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Decoupaged Wooden Crate

I picked up this little 3 drawer wooden crate from Joann Fabrics months ago and finally got around to playing with it. I don’t remember how much I paid for it but I got it during a half off unfinished wood sale and used a 20% off coupon, so it was under $20. You can’t beat that for personalized storage!

I’ve laid my ruler on it so that you can see it is a small crate. It’s only about 18 inches high but perfect for what I wanted to use it for…lace storage.

A couple years ago, I created this box (also an unfinished wood item from Joann Fabrics) and I knew that I wanted this storage crate to match.

The top is decoupaged with MacKenzie-Childs Floral Market napkins and the bottom is stained with DecoArt Color Stain in Turquoise.

I started by taking out the drawers and sanding down the whole crate. I did not sand the inside of the crate because I did not plan on staining it. However, if this was going to be a gift for someone else, than I would’ve taken the time to do that. Since it was for me, I wasn’t worried about it. In the final pictures you can see some unfinished wood peeking through. If you don’t want that, make sure to stain the entire piece.

I used 3 coats of the stain to get the depth of color I wanted. On the drawers, I only put one coat of stain. I wanted them to have color but since they won’t really be seen, they didn’t need to match perfectly. Here you can see the difference.

Try your best not to get any stain on the front of the drawers. The little bit that I did get on there was difficult to cover. Now it’s time to decoupage!

I started by painting the front of the drawers with white acrylic paint. It took 3-4 coats for me to get a nice even finish and cover the little bit of stain I got on them. After they’re dry, give them a light sanding. You don’t want to sand off the paint, you just want to sand it to be smooth and get rid of any brush marks. We’re going to be using the iron decoupage method for this project. Put on two coats of a decoupage or PVA glue. I used Mod Podge. Once they’re dry, get your napkin, tissue paper, or whatever you want to use and put over top. If you are using a napkin, make sure to separate the plys. The napkin I used was a 3 ply napkin so I gently lifted the top ply away from the other two. You only want to use the pretty ply.

Next you will need an iron and parchment paper. It must be parchment paper! If you use wax paper, it will leave a waxy film on your iron which will turn brown and gross. (Don’t ask me how I know that😜)

Once you’ve got your napkin in place, put the parchment paper over top and press the iron down onto the parchment paper. Make sure to use a hot iron with NO steam. I like to start in the middle and work out towards the edges. The edges are very important. You want to make sure you have a good seal. After a few moments, lift up the parchment paper and make sure everything is sealed down nicely. Remember to double check those edges. If they’re loose, hit them with iron again.

I used a razor blade and sandpaper to carefully remove the excess napkin around the edges. I also added another layer of Mod Podge on top of the napkin to seal it in really well.

I had some drawer knobs from Hobby Lobby that I wanted to use but I needed them to be gold to match the feet (more on that later), so I just used some gold paint to cover the metal.

Before adding the drawer knobs, I needed to add glitter. I don’t think you can tell from the pictures, but on the original box I covered all the flowers in Stickles Glitter Glue, matching the colors as best as I could. I just love things that sparkle! I had to do the same to crate. Here you can see some of the sparkle. It’s so much prettier in real life. Very dramatic.

After all the glitter glue was dry, it was time to add the knobs. I decided to simply glue the knobs down using E6000 glue. Again, if this was a gift, I would drill the hole and properly insert the knobs. I wanted my knobs to be simply decorative. I had planned on using the little dip at the top of the drawer when opening and closing. But over the last few days of using this piece, I have noticed that I use the knobs without even realizing it. Right not, they’re holding up fine but if they fall off in the future, I will definitely drill the hole and secure them properly.

The piece is almost done. We just need to add the feet that I mentioned earlier. Since this crate is only 18 inches high, I wanted it to sit a little higher off the ground. I thought about going to Home Depot or Lowes to see what kind of furniture feet they had but decided to check Amazon first. Amazon really does have everything! They had all types of feet. Wooden, metal, acrylic and in all different heights, sizes, and designs. I decided on these 5 inch high gold metal feet. They even have the little rubber piece on the bottom so it doesn’t damage your floors. I’m already looking around the house asking myself “what else can I add beautiful feet to?” 😂

Using the screws that it came with, I secured the feet onto the bottom of the crate.

And it’s done!

I was able to organize all my laces and they fit perfectly in the three drawers.

Now my beautiful box doesn’t have to be hidden on a shelf anymore. It sits right on top of the crate in my craft room.

I love the way this turned out and I hope you found some inspiration along the way. Happy crafting!

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Black, White, Pink, and Gold

I’ve been wanting to make a black, white and pink card for some time and I have finally brought it to fruition.

I started by die cutting a piece of black cardstock and a piece of white cardstock with Papertry Ink Striped Diagonal Cover Die. I switched out the black and white stripes so the white cardstock has black stripes and the black cardstock has white stripes.

The flowers I chose are from Hero Arts My Monthly Hero Kit from January. This kit is sold out, but look through your stash, any flower image would do. Originally I envisioned a single large flower with a long stem. Unfortunately I didn’t have one like that so I chose this image instead. A large rose with a couple leaves coming out of the corner would also be really pretty.

I stamped the flower image with versamark ink and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder. I also watered down some gold paint and splattered it all over the diagonal backgrounds. The flowers are colored with Firefly Alcohol Markers. I found them at Tuesday Morning and they work wonderfully.

Digging through my sentiment dies, I found a miss you from My Favorite Things and a thanks from Papertry Ink and cut them both out of gold cardstock. I felt like the miss you got a little lost in the background so I added a strip of black cardstock across the card.

I trimmed the backgrounds slightly and put the black border on a white vertical card and the white border on a black horizontal card.

I finished off the cards by adding some white iridescent pearls and small gold strips along the black cardstock on the miss you card. These are 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 (A2) cards.

I am just crazy about these cards. I don’t know why it took me so long to create in black, white and pink but there might be more in this color combination coming soon.

I hope you found some inspiration. Happy crafting!

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Cathedral of Trees Card

When I first saw Hero Arts Cathedral of Trees stamp, I immediately saw this card in my mind.

Starting with white cardstock, I stamped the Cathedral of Trees with black ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

I love working with Distress Oxides. They blend beautifully! If you struggle with ink blending, like I do, try the Oxides. You will surprise yourself.

I knew that I wanted a moon in the center of the trees. So I needed it to be lighter in center and blend out to darkness. I started with chipped sapphire all along the border then moving into blueprint sketch and broken china in the center. I ended up adding black soot around the edges to darken it even more, although this ended up getting cut off in the end.

Let me stop and make a suggestion here. Since this stamped and embossed area is so large, it was really a struggle to wipe all the oxide ink off the trees. If I was to make this card again, I would first ink blend my paper then stamp and emboss on it. We could even start with a piece of blue paper making the blending even easier.

After wiping all the oxide ink of the trees, I gave the card a light mist of water and used a paper towel to dab up the water. Oxides are water reactive and this was the beginning of the stars.

At this point I realized the full moon that I wanted to use was too large. Digging through my stamps, I found this crescent moon on Hero Arts Sky’s the Limit Balloons set. I stamped it in the center with white pigment ink and heat embossed with white embossing powder.

Of course we know that a crescent moon is not nearly as bright as a full moon and I had inked the center brightness for a full moon. At this point I was frustrated and almost scrapped it. But, after taking a few deep breaths, I decided to press on. I added some chipped sapphire inside the crescent with my finger. There’s a moon there even though we can’t see it.

For the majority of the stars I used a white gel pen and a glitter gel pen. You can always splatter watered down paint for stars, which would be easier and much faster. However sometimes I am a bit of a perfectionist and at the time I wanted to place all the stars myself. Crazy, right? I glued down some tiny iridescent stars for a little extra sparkle and shine.

I found the sentiment “you light up my sky” on Kindred Stamps Bayou Buddies set and thought it went well with the background.

I decided to trim this piece down to make an A2 card. I cut the piece to 4 x 5 1/4 and matted it on a piece of black cardstock that was 4 1/8 x 5 3/8 then placed it on a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 card base.

I am happy with the way the card turned out and glad I decided to keep going. I often get frustrated when something doesn’t turn out the way I had planned. I’m sure many of you do too. I used to throw those pieces away but I have learned over the last couple years to push through. More times than not, I’m happy with the end product.

“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents” – Bob Ross

I hope you found some inspiration. Happy crafting!

Patriotic Stars

Like many of you, I like to decorate the house for every season and holiday. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, I put out red, white, and blue decor. Unfortunately, I don’t have as many patriotic pieces as I would like. I decided I needed to make something to add to my collection. I started with three wooden stars from the Dollar Tree.

These are carried year round in the craft section of the Dollar Tree. They also have other wooden shapes that come out seasonally. I knew that I wanted all three stars to be connected together so I used my crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the bottom of each star. I decided to do this first just in case it split the wood (then I could cover it up). Surprisingly, none of the stars split and they all punched beautifully.

I then prepped the wood with three coats of white gesso and some light sanding. If you don’t have gesso on hand, acrylic paint will work just fine. Next, I did some measuring. I knew that I wanted to decoupage music sheets onto the whole star and photos in the center.

Here you can see how I did my measurements. Horizontally from tip to tip was 10.5 inches and from the high point on the bottom to the top point was 8 inches but I needed to take into account the bottom two points. I wanted to cover as much as the star as possible with the sheet music. Including those points, the star was about 9.5 inches vertically. I also measured out the center of the star for a picture, which was 3.5 x 5.

I found three vintage sheet music pintables on Etsy. I purchased America the Beautiful, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and The Star Spangled Banner. They all came from a great shop called Vintage Digital Rose. Go here to check out her shop – Vintage Digital Printables and Collage by VintageDigitalRose (etsy.com) . I printed them out on photo paper with a inkjet printer. You do not need a laser printer to decoupage, as long as you use photo paper. Here is a link to a fantastic tutorial – PRINTING DECOUPAGE PAPERS AT HOME | HOW TO DECOUPAGE WITH THICK PAPER | TUTORIAL FOR BEGINNERS – YouTube . If you are not already subscribed to Dainty Gifts, you should be. She is amazing!

You can see the top of the star where the 8.5 inch paper didn’t cover. I mixed together some brown, yellow, and white paints to try and match the colors of the sheet music and painted the tip. It wasn’t perfect but I was happy with it.

I chose these three beautiful old photos from The Graphics Fairy – Vintage Images, DIY Tutorials & Craft Projects for the center of the stars. I sized them down to the 3.5 x 5 before printing them and decoupaging them onto the center of the stars.

After all the decoupage was complete and dry, I added Deco Art’s 2 Step Crackle. I usually get pretty small cracks with this product so I tried adding two thick layers of step 1 before adding step 2. I wanted larger cracks. The cracks were a bit larger than usual but I think three thick layers of step 1 would’ve been better.

After letting the crackle dry overnight, I mixed some brown and black paint together and watered it down really well. About 50/50 paint to water. I brushed it over the whole star making sure to get into all the cracks then wiped it off quickly before it dried. This gives it a nice, aged look making the cracks darker. I was happy with one coat but you can always repeat the process if you want it darker.

For the borders around the photo I used air dry clay and a silicone mold. After the pieces were dry, I painted them with the same dark brown color I used to darken the cracks. The trim around edges of the star are the pearl sticker strips from the Dollar Tree painted in that same dark brown. I used one and a half packages of the pearls for the project, about 8 strips per star.

After all the brown paint was dry, the trims were glued onto the star. Make sure to use a strong glue as those clay pieces are fragile. You wouldn’t want them to fall off and break. Once I was happy with the placement, I used some gold paint to gently dry brush the tops of the clay pieces and the pearl border.

Now the stars were basically done. All that was left was to tie them together and add some embellishments. I pulled out some laces, ribbons, flowers, charms, and of course, bling that I thought would look good. I added some small red, white, and blue rhinestones onto the clay pieces. While I was doing that, I soaked the laces and ribbons in a cup of black coffee. I wanted them to be darker and look a little dingy. I didn’t have any success aging the red ribbons and laces. I even tried alcohol inks after the coffee didn’t work. No luck there either. If you have had any luck aging red laces, please let me know. After the laces were rinsed and dried, I folded them in half and tied another piece of lace around them to create a tassel. I attached the tassel to the bottom star and added some small flowers to the top star.

I am really happy with the way this project turned out. I hope it sparked some inspiration in you. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. Happy creating!