The Thing About Daisies...

But it's almost done, I just have a very small handful of squares to fill. And while it didn't turn out how I wanted (I had to cut down on the size because of a lack of fabric), I can at least say I did it. And Emmett absolutely loves it and that's enough for me. I'll be posting the finished product within the week. So keep and eye out!

Just a new wreath that I was able to throw together in under 30 minutes (would have been faster if I hadn't had to paint the wreath form).

Hope everyone's holiday season is off to a wonderful start!

I set to work, gluing on the crayons.

A lot of the DIYs I found were using hot glue...and while I do LOVE me some hot glue, I decided to go with super glue. It didn't seem logical to use a glue that melts with heat on a project that gets melted with...heat.

I lined up all of the crayons with the logo up in my best attempt at ROYGBIV.

We then headed outside with my blowdryer.

Nate was super excited...

Especially when it started working.

We worked on the crayons for awhile, but while a hairdryer gets hot, it doesn't get hot enough to make the melting process happen quickly. We also didn't like that the force of the air was pushing around the wax. It was making for a splatter-y look that nether of us liked. Nate kept saying that a heat gun would be perfect for this job and that's when the light bulb went off in my head. I went and grabbed my embossing gun.

It was perfect. A little too perfect. Lets just say that if you let the embossing gun stay in one spot for too long...the paper wrappers would start smoking. Once we figured out the prime distance and sweeping motion we were golden. We were really able to start get the look we were looking for. Melted, layered wax.

After we had a good look going on, we decided that we didn't love all of the white space left at the bottom of the canvas. We didn't want to lose the layered look we had going, so we decided to add crayons to the other side of the canvas.


Seeing as I had glued the other row with the label up, I had no idea what colors what the colors were and I wanted to line them up the same on both sides. So I set to work laying the fresh crayons on top of the melted.


Again, I glued them down with super glue. I glued this row with the color name up, so you can see which color is which. At this point I totally took over. Nate had his fun and it was my turn!


Watching the wax melt, drip and pool was beyond entertaining. I kind of want to do 20 more just so I can play with the wax. Though with as anal as I am...I did melt and remelt the wax a lot. I like finding perfection in chaos.


I must say, it was an easy craft...unless you are me. I did, after all, say that I like things to be perfect (or what is perfect to me) and it was easy for me to get carried away. I wanted to add my personal touch, which was the super layered look. We also love that we can hang the art a few different ways. Though having it sideways so that the crayon drips look like they are fighting gravity is our favorite way to hang it.


Anyone who knows me, knows I am a sucker for texture. And once I figured out that you could layer the wax...I went to town. Hello texture!

Honestly, this was one of the easiest crafts I have done recently. It's even easier if you aren't crazy anal like I am. I mean if I weren't so crazed I probably could have had this done in hours instead of 4 days of messing around. What can I say...I find ways to make simple things harder than they should be!

...Use Crayola Crayons because the cheap ones just won't cut it (we didn't test this, but we have seen self admitted fails from other people that used brands like Roseart). Also, while the canvas was good it wasn't perfect. With the canvas having an open back the wax had a tendency to crack or pop off if disturbed too much. You can fix this by placing something solid (like cardboard) in the opening. Or you could just attach the crayons to foam board and then place the foam board in a frame. It's really personal preference. And last thing, seal your wax with a clear coat. It should help lock the wax in place and hopefully keep it from melting (not that our house would ever get that hot).

{via}

One of those things was the t-shirt latch hook run tutorial over at Xoelle. I loved how her rug turned out and I stored away the idea in the back of my head. Then I forgot. But Pinterest reminded me about the run, when it popped up in a feed. My mind raced as I set my mind to making my own rug. I even told Nate about it...and he thought it was cool. That was all I needed.

We went to our local Goodwill Outlet and looked for shirts...but apparently the store felt they were worth $1.50 each. But that's okay, because we didn't leave totally empty handed.

After thinking about it, Nate and I decided that using jersey bed sheets would work just as well. Plus Target sells a set from their RE line for $25. So I grabbed a king sized sheet set and all of the other things I needed and I set off on my project. While I could have kept looking for t-shirts so that I could have dyed the rug the exact color I wanted, I like working with the sheets, because I don't have to deal with dye.

So far the the most annoying part of doing this is cutting the strips. I feel like it's the longest part of the process. Luckily, Nate is more than willing to help. So while he cuts, I can get to latching.

It's going to take awhile...and I have moments where I feel that I have totally lost my mind for doing this. Then I touch the patch I have done and I just can't wait to bury my toes in a rug that I made.

Of course after I started with the yellow, Nate and I both decided that we wanted to add in another color. So we decided to add in a dark gray.

It may take awhile to finish this, but I promise to post occasionally about how it's going. I'm really excited to finish this...I mean I'll get to say that I made a rug. Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

You'll need:

~An old crappy book (like the one I got from Goodwill)
~Round paper punch (mine is 3 inches)
~Styrofoam ball (mine were 2 and 3 inches)
~Hot glue gun
~Pencil

It was wonderful! We had so much fun!

We used this as a chance for everyone to dress up a bit, because really there are just not enough times in our life that we can wear nice clothing. Honestly what happened to our generation and our lack of desire to dress up!? It is a travesty. But that is a whole other rant for another time.

Anywho, along with it being a dress up occasion, we asked everyone to bring a favorite wine and fruit/cheese pairing. With there being 7 couples, it meant that we got to try a good amount of different wines!

Most of the tasting was held in our dining room, so of course that is the area that was decorated the most. I made those paper garlands that I sewed on my machine and pom poms that were then glued onto paper covered wire to make them look like flowers. We also made two different gifts for our guests. One of them being slate tiles with felt on the bottom. We used those as plates to set out the food pairing, but we use them as hot pads (trivets) in our house. We also did simple things like turning corks into place card holders, which we then asked our guests to use to let us know what they had brought.

Throughout the rest of the house there was more of the paper garland and pom poms, as well as the fabric and paper rosette balls I made. They were little touches, because we didn't want to go too overboard.

This party was my most DIY oriented party I have every thrown. Almost everything we used to decorate and give as gifts were hand made. It was stressful at moments, but so worth it to have such a wonderful night with friends. I enjoyed it so much, that I want to make this into something we do somewhat frequently. My mind is already racing with ideas!

Because of all of the DIYed stuff, check back this week for some more in depth how tos and DIYs!

{via}

{via}