Little Cricut Projects for my Little one Part-2

Handmade products are the best and when they are made for your tiny bundle of joy they become even more precious. Here is the second set of crafts that I did for my little one.

I always dreamed of having a little girl, so of course I had to make a banner for our maternity photo shoot to shout out my joy and here is that. I made this onesie banner with the help of my Cricut cutting machine. It saves me whole lot of time now that I have other things to take care of.

I just designed my project in Cricut software and put the pieces together once they are cut. It took a little bit of time until I got hang of the machine and now I just love it.

I saw these cute onesie designs on a shopping site but I wanted to give my Cricut a shot, so I designed stencils and used Martha's multipurpose acrylic paints that I already had on hand.

They turned out really cute. Did you ever go shopping clothes for a little girl? Most of the time they have quotes only about dad's like Dad's little princess etc., so I just loved this quote "I'm Cute. Mom's Cute. Dad's Lucky"and I just had to recreate it.

This was my first Iron on project and it was Super easy to do. I chose the word #adorable for this little baby pink onesie.

My Cricut cut through the gold glitter iron on like it was butter. All I had to do was follow the instructions that came with my iron on sheet and after that little bit of ironing it was all done. I used Cricut Iron on sheet and it stayed so well even after multiple washes.

I wanted a 3 piece wall art to go above my baby crib. I saw these wooden boards at Michaels and started brainstorming.

I decided the 3 quotes I wanted on them and whipped up these cute designs on Cricut with card stock and scrapbook papers I had on hand. Personally I think this wall art didn't turn out exactly like how I imagined but I still love it. What do you think?

Would love to hear your comments. Thank you for stopping by.

Paint and Sew Pillow Covers Tutorial

As I mentioned in my previous post, I started putting together my patio. I got my andorak chairs from Lowes last summer and I really like their green color. However, I wanted to add a stroke of brightness and what's a better way to add color to chairs than comfy cushions. Since I decided to challenge myself with a 100$ budget for my entire patio makeover, I wanted to upcycle stuff that I already had on hand as much as I can. So here is a before and after picture of my pillows.

The brown decorative pillows are from our old comforter set. The comforter had to leave our home after a lot of wear and tear and I saved the decorative pillows as they were in pretty good shape. The cushion with orange and green shades is my favorite pillow that sits on my sofa with me, though its odd one out in our living room decor I really love it because that pillow cover is the first sewing project on my sewing machine. I decided to upgrade these 3 pillows for my patio chairs.

Things used:

• 1/2 yard white home decor fabric (for white pillow fronts) 
• 1/2 yard of white denim from my fabric stash (for pillow backs. Ofcouse you could go ahead and use outdoor fabric or home decor fabric for backside too but I just wanted to use the fabric I already had.)
• Yellow Polka dot fabric quarter
• Pink fabric piece for rosettes 
• Hot glue gun
• Stencils
• Acrylic craft paints
• Textile medium (If you are using fabric acrylic paints you don't need textile medium)
• Paint brushes (You can use Stencil brushes. I just went ahead with paint brushes as I had them on hand)
• Temporary fabric marker (optional)

First, I prewashed my white home decor fabric on which I planned to stencil.
My 2 big pillows measure 16 x 16, so I cut 2 of 17 x 17 white home decor fabric pieces to stencil on. These 2 pieces are going to be front side of my 16 x 16 pillows with half inch seam allowance on all the four sides.

As I was using craft acrylic paints that are not made for fabric I mixed it with textile medium to turn it into fabric paint. Yes! you can do that. I tested this method on a scrap fabric before starting this project and I just loved the results. Just follow the instructions on your textile medium bottle. Mine requires a heat set after 24 hours dry time and then the fabric is good to go, even into the washer. God!!! this unleashed tons of cute little fabric painting project ideas for me.

I planned a floral wreath design for one of the pillows. Placing my dinner plates upside down on the fabric I traced 2 concentric circles with temporary fabric marker. Then I started stenciling the flowers all around the circle and I hand painted few branches and leaves to connect the flowers. I felt I had more control over the paint when I used paint brushes instead of stencil pouncers on fabric. If you want to know more on how to stencil in detail, refer to my pot stenciling post where I mentioned dos and don'ts on stenciling.

 I am no expert in stenciling, I did end up with flared petals and weird shaped flowers which I craft-fully turned into something pretty (or atleast I think so). In the above picture one of the pink flower petals is clearly flared too much and which is why I gave the entire flower a red color edge to make it look less obvious. The red flower is a disaster. I was trying to stencil very small flower with pouncer and ended up covering it with circular petals using my paint brush.

Here is one more example of adding green stem right where the yellow paint seeped through the stencil. After these mistakes I shifted to paint brushes from pouncers and they worked great. Hey! Lesson learnt. 

Use narrow tip brushes to paint small flowers, leaves and thin stems. (Try to design something creative if you do end up with little paint mistakes.)

This is how my 2 stenciled fabric pieces looked like once I am done. I was initially planning to add text in the middle of wreath design like "Smile" or "Relax". But I really liked how they turned out and wasn't daring enough to paint something on it and loose what I already think looks pretty enough.

Pillow cover Sewing Tutorial

Sewing an envelope pillow cover is the easiest sewing project ever for beginners. No buttons, no zippers, no piping are required. You just learnt to sew a straight line?? Congrats! you can stitch this pillow cover under 10 mins. Here is a step by step tutorial for you.

Measure and Cut your fabric pieces:

In above picture, I am showing how I measured and cut fabric for my 16 x 16 pillow. 

Here is what you need to do to sew one that fits your pillow:

For front:

• Measure your pillow width and height.
• Add half inch seam allowance to all four sides of pillow measurements, to get the front piece.

For Back:
You need 2 Pieces for the back with 2 inches overlap.

• You are going to keep the width same as front cut piece, that is width of the pillow + half inch seam allowance to left + half inch seam allowance to right.
• Height of these 2 pieces is going to be half inch seam allowance at the top + half of the height of the pillow + 2 inches overlap + 1 inch for double folded hem. 

Hope you got it!! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. Once you got correct measurements and cut your fabric you are 70% done. 

Take one of the back fabric pieces and fold half inch along the horizontal edge that falls in the middle. Iron it. Repeat half inch fold and again iron on it. These makes it easy to sew our double folded hem.

Finish sewing the double folded hems on both back fabric pieces.

Lay the front piece with right side facing up, then one back piece with right side facing down and finally another back piece on top with right side facing down. Make sure to line up the outer edges with front piece edges.

Pin all four sides, while holding all the 3 pieces together.

Sew all the four sides and trim the corners so that it doesn't bulk up the pillow cover corners when we turn it right side out.

Turn the pillow cover right side out and insert the pillow form. Tada! I told you, it's easy. Didn't I ?

 I made this fabric rosettes with pink fabric scrap I had, to embellish my yellow pillow. All you need is fabric pieces and hot glue gun to make these rosettes. There are so many tutorials out there in many craft blogs and youtube on how to make them.

Finally, a picture of all 3 pillow covers I made. I love the fact that I spent only 4$ (for fabric) on this project as I had most of the stuff already on hand. 

Let me know what you think about these pillows. I love to hear your comments. Thank you for stopping by. Have a great weekend! :)

Color pop your pots

After living with an empty patio for 2 years, I made the decision to decorate my patio this summer. Yeah! Pretty late. Hey better late than never :). My balcony walls are too dull in color. So I wanted lots of brightness in everything I add.  I wanted to buy self watering pots so that my plants wont die when I go on a trip for 2 or 3 days. The Latte color is the brightest I could find under my requirements. I was not satisfied with how they looked in my balcony. So, here is what I turned them into.

Want to do it yourself? Then here is the procedure for you.

Things used:

• Plastic pots
• White Spray paint
• Adhesive stencils
• Acrylic paints or outdoor acrylic paints (I used acrylic paints as I had them on hand. Read the note on step 2 and 3 incase you are going to buy new paints)
• Clear gloss spray paint (optional if you are using outdoor paints)
• Stencil pouncers

Step:1 Spray paint the pots with a bright color

It's best to do spray painting outdoor so that you have lot of ventilation but also make sure its not windy or dusty out there. If you don't have a patio use low odor indoor spray paints and use a cardboard box or carton to enclose the item to be spray painted, that way you won't end up spraying your room. Cover the area around with old bed sheets or plastic sheets (I used half sheet of dollar store plastic table cloth that I had on hand).
Follow the instruction on your spray can and do 2 coats of chosen color. I chose white. Let the paint completely dry before going to next step.

Step:2 Stencil

Before moving on to this step let me share with you few dos and don'ts from my experience in buying a stencil.

I got the black color plaid stencil for 0.92$ in clearance at Joann. God! I love those red tags :) And I love this product, it came with an adhesive backing so the paint doesn't seep through easily on the curved surfaces of pot.

The blue stencil is a plastic stencil with no adhesive backing. I got this for 1.5$ after discount coupon. But this one did no good on my pots :( Pots usually have a curved surface and this stencil was flexible enough to bend which made me think it would work when I tape it on sides. This is how my flower painting turned out with that stencil. As that is backside of the pot, it didn't bother me much. The stencil worked great on fabrics but I guess its just not made for plastics or the curved surfaces unless used with a stencil adhesive spray.

As my stencil B failed, I ended up buying martha stewart adhesive floral stencil for 4.99 after 50% discount coupon. ( I do crazy couponing when it comes to craft supplies or home decor) I got this stencil because I liked the designs and tons of ideas popped up after I saw the project idea on the stencil cover. Which means you can expect more stenciling projects to come. However, I would rate this stencil moderately good, as few of the delicate designs from this pack din't turn out as good as I expected them to be. But thumbs up for rest of the designs.

Coming to dos and don'ts on stenciling:

• Make sure the delicate parts of the stencil are adhered to the surface properly before pouncing it with paint.
• The trick is you need right amount of paint on your stencil pouncer. It should not be too low that it can't get the paint evenly on surface or too high that the paint can seep through stencil and ruin your design. It takes a little practice to do it right. I would definitely recommend practicing on the back or down side of your pots before doing the actual job.
• Carefully peel away the stencil once you are finished painting the design.
• Always clean the stencil between every use as suggested by the instructions on your pack.
• Most importantly don't bother much if your paint does seep through just a little here and there, at the end its gonna still look pretty and colorful. Have fun stenciling like a kid.

Now get creative with designing, mix and match different stencils for the look you desire. I used acrylic paints as I already had them on hand. Note: I recommend buying outdoor acrylic paints if you are going to buy some paint just for that purpose. Buying multi surface acrylic paint would be a great way in case you are looking for painting different surfaces outdoor or indoor. If you already have enough acrylic paints on hand and don't want to buy new stuff like me, just use them but make sure you spray the painted pot with clear gloss or clear finish spray paint(more about this in step 3).

Try painting the pot open ends with solid colors to take it to next level.

You need lots of patience and I am sure your pots would look stunning.
Let the paints dry completely before moving to next step.

Step:3 Spraying with clear finish

This step is optional in case you used outdoor acrylic paints for stenciling your pots. However if you used regular acrylic paints you need to seal the colors with clear finish or clear gloss spray paint to water proof the colors. (Note: I read in various columns that sealing with clear finish is good enough to protect acrylic colors, so I decided to experiment.  I had left over clear gloss spray paint from my DIY Star Burst Mirror project so I went ahead and used it). You could use clear matte finish or any clear finish spray that you like. Make sure you (take care while spraying like in Step1) cover the entire painted pot with 3-4 even coats of clear finish.

After the paint is completely dry you can go ahead and pot your plants. I am sure you will enjoy the color pop.

I tested my pots under water once the clear gloss spray paint completely dried and they seem completely fine, my colors didn't move or fade a bit. Knock on wood! I will update you once in a while about the paints performance out in the balcony.

Enjoy these beautiful flowers until my next post about makeover. And I am very sorry for long silence on the blog earlier, I was on a trip to India and it took little time to get back to things. It was very sweet of you guys who messaged me asking about the silence. 

I love to hear your comments on these color pop pots. Thank you for stopping by. Have a great week :)