Teacup Cactus Pincushion

 Hello!  I'm making an effort to actually get more than one blog post in during the month of April.  It actually wasn't too hard since all I had to do was edit a few photos that I had already taken.  I'm excited to share this fun tutorial with you today.  I've wanted to turn one of my vintage teacups into a pincushion for quite sometime but I had been seeing some adorable succulent and cactus pincushions lately that really caught my eye.  Then I had the brilliant thought to combine the two and I love how it turned out.

If you have been following my blog for awhile you may remember this post about planting succulents in teacups (so this is my first time at the teacup succulent rodeo ha ha).  For this project I decided to use my favorite blush pink and gold teacup and saucer that a friend gave me several years ago.  It goes great in my sewing studio as I have a bunch of blush pink accents in the space.  I started by gluing my teacup to the saucer with hot glue.  Next I measured how tall I wanted my succulent to be and found a circular object that was close in diameter to that measurement.  Then I grabbed a piece of green felt and drew 6 circles on the felt.

Next I cut out the felt circles with pinking shears.

Then I placed two circles together and sewed around the edge leaving about 2-3 inches open at the bottom.  I repeated this step with the other 4 circles.  I used my sewing machine for this step but you could hand sew them too.

Next I stacked the 3 sewn pieces on top of each other and hand stitched a straight line down the middle of the stack.  Make sure all of the open parts of each piece are lined up with each other before you sew them together.

Next I filled the cactus with steel wool (you could also use filler that you would use for stuffed animals but I thought the steel wool would help to keep the pins sharp).

Finally I found some black felt and cut a strip and cut it like grass for a kids art project (does that make sense...my baby/mommy brain can't seem to think of better words to describe that today).  I placed a little dot of hot glue on one end and rolled it up and placed another dot of hot glue on the other end to make the center of the flower.  I apologize that I didn't take a picture of that step.

Then I freehanded the flower and cut out two pieces from pink felt.

When I glued the flower pieces to the cactus I placed the top piece so that the petals lined up with spaces between the petals of the bottom piece.  Finally I glued the stamen piece in the center of the flower.

The final step was just to add the pins.  I think it is so cute and love having the saucer underneath to hold little items like small safety pins, a few of my labels for my Etsy shop items, and my little embroidery scissors.  

Next time I write a post I will be very excited to share my sewing studio and my giant pegboard with you.  It is quickly becoming one of my favorite spaces in this house!  

Fireplace Makeover

I am so excited about today's post.  From the minute that I walked into our home before we bought it I knew that this fireplace could be something amazing.  Today I am excited to tell you that I made it that way by using only paint (and a stencil)!

The living room started like this.  The purple walls and the dark wood trim made the room so dark (it is dark anyway since there is no overhead lighting. When we first saw this room before we bought the house the previous owners had a giant entertainment center in the corner where the piano is now that was blocking that window by the fireplace so it was even darker! By just changing the wall color (I chose Behr Silver Drop for this room) and painting the trim white the room became dramatically lighter.  We just got an overhead light fixture installed so I can't wait to share how that changes things too.

The walls and trim made the room look so much more modern but the fireplace was a giant dated piece in the room.  Originally I wanted to rip all of that stone off and do something like shiplap but that would be messy and time consuming.  Plus using the existing materials is so much less wasteful.  So after a lot of Pinterest research I started to form a vision of what this fireplace could become.  I knew that I wanted the stone to be white.  I had played around with the idea of just white washing the stone but I know that bright white was what I really wanted it.

I started by cleaning the stone with vinegar and water and a scrub brush.

Then I primed the stone using Kilz 2 latex primer.  I have never used this primer before but I liked how thick it was. I used the fluffiest roller insert that I could find to get in all of the crevices on the stones.  I had to use a brush to get in the the cracks between the stones and it was a huge pain in the butt.

I used a cheap brush at first and totally destroyed it after priming just one side of the stone.  Later I used a 1.5" Purdy brush that I already had and it worked so much better and I was able to prime the other sides and paint the whole fireplace white before it was as bad as this brush was.

While I had the primer out I figured that it made sense to go ahead and prime the mantel piece too.  This primer worked great over the wood too.  I did give it a light sanding before priming.

Next I painted the stone and wood piece with Behr Ultra White in satin.

At this point you may have noticed that I removed that lovely brassy piece with the doors.  I wanted to get rid of the brass so I painted it with Rustoleum High Heat paint in BBQ Black.

This paint is oil based and smells very strong.  It took two coat to cover the metal.  In some lights it almost looks more like an oil rubbed bronze than a black.

After cleaning the tile I painted it with Rustoleum Chalked in Linen White.  I painted the grout as well.  It took two coats to cover.  This paint isn't really white at all.  It is almost more of a very light gray.

You can see the difference between this paint and Behr Ultra white where I accidentally painted a little bit of the wood piece.  I didn't really mind the contrast thankfully so I just went with it.  I'm glad it was this color instead of turning out to be a yellowy off white.  This is my first time using chalk paint (and probably the last) but it seemed to make the most sense for this application.

Next I used this lovely stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils called Santa Ana Tile Stencil.  It is the 12" size.  I taped over the grout because I wanted to make sure it stayed white.  This isn't my first stenciling project of course.  Stenciling is one of my favorite ways to add details and interest to a project.

Stenciling the walls in our dining room was one of the very first projects on this blog.  I loved that room!

I stenciled the tops of the night stands in our bedroom.

I made my own stencil with my Silhouette Portrait and stenciled the backs of these chairs.

And I stenciled these storage boxes.  You can find many other examples of stenciling throughout my blog.

 I used Rustoleum Chalked in Charcoal for the pattern.

This was probably the hardest stenciling project I've had because of all the partial tiles I had to do.

It was so hard to bend the stencil into some of these small spaces.

So I had to make my own mini stencils to finish the project.

After touching it up it all turned out pretty nice.  The last step was just to apply two coats of Minwax Polycrylic over the tile and the top of the mantel.  I put the polycrylic on top of the mantel because I knew it would get the most abuse with changing out the decor frequently with the seasons.

Then of I put the door piece back in.  Here's a reminder of what I started with again:

It is such a drastic difference!

Then I just pulled out some random decor and styled the mantel.

This is the view I now have from the dining room table!  Note the cute baby on the playmat in this shot.  Also that door looks like it is painted the same color as the walls but it is really just a very dingy white because I haven't painted it yet.  Here is the whole side of that room now:

 That skyline painting is on the floor because I don't know where I want it yet.  Eventually I want to get two accent chairs to put in front of the fireplace.

I am so glad that I got this project done before the Christmas season because I can just imagine the stockings hanging from the mantel!  

I'm not sure what will be next up on the blog but there will be two more big changes in this room in the near future and I have a big list of sewing projects that I want to finish.  I hope you like my new fireplace as much as I do!

Atlas Roses

 Awhile back I made some poppy type paper flowers out of the pages of an old book for our porch.

It is one of my favorite projects that I have ever created.  Since the nursery has a vintage travel theme,  I decided to duplicate this project using an old atlas instead of just a regular book.  I once again used my Silhouette to cut out the flower parts.  The shape I used was 3D Catalina Tea Rose from the Silhouette Design Store.  It took lots of playing around with the settings on the Silhouette to get it to cut right and your settings will depend on the thickness of the page that you are using.

My mat was not very sticky at all so I used some painters tape just to make sure the pages would stay in place while cutting.

Once the pieces were cut I place them in order from biggest to smallest.

Then, starting with the biggest piece, I used a wooden skewer to curl the petals.

I used a glue gun to attach each piece starting from largest to smallest.

After gluing all of the pieces, I fluffed and adjusted the petals until I got the rose to look the way that I wanted it to.

I then took a piece of floral wire and wrapped a bit of floral tape around it making sure to leave a bit of wire exposed at the end.

I poked a hole through the rose and then put the exposed end of the wire through.  The floral tape will keep the rose from sliding down.  Sorry for the out of focus picture.  It was really hard to take a picture of this step!

I didn't use the center pieces that were part of the design from the Silhouette store because they were too delicate to be cut successfully.  Instead I cut a strip of the atlas page and cut it into little grass like pieces and then wound it around the wire and glued it in place with the glue gun.

I made three roses total for the tiny vase.  I found the antique silver "vase"at a local second hand store called Heirlooms.  I believe it is actually a candle stick holder but it was perfect for my three little roses.

I placed it on the little floating shelf in the nursery along with some frames that are now filled (more on that in another post), an antique perfume bottle and a Peter Rabbit music box that my Grandma Charlotte gave to me when I was a child.  I just love this project and I hope that you do too!