Practicing Thriftcraft!

Hello All!

We are working on the craft room but it's a process!  The crown molding is up and the flooring will go in this weekend if the weather cooperates.  In the meantime, I wanted to share the light fixture that's going in there.  A few weeks ago, I saw this at Class and Trash:

It's the kind that has glass arms!  It was taken out of a home in Northern Virginia during demolition.  It needed a good cleaning, new wiring, a little paint, and new crystals.  Dan and I got busy and took it apart:

It made me a little anxious to take it all apart.  Look at all those glass pieces!

Plus, all the hardware pieces:

My part was easy--cleaning and painting--but Dan took on the task of rewiring it.  He showed me how it's done.  Yeah, I'll need a few more classes before I'll feel comfortable doing it on my own ;)  Here it is now:

The champagne-colored crystals came from Shabby Elegant Designs.  I kept the vintage prisms and will use them either on another project or as ornaments on my Christmas tree.  I love the look of blue opaline also and gave those a try:

Also gorgeous!  But when I painted the room --Bravo Blue by Sherwin Williams--the blue just blended into the walls.  Based on the other color/design choices for the room made the champagne crystals my next choice.  Once I saw the on the chandelier, there just wasn't any other choice!  (sneak peak alert! :)

I'm linking up!

Coastal Charm, Nifty Thrifty Tuesday No. 201
Elizabeth & Co., Be Inspired Features and Link Party #107
From My Front Porch to Yours, Treasure Hunt Thursday, #145

Have a great week,
Lisa

My Craft Room - Before

Hello All!

I mentioned back in October, I would be re-doing my craft room.  Nothing much happened before or after Christmas besides putting together a Pinterest board of ideas.  Finally, we have started making some progress and since I had "before" pics I thought I'd share them.  I don't have any before before pictures --you know, the ones with all the builder beige walls and boob lights.  I claimed this room as mine the day we moved in and, three years later over one long weekend in January 2008, Dan and I created the room you see below.

I picked the smallest of the bedrooms and one in the front of the house with the most windows.  I LOVE LIGHT --the more the better; it's hugely motivating and great for crafting.  Our house faces east so we get full sun in the mornings.

The inspiration for this room came from a scrapbook kit from Michael's in which the theme was poppies.  I started out with painting half the room "Moss" (Laura Ashley for Valspar) and the remaining walls and ceiling white.

We gutted the closet, removed the doors, but left the brackets in case we convert the craft room back into a bedroom.  I did this so we could fit two more shelving units in the room.

 Dan edges for me when we paint.  I like to roll, roll, roll.  The edging is far too tedious and he's far more patient!   Once the painting was done, I added the wall decals (found online).

Poppies!  These wall decals are really wonderful.  They are the kind that peel off and stick on and are repositional/removable.  I can vouch for them that they do in fact stick and peel off and can be removed and repositioned; they have been up since 2008 and I haven't had one problem with them.

Once the decals were in place, it was time to start furnishing the room.  Here are the shelves; I was so happy they fit so well.

This one is is behind my desk.

More organizers - the one on the wall came from Michaels and the shelf from Ikea.

I loved the curtains when they were first up, but now I think they would look so much prettier if they hung down to the floor.

The computer desk.  I swapped out the small flat screen for a larger one and now there is a shelf above the bulletin boards.  I was able find a small shelf for the printer so the small end table is now in the sun room.

So that's the way it looked when we started the makeover--I cannot wait to show you what it looks like now!

Have a great week!

A Little Monkey Business

Hello all.

I finished the diaper cake for my niece.  One of her friends is expecting twins --a girl and a boy!  The nursery theme is monkeys.  This is the cake I came up with.  I was going to make two individual cakes, one all pink and one all blue but I had a difficult time finding monkey-themed baby items so one big cake became the plan.  All the monkeys were cut and layered using my Cricut and three different cartridges:  Create A Critter, Baby Steps, and New Arrival.  I used Bazzill cardstock but the pearl paper is by Recollections.

Since I had to mail this bad boy, I just stuck to diapers, receiving blankets, and paper decorations but the top layer is a box and the storks are mounted on cake poles that have been glued to a round piece of cardboard.  It creates a sort of lid for the box and I stashed some baby items in there --two sets of onesies, two sets of booties, and two sets of Johnson & Johnson baby lotion and wash.

Here's a closer look at the decorations:

And one more all together:

Have a great week!