Finished Projects

I've been spending inordinate amounts of time on Pinterest looking at myriad beautiful ideas, laughing at countless funny sayings, ooooing and aaaaahhhing at darling children, yummy desserts, gorgeous rooms - and getting entirely enthused about dozens of craft projects!

I wrote earlier about how those projects proliferated all over my house like VERY affectionate rabbits until I finally corralled them all into my own little craft corner. But not all of my projects are unfinished - oh no. I've finished quite a few of them - some of which cannot be shown until after Christmas (no spoilers here)! But there are some that I can share now.

I've seen so many great ideas for using magnets to make life simpler and more beautiful. I like to wear my hair up and clip flowers into it, but the basket I kept my flowers in often left them crushed. Getting my flowers up onto something that held them vertically seemed like the perfect solution.

Our bathroom has beaded paneling with molding detail above it that forms a series of small “frames” - perfect for my need! (If they weren’t there, I’d just have used a normal frame.) I priced sheet metal to fit into the frames – yikes! Too much! I went to the roofing section of Lowe’s and found rolls of galvanized flashing, but it was far more than I wanted. Then I found a roll of galvanized mesh – just right. (I felt kinda like the Three Bears: too much $$, too much length, juuuust right!) While I was there, I picked up a couple of packages of magnets, too.

The mesh cut very easily with tin snips, and also made it easy to keep my lines straight. Two lengths happened to fit perfectly inside the frames on the wall, wasn’t that nice?

We rent this house, so I didn’t want to do anything permanent, so I used four little dots of hot glue to attach each piece of mesh to the wall. Then, using a glue stick, I covered the mesh with a piece of white drawing paper cut to fit the “frame” and smoothed it out. You can’t even tell that there is anything there! When we leave this house, it will be a simple matter to remove (if our landlord wants us to), but it will stay there until then.

I simply placed my magnets and popped a flower (or two) onto each one. Ta da! Lovely, handy, and no longer crushed! I love my pretty flower holders!

(Please ignore the misplacement of my pictures.....I just can't get them to go where I want them!)

I've been AWOL. Or is it MIA? POW? no, not POW. If anything it would be POP (Prisoner of Pinterest). But I haven't been idle, oh no, not idle. I've been crafting like a mad woman!

We women often remark that we’re particularly suited to multi-tasking, while men are profoundly able to focus. I must be more masculine than I realized, because I’m prone to multi-task in a profoundly focused manner! When the creative gas begins to rise in me, I start projects. Unfortunately, I seem to produce either no gas at all, or LOTS of creative gas! So I don’t start only ONE project – I start GOBS.

Those projects begin at the kitchen table, spread to the counter, then into the laundry room, finally overflowing into the office. Oh – and cooking never seems to produce much creative gas (unless it’s a dessert or something COOL like making cheese)….so daily life becomes a little, shall we say, unpredictable when I’m in full-creative-mode.

Yesterday, when my creative-gas-induced euphoria touched the last fading spark of responsibility, it exploded in a fireball of guilt! I needed to corral my crafting to a more family-friendly portion of the house. So I found myself a corner, and….well, I’ll just show you what I did.

I started with the two ends of our entertainment center (which was too big for our living room, anyway), and a table I had for painting watercolors. I bought three shelves from Lowe’s and spanned the top and two of the shelves with them. I already had two 1x4s (unused twin bed slats) for the lowest shelf. I also had several good cardboard boxes, which I covered with some pretty Christmas Wrap to make everything look nice. (Oh, don’t tell Ed, but I also stole the lamp from our headboard.)

I went to Walmart and got some bins (and some eggnog, with which I fortified myself for the ordeal to come – yes, there was some brandy involved in said fortification). Then I sat down to do a little planning, separating my huge pile of projects and materials into rational piles. (This is always the danger point for me: sitting down and planning. It often results in more projects – and not finishing the current one! Still – planning is important if you only want to do something ONCE.) I limited myself to a simple list of generalities: Tools, Materials, Adhesives, Yarn Crafts, Watercolor, Acrylic, etc…. Then I got up and started sorting.

Here’s how it looks now – and it only cost me $27 for the bins (plus $3 for the eggnog – I already had the brandy). So for $30, I can craft to my heart’s delight in the same room with the love of my life as he works on his computer – and then get up and close the door on it and eat dinner at a beautiful table free of paint, glue, drying racks, or sanding grit. We are both very happy about that!