Category: Create

Create with vintage and found items. Repurpose. Reuse. Paint. Don’t paint. These are tutorials of my DIY and craft successes – as well as pictures of my DIY and craft failures. Keeping it real, my friend. Keeping it real.

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Cabbage Bowl Bunny – Crafting With Baseballs

Baseball Skin Cabbage Bowl Bunny

From the creative minds of Melanie and Wanda comes Cabbage Bowl Bunny!

No doubt most of you have seen the 2011 issue of Flea Market Style by now. One of the first projects featured were these baseball skin flowers, created by Sara Smith (photography by Heather Bullard):

Adorable, right? I was so excited and… I had the baseballs already! Couldn’t wait to make these cute flowers! So I cut the skins off the balls… Ummm… How can I word that differently? OK. I’ll try it again. I cut the skins off the BASEBALLS. Let me say that a good, sharp pair of utility scissors works best. Don’t use a seam ripper. It’ll break. And old, dull scissors take a long, long time. But I’m just guessing here, you understand. Don’t you? I mean, I wouldn’t have actually tried either of those things. Nope. Not me. I’d know better! Yep. I would. Ahem.

I was a little disappointed in what I was ending up with. Not only were they going to be gargantuan:

But I couldn’t get the darn things to lie flat enough to look right!


(Oreo’s such a ham)

They were just looking like a pile of baseball skins to me. Now, I’m not knocking the flowers. I think they’re cute as they can be. But for me, I’d rather have something smaller. And I didn’t think I’d be able to make them look as good as the ones in the magazine. Coz I’m not talented like that.

Annoyed with myself, I showed Melanie. We were just sitting there chatting and she took the skins and sort of made a bowl. Then the idea was born. Don’t ‘cha love it when that happens? I glued them together, put some grass inside and a purple bunny and here’s the result:

Crafting with baseballs - Baseball skin cabbage bowl

 

Or maybe it can sit on a spring:

 

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How I made French look flour sack towels

French stripe flour sack tea towel

French stripe flour sack tea towel

I worked in a little time for crafting/experimenting this week. I’ve been wanting to stripe some flour sack tea towels to give them a French look for my kitchen. If I’ve read a tutorial on how to do this, it’s been a long time and I’ve forgotten everything I read, so I was pretty much on my own. Although it’s really nothing to crow about. Pretty simple stuff here. But I’m a-gonna tell you how I did it.

Here’s what you need:

French stripe flour sack tea towel

  • Flour sack towels — I used Main Stays flour sack kitchen towels from Wal-Mart
  • Wax paper or something similar to protect the surface you’re working on. Don’t want the paint to bleed through onto your pretty dining room table or anything.
  • Fabric paint or, in this case, I used Martha Stewart’s multi-surface craft paint
  • Painter’s tape
  • A stencil brush
  • You’ll also need a ruler and marker seen in the next photo
  • ***Update. I didn’t use this, but textile medium is probably a must have.

French stripe flour sack tea towel

  1. Fold your towel in half lengthwise. You want to measure from the center rather than in from the sides. These towels have wavy sides and your stripes would be all kinds of crooked if you measured from the side. So. Again. Decide how wide you want your center stripe and measure half that distance all the way down the center. I wanted my stripe to be 2-1/2″ so I measured 3/4″ and made little marks every few inches to help keep the painter’s tape straight.
  2. Lay down your tape to your marks. I didn’t take a picture of this step, but I’m pretty sure you can use your imagination.
  3. Now, while still folded, flip the towel over.
    French stripe flour sack tea towel
    You won’t need to make marks this time because you can see the tape through the fabric. Lay your tape down on this side of the fold using the first tape as a guide.
  4. Unfolded, it looks like this:
    French stripe flour sack tea towel
  5. Now you’re ready to paint. Using your stencil brush, dab in an up and down motion on the fabric between the tape pieces. You can pull the tape off as soon as you finish.
  6. Once that is dried, mark off your other lines and repeat the painting step on the new lines.
  7. Pull the tape off and let it dry. You’re done!

A note about paints. Try to find a color you like right out of the bottle. It’s hard to mix enough to do as many as you want. And… I thought I had mixed the color right, but when I put it on the fabric, it so wasn’t what I wanted. It’s back to the drawing board on that. Hoping to find a color that more closely matches what I have in mind.

Hope you give it a try!

French stripe flour sack tea towel

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A Quick and Easy Footstool Makeover

Footstool makeover

Here’s a quick and easy footstool makeover for you.

Footstool makeover

Sometime last year I bought this little footstool.

Footstool Makeover

It’s hard to tell, but it has a pretty decent looking gray, linen look fabric. Nice enough, but borrring. It’s been part of the mess in the bedroom that sorta became the catch-all room. The room I need to organize so I can get to my sewing machine and maybe even put a baby bed for the granddarlings in there. I figured if I could do something with the stool and get it to a booth, that would be one less thing to step over in that room. I could have left it as is, but it just seemed to need something… more. That “more” became a stencil.

Using some plain ol’ contact paper from Dollar General that I had lined a drawer with and my trusty Silhouette Cameo (ad) – I’m always looking for a reason to use the Silhouette – I cut out No. 21 in Tirani Solid LET font. I really have no idea if that’s a font I’ve downloaded or if it came with the Silhouette software. But it’s pretty. And exactly what I was looking for.

Footstool makeover

Then, using a small, stiff, stencil brush, I dabbed on Martha Stewart’s Multi-Surface Satin craft paint (ad) in Wedding Cake white. When you stencil something, always use an up and down motion. Never a brush stroke. Unless you want a brush stroke look. There are always exceptions to the rules.

Martha Stewart multi surface paint

It actually turned out pretty cute.

Footstool makeover

If no one wants to buy it like this, then I can recover it later. But for now, it’s outta my way. And that’s a good thing.

Footstool makeover

For the life of me I couldn’t find a good spot in the house to take a picture! It just didn’t look right anywhere.:-(

Footstool makeover

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Vintage Light Fixture Upcycle

Light fixture into a candle holder

Here’s a new use, upcycle, for a vintage, two socket light fixture.

These two-socket light fixtures were plentiful in houses in the early part of the 20th century. The 19teens and 20s or thereabout. They hung from the ceiling. They were not equipped for any type of shade, leaving the bulb bare. Some were quite ornate, others rather plain. They’re fun to take apart and turn into something a bit more useful.

Light fixture into a candle holder

It’s very easy, but there is a a tad more to it than you’d expect.

The fixture will have a light socket screwed in. It generally sticks up too far for anything to sit flat. You could put a taper candle in there, but I’ve never had luck finding one to fit. Your mission will be to unscrew the socket. Might be easy, might be hard. I had one of each. The hard one was just tight and needed more than my hand and finger strength to unscrew it. Had to use a pair of pliers to hold one part while I unscrewed the other side with my fingers.

Light fixture to candle holder

It comes apart looking like this. Yours might be different, but it should at least be similar.

Light fixture to candle holder

Now, a hole with no bottom where the candle goes isn’t the best idea. We need to make something for the candle to sit on other than the table.

I used an ArtEmboss copper sheet

Light fixture turned into a candle holder

When the copper comes out of the tube it still holds a curved shape, so I used the cardboard tube the copper was wrapped around like a rolling pin to flatten it.

Light fixture into a candle holder

Next step is to draw circles for the bottoms and cut them out. If your fixture had a washer (See the second picture above) use it to trace around the outside for a correct fit. If it doesn’t have one you can draw around the cup piece and cut slightly larger. My copper came with a stylus, but I found that a ball point pen worked better.

Llight fixture into a candle holder

I used regular scissors to cut the copper. It’s thin enough. Tin snips could also be used, but for me and my little hands they are heavy, cumbersome and unnecessary.

Now that you have two, somewhat round pieces, you can either put them in the fixture cup as is or antique them. I used a solution I’ve had for years – 20-30 years! – called Corrosive. That’s it. No company name on it or anything. I couldn’t find anything similar on the internet. Not that there isn’t any. I just couldn’t find it. You might try Vintaj’s Patina Opaque Permanent Ink for a similar look. I’ve never used this, but it says it’s made especially for metals.

Light fixture turned into a candle holder

It’s time to put them in the bottom of the light fixture cups. I put them inside the cups, but think maybe I’d rather have had them between the cup and the fixture.

Light fixture into a candle holder

Light fixture turned into a candle holder

I used E-6000 to glue the copper onto the cup and the cup onto the fixture. For bests accuracy, glue the cup onto the fixture before gluing in the copper disc.

Light fixture turned into a candle holder

That’s all there is to it. A lot of explaining and pictures for a very simple process.

Light fixture into a candle holder

I think taller, slightly skinnier candles would look nice, but these chunky ones were all I had. Kinda negates the reason for the copper disc, doesn’t it? But I also like the idea of putting an ink well and pen nibs in the cups.

Light fixture upcycle