re-purposed father's day

i had been saving dried out tea bags for another purpose....and today- they got a calling. i emptied the tea out and cut out my heart shape. i then, stamped onto the bag and stuffed it with a cottonball; finally stitching around the heart.

 then, i had been wanting to re-purpose a cereal bag....so, i cut out my rectangle shape and painted on the inside and stamped on the outside of my bag- leaving space for my teabag heart.i stitched the bag and heart into one and put a book page behind. i liked being able to see the words through the bag. i wanted my piece to eventually be able to be placed into a frame so i built the background to fit a 5"x7". i used brown paper, painted scraps, stencil, a bingo card, and acrylic paint for the background paper. finally, had the kids and i sign it for the perfect postcard.

i was so proud of myself re-purposing things that when i explained it to my spouse...he said only you would re-purpose and use garbage to make a card sweetie.... :)

a cup full please....

i got these cute little teacups at an auction recently and knew i would probably not really use then, so let's re-purpose!! i knew what i wanted to do and picked up a nice little variety of plants last week at my favorite green house- harmony garden. i also told her, miss harmony garden, that she needed to be online! i had made up my cute little fairy gardens and wanted to link to her store so people would know how to find her.....and she was not there. she reassured me that she was working on it. so when she does, i will make sure to give proper credit to this wonderfully creative green thumb.

i know it is not a  cute little teacup, but, it is kind of a cute chippy red painted pot. see the brown nest- like stuff in this plant? her's looked like a bird nest at the store, so i bought some to put into my pots.....when i pulled mine apart, somehow it did not look the same as hers; but, i do like the texture it adds.

re-purposed metal shelf with a tray

as we were working on this project, i was thinking that it needed a tray (for the chalk). i did some digging into my extra stuff and came up with a vintage shredder. my husband (bless his heart) worked a little magic and got the shredder bent in the right spot so that we could attach it to my "family coordination center."

as we were talking about about my plans for this project, i was thinking that cork on a portion would be cool; and low and behold, my husband had a stash of cork- he is very handy and well prepared (for anything- especially projects that his wife wants to do....).

this was a metal shelf for a cart that i picked up at an auction recently; it somehow had been separated from the rest of the cart. it started its' life as a brown fake wood grain middle shelf for a 3 shelf cart. we sanded it down, primed it, and then, painted the outer edges an ivy green.

once that was dry, we painted the chalkboard paint onto the bottom portion and my husband helped me attach our tray and the wire hangar in the back for me. it turned out so well, i think my husband would like to keep it, but, it will be going on the occasional sale coming up in a couple of weeks.

crafting....

yesterday i told you that my mom and i had hung out and crafted....well, it was really only one project that we actually worked on- and that was re-purposing a mens' tie into a head band.  remember when i bought that adorable head band made from a men's tie at junk bonanza? we both thought it would be simple enough, as we are both experienced at sewing. here are the labels we saved off our ties from yesterday's project.

here are our finished products.... i have two more to make. and let me tell you what- this was not as easy as we first assumed! neither of us really had a good idea of how to make the rosettes, so we looked that up first here. there does seem to be a knack to wrapping and hot glueing.... i was happiest with my second rosette there in the middle- although, my mom (god bless her....) told me that all the rosettes looked great. once we were done with making  the flowers, we did hand stitch them back onto the ties.

the in-between parts consisted of cutting off a portion of the tie to use to make rosette. it was interesting, the more expensive the tie- those were hand stitched, and apparently i picked a couple of cheap brands as well, and my cheapies are machine sown...here is the pile of left-overs-the inside of the ties and a lining. the other piece we struggled with was how to finish the end of the tie that we had cut off. our sample of course had done a nice job of making it look how it was supposed to look with a restored point; our however....we did mange to get one to look similar to a point, and decided that it was too much of a hassle and finished the other two with a straight edge.