Sawyer’s Nursery Update

Hey again everyone!  I told you in the last post that I’d get some new pics of to show you Sawyer’s room now that its all done (13 months after his birth…don’t judge me).  Actually, its been done for a while I’m just slow at posting.  Theres really not TOO much that looks different from the nursery posts before this one, just a few added details that I think pull it all together.  Anyway, here it is.  All DONE.  🙂

Please ignore the stuff on the floor.  Sawyer was in here while I was taking these pics and was dragging all kinds of stuff out.  At least it shows how the room looks in reality!

The white Jenny Lind crib and changing table set I got off of Craigslist for $125.  The vinyl wall mural I found here.

I found the empty frame at Hobby Lobby in the clearance section for $8.  I made the banner with a template and cardstock and chipboard letters I covered in scrapbook paper.  Here is a template you can use to make your own.  (Just cut the little corners off when you fold the top over your string).

Above are some close-ups of Sawyer’s bunting name banner.

The woodsy vinyl wall mural totally MADE this room.  Since I wasn’t spending much on the rest of the room decor, I “splurged” on it and got it for around $100 or so.  I could pick the colors I wanted and I think it turned out FABULOUS against the teal wall.  (p.s.  Sawyer is so cute rockin his new mowhawk!)

A tree branch made the perfect curtain rod for this space.  I also used a tree branch for the DIY mobile below.

This mobile was SUPER EASY to throw together.  A tree branch+wooden cutouts in woodsy shapes from the craft store+orange craft paint+hemp string and a hook screw= a graphic naturalist simple baby mobile.  You can also buy a little hand drill in the wood pieces section of the craft store for easy hole drilling into small wood pieces like this.

The lamp above was made from an old shade I had leftover from a client’s house, and some extra orange and white fleece from other projects.  My little sis helped me cut out a bunch of “leaf shapes” alternating between regular scizzors and pinking shears.  Then I simply sewed them together like a long garland right down the center of each.  I then cut varying lengths off of the “leaf garland” and hot glued them to the lamp shade, being sure to cover the entire shade and vary the lengths that dangled.  It turned out pretty cute I think and was an easy way to add fun, whimsical lighting.

Sawyer’s baby quilt was another DIY project.  I had found a towel at Walmart for $4 that was the PERFECT color and then decided to applique birch trees and leaves onto it with scrap fabric from other projects for the room.  Then I simply bound and backed the entire “towel quilt” with white fleece.  It has held up really well through several washings and ties in the wall mural nicely.

Below is the block printed bird pillow I made.  Martha Stewart has a great tutorial on block printing using Speedy-Carve blocks here.

And below again is another pillow I hand stamped.  That tutorial can be found here.

I also made this DIY fabric wall art.  That tutorial is here.

And above is a pic of the white $4 thrifted antlers (I sprayed them white with high gloss spray paint), and a photo set I took and framed (got the white frames at the Dollar Store), and also a little owl I made with a hand towel and scrap fabric.  I love this little vignette.

So there you go!  This is my cheap and easy DIY’d, aqua, orange, brown, and white, vintage modern, refurbished, thrifted, woodland creatures, little boys nursery.  Phew.  Hope you like it and can go and DIY one for your little man (or woman) ! Happy crafting!

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DIY Faux Taxidermy! My Pinterest Project! :)

Finally!  I’m back to post my Pinterest challenge project!  I was away for a funeral for a while and had to get back to regular life and catch up and of course it took me much longer than I wanted it too.  Anyway…

So I’m totally into this faux taxidermy trend.  I kind of love it and hope it sticks around forever.  In Sawyer’s nursery I have a pair of antlers (not faux…they’re the real deal) that I bought at a thrift store for $4 and spray painted white.   This is a pic from this post:  (Wow!  I need to get pics posted of Sawyer’s completed room.)

I also found a little porcelain cow bust at a thrift store for $3 that is now hanging on the wall in my master.  This is a pic of it from this post:

So even though I already have a couple of animals hanging on my walls, I couldn’t help but want to get some more!

For the Pinterest Challenge I went into my DIY folder and purused my past pins.  When I saw this image

I thought it would be the perfect project!  I was fully aware of course that my DIY version would most likely be uglier than this but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway.  Maybe the ugliness would add to the charm. 🙂

So off to Home Depot I went in search of some wire.

Heres the breakdown:

Cost:  About $6

Supplies:

• Plenty of 16 Ga. Dark Annealed Wire (I bought the 2lb reel).  OKay.  So now that this project is done, I can tell you I HATE THIS WIRE for this project.  It is too stiff and hard to shape and really beat up my hands and fingers!  I suggest a covered clothesline wire or floral wire.  I saw some colored floral wire at the Dollar Store and am going to try it out again with that I think.  But, for the sake of accuracy in the tutorial, I used the 16 Ga. wire from Home Depot for this project.
• Wire cutters.
• Pliers or jewelry tools are helpful for twisting the wire ends.

And thats it.  Simple and cheap.  Now the fun part…

1.  The first thing I did was make a wire circle to use as my base.  Depending on how large you want your animal head you can determine the size of your base.  I also was sure to add a little loop up at the top of the base for hanging.

As you can see from the pics above, this wire made it hard to keep smooth and straight so my faux deer head turned out a lot more wobbly looking than the inspiration pic.  I just convince myself it adds charm.

2.  The next thing I did was build a neck.  I used 4 equal lengths of wire and attached them to the base.  I curved them slightly so that they weren’t sticking straight out of the base but concave in a bit as a neck of an animal does.  Then I made another circle (slightly smaller than the base circle) and attached it to the ends of the neck wires.

3.  Then I started building the head.  Following somewhat my inspiration pic, I built the head using curving pieces.  First, one coming up from the neck to form the chin piece, then two others curving down from the top of the head to the chin piece.

4.  Next I added a long piece of wire that connects all three of those new parts together.

5.  Then I added another wire that curved a bit and came down forming the front of the face from the base of the neck to under the chin.

6.  See how its starting to kinda look like something?  Even if it is a little whompy.  😉  Then I added a couple more curvy piece to either side on the center wire on the face and made and added ears.  From here you could probably make this into a variety of different horned creatures.  Although I originally wanted to copy the inspiration image and make swirly cool horns like that, after several attempts, it just wasn’t working for me and I decided to make my little guy a deer instead.  Maybe if I had used easier wire, I could’ve done it.  Meh.  Another day…

7.  Next I made the antlers.  To do this I took two really long pieces of wire cut to the same length.  I folded them in half (at the same time), and started forming the “branches” up the sides of each.  Then I pulled them apart and attached them to the top of the head inside each ear.  I had to mess with them a bit to get them to look somewhat symmetrical.

8.  Then I stepped back and took a look and decided the face needed a little more so I added a cross wire across the nose of the face and also decided to give him nostrils.   This was the finished result!

What do you think?!  Like I said, not nearly as pretty as my inspiration Pin but I love him nonetheless. Just take my advice, get some really good wire cutters and really pliable wire if you decided to do this one!

And thats it!  Thats my first Pinterest Challenge project!  YAY!  I’m sure there will be many more to come.

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Pinterest Challenge!!

Have you heard of Pinterest?!  I had heard about it quite a while ago but just didn’t bother checking it out until my sis-in-law raved to me about one day on Facebook.  And so I decided to check it out…and I was instantly obsessed.  I have been using the same kind of “organizational method” for inspiration by just putting all my inspiring images I find online in categorized folders on my computer.  But Pinterest does me one better.  It lets me not only organize all my images online, it also lets me follow other peoples boards and see whats inspiring them.  I LOVE that.  I also LOVE that I can upload a little button to your browser that says “Pin It” so I can quickly and easily send images to any of my boards at any time while I’m browsing around online.  Anyway, ever since I got on Pinterest I’ve become obsessed with creating boards and stalking other people’s boards and have become so overly inspired I hardly know what to do with myself.  Honestly I think I might go into an inspiration coma if I don’t slow it down.

And I’m apparently not the only one.  While doing my weekly blog hop I came across one of my favs, Emily Henderson’s blog,  you know, from Secrets of a Stylist on HGTV and past winner of Design Star?  Yeah, shes AMAZING.  Anyway, I came across this post  that issues a challenge to all the Pinterest obsessed pinners out there.  The challenge is to create something from one of your pinboards that you’ve loved and have been procrastinating doing.  She even brought in Sherry from Young House Love and Katie from Power Bower Blog in on the challenge.  Here is there little silly challenge video:

So I thought “Hey why not!” and have decided to accept their challenge!  I have about a hundred things on my Pinterest boards that I have been dying to try so this gives me the motivation to just DO IT!  And you should too!  If you don’t have a Pinterest account GET ONE.  Then follow my boards if you’d like at Cate Rawson @ See Cate Create and get pinning.  Find inspiration and take the challenge with me.  It could be some real good-ol’ glue-gunnin’ fun! 🙂

OK!  I’m off to pick a project!  See you soon! 🙂

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