DIY Wood Frame on a Canvas for $2

I’m always on the look out for wall art to decorate and freshen up my home. When Photowall contacted me about another opportunity to beautify my home with high quality wallpaper, canvas, wall murals or posters I jumped at the chance. Last year when they contacted me I chose to wallpaper my office (see post here). We love how it turned out and are very excited to work with Photowall again!

How to Easily Up Cycle Nursery Wall Decor Using Paint

In this second installment to my daughters nursery I'm going to show you how to easily up cycle wall decor using paint, to bring the entire room together. Nursery wall decor is usually not cheap, especially if you have a theme and you want it all to match. The theme for my daughters nursery includes pinks, light blue and light green, butterflies and birdcages. I didn't stick to just one thing because I didn't want to be limited. I visualized my theme with a design palette in my baby girl announcement/chandelier post:

How to Make an Easy DIY Crib Canopy

The next couple of posts I'm sharing are all about DIY nursery decor. My daughters nursery has been done for quite some time (my daughter is 4 now haha) so I figured it was finally time to write the blog posts and show the world. I especially wanted to get them written before I start changing her nursery/toddler room into a big girl room. 

DIY Faux Enamelware Tiered Tray Stands for less than $6 each

Who doesn't love a beautiful tiered tray mixed in with their decor? I know I love them! They add a great aesthetic to any room in your house and you can change them with the seasons and holidays or simply just to suit your decor.

How to get the Chippy Paint Look

I just love wood decor that has chippy paint. I have plenty of pieces throughout my house that I bought or made myself. Here's a few chippy pieces I have in my home that I love!

5 minute DIY Magnolia Wreath for less than $25

I'm kind of obsessed with magnolia wreaths. They blend beautifully with pretty much any decor from farmhouse to cottage to rustic and so many others. My style in my home is a little bit farmhouse, a little bit french country so it was inevitable that I would want a magnolia wreath (or 2 or 3) mixed in with my decor.  I swooned over them for years but never purchased one because I wasn't willing to spend $50-$100 for a large magnolia wreath.

DIY Moss Balls for Less than $1

Happy Spring! Today I'm sharing an easy craft to freshen up your decor and bring some green into your house. It's been a long winter, and it's looking to be a long spring due to the Corona Virus so I definitely need some new decor to brighten up my house.

Easy DIY Button and Bead Elephant Nursery Wall Art

I hope you all are having memorable, happy holidays with family and friends! With that said, obviously I was just a little too busy this holiday season to get any blogging done. With work, festivities and the hustle and bustle this time of year brings I'm lucky if I even get to sit and let it soak in for five minutes. 

Don't worry though I was doing plenty of crafting, creating and renovating in between the ol' job, festivities and sleeping. Today I'm going to show you one of the projects I managed to slip in between the chaos.

Oh Christmas Tree: DIY Potted Topiary Skinny Christmas Trees in Urns

It's that time of year again folks. The time of year you either love or hate... Christmastime! I for one love this time of year. From the decorations, the music, the food, the fun, the traditions with family and friends...I could go on and on ;). I just wish it all lasted a little bit longer and didn't seem so rushed!!

Don't Fence Me In: Rustic Reclaimed Wood Trough Tabletop Centerpiece

Today I'm going to show you all a fifth grade woodworking project. Ha! Not really. But as I was working on this particular project that is totally how I felt. But hey, regardless of whether or not this is a school project a ten year old would do, I never got to do any cool woodworking stuff when I was a kid (so unfair, right?). When I was younger I was a girly girl, for sure, glittery pink unicorns oh my (some things never change ;). I was also in Girl Scouts for years but I don't remember us dabbling with wood and tools. I just remember doing tons of crafty projects, oh, and cookies, lots and lots of cookies...

How to Easily Preserve Fall Leaves with Wax Paper

I know I promised a Halloween post next, but I just had to get this super easy tutorial out there before all the beautiful fall leaves have fallen and dried up! Also the boys are taking a nap so it's the perfect opportunity to throw together a quick post. Then it's back to the owl bathroom for some thrifty renovations I can't wait to show you all!

DIY Gold Glitter Mercury Glass Pumpkin

This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for more info.

I'm sure you've all seen at least one of the numerous do it yourself Mercury glass tutorials. This isn't just another one to add to that silvery mercury glass list. Well, not exactly. I decided to do some experimenting because I wanted to make a gold (not silver) glass pumpkin to put out with my primarily gold toned autumn decorations.

Easy DIY Fall Leaves Potted Topiary Tree from a Tomato Cage

This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for more info.

Now that it's September, fall decorating is in full swing at my house. While I'm not happy about the cooler temperatures I do love decorating for the fall season. I'm sure I have enough decorations to keep any decor enthusiast happy but I just couldn't help myself when I saw a picture of a tomato cage fall tree on Judy's wonderful crafty Facebook page, My Heart Beats.

DIY Simply Sweet Hanging Birdcage Planter

Before I begin I must confess to some extreme summer blog slacking on my part these past few weeks. But in my defense we finally had a heat wave here in Illinois along with a couple sunshine filled weeks during this oh so rainy summer. So what's a girl/mom to do on her days off but go to the zoo, swim, boat, fish, you get the picture. Pretty much as many outdoor fun-filled summer adventures we can cram into this nice weather while it lasts.

That doesn't leave me much spare time to work on projects, much less blog about them. Although my numerous, half finished projects (that are patiently waiting for me to finish, and blog about) are always on the back of my mind ;). With that being said, on to my post:

Are you guys tired of my birdcage obsession yet? I hope not because here's another DIY up-cycled birdcage project :)!

Whimsically Ambient Birdcage with Ivy and Lights

For my next few posts I'll be highlighting homemade chalk paint. It's my new obsession. That along with birdcages.

This particular post is on a birdcage that I spruced up to decorate a piece of chalk painted furniture that I'll be revealing on my next post.  

Ideas with birdcages started brewing when my neighbor brought me into her house the other week to show me her beautiful succulent birdcage that she made after seeing my succulent birdcage post (here). It really made me feel great to have inspired someone (especially so close to home!) since that's one of the reasons why I started blogging! 

She also showed me her other awesome birdcages decorating her house and she filled me in on where I could get some cheap birdcages, since we share the same, some would say addiction, to birdcages. She purchased her birdcage that she used for succulents at Michael's for 40% off or so and she was able to use a coupon to get a sweet deal. This was news to me. I didn't know Michael's had coupons! She said you can also just pull up the coupon ad on your phone in store and use it! Even easier!

So a few days later I made my way to Michael's to scope out their birdcage collection. I found a shelf full of white birdcages with clear birds perched on the top for 50% off (apparently it was a get the Spring decor outta here sale) The bird had been broken off one of the larger birdcages, which was fine by me since that wasn't the look I was going for anyway. I put that birdcage along with a smaller one in my cart and strolled around the store for a minute before making my way to checkout.

I'll share with you all a trick/tip I ALWAYS use on damaged goods: I ask at the counter if I can get a discount for damaged products. They more than likely will say yes and it just depends on the store and employee how deep of a percentage off they will give you. It never hurts to ask! I've left stores saving tons of money, feeling great because I'm a bargain shopper by heart!

I scored the two birdcages for $17 altogether getting an additional 20% off the missing bird-cage. Not too shabby. I think I'll be checking out Michael's more often since in the past I found them to be a bit on the pricey side.

I got home and started almost immediately with my birdcage project. I knew I wanted to put the birdcage on top of my "new" piece of furniture and that I wanted to put a plant inside of it. I just happened to have some leftover ivy from planting all my planters outside. I love everything about ivy. It is one hardy plant (it's hard for even me to kill with my black thumb and all) and I am in love with trailing plants that you can train. We happen to have an old ivy plant that is pushing 16 years old on top of our fridge.

I pulled out a pot that was sitting in our garage and planted the ivy in it and then set the pot in the birdcage to admire. Eh. It needed something. The terra cotta color wasn't doing it for me. It just didn't flow. So I decided to paint the pot with the same color chalk paint I had just used on my piece of furniture.

The recipe I used for my homemade chalk paint was super easy. I found it on Salvaged Inspirations along with 3 other great recipes for chalk paint. They are all tried and true recipes that have been passed along so much that the original creators are impossible to find.

I'll share with you all my first second experience making chalk paint:

Ingredients

• paint (any color you like in a satin, eggshell or flat finish)
• plaster of paris
• water

I mixed plaster of paris and water in my handy dandy paint container until it was the consistency of a smooth paste. 

Then I poured 3 times the amount of paint to the amount of plaster of paris mixture into the container and mixed that all up. 

To reiterate the ratio is 3 parts paint to 1 part plaster of paris mixture. If you don't mix the paint and plaster of paris mixture well enough there will be hardened pieces of plaster of paris on the bottom of the mixture (speaking from experience here folks), so be sure to mix very thoroughly.

The chalk paint is super smooth and, well, chalky. I really like the ease and smoothness of painting with this paint. I only had to paint one coat on the terra cotta pot. I'm not really sure if this is exactly how thin chalk paint should be but it worked out great for me and I'm very happy with the outcome.

While I don't recommend painting a pot when there's a plant and dirt already in it. the whole process really did work out just fine for me. No dirt spillage or dirty paintbrush. I could have just been lucky though, and you can still see a tiny bit of the terra cotta color peeking through on the inner edge but I don't think anyone will be looking that closely to notice since it's inside a birdcage.

I set the finished pot in the birdcage and then stood back to admire my new ivy decoration. I thought it looked pretty good and once the ivy starts to grow it would look even better. As I scrutinized the birdcage I thought to myself it could still use a little something...maybe some lights to give the room some of the cozy, warm feelings I get during Christmastime from the Christmas tree.

Yes, I'll admit I am in love with Christmas lights. It's such a sad day at my house when I take down the Christmas decorations, especially the lights. Not just because it's so much work taking all those decorations down (ugh I absolutely dread it) but because I immediately miss the beautiful ambiance Christmas lights create.

I went on down to the basement storage area and pulled out my heavy tote of Christmas lights and brought out a string of battery powered led lights (with a timer even!) that I had previously used on a wreath. These lights would work out perfect!

I strategically placed the lights inside the birdcage and tada! Instant mood change to the room. Here's the finished birdcage. It creates the perfect amount of whimsical ambiance to the living room.

Now I can get that warm and cozy Christmas lights feeling all year round!

-Sherri

How to Make a Succulent Birdcage Wreath

Since Easter was so early (too early) this year and since rabbits and eggs are a sign of Spring I left my bunny wreath up on my front door for a while. Now that April is coming to a close I figured I really should take it down since I don't want to be "that house". You know the one. They leave their Christmas lights and decorations up (and on) until March.

I will admit I am a little guilty of this. I took all our Christmas décor down shortly after Christmas except the faux pine wreaths on the garage lights. They were just too high up for my lazy self to get down without a stepstool.

When I finally went to take them down I accidentally broke one of the light fixtures (I still can't believe I did that!). I was so bummed that I had broke a (possibly) unfixable, and (possibly) irreplaceable fixture that I just wanted to go into the house and forget all about it. Yet I begrudgingly continued on with taking the rest of the wreaths down. I tromped on up the stepstool to the next wreath and was pleasantly surprised to see a hidden robin's nest with a bunch of light blue eggs nestled in it. I guess it's ironic that my house will continue to have Christmas décor on it until after May. That's what I get for being lazy. I captured pictures of this range of "wreath taking down" emotions on my Instagram if you would like to laugh and feel all warm inside at the vision of my ordeal.

Since I now (continue to) have a Christmas wreath and an Easter wreath on the outside of my house and it's almost May, I guess that's my cue to put up a Spring wreath. Since I don't have any Spring or Summer wreaths and we all know I'm not going to buy one, I decided to make my own.

I was of course on Pinterest when inspiration struck. Everyone's been pinning outdoor/garden ideas since it's getting to that time of year when everyone wants to be outside in their yards that they've worked so hard on making perfect. My yard is far from perfect. It's the complete opposite of perfect. But I digress, I'm sure I'll divulge the dirty details on our yard in some other post coming up.

This post is about making a wreath. A succulent wreath. I saw an adorable pin of a succulent birdcage from Craftberry Bush. I loved it so much that I immediately wanted to make one! I've been a little obsessed with succulents lately since Mel and I went to Home Depot and they have the mother load of succulents right now. Seriously, if you can't find a succulent you like there right now, then it doesn't exist. I wanted to buy them all but I settled for a pot with 3 in it and tore out our dead (not so) lucky bamboo that I had by our kitchen window and put my new cute succulents there to gaze at while doing dishes.

Thankfully they still had a huge assortment of succulents when I decided to make my birdcage wreath. I went and picked up 6 succulents and some sphagnum moss to line my birdcage with for a hefty $15. I already had the perfect half birdcage with a flat back that I had picked up at Kohls after Christmas for 50% off for about $13.

 I love birdcages but they are expensive. When I saw this one I almost didn't buy it since it was still kinda pricey and I had no idea where I was going to put it. I placed it on my dresser where it just hung out, empty, collecting dust until now.

When I got home from buying the succulents I went straight to work. Here are the supplies I used:

• several different succulent plants (I used 6)
• a birdcage (I used a flat back one so it could hang on my door)
• sphagnum moss
• potting soil
• small pebbles (I used some that I sifted out of Jackson's sandbox)
• a kabob stick (you can use any kind of stick, I just already had kabob sticks)

 I started by lining my birdcage with sphagnum moss. This moss is used to make those hanging pots that look like moss sitting on wires. It holds a lot of water so it's perfect for watering and for keeping dirt inside the wire birdhouse. I put the moss in a bowl filled with water and then squeezed out as much water as I could and lined the entire birdcage.

 Here's a pic of the birdcage lined with moss.

 After that I put some pebbles on the bottom for drainage and covered that with dirt. I wasn't too worried about drainage since succulents don't require too much water so I will be watering sparingly. Which is perfect for me since I often forget to water the plants (I'm such a bad plant mom).

 I filled the dirt all the way up to the top of the moss.

 Now I started arranging my succulents in the birdcage. I bought some succulents that would look good hanging as well as some that would not be hanging to give it a nice varied look. I took the hanging succulents out of their pots first since I was going to have them on the outside of the birdcage. I knocked off as much dirt as I could get off of the roots since it would be easier to insert the plants without extra baggage. I used the kabob stick to poke a hole in the moss to insert the succulent roots.

 On some of the plants with longer roots I gently pushed them into the hole with the kabob stick.

 I continued knocking off dirt from the roots and using the kabob stick to plant the succulents all along the outside. I planted the non hanging succulents inside of the birdcage. I also knocked as much dirt off of those plants since I already had enough dirt inside the cage. I watered very sparingly when I was finished. Here is a picture of the inside of the birdcage. I was able to poke some of the smaller offshoots from the inner plants through the bars so they can be seen from the outside.

 Here is a pic of the finished birdcage. As the succulents continue to grow I can poke more out and they may even fill in the top area more.

 While I was planting the succulents, leaves naturally fell off of many of the plants. While I was at Home Depot a very nice man who helped me find the sphagnum moss filled me in on how to "propagate" or breed succulents from a cutting. Succulents are apparently super easy to grow!! You simply take the leaves and lay them in a dry area with indirect sunlight for a few days so they can callous over. Then you lay them on some dirt and they will grow roots and eventually a whole new succulent. I'm so psyched to try this! I may never have to buy succulents again and that would be awesome since they can be very expensive.

Here's some pictures of the finished birdcage hanging on my front door. I am in love with this birdcage! I did spend more than I normally would on a project like this but I can keep the birdcage displayed somewhere outside and inside for the entire year. Also if I can regrow succulents from the leaves then it was totally worth the price I paid for them.

I don't know about you but I want to make another one of these succulent birdcages!! I will for sure be on the look out for an ornate cheap birdcage that I can put in the corner of my backyard (filled with succulents that I propagated of course) and bring in to decorate my house in the winter.

-Sherri

Hop to it: How to make a Spring Easter Bunny Wreath

Last Spring when I was off work for shoulder surgery I got tons and tons of crafty projects done (and some, of course, only half done). I told my friend Mel about some adorable bunny wreaths that I had seen on Pinterest that I wanted to make. As soon as she saw all of them, she wanted to make one too. Here's one of the cute wreaths I showed her at Bubbly Nature Creations.

So we went out to Walmart to buy all the supplies we needed. Walmart actually has a pretty nice craft section and I managed to find everything I needed to make this wreath there. Here's the supplies we used:

• 2 wreaths (1 small for the head and 1 larger for the body)
• floral wire
• glue gun
• plastic eggs
• ribbon (I used a few different kinds)
• Spanish moss
• flower clip for the side of the bunny's ear

I made a wreath for my front door and as soon as my Mother in law saw it she oohed and aahed her love over it so much that I made her one of her own. Since I made these wreaths before I started this blog I decided to make another one so I could give everyone a tutorial on how I made these adorable bunny wreaths.

Here's a pic of my wreath:



And here's a picture of my Mother in law's:

Both wreaths have weathered out last spring and this spring very well. They are both on covered porches but it's very windy and rainy and the weather can change from 30's and snow to 70's and sunny during the course of a couple days during spring in the Midwest, so I'm pretty impressed by my homemade wreaths.

My tutorial is on a mini version of the two I made last year. A baby bunny wreath to hang in my house for a cute Easter decoration inside my display frame.

I gathered up two small wreaths. I had one in my stash and purchased the smaller wreath for $2 at Walmart along with some sparkley eggs for $1.49. I went ahead and brought out all my supplies so they'd be right in front of me. I already had all the ribbon, Spanish moss and floral wire leftover from last years bunny wreaths.

First I wound the two wreaths (head and body) together with floral wire.

You just loop the wire through parts of the grapevine on each wreath and twist to make a knot when done. Use as much as you want to make sure the two wreaths are secure. I used three strands on this wreath. It doesn't have to look pretty since no one will see it.

Next, flip the wreath so it is facing up and hot glue your eggs on.

I tried to lay the eggs out in a pattern that I liked and then proceeded with gluing them on. They don't always stay in place(they like to roll right off) but just to get a general idea I like to lay them out. If you don't like how one looks, it easily pulls off and can be re-glued and repositioned.

After the eggs were all glued on I put the ears on. I used floral wire bent in half. Since I was making a baby bunny I cut the ears a little shorter with wire cutters.

To put the ears on I simply shoved the wires into the grapevine wreath where they looked good and squeezed a generous amount of hot glue onto the wire and wreath to hold them in place. Since I used wire I can reposition and bend the ears as much as I want to get the desired ear look I want.

Here's a view of how the hot glue holds the ears in place. At this point I hung the wreath up on a doorknob to make it easier to do the final steps and to see exactly how everything will look upon completion.

After the ears are on I clipped the flower clip onto the wreath right next to one of the ears and started hot gluing Spanish moss all over the wreath. I find this helps to soften the wreath and make it look more like a furry rabbit. It also helps to blend the wreath with the ears since I cover the wire ears with hot glued Spanish moss and leaves and twigs that have fallen off the wreath during the whole process (lots and lots of "stuff" falls off the wreath while you make it, so have your broom handy!).

To do the ears I simply wrapped them with Spanish moss and hot glued it to the wire. I also glued sticks and leaves from the actual wreath (if you don't have enough you can break some twigs off the wreath in an inconspicuous area) to make the ears look like they belonged on the wreath.

 After all the Spanish moss gluing I tied a pretty ribbon around the rabbit's neck. I used three different sparkly ribbons (oh, how I love sparkles). I also found some tiny sparkly eggs at Salvo so I glued one of those in the middle of the flower clip to make it pop.

Here's the huge mess I had to clean up after making this wreath. Jackson somehow inherited all the leftover eggs (he brought them all to me to "help"). This is definitely one of the messiest wreaths I've made, but it's still not even half as messy as the first one I made. Mel and I decided we would make our own sparkly eggs so we hand painted all our eggs and then sprinkled glitter on them...Not one of our best ideas and needless to say I was finding and cleaning up glitter for weeks after that.

This bunny wreath is however very cheap to make. Each one cost me less than $10. The last one being the cheapest since I already had most of the supplies. The bag of Spanish moss lasted through all three wreaths as did my roll of polka dot green ribbon.

Here's another pic of the finished baby bunny wreath:

You all better hop to it and make this easy, adorable Easter Bunny wreath since Easter is only a week away!! Wow, where did the time go?



-Sherri