End of the Year Project Wrap Up

End of the Year Project Wrap Up

I have been a very busy lady, but you wouldn’t know it from how silent I’ve been. I’d thought about doing an end of the year wrap up to recap all the projects I’ve done throughout the year. However, you can just click over to my Projects Page to see all my projects.

Instead, I thought I’d show you all of the projects I’ve been working on that I haven’t done a post for. Are you ready? In no particular order.

A few months ago, I got a catalogue from West Elm and found this Lourdes Sanchez Bull’s Eye runner and fell in love.

Not so lovable was the $129 price tag. I bought a $7.99 rug and made my own version. I just taped off some lines in varying widths and sizes and then painted away.

West Elm Knock Off Lourdes Sanchez Runner

For some weird reason, the blue turned out much brighter than I wanted. It didn’t seem like the paint was that bright, but it dried that way. I watered down the paint, hoping I wouldn’t get that crusty paint feel, but it didn’t really help. It feels pretty crusty.

I want to do this again, but with a different type of rug. The pile on this rug was too thick. I love how it looks in my kitchen, though. The bright rays of color are a fun touch. The blue below looks much brighter than it really is. This picture is three months after I made the rug and it looks like I need to throw this in the wash.

One of my other projects was for my niece, Miss Cute, who celebrated her eighth birthday. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) this is a special birthday because it’s the year you can be baptized a member of our church.

Miss Cute chose to get baptized and I made her a head band and a scripture case to celebrate the event.

The headband she’s wearing in the picture is not the one I made. I made a no-slip headband. It has lace and pearls on one side and velvet on the other. The velvet side goes against the hair which keeps the headband in place. It really works, too. Babies have thicker hair than I do and it works in my hair and I can NEVER wear headbands. They all fall out.

No Slip Velvet Headband

For her scripture bag, I made a plain bag out of a quilted fabric. I embroidered her name on the top binding, along with some flowers.

Quilted Scripture Bag Outside

Then, I froufed it up a bit. Shazam! I love the ruffles.

Quilted, Ruffled Scripture Bag

Speaking of scripture bags, I also made one for the Daja for Christmas since she asked for new scriptures this year. Apparently, the ones she got when she was 6 years old and highlighted with a pink glitter crayon were no longer working for her. Weird.

I bought a 1/3 of a yard of fabric and was actually able to make two bags. I needed a new bag as well, since my last one had gotten splattered with red paint during a freak ornament-making accident last Christmas.

Quilted Scripture Bag Outside

The Daja chose the white handled set. The bag is big enough to hold a journal I made for her as well as her scriptures. I sewed a pencil/pen holder into the side of the bag. If anyone wants a tutorial for either bag, let me know and I’ll work one up.

Quilted Scripture Bag Inside

I picked this fabric up from an Amish & Mennonite fabric store out in the country when Hubs and I took a drive one day.

We also stopped at the Planktown Country Market and got Amish butter, jam and bacon. I fell in love with a hand woven rug at the store and  tried to convince Hubs how perfect it was for our house. Santa Hubs and the Daja took a drive up there to get me the rug for Christmas. Isn’t it gorgeous?

It’s nearly 6’ long and I love having something warm and soft underfoot in this area.

Another project I’ve been squeezing in during the evenings when I watch t.v. is to crochet some dishcloths. I gave some of these to friends for Christmas presents this year and I’m now making a couple for me.

Excuse the upside down picture. Apparently, I didn’t realize I took an upside down picture until just now. The pattern is the Waffle Dish Cloth from the label of the cotton yarn. You can find the pattern at Sugar’nCream.com. You need to be a registered user to get the pattern, but it’s a free registration.

What else have I been doing? Oh yeah, I built a trundle bed. With the older kids coming home for Christmas, I knew I needed an extra bed around.

Kiddo has a custom built bed. It’s an old bunk bed turned upside down and extended to hold a long mattress. We got the mattress from a friend. As best I can figure, it’s a California Queen, which is a foot longer than a regular queen mattress.

With a few modifications to the bed frame, his bed was long enough that we could build a frame for a regular twin mattress to fit under his bed. It’s not pretty, and he needs new bedding, but it gets the job done and it works really well. Since Kiddo is 6’2” tall and still 13 years old. He is not done growing!

 The trundle bed is a piece of plywood cut down to the size of the mattress, some 2 x 4’s cut the width of the plywood support the ends and middle and hold 6 casters (2 of them are locking ones). I used some 1” x 3” boards to trim out the sides. I made some rope pulls to help maneuver the bed. Ba-da-bing. We have a trundle bed.

If you missed my post about the Christmas ornament I made this year, you can click on over to read about the Christmas Bulbs I made from some ornaments I picked up at Goodwill.

On that same trip, I came across this $5 mirror. I’ve been wanting a mirror for over our mantel and this one was just the right size.

I’ve touched up the gold to make it less orangey, but I used the Antique Gold Rub ‘n Buff, which looks too close to the original finish. I want to pick up some Gold Leaf Rub ‘n Buff and see if that tones it down a bit. If not, I may just spray paint this a white and call it good.

You can see it’s not so orange on the mantel with the new Christmas stocking I made this year (6th stocking). I would like the record to reflect that I made this stocking under duress. See, way, WAY back in the day (cough1989coughcough) I made stockings for our first Christmas with Man Child. Country décor, teddy bear motifs and ugly Christmas fabric were in fashion (2nd, 4th & 5th stockings below).

Then we had Baby Girl. There were no girl Christmas teddy bear stencils to be found so I finagled the old stencil and created the angel bear for her stocking(3rd stocking). Cuter fabrics were available, so I used those instead of the old fabric. Years later, we had Buddy and Kiddo. Naturally, I needed to make two more stockings. Oh, how I wish I had junked them all then and started with all new ones!

I made the snowflake stockings (1st and 7th stocking) using all the fabrics from the previous ones (hoarding does have it’s advantages) plus some fabric from Hubs’ grandmother that she used to make her husband’s underwear. I kid you not.

Since Katie has joined our family this year and will most likely spend every Christmas with us, she needed a stocking. By the way, I have a second blog in which I talk about the challenges of caring for a disabled family member. The link is on my side bar if you are interested or know someone who faces similar challenges and think they may be interested. It’s called My Sister’s Keeper.

Anyhoo, I lobbied to make all new stockings for everyone, however, my people are ridiculously attached to these stockings. I hate them. My design was bad from the start and the execution stinks. Badly.

From a distance, they aren’t so bad. If you squint. And wave your hand in front of your face back and forth really fast. And the lights are low. They are big enough to hold all the stuff we normally put in stockings, so that’s their redeeming grace.

I refused to add another teddy bear to the mix, so we came up with a tree design for Katie’s stocking. Katie helped me paint the stocking by putting the dots on the tree for ornaments.

I did the rest. While it doesn’t show in the pictures, these stocking are quilted.

While Katie’s is the best of the lost, it still isn’t saying much and I’d love nothing better than to start anew. I fear I am stuck with these for the rest of my life, though.

Finally, I salvaged last year’s Christmas Tree Fail. I ran out of beads mid-way up the Styrofoam tree. I tried to fill the space with some netting. I hated it but kept plugging along thinking it would not look so bad once I filled in the whole area. *FacePalm* It was bad. See?

This thing sat in my craft room for a year. Kiddo was oddly attracted to it’s weirdness and would frequently comment on it. While we were decorating the tree this year, I decided to forego the pearl garland in favor of my new faux capiz shell garland.

With plenty of pearl strands at my disposal, I dismembered the tree tutu and glued the pearls on. I figured I could just spray paint the whole thing and maybe sprinkle some German glass glitter on for some bling and call it good.

Beaded Christmas Tree - Pass

However, I liked the pearls with the bead strand enough for this year. We’ll see how I feel about it next year.

Finally, Hubs got me a new camera this year for Christmas. I cried. A lot. Man child said, “Well, it’s not really Christmas morning unless Mom cries.” That isn’t really true. I rarely cry at Christmas. I was just so happy to have such an amazing gift from the person who loves and knows me best. In fact, I was really spoiled this year and it touches my heart to recognize all the blessings I have.

Canon T2i

It’s a Canon T2i and I’ve been trying to learn all it’s features. I have a lot to learn. I will leave you with a photo from our Ugly Sweater Family Photo shoot.

Ugly Sweater Family Photo

Wishing you the warmest thoughts of blessings, love and many completed projects in the new year.

Suesan

ps. Let me know if you’d like a tutorial on any of these projects and I post one just for you!

Thank you for reading Frou-FruGal. For more projects, please click to my site, http://froufrugal.blogspot.com