Real Burlap!
The most exciting thing I’ve done lately is working with some REAL burlap. I originally bought yards of burlap from a fabric store, but have since been excited about my new endeavor with some real, serious, burlap. I purchased burlap coffee sacks from Etsy and went to town! Was much fun. As I opened up the seams of one of the bags, a few coffee beans fell out.
I covered my coffee table/bench with one bag, I did need to extend it by sewing additional onto the sides (I took extra from the back of the bag), and it turned out fine, you can’t see it on the sides at all. I have a very small apartment, so the bench serves as a coffee table or I turn it perpendicular to the couch and it serves as extra seating. It also can be used as extra seating at the dining table.
I also had three little stools that I chose to cover as well, they serve as additional seating for my dining table or living room and look great now!
I have my butcher block in the dining area and decided to make a little table runner for it. I used the burlap from the store that I had leftover and added my favorite girly fabric, which I also used in the pillows I made for the couch that you can see in these pics, and I will add another blog post for those pillows.
Offers some variety, necessary for small spaces:
I also purchased about 8 additionall, smaller, coffee sacks which are all pretty awesome and have cool designs on them. I plan to frame them and use for decorating the walls.
Upcycle Old Magazines
I’m discovering new uses for all those old magazines that are collecting dust under my coffee table. One of the ideas I saw somewhere online at some point are these envelopes that I made for the handmade cards (previous post):
The envelopes are definitely cute, but there are so many other uses for these magazines as well. In fact, I didn’t think about how to wrap my sisters gift and I found an old birthday bag around the apt when cleaning, so I dropped it in there. I didn’t have any tissue paper, so I grabbed a few pages of the magazine, and glue them to together to make large pieces, and just then just used that as “tissue paper” filler for the bag.
You can also just cut out pieces from pages and use them to decorate cards instead of fabric as we did during craft day.
Just channel your inner school-aged child, and wa-lah! What’s old is new again.
Wine and Craft Nights
Anna and I have decided to have monthly wine and craft nights after our extraordinarily fun day of making cards last week. We sat down on the floor of my apartment and brought out all the goods: pretty fabrics, pretty scrapbooking paper, buttons, gemstones, glue, scissors, and pretty much anything and everything I own and can cut up and use. Anna made 4 gorgeous cards, and since I am slow and a crazy perfectionist, I only made 3. However, I can only post two of mine here right now as one was not given yet!
Here are Anna’s creations. The first one on the far left is a wedding card, the next is a birthday card, the one she is holding is a birthday card for her mom, and the last one is an engagement card:
Here are mine. On the left is my sister’s birthday card and on the right is my dad’s birthday card:
A Special Birthday Card
I made this recently for one of the most amazing people I have ever known. An incredibly genuine, kind, and compassionate person.. truly one of the most beautiful souls I have ever even just grazed the surface of.
Miss you, Froggy! :o)
Hand-sewn Cards
Got this wonderful idea from Rachel at Stitched in Color and even used her Christmas tree design, but added something different to it. The wedding cards are sewn with a monogram and a pocket in the inside to hold a check… And I printed all cards with my personalized logo on the back… yeah I know… it’s a little over the top, but that’s my favorite part!! haha..
