Craft Day - David, Mitts and El Rudolpho

A while back, my friends Kim, Shan and I had Craft Day! Craft Day is a tradition we started a few years back where we get together and do crafty things. We've done Christmas crafts and Halloween crafts in the past, but this time there was a theme of spray paint. Kim spray painted her $20 David head (see her blog post all about it here) and I worked on my $1 reindeer from Goodwill. Shan brought her mitts (she was knitting) and they turned out great! I actually used the pattern on a couple knitting projects lately...

Here's Kim's David that she scored when we went to Pacific Galleries a few months back. It was a big debate between aqua or yellow. I think she made the right choice!

As for El Rudolpho, I got him at Goodwill for a dollar. Not too shabby. He was covered in some lovely mod podge Christmas fabric. Now I love me some Christmas, but I was not digging the fabric look.

The mod podged fabric had some wrinkles, but I didn't mind and decided to just spray paint over it. Unfortunately I learned the hard way to use primer! Luckily Kim let me borrow some of her white. :) You can see how the red isn't covering as well without primer.

You can also see that it looked like a war zone out there. After some primer, El Rudolpho was doing much better. The flat Rustoleum enamel in white worked really well as primer. Overall I think I did 2-3 coats of red, then two coats of primer, then 2-3 more coats of red (obviously if I did this next time I would leave out the first couple coats of red and start with primer:). 

I love how El Rudolpho turned out and can't wait to decorate with him for Christmas! You can definitely see the fabric outlines through the paint, but I actually like it. It looks more like a paper mache reindeer instead of just flat and smooth. 

Total project cost: Less than $5! Booyah!

For some reason I'm really into reindeers this year... so get ready for another reindeer DIY coming up!

PS I got a Facebook page for my blog! Check it out and like me to follow my posts!

Getting Crafty at Anthropologie

Last week, Kim and I went over to Anthropologie for a little craft event hosted by Cassandra LaValle of Coco + Kelley (she's a fellow Zag, too!). Here's Kim's post all about it. Kim found out about this event and I'm so glad we got to go together and get our craft on. 

They had champagne, and cute little mini cupcakes. We both opted for the maple fall cupcake. So delicious!

The craft: color blocked coasters! We started out with four plain cork coasters, a foam brush, different widths of tape, and some paint. 

There she is! Our fearless leader. Like Kim said, we tried not to be super stalkers. :)

In process... this project was super easy!

The finished product. My favorite is the aqua and gold striped one!

The craftermath (craft+aftermath)... Yes, that big pile of junk by the tape is all mine. Haha.

Here's Kim's coasters!

Apparently she was really into the aqua + red color story (notice her matching outfit!). Everyone thought we were sisters (must be the glasses:)! Nope, just besties!

Love how mine turned out. Geometric goodness. It was fun to see what everyone came up with. Especially all the different colors they used!

So much fun - thanks to Anthropologie and Cassandra for hosting this event! 

$1 Art

Keeping with the theme of the dollar section at Michael's this week, I wanted to share a quick art project I did a while back. I found this brass gem after a little digging in the dollar section. It was mixed in with a jumble of different letters and I prayed that they had one of our letters - K (Kane), M (Megan), Z (Zachary), B (Buster). Jackpot! We got ourselves a K (Go Team Kane!). 

I'm not sure what the purpose of the little guy actually is (maybe a metal luggage tag? or to spell out your name on the outside of your house?), but I wanted to frame it and put it up somewhere. All it needed was a little color. Cue my trusty collection of scrapbook paper. I loved the pattern of the dark blue and jade paper (can you tell those are my favorite colors right now?:), but it was a little too busy behind the brass letter. So, I settled on just the solid jade to go with my IKEA frame. I love the way it turned out. 

Simple and interesting. I love it when you can find inexpensive and unique ways to create beautiful things!

Mason Jars + Stamps

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend! We are back in business this week with a fun project or two, a recap of our San Juan trip and maybe some baking... if you're lucky! :) With all this free time I have on my hands nowadays (and by free time, I mean normal weekday after work free time), I am getting back in to the swing of things and it is glorious.

One of my favorite places to get a good deal is at Michael's. The dollar section there is amazing! You can find some pretty sweet stuff if you dig around. One of my best finds was these alphabet stamps in all different fonts. For a dollar each, I got probably about 8 different sets of alphabets, each with its own font. Perfect for making note cards, scrapbooking, etc.

I've always just kept the different sets in separate sandwich bags, but my new jade dresser motivated me to make things look a little nicer. It's just so purty! :)

I found these cute little short and stout mason jars at Target. It was about $4 for a set of four. I only got one set at the time to make sure the whole alphabet would fit inside each jar. It turns out they were the perfect fit! The mason jar glass slipper to my Cinderella of stamps!

In order to keep the different alphabets easily recognizable when they are in the drawer, I stamped out each alphabet on a cute piece of scrapbook paper and attached to the top of the jar lid with a little Elmer's.

The result is fantastic! Such an easy and attractive fix for my messy alphabet stamp collection! And they even fit in the drawer perfectly.

Such a quick fix. Doesn't it just make you feel good to get organized? Have you guys done any quick and easy organizing lately?