flower Archives | Crafted Niche - a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorialsCrafted Niche – a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorials

You are browsing the archive for flower Archives - Crafted Niche - a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorials.

Hat Trick – A Reader’s Solution!

December 5, 2011 in Gettin' Crafty

I swear… you guys are the best! Between the CraftedNiche.com and Facebook, I had lots of ideas sent my way for saving this project today. Isn’t it amazing how having a fresh set of ideas can get things going again?

I have to give a special shout out to DAWN for her comment on my hat fail:

Seriously…. why didn’t I think of that?! Duh Dana… just turn the pin! hahaha Her idea was SPOT ON. All I had to do was rotate the pin and “buckle” it around the strap rather than trying to pin it through the strap. Does that make sense?

I’ve since popped the hot glue off the numbered piece too and reglued it with the pin vertical. Woop! Who’s excited?! THIS girl. Who feels a little like a dummy? This girl. None-the-less…. THANK YOU DAWN!!! You get a gold star. If you lived close, I might even make you cookies!

….and here’s a look at the hat on my noggin -

For the record… I almost never do my hair. I’m a habitual-ponytailer… I think it drives my Mom crazy. So odds are, when I’m wearing the hat, my hair will be back. Today was one of those rare blow-dry and straighten days though… so I went with it! I think I might even wear it out to the barn tonight. Brrrrrr I’m dreading that already.

Thanks again everyone for all your awesome suggestions! I think I’ll have fun dressing this hat up with different outfits.

Hat FAIL – Any Suggestions??

December 5, 2011 in Gettin' Crafty, Uncategorized

While my Mom was here we started tackling my guest bathroom makeover. I’m super excited about it and I’ll show you more of that later this week. The tile isn’t quite finished (need to seal the grout and replace the trim), but it feels 100% better already!

In the meantime, I wanted to show you a quick “up do” I attempted… and FAILED. Looking for any help and suggestions!!! Okay… so here goes -

I bought this hat at Target (shocker) a couple weeks ago. I found it in the mens department, but I thought I could girl it up with some accessories. It’s super warm fit my head perfectly. (BTW, the hat comes in sizes S-M and M-L so if anyone has a smaller head, the smaller size just might work for you!)

I thought I could make (or buy) some cute pins that I could interchange on that band based on whatever I was wearing that day. Interchangeable cuteness – Yes please!

Mom and I were shopping away ~~one~~ two days at JoAnns while she was here and I found a couple things I thought might do the trick. I wanted to personalize it a touch and add just a touch of girly to the hat.

….and that’s what I came up with. In the jewelry section I found some leather(ette) flowers by Simplicity that are made to just be glued right to accessories like headbands and whatnot. In the scrapbooking section I found those awesome metal numbers. I swear I always look at that particular line of things (Tim Holtz) and LOVE everything. I’m not a scrapbooker, but I find all sorts of cool stuff in those aisles!!! Last, I grabbed some flat back pins to attach things to the hat.

My thought was… just hot glue the things to the pins and voila! DONE! Welllllll not quite.

First I cut the backs off the brads and hot glued them in the holes of the metal tag. Thought this would look better than just leaving the holes and hot gluing the tag without them. Sidenote – I picked the 25 because I was born on the 25th!

Yup… I’m a messy gluer.

Rinse and repeat for the flowers:

Next step? Well… pin one on! Only… this is where my enthusiasm came to a crashing halt. It wasn’t quite what I had envisioned. I wanted the flower or number to lay flat and close to the hat. These pins… did the exact opposite!

It looks pretty good in the pic above…. but from all of the other angles I’m just not feeling it. What’s a girl to do?! The numbered pin was equally depressing.

HELP – does anyone know of a different type of pin or attachment that might work for me? I’d REALLY like to be able to swap things on and off so I’d rather than sew or glue them to the hat. Hoping you’ll have some ideas!

UPDATE – Thanks to Dawn’s suggestion below, I have a solution. Click here for the update!

Christy’s House – Exterior Before and After

November 5, 2011 in Crashing at Christy's, Outside

Great news guys! Seems my sister is catching the Blogger bug! That’s GREAT news for the rest of us because her house is UH-dorable! Tons of great ideas and that girl is NOT afraid to try a new technique or go out on a limb. She’s agreed to give us a tour of her house over the next few months and walk us through some of her favorite projects. What better way to start than a look at her house before and after from curb-side! Take it away Christy….

Hi, Crafted Niche followers!!! Thanks for letting me post again. I recently was looking back through some pictures of my house from my first walk-through before I purchased it. WOW. To say that this house needed a makeover was an understatement. I can’t believe I was able to see the potential now that I’m looking back! But, knowing your budget and what it can buy was probably a HUGE motivator in buying something that needed a little rouge and cover-up.

Welcome to my house!!! It’s my first home and I am so proud of it. The house was owned by the first owner and then ME. I think she did some updates in the house while she lived there and raised her family. She put a Tuscan mural in the dining room, carpeted over the linoleum in the bathroom, and added ceiling fans in the bedrooms beside the ceiling light that was already there. Yes, I said “beside” the lights. She didn’t combine them. But, the good part about me being the 2^nd owner of this house is that I didn’t have to deal with other previous owner’s cover-ups. I got to create the first ones!

This is how the exterior of the house looked in the listing before I bought it.

So charming. Actually, I probably could have left the house just like it was on the outside and it would have been sufficient. But, A. LOT. OF. WORK. Look at all those bushes that would need to be trimmed! No thanks. Plus, I felt like the house was hiding behind all that shrubbery. And, the holly bushes would attack you as you were stepping onto the front porch. Bye bye, holly bushes!!!

Well, this picture is a teensy bit unfair since the grass and tree are green. But, it’s my guest post so I get to make the rules. So there! My parents, my neighbor, and I tore out most of the original bushes. I then went in and tried to make the right side look more like the left and added some boxwoods. A friend installed the mailbox under the light, I painted the front door navy blue and my dad built the window boxes!!!

My dad is so incredibly handy. I had a crazy idea that I wanted to hang a 6’ window box under each of my downstairs windows and then 3’ boxes under the upstairs windows. Well, my dad got some cedar and made it happen. We hung them from the house using homemade “cleats” that my dad made by cutting a 1×2 in half at an angle. During the winter, I bring the upstairs window boxes into my garage so they don’t get as much wear and tear.

If the flowers had to rely on me to keep them alive during the Summer, they wouldn’t stand a chance. So, I installed a drip irrigation system on a timer that waters them each day for me. Yep, that’s the engineer in me coming out. So, all my flowers and bushes take care of themselves, thank you very much. If you look closely at the pic below, you can see the tube that leads up to one of the flower boxes. Another lovely friend of mine ran that tubing just under the edge of my shingles so I wouldn’t have to climb the ladder on a 100+ degree day.

I also tore out what I’m sure was a gorgeous Wisteria bush that was at the front of my driveway. It didn’t bloom for the first two years I was there and was constantly sprouting up all over the yard. So, it was history. I know some of you are cringing, but I have since become a fan of posting on Craigslist and offering “free bushes” to anyone who will come dig them up. At least they’re not going to waste now.

Thanks for taking a look at the exterior of my house. I’m really looking forward to showing you some of the inside next time!!! After looking at these pictures, I’m so ready for SPRING!

-Christy