I’ve been so busy crafting, I haven’t been posting lately. So doing a photo dump here of many of the projects I, or my husband and I, have been working on lately.
You will find details on some of these projects by following my Instagram page. I try to explain there on how some of them were created. https://instagram.com/sharsumpaint
For now, I have to go clean and reorganize my craft area before Christmas. Wish me luck!
Update: Jan. 12, 2023
It seems Christmas got in the way and every time I sat down to try to add photos, I couldn’t. But, I did get my craft area cleaned and organized! I finally figured out that I was missing permissions for WordPress to access my photos. Most of the projects are on Instagram, but here’s few of my favorites. Maybe you can save some ideas for next year.
One more little craft, then taking a short break for our 50th anniversary coming up on the 28th! Hoping to see some beautiful fall foliage and an eagle 🦅 or two.
We found a bunch of these cedar rounds thrifting.
Amazon
I’ve already made a snowman’s hat, a stand for my teeny tiny snowmen, and now I’ve used one for a small 5” high cedar tree.
I had these faux cedar pieces I bought after Christmas last year. They were attached to a table runner. 🙂 And… since these are cedar rounds, I thought why not make it an air freshener, too? I just happen to have Young Living’s Cedarwood essential oil to use on it. 🙂
I love the smell of this Cedarwood. P.S. It freshens up furniture drawers, too! I think I will put a couple of the rounds with a drop of Cedarwood in the dresser I just finished!
I changed it up a little. This one is 5” tall. I used a small 2 1/4” wood slice for the base and cut down the size of the skewer some. It still has a point on it for piercing each strand of jute. I just cut it off at the end.
The jute pieces I used:
12 – 4” 12 – 3” 12 – 2” 2 – 1” And a half inch piece. For this one I used more glue and pressed and molded it to round off the top.
I cut off the skewer and left enough to glue the greenery and the star to the skewer and glued some jute to the back of it to cover.
This one got caught in a snow storm so has a bit of snow (paint) on the branches.
I found another way to use some of the roll of jute rope I thrifted. I created a spiral tree with it. 🙂
I used a long stem piece of green floral wire and using craft glue to secure, twisted the jute around the wire.
I then shaped it into a spiral form. The center of the spiral I thumbtacked into this chunk of birch tree I had. I used craft glue to glue the rest of the bottom edge to the base. I added sprigs of faux cedar and daubed on white paint to represent snow. I also daubed a bit of paint on the jute.
I added little balls of a muted green, red and cream color from a garland I had. They had wire attached so I just wired them on.
I cut a star from a piece of aluminum foil I spray painted copper and daubed white paint on it. I used a small piece of Velcro to attach the star to the top.
I sat the tree on a little round base then sprinkled some of the fallen copper dried hydreanga blooms I had left from another project around the base for the photo.
I’m having so much fun finding ways to use my big roll of jute rope I thrifted. 🙂
I found one thing this morning to make with the big roll of jute I found at an estate sale… a shabby jute Christmas tree. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to make.
My little tree stands about 7 1/2” h x 7 1/2” w.
I was inspired by a tutorial I saw come up on Pinterest. My jute was a little thinner than the tutorial so I adapted it some.
I used a 10” skewer from Dollar Tree but ended up cutting several inches off when finished. I also used 5 – 3” pieces 3 -2” pieces and 3 – 1” pieces of jute instead of what they did. I also used Dollar Tree Super GluecWood Glue on the wood round stand and on each stand of jute as I built it.
Then I just kept building.
Here it is pictured next to this cool sign I also thrifted. Sure wish I had could have created that, but sadly, no.
I had a mid-morning project this morning. First of all, I slept in. I never do that. We have had a new rule the past Several months that the last one up has to make the bed. So, I did. The first thing Danny said to me when I came into the living room was not Good Morning. It was, “Did you make the bed?” 😂
It’s a thrill a minute when you are retired.
I love when plans change on a dime. I was going to be knee deep in cleaning today but…..we had gotten an offer we couldn’t refuse from our credit union to move the financing of our car over to them. So, they set it all up this week and now we are on our way to lunch in the city and closing. Lol
I had already stolen a little cleaning time with my framed Santa I made earlier this morning. For this project I adhered the printed drop cloth to the cardboard that came with this frame I had distressed some time ago and gave the berries on his hat a bit of red. I kept looking at that frame thinking he would look so good in it. I kind of think he does. See how I created the image on my cheese box post.
So, while Danny was getting ready, I just had to make the Santa wood slice ornament. I really love this Santa! 🙂
Plans change, but hey…. we are saving money and I get lunch in the city. So, retirement is pretty good….most days. And I can always clean later. 😌
I found this cheese box (15” round x 5 1/2” tall) when thrifting this summer while on vacation. I knew the glued on flowers had to go, but hadn’t decided how I was going to upcycle it….until today.
It’s getting cold out and that cheese box needed a sweater. I just happened to have a new red sweater that came in an Ugly Sweater kit I thrifted last year.
The first thing I did was sand off those flowers as much as I could and then I cut the sweater in half about 4” below the armpits. Then I covered the outside of the box and down the inside. The lid still fits fine around the sweater.
I glued the seams first, inside, outside, and underneath. Then I glued all around, securing the sweater to the box.
I was left with a lot of fuzz, which was hard to remove on that rough wood. I didn’t want to get out a vacuum, so I used rolled up masking tape to pick it up. It worked like a charm.
Next, I finished the rough edges by gluing sisal rope around the sides and bottom.
And then came the image I downloaded and adapted to cover up the old flowers I had mostly sanded away. This is a technique I’ve used several times now. I found this image, free on The Graphics Fairy Site. I had to do several things to get it the way I wanted, though. First, I had to make the image transparent and I cut it into a round shape using the free app Pro Knockout. But I wanted it to have a more vintage look so I uploaded it to the free website Lunapic and saved it as a pen drawing.
All of this is free, so I’m sharing my image I created here. Please credit The Graphics Fairy and this blog post if you do use it. Thanks.
Pen drawing created in Lunapic.com from a free image found on The Graphics Fairy.
I then inserted the image into a Google Document, enlarged it to fit the paper, and saved it as a pdf file. Next, I used a product called Pixi Spray to temporary adhere a piece of drop cloth to a sheet of printer paper. I trimmed the drop cloth to the size of the paper, then printed it on my personal black and white laser printer.
I am always blown away how cool this look is on drop cloth. I cut around the circle and adhered the image to the box using Elmer’s Craft Bond.
I cut the neck off and used what I learned from the wise words of all mothers, “Don’t pull on the neck of your sweater, you will stretch it out!” They are right! I pulled and pulled and stretched it enough so that it would fit around my image and then hot glued it in place. It is on there forever. 🙂 And while I was at it, I used a red paint pen and colored in the berries on his hat for just a bit of color.
This finished my cheese box. I posted it for sale on my Facebook page and it sold almost immediately!
Now, what to do with the sweater arms?? I’m thinking my early morning project will be dressing a few Oui yogurt jars. 🙂
Today’s project: I just had to do this. I found this awesome Christmas shower curtain at my sister-in-law’s yard sale yesterday.
I knew I wanted to use the images for decoupage. It is 100% polyester, so I wasn’t sure what would be the best way to do it. I posed the question to a decoupage fb group I belong to. A couple people suggested making printed copies of the images! Brilliant! I hadn’t even thought about doing that… and now I can use the shower curtain, too! Just look at all the different images on it!
I copied the image I wanted on my ink jet printer by laying the shower curtain on the tray in the area that showed that image. Then, the question of how to cut it out.
That brought to mind an old German cutting technique called Scherenschnitte, which means “scissor cuts” in German, and is the art of paper cutting design. I had done some of this many years ago. At one time I even had special scissors. I do have a pair of very sharp, small pointed scissors, so I cut around the edges my design with a kind of modified Scherenscnitte technique. It worked fine. These are the scissors I used.
I remembered to spray both sides of my printed image with Mod Podge spray to keep it from bleeding. When it was dry, I used Elmer’s Bonding spray on the back and bonded it to a piece of painters drop cloth the size of the back of the 8×10 frame I found in my stash to use. I made sure I pressed down carefully on all the cut edges to make sure they bonded well.
I then used a spray adhesive called Pixie spray on the back of the drop cloth and pressed it to the backing of the frame so it would lay flat.
I opted not to use the glass as I really wanted the texture of the drop cloth to show….and the texture of the paper. You really can’t even tell the image is a piece of printer paper.
I tried to take a couple of pics to show the texture. I am thrilled with how this project turned out and it took less than two hours to complete.
The frame is just perfect for this vintage looking image, don’t you think? It looks like it has been around hundreds of years.
Then a friend challenged me to make something from one of the trucks. So, I used this one and added a couple more embellishments.
SharSum Paint 