Hop on the Halloween Bus

This year for Halloween I was Miss Frizzle and Kyle was the Magic School Bus. My costume only cost me $5 and I wanted to show you how I made it!

DIY Miss Frizzle Costume

What You'll Need:
1. A blue dress
2. Felt squares (I used 6 (3 yellow, 1 blue, 1 white, and 1 orange)
3. Safety pins
4. Hot glue gun
5. Red flats
6. Stud earrings

Directions:
1. I had a star cookie cutter that I used for the star. I traced it on the yellow felt squares and cut it out. You could also free-hand draw a star and then trace that.

2. Then, you will need to find a circle shape to trace for the middle of the suns and for the planets. Cut out the circles.

3. Take the circles you cut out and place them on the orange felt. Then, draw sunbursts around them. Cut those out and hot glue the circles to the sunburst.

4. Take the other circles you have and place them on the white felt. Trace half of the circle and then move it over slightly and trace half of it again to make the moon.

5. Trace the circle and draw swirls in it. Put an x in half of the centers (to make the planets). Cut out the moons and the x parts of the planets. Hot glue those to the circles.

6. Draw rings on the white felt and cut those out. Hot glue those to the remaining circles.

7. Using safety pins, pin all of the felt items onto the dress.

8. Pin two stars onto your flats. Take stud earrings and push them through the felt stars.

9. Put on your outfit, put your hair up all crazy and enjoy!

Here is what my costume looked like:

Have a happy Halloween! Stay safe and check back at the end of this week for a booth update!

Polka face

I have been noticing polka dot jeans popping up everywhere. I have seen them on some of my favorite shopping sites. However, they aren't really affordable or in my price range. So I decided to make my own! Here are some inspiration pictures:

These are from Anthropologie. They aren't available anymore, but Anthro definitely isn't the cheapest.

These are from Shopbop and they cost $190, which is way out of my price range.

So I set out to Forever 21 to buy some $10 plain jeans. I looked around my house for the right size circle and my white oil-based paint. Here's the tutorial:

What You'll Need:

1. Jeans

2. Something round - I used the top of a glue stick (with the cap on)

3. White paint - you can use fabric paint or I used oil-based paint

4. Tape

5. Scissors

Directions:

1. Tape off the jeans in a diagonal pattern. Here's an example of my tape pattern:

2. Dip the glue stick in the paint and put a dot in all of the corners of the tape pattern and one in the middle.
3. Repeat this step (because it will need two coats). Here is what it will look like with tape and paint:

4. Take off the tape and see if there are any holes. Fill in the holes with more dots.
5. Let dry and then do the back side the same way.

Here is what the back looked like:

And finally, here is what the finished product looks like:

I am very pleased with how they turned out! These will definitely be a favorite for me this fall. And they only cost me about $15 overall. That sure beats $190. Stay tuned for my Halloween costume.

Recently...

I thought I would share a couple of projects I have been working on recently.

The first is our engagement pictures! Kyle set up the camera on his tripod, while I stood in the frame. Then our awesome friend Allie took the pictures. These are special to me not only because they are our engagement pictures, but they also show some of the best places in our neck of the woods. We tried to take the pictures in places we loved in Pendleton and of us doing the things we love (riding our bikes). Here are a couple:

I have also been working on some wedding stuff. I have been busy painting some more silver trays with chalkboard paint and finding accessories for my dress (like a fab headpiece).

Speaking of previous projects resurfacing, I am making another mobile. Here are the beginning stages.

Since it has been getting a little chilly, we snatched up a coat rack when we saw it. We spray painted it white and we love the faux bamboo look. You can find it in our booth at Midland!

And lastly, Kyle's brother Neil and his girlfriend found this awesome shaker at Goodwill. It will look awesome at our wedding since it has silhouettes. Great find you guys!

Check back later this week because I have a fun fashion DIY to share with you!

Time Table

Recently, we have been spending a lot of time working on pieces for the booth and rearranging the booth. Last week we worked hard on a table. We taped off the gold details and painted the rest of it a glossy white. I think this would be a great buffet in a kitchen or a fancy bar somewhere, with wine bottles on the side shelves of course. Here is what it looks like:

We also found this golden chair and fixed the springs a little bit. Then, we painted the legs white.

Lastly, here is what the booth looks like after our rearranging.

Stay tuned for some upcoming before and after projects this week!

Tips & Tricks

I was think the other day that I should share some tips and tricks I use when refinishing furniture.

1. Wooden dresser drawers won't slide open easily? Just use some soap or a candle! Wooden dressers that are old (which are the best if you ask me) tend to become hard to slide open after a long time. If you rub a bar of soap or a candle on the drawer tracks, it will allow the drawers to slide open easily. The wax lubricates the track and makes it easy to open. We used this trick on my dresser in my room when we got it! Bonus: it will even make it smell better.

2. Hammer + Flat head screw driver = no more paint on the rim. Have you ever started painting and have the paint pool in the rim of the can? I hate that and sometimes it prevents you from getting a good reseal on the can. We had a can of paint dry out due to this issue. If you hammer the flat head in four spots on the rim, it will create little holes in the rim. Then, the paint will drip back in the can and won't pool. And it only takes a couple of seconds. Here are some pictures of me using this trick:

 This is what the hole looks like:

3. Wood stain pen. When we stained our floors, we found out that the maker of the stain also sold a pen in the same stain color. We bought it immediately because we knew it would be great for scratches and touch ups. Little did we know that we would use it all the time. It is great to touch up ay wood product! Here is a similar one to the one we use that I found on Google:

We used it to touch up this mid-century modern desk we sold in the booth:

4. Spray paint. I love spray paint. It is great to use on hardware. Some old hardware can look drab as old, rusty metal. I have found that if you spray it white or silver it looks vintage, but fresh. It just adds a pop to the piece. Here are some pieces I have spray painted the hardware on:

5. Oil-based paint. It will stick to almost any surface well. You can buy glossy oil-based paint (which is what we get) and it will create a beautiful shine on the furniture. Oil-based paint lasts and looks great. We use the Rustoleum protective enamel. I started using this because of Natty By Design, a blog I follow.

Hope these tips and tricks help in your home project! If you ever have any questions for me or want some recommendations, please comment!

Side table Sunday

Things have been going really fast in the booth so we went on Sunday to add some pieces and change things around. We have a few new pieces to show you and an updated layout.

The first piece is a light blue, vintage cabinet. I love the industrial look of it!

The next piece is a mid-century modern side table that we decided to paint glossy black. I really like that it has a little shelf and a drawer to display or hide things.

The last piece is the last update from my sneak peek post. We decided to paint it teal because teal side table seem to be selling really well in our booth.

And lastly, here is the new layout of the booth! As usual, you can see it anytime at Midland in downtown Indianapolis.

DIY Silhouette Cake Toppers

I am excited to share another wedding DIY with you! Kyle's family has silhouettes of each family member. In our living room we have several of them framed and hung on the wall. I love the simplicity of them and that you can tell exactly who each one is. So we decided to have silhouettes as part of our wedding theme.

The first thing you will need to do is create a digital silhouette. I am very lucky because Kyle is a graphic designer, so he just whipped ours up in Photoshop from two profile pictures of us. However, I did find a great DIY digital silhouette tutorial on Pinterest.

Here is what our finished digital silhouettes look like:

Now it's time for the cake topper DIY.

What You'll Need:

1. A print out of your silhouettes
2. Scissors
3. Black Cardstock
4. Pencil
5. Sucker sticks
6. Sharpie
7. Super glue

Steps:

1. Cut out the printed silhouettes.
2. Trace the printed silhouettes onto the cardstock using a pencil.
3. Cut out the silhouettes on the card stock
4. Color half of the sucker stick with a sharpie (so it is black like the cardstock). But only color half because the white half will go in the cake. I don't know about you, but I don't really want to eat Sharpie cake.
5. Super glue the black half of the sucker stick to the back of your silhouettes.

Here is an after picture of ours:

I think these will look really great on top of our cake and I love how they really look like us!

Early Grey Dresser

I have another update for you from our sneak peek. This time we redid the buffet. Here is the before picture:

We decided to paint it grey. So keeping with the English theme, it is now called the Earl Grey Dresser. I haven't heard anything about the queen stopping by our booth. However, I have now created even more of an incentive for her to visit. We also took some black metal knobs we had lying around in the garage and spray painted them white. Here is what the finished product looks like:

Items in the booth have been going fast, so we will have an update for you later this week or early next week. We have several new pieces we want to show you!

The royal dresser

Remember this black dresser that I showed you in my sneak peek post?

Well it's done and we decided to paint it royal blue! So it is henceforth deemed the royal dresser. I bet the Queen of England is stopping by our booth right now to pick it up. Here is the after picture:

And it's in the booth now. Things have been going really fast in the booth, so we stopped by on Saturday to drop off the dresser and rearrange things. It was looking a hot mess when we arrived on Saturday, so you know we had to fix that. Here is what it looks like now:

 We think this is about as empty as the booth has looked in a long time. Don't worry though, we are working hard on those other pieces I showed you in the sneak peek. Stay tuned for updates on those pieces!