of having was something like this:



Or this:



But what we got was this:



These were the ONLY cabinets in the entire kitchen, (talk about limited storage space!!!) and of course they were your standard UGLY brown wooden variety. Not to mention the hideous cheap GREEN countertop with matching sticky tile laminate flooring...


Oh yes...the first thing on my list was a kitchen re-model. My husband and I set down and crunched some numbers and realized that we had AT MOST a $400.00 budget to re-do the entire kitchen. At first, this sounded like a reasonable amount of money! But I soon realized that $400.00 was NOTHING. I needed to find cabinets for the rest of the kitchen, purchase new counter tops, a new sink, all the primer, paint, and glaze to faux finish the cabinets, new cabinet handles, and not to mention new flooring!


So I realized that in order to stay in budget I would have to shop around for a long time until I found super sales. My goal was a new set of cabinets in the corner, and on the wall which as you can see was originally completely empty:



With only a $400 budget new cabinets weren't an option. I began scanning craigslist and spreading the word that we were looking for a set. I also wanted tile flooring, which I KNEW could only be possible if I found a SUPER sale on tile and grout somewhere...I didn't know what to do in terms of countertops, and I guess I was just crossing my fingers that at some point I would find exactly what we needed for dirt cheap.


Waiting for super sales when you want nothing more than to re-model NOW is not easy. I occupied and distracted myself by focusing on the one thing I COULD do which was begin re-painting the cabinets we had in place so that's where I started....


I bought some Kiltz primer, the cheapest gallon of paint I could get at Lowes which was about $12...(a cream colored Semi Gloss finish), the cheapest brushes I could get and I started priming:



After removing all the doors and hinges to prime, I painted the entire thing the cream color. While I was at it, I went ahead and added some under the counter lights because I found them on sale for $5!! And soon it looked like this:



NOT bad!! Already a massive improvement in itself, but I wasn't nearly finished...now was time for the faux finishing...

I begin by adding some fancy appliques to the fronts of all of the doors. This was tricky because I had to measure perfectly in order for them to be uniform. I got a TON of these appliques off of a clearance shelf at Lowes marked down to .30 for a 2 pack. However, they were dark brown so I had to paint them the color of the cabinets before gluing them on the fronts...

Here is the base part of the cabinets:



And here are the wall cabinets:



Of COURSE I couldn't just paint the appliques the same color of the cabinets because they would completely disappear, so I took a black paint pen that I got at Hobby Lobby for $2.99 and I accented the appliques by coloring in the grooves, and then also coloring in the oval in the center.

This worked out nicely because coloring in the oval of the appliques actually ended up matching the oval of the knobs I chose for the cabinets....Speaking of the handles and knobs...went to a local furniture warehouse and got the oval knobs for $2 each, and the handles I found at target for $1.99 each...(FYI: Now Target doesn't sell the handles separately and you have to purchase them in a 10 pack)...Then I took the paint pen and edged all the edges of the cabinets just to help them stand out a little...

Then as if God himself was taking on the project...my husband and I went to IKEA just for fun and ended up finding out that they had a line of incredible brownish countertops that were being discontinued!!! $40 for the biggest pieces they had which (I THINK) were 96" long! I bought two of the longest pieces they had in the hopes that soon I would get extra base cabinets...

Next came ripping out the old nasty green countertop...



Because this was a big project and it involved cutting the countertops to fit our base cabeinets, we called in reinforcements: my Dad. Here he is outside getting ready to cut the countertop down to 48" to replace the original countertop:



Within a few hours he had it installed!! Also, at IKEA (while picking up the countertops)my husband and I found a unique ROUND sink for only $19.99 regularly priced! AND....I got a $129.00 kitchen facet set for $29.99 at Home Depot on a Clearance endcap...all of which my Dad agreed to install the same day he cut and installed the countertops:


Here he is getting ready to cut out the round hole to place the sink:



And here is the finished countertop and sink!!!



Right around this time, as if the super deal with the IKEA countertops wasn't enough....my friend called me up and said that her neighbor just replaced all her cabinets and had the old ones available IF I wanted them....

FREE cabinets!! She warned me that they weren't nice...and not to get too excited. What we ended up getting was more than I could have ever asked for!!! Enough cabinets to do another base and wall cabinets in the empty corner!! Plus a wall cabinet for the wall by the oven...and extra cabinets for the laundry room too!

Now we were able to fill the empty corner in the kitchen!! From this:



To this:





My dad also cut the countertop for the new cabinets too. As you can see from these pics, they were originally an ugly brown color too. Just like with the original set of cabinets I had to prime, paint and re-finish these these as well.


I had finally doubled my kitchen storage space and countertops for very very little money out of our budget!! But OF COURSE...I wasn't done. I still had to complete the last step of faux finishing the cabinets: cracking and glazing them. This takes quite a bit of patience and probably isn't for novices (more on the how-to of this later).

I have to take some better pictures of the final finished product, but for now here are a few pictures of the faux-finished crackling:







After all of this, all that was left was the floor. How would we ever afford to redo the UGLY green laminate floor when we only had about $170 left from our original $400 budget???

And then came yet ANOTHER unbelievable deal...I was at Lowes (yet again) and was YET AGAIN walking the flooring aisles pricing tile. I knew I needed at LEAST ninety 12" x 12" tiles to do both the kitchen and the laundry room (which is right off the kitchen and not enclosed with a door) not to mention grout, backer board, and thinset mortar...plus the tools needed for tiling like a cheap tile cutter, rounded edge sponge, float, and spacers...

So as I was walking the aisles I saw a sign out of the corner of my eye that read, ".49 a tile"...I ran over and lo and behold they had lovely tan tiles on sale that were being discontinued!!!!!!!!!!!! In all the times I had been to Lowes I had never seen tile go cheaper than .69 cents a tile!!!!

I couldn't believe my luck...so I bought about $70 worth of tile and took it home without buying any of the other items I would need to tile because I knew I wouldn't have enough money. I had planned on going to my husband to explain that the $400 just wasn't quite enough, but as fate would have it, within the week I was at yet ANOTHER Lowes and they had a big cart in the tile section FULL of broken open bags of grout...and WOULD you BELIEVE that they had 4 bags of the SAME cream color for only $2 a bag?!?!?!

I was soo excited!! I just kept storing all of this in the house...slowly aquiring all the supplies I would need to finish the project. All that was left to buy was the tile cutter, and back board, but the tile cutter was $30 and the backer board was $10 a piece and I needed 8 pieces. So the $100 odd dollars I had left just wasn't going to stretch.

So again I waited...

A few weeks later, I went to our local Habitat for Humanity resale shop and they had 2 pieces of the backer board I needed for only $4 each...THEN I went to Lowes again and they had some broken pieces of backer board marked 50% off!! This was enough to finish my project.

My dad let me borrow some of the additional tile cutting tools I needed and my husband and I began to tile the kitchen. First came laying the backer board:



Then we placed the tile on the floor to lay the pattern out...



After much fidgiting and fussing we began to actually lay the tile!



This was our first tile job EVER, so it took a lot of planning, and reading up on tiling, and researching online to make sure we did everything right...After we laid it all out with the spacers, we of course waited over 24 hours for the thinset to cure...so all night it looked like this and we couldn't walk on it...



Finally after letting it sit over 24 hours we were able to do the grout...Though it was our first tiling project, I think my husband and I made a pretty good team. It turned out soo good!!!





Ahhh...of course there are still little finishing touches that need to be done with the whole project, but for just a tiny bit over $400 we were able to completely redo not only the kitchen, but also the adjoining laundry room!

It was without a doubt the most strenous project I've ever taken on because we did it all ourselves, but I learned so much, and am sooo VERY happy with out new kitchen!!!

More recent pics to come....!!

The Transformation of An Old Brass Chandelier...

Have some old brassy light fixtures around the house that seem outdated and you're tempted to trash? WAIT!!! Before you throw those out and replace them with new expensive lighting take a look at this....

I got this old brassy chandelier for $10 at a local thrift store:



When I brought it home my husband LITERALLY said, "Why did you buy that piece of JUNK?" I told him that the next time he saw it he wouldn't recognize it, and he rolled his eyes and smiled.


So later that day I went to Lowes and bought some spray paint (this large 12 arm chandelier took 2 cans of paint to fully cover). I bought one can of brown and one of black. Before I started painting I took some scrap paper and covered the electrical parts of the arms, and then I took it outside, laid it on my old recycle bin and sprayed and sprayed!



First I took the brown paint and sprayed the side that was facing up, making sure to really get every angle. Then I let it dry for about 30 minutes and then I turned it around and sprayed the side that was originally facing down with the brown paint. After that dried I lightly coated the entire thing with the black paint which created a speckled look with the brown showing through underneath...


Even I was shocked at the quality of the finished product!!!



For the finishing touch, I went to a store called "Old Time Pottery" and believe it or not I got these shades (which were a buy-out from Target) for $1.00 each!!! Amazing! And it loos even better in person!!

When my husband saw it he couldn't BELIEVE it was the same old junky light he saw earlier!!


So before you take down those old brassy lights, consider painting them! OR before you go and buy brand new lights, go to your local thrift store and get the ugliest brass light you can find....you'll be SHOCKED at what a little paint can do!!!

Do-It-Yourself Toe Blooms!!!

So I found a website called: http://www.toeblooms.com/ that sell these stunning wraps that ruffle around your baby girls little ankles and feet and have a pretty flowers on the top:









I love love loved these but honestly didn't want to pay the $25.00 plus shipping just for one pair  so, I thought WHY couldn't I make those myself?! And that's exactly what I did!


First, I started with an old cotton skirt:



Then, I took a stretchy elastic band that was close to the same color as the skirt. This I wrapped around my daugther's ankle and foot to measure. It measured 11 inches (and she's 8 months old FYI), so I laid it flat on the table and cut 12 inches to give me an extra inch of material to work with and hem.



(NOTE: You can always by the pre-made stretchy ribbon at the store, but they only come in so many colors and types, and I wanted something more frayed and rustic which is why I chose to make it myself. IF you are using a pre-made band skip the next few steps where I explain how to figure eight, and sew them)


After cutting two 12 inch pieces, I went to my old skirt and cut a 4 inch by 50 inch strip out of the bottom of the skirt. This would eventually be used to make the ruffles for the band. I didn't cut this very carefully because I knew that once I sewed it to the elastic band I would trim both sides to make it even. Plus the 4 inch width gave me room to make mistakes if the line from the sewing machine went off a little.


Now comes the tricky part. I then used my Ruffler Foot attachment on my sewing machine to make the ruffle for the bands.



This can be a little tricky because you put your elastic band below the ruffler and then you thread your cottom fabric through the Ruffler (and above yet on top of the elastic band) so that in the end the Ruffler ruffles the cotton fabric and sews it to your elastic without ruffling the elastic. I am a complete novice of a sewer and I was able to accomplish this so if you are new to sewing and have a Ruffler Foot attachment you will be able to do this to I am sure! Just practice on some old stuff beforehand so you don't waste anything expensive.


So basically I took the cotton stip from the old skirt + the 12 inch elastic band, used my ruffler to ruffle and attach them together which made a lovely 12 inch elastic ruffle band for one of the Toe Blooms:





Because I originally made it around 4 or 5 inches wide, the ruffle on the band was WAY to wide, and in places I had sewn it a little crooked so I just took my scissors and cut a pretty even edge on both sides so that the entire band was only about 2 inches wide.


Then I repeated all of the above steps for the second band. Afterwards I took both bands and wrapped them around my daughter's ankles and feet to get a final measure. Then I pinned them in place and removed them to sew.


(NOTE: As it turns out, giving the extra inch was not necessary. I originally measured 11 inches and cut 12, but since there is some give with the elastic, I really only needed the 11 inches. So I had about 1 inch extra that I ended up trimming off the band).


It's hard to describe how these actually go around the ankle and foot but it's sort of a figure eight. The trick is that they have to wrap around the ankle, cris cross over the top of the foot and then wrap around the bottom of the foot. This is how the underneath should look:



(REMEMBER: The cris cross is on TOP of the foot not underneath or behind the ankle)


I hand sewed the seams together in such a way that the seam would be right at the cris cross because the flower would then hide the seam. Now all that was left was to attach the flowers!! I used 2 tyes of silk flowers, some maroon ones and then some little purple ones.



I started by taking the flowers off the wire stems and then completely took the flowers apart. Once you do this you will find that the inside of a silk flower has a bunch of plastic pieces inside to help it keep it's shape. Just take those all out, because you want your flower to lay flat. After dismantling the flowers I decided to do four layers of the maroon petals and two layers of the smaller purple which made for a nice full flower.



Then I wipped out my hot glue gun to put it to work!

I started by hand sewing the first layer of the maroon flower to the actual Toe Bloom band. Then, after sewing I reinforced it by adding a few drops of hot glue as well. Then I hot glued the remaining layers of flowers one on top of the other. Once all the flower layers were glued in place I did a tiny drop of hot glue on the back of the faux diamond and placed it directly in the center of the flower.


And the end result was.......







Then, just to make it Over-The-Top I went ahead and made a matching hair accessory!!!



She looked soo cute today in church!





Whew!! All in a days work!! Total cost = Less than $5.00!!!!