Paint Chips Birthday Banner

Its re-useable, one of a kind & personalized and lastly free! So I was tired of hanging the same Happy Birthday banner every year so this year everyone in the family will get their own personal birthday banner in their fav colours! Since paint chips are so versitile in creating banners why not a happy birthday one. I absolutely love using fishing to string everything together.  Not only do I have an entire spool that will never be used for fishing it gives the banner a floating effect. (I left out the name of my daughter...well it is the internet)

Apologies to my man for not thinking of this for his birthday, the first one in the calender year but I promise he will not be left out!

Makeup Vanity Make Over

Our 13 (now 14) year old daughter wanted her own makeup vanity table.  Knowing the chances of her spilling something and our adversion to painting an antique we came across this....

It wasn't in too bad of condition.  The entire piece was sanded and painted and came out looking like this

The stool, which I did not get a before picture of unfortunitly, I wanted to be as unique as she is.  Lucky for me I had fabric left over from her room make over 2 years ago. After almost 5 hours of cutting strips of fabric and sewing it turned out exactly how I envisioned it would~ she said it looked like a cupcake!

I got the inpiration for the top from how to shag pillows from vanessa christenson   Our daugher has a unique piece of furniture in her room that she adores and we are thrilled with the end result.

A Quiet hour for a book wreath

No kids & husband not feeling his best, house cleaning started but some me time was in order.  I saved the pages out of the book I am making into my recipe collection but what to do with them?  I saw this idea posted numerous times on various places on the internet so this is not an original idea.  With the torn out pages I made cones (in between dusting and texting a friend) Note to self that cones come out more uniform without interruption lol.  I had a piece of leftover styrofoam insulation which I marked two circles on.  The outer circle is approx 8" and the inner circle 4".  After most of the cones were made held together with some regular scotch tape I stapled each cone 1" from the bottom making sure the tip was centered. With glue gun in hand I glued the outer edge first using the staples as a guide to glue them to the line.  Next the inner circle was glued in place.  Finally an inner circle was glued in place lining up the staples with the tips of the cones of the 4" circle.  Now to put something in the middle. I tried a pom pom to make it look more like a flower but that didn't work well as I didn't have wool and curly ribbon was too stiff.  Next was a Coke can. I cut off the top and made 1/4 slits to the bottom.  I curled each strip around a pencil.  Cool look but it wasn't big enough.  Lastly I went with dried hydrangeas from the garden.  Cut and glued them in place and happily it was more the monochromatic look I was looking for.

Recipe organization continues but this was a nice break

In the Spirit of St Patrick's Day

In the spirit of St Patrick's Day and the ever paint chip .... I noticed people making banners out of paint chips mostly for Easter so I began to think.  Although I am not Irish at little decoration doesn't hurt especially here when we are in between seasons and everything is just kinda blah out.  So on my last trip to Homie D I picked up a variety of paint chips in multiple shades of green.  I drew out a shamrock on one to use as my template and began cutting out shamrocks.  Using fishing line to string them up the result was...

I didn't take a pic of the whole string because due to the damp weather a lot of the shamrocks began to curl so note to self that any future paint chip garlands will fair better inside.

(6 in 4)

Recipe Organization-What have I started?!?!?!

So on yesterday's outting I picked up two free books.  One I made into a book ball which now graces my piano.  The cover of the second book held a certain appeal to me and I decided to keep the cover.

I love to cook and try new recipes.  Much to my embarassment my recipes are scattered everywhere.  I started a semi-organizational plan.  I have a recipe book that ou add your  fav recipes to however it is old, overstuffed and falling apart.  Awhile ago I decided that recipes I wanted to try went into a file folder...it no specific order....once tried and it was approved it went into "the recipe book".  Since it is already bulging and the categories didn't exactly match my classification of recipes it was to say the least a mess.  I tried keeping recipes on the laptop however all that did was add another space to store stuff.  A cabinet in the mud room holds even more recipes. I am sure I have more packed away even with my attempts to downsize them. A disorganized mess is all it is.  So my free little book is going to be my solution.  Well that combined with a file folder and the laptop.
My recipe mess....

So it begins turning my little book into my recipe saviour.  I spent the evening removing pages from the book.  Since I am going to add recipes I figure I have to remove some paper to add more.  I spent part of the day sorting through recipes.  This was going to be a little more complicated and time consuming than I thought.  First dilemma was how to cover the words on the page if my existing recipe was too small.  Scrapbooking paper was the answer! Next was categories.  I made a list that was logical for me.  Next was how to divide up the book into the categories.  I have more cookie recipes than I do salads so the logical step was to gather all the recipes ready to be inserted and see how many I had of each of my categories.  Add to that that I have to leave enough space in each category to be able to add recipes.  This is going to take alot longer to organize that I had originally thought.
Some recipes that I had written out were too big for the book pages so I set up a template on Microsoft word and started typing.  Goal is have all my favorite recipes in a compacct book.  Ironic that little book is a Raders Digest compressed book. 

Reader's Digest Condensed Condensed!!!...New Use for Old Book

Today was a run the errands kind of day.  With husband in tow, it was banking and grocery shopping.  When I mentioned I wanted to go to the ReUse Centre he was curious especially when I said I needed a book.  With chores out of the way we headed off to the centre.  The books I have I truly treasure so I needed a hard cover book that needed a new home. The Reuse Centre located in Burlington was started to divert items that people no longer needed from the landfill.  A noble cause.  In the entry way they have books for free. I was looking for a very specific kind of book, a hardcover book of music as this project was to sit upon the piano but none were to be find in the book section.  On our way out I grabbed two books from the free shelf and we were off to our next stop. 
My inspiration for this project was from Saved by Love Creations where she made a vase from an old book.  The look I thought was so unique but the vase shape was just not me...So it started with

First I measured the first page to find the centre length of the book. With a compass I drew a semi circle

With knife in hand I started cutting away  the pages.  About the time I started my children saw what I was doing in shock as I have always tried to instill in them a love of books and here I was cutting one up!

Once I was finished cutting away all the pages away the cover needed to come off. In this case it almost fell off.  Some glue inside the spine and all over the first and last page.  Some elastics to secure everything during drying time

When dry....perfect!

Did I mention I picked up two books......

Painting Pyramids

It has been an exhausting week trying to balance work and life.  Alot of plans to create and re-create just no time to implement. 
Installing a home office recently gave rise to my version of painting pyramids.  How many times have I painted something placed on newspaper only to have the newspaper stick to the edges or could not completely get around the edges. So you prop it up off the paper using scrap pieces of 2x4 or what ever is available.  Painters pyramids are available from a variety of  sources.  These are from Amazon...

My version were used in packaging cabinets to protect the corners. 

Next I have to stop using camera phone for this



Re~ Invention Design

Trying a new name for this blog~Make it and Mayham reflects my life but ReInvention Design is more me and perhaps this blog I think.  I still intend on doing one thing a week but not so much a craft.  Perhaps I am old school and think of crafts more as cross stitch & crocheting.  I like to reinvent things, make the plain stand out and try to look at things out of the box.  Bold I am not but I do know what I like. We can all have beauty & style in our homes for little $ as long as we are creative in the materials we use.  A person's style is defined from within.  A person's home should reflect their personality and that truly defines it as place where the heart is.
That being said Fridays are now Frugal Fridays.  Point to ponder is the line between frugal and cheap.  Frugal is money conscience whereas cheap is an unwillingness.  An opinion of mine which could very well be wrong.  So frugal Friday starts with curtains.  We have a wonderful friend/client who after having the whole main floor of her home renovated needed new curtains.  The curtains were to span a dining room window and sliding patio doors.  After shopping around she was shocked at the price of curtain rods.  My suggestion pvc pipe and a can a spray paint..she was thrilled!  Corks were inserted in the ends of the pipe after painting, finials from Habitat for Humanity screwed in and she had custom rods for less than $25.

New Month ~New Revamped Scarf

Day started out with sick husband and sick clients.  A day off work for me! Looking at a donation bag that I was getting ready for charity I looked at a scarf half sticking out of the bag.  A shame to give away a scarf that I had barely worn.  It was a gift and not really my style.  Fact is the scarf lacked style.

Digging through my fabrics and some jewellry.  Needle and thread and voila! My give away scarf is now a keeper!