How many of us have a lot of jewelry?

I do! I do! I do!

I never 'knew' what all I had though because I couldn't find it or see it all. It was in drawers or in piles in a couple of different places in the bedroom.

Not any more! I can see almost all of my earrings and brooches now. A few select necklaces are out as well.

You know what's even better. I reused an old window that I had to make said jewelry shine! Here's what I made!

These jewelry holders are all over blog land, and I'm happy to say that this project didn't cost me one red cent. Well it did at one time, but I did not buy anything new to make this jewelry display.

So here are some close-ups!


I just stapled the hardware cloth inside of each frame. This was not as easy a task as one would think, but I made it work. Fitting the hardware cloth inside the frames and then laying down a bead of silicone probably would have been easier and more secure than the staples I used, but silicone would have taken too long to dry. I wanted this thing up pronto!

Another note - did you notice the heart hanging from the window? Its full of rose petals from the first rose that the hubs ever gave me.

Now I just need a good way to organize all those rings I have!

So what started off as a very long project has finally reached completion!

Wahoo!

So the journey started like this.

She's really beat up, but she's got such pretty potential. I love her lines and her femininity. Unfortunately, there's no saving the veneer. It has to come off.
It was tough going at times, and then I just had to stop, because the veneer was not coming off. So a $6 iron, some perseverance, hard work and about an hour later She was completely free of damaged veneer. yay! Now how to finish her? It would take me a while to figure it out. I fixed the pitting and gouges and then sanded until she was baby-butt smooth. Then it sat. And sat. And sat some more.

Then hubs and I moved it inside, and it sat for a few days. I did figure out what paint treatment she needed on the 2nd day though, then it was just finding time to do it. :) I decided on a dry brush technique using the yellow color already in our master bedroom and antique white.
After a mishap where I painted the desk portion and forgot to paint the mirror, the whole painting process took no time at all. So here she is back up in the room!

 Please pay no mind to the mess just off camera. I still haven't gotten all the fabric back into my sewing room. You'll also notice that pictures have moved around, and maybe even see a few new ones. More on one of them below!


 The hubs wasn't so sure about the shabby finish of the piece, but after everything was put together I think he liked it. He said he did, so that's what I'm going with. I love it! I love the whole look and how it all came together! I really love all the details too, including some of the cracked veneer that I didn't remove.
 So are you wondering about one of the pictures? Do you follow Straight Stitches on facebook? If not, then you have no idea that inside one of the drawers of this vanity I found a page of scribbles and math equations from either my aunt or my mom. How cool is that? The vanity was in my grandparents' outdoor shed and lots of critters took advantage of her, but they also left some nice details. Anyways, back to the paper, I decided that the perfect way to showcase it was to frame it and put it up near the vanity. I really like the story behind it and its just a cool thing to showcase.

So there's my new vanity and I am in love.


Linking up to:

So if you guys follow the Straight Stitches Facebook page the you'll know that I started working on a vanity to replace the one that had been in our master bedroom. I gave the desk that I had been using as a vanity to Devlin so that he could have a computer desk in his room.

The vanity that I'm working on was in my grandparents' shed and was somewhat exposed to the elements. Luckily, the piece was veneered and it seems that the only real damage was to the veneer.

So out comes a cruddy iron ($6.50 at Walmart, baby!) and lots of water for the steamy action that commenced.

Removing the veneer with the iron was a fairly painless process, but it also didn't hurt that it was already humid outside because of the thunderstorms that were passing through the area.

I had the iron set to wool or linen with steam and it probably only required about 60 seconds of steam on a section to loosen the glue. Then came my trusty putty knife. I actually ended up leaving the iron on a section while working on a different section and then moving the iron to yet another section and the working on the section that the iron had just been resting on. I don't know of that's the correct way but it's the way that I did it and it worked for me.

So after removing all of the veneer, I stopped. I'm still stopped. Why? Because I don't know how to finish off this thing. I have pinned a few ideas which I'll share later, but the main problem is that idk renown if the top is going to be stainable. I don't even know that I want to stain it. I may just paint it and then distress it. Or I could tile it, but the problem with that is the cost associated with that. I would love to finish it all in mirrors but unless I win the lottery tonight there's no way I can justify that expense. So the poor thing sits.

Tomorrow I should at least take a sanding block to her to see exactly what I'm working with. Oh, I also found some errant notes from either my mom's or aunt's time in school. Apparently page 366 was homework. :)

So today I'm going to share how I altered my tab top curtains to back tab curtains. You can see the finished product hanging here.


This may be the simplest curtain alteration - ever.

Seriously. Someone with no sewing experience could do this.

So lets get started.

Obv you need to have a tab top curtain.

I ironed my curtain so that everything would be nice, crisp and flat.

What we're going to do is fold the tabbed portions back underneath the curtain header and then stitch them down. Now where you stitch is up to you and the width of your curtain rod. My curtains rods are teeny so I was able to stitch in the ditch of the existing header so you can't even see my new stitches.

Here's me folding the first tab to the backside of the curtain.

You can't really see it, but I am stitching in the ditch (stitching over existing stitching).

Here's a slightly clearer view of the stitching line I'm following. It's faint but it's there. Also I did not fold under the tabs until I was almost on them. I made sure to keep my needle in the down position while doing this as well.

Just a couple more shots of me stitching these tabs down.

You want to make sure and try to get the tabs to fold as flat as possible and have the tops line up as much as possible so that your new header on the curtain doesn't look flunky.

So here's the curtains hanging. You can see the shadow of the tabs a little bit, but when you move away from the window you can't tell at all. It doesn't help that the white cotton shows everything as well.

Here's the view of the back of the curtain - looking up at the curtain rod. The rod slides nicely along the new back tabs, but it doesn't  hang limply. I also did not cut those tabs in case I wanted to undo this alteration in the future. I probably never will, but you never know.

Now for the fine print. When you buy an 84" curtain and you convert it from tab top to back tab you will lose about 3 inches. I avoided this, because the curtains I bought from Ikea were unfinished at the bottom, so I measured down 84" from the header I was going to be creating. Just an FYI. :)

One more of the finished product. :)

Hope you guys enjoyed this super simple tutorial!

Have a great day,
Heather

I decided to do something I've never done before to my master bedroom.

I decided to change up some of the textiles in the room for a season.

I'm so glad I did too!!!
What do you guys think?

I love how the white brightens everything.
Oh wait, here's what it looked like right before the change.

It should have looked like this, but we've gotten lazy.

All of the new whiteness is from Ikea.

I altered the curtains so that they were back tab which I'll show you how to do tomorrow. :) But for now here's some more deliciousness for you guys to gaze upon. :)


I have decided that I definitely need more color on this bed, so I guess that mean I'll be making more pillows :)

Oh darn.

See you guys tomorrow!
Heather

I'm at it again. I cannot get enough of these felt dahlias, of course now I want to add flowers to everything, but so far I've been able to restrain myself. Almost.

I may have gotten my fix. About 9 times over.

So you guys remember when I made my Dahling Headband?

Yep these are the same dahlias.

I just added some yellow seed beads to center. I just added a drop of hot glue to the centers, and then poured the seed beads over the hot glue. When the glue had cooled a bit, I pressed the beads down into it, and then just shook off the excess.

Then I let all 9 flowers sit for about a month while my sewing room got ravamped, but last night I decided it was time to finish this project.

I had gotten some pretty  yellow linen from Ikea a while back and it'd even been all washed up. Saves me time. :) So I cut out two 15" squares and then sewed up 3.25 of the seams. Why the quarter, because on that 4th side I sewed about 2" in from each corner, just so the corner would be nice and finished. :)

After turning the pillow I folded it in half, and then ironed a line down the center, then I brought each edge to my ironed middle line and ironed 2 more lines. I rotated the pillow 90 degrees and then did it again. So I ended up with a nice grid that had 9 intersections of ironed lines.

I stuffed a small cardboard square into the pillow, because I did not want to accidentally glue the two side together. The fabri-tac was then whipped out and I proceeded to paint the bottoms of the dahlias with glue and then stuck them on to the pillow at the ironed intersections. I made sure to press each one down, and then as I was working another project I would place the stuff I was working with on the pillow to add some weight and help those flowers stick. Not that I was worried, because fabri-tac bonds everything nice and tight, but you know - the boys.

The boys likes to play- hard, and my darling pillow may not be able to stand up to their type of playing.

So after the glue was dry, and I had a nice night's sleep, I removed the cardboard, and shoved my pillow form into the linen and then sewed up the opening.
Isn't she precious? She's going in my bedroom, which is going to get a summer makeover just as soon as I wash the sheets. Which maybe should be sometime in the near future, hopefully. ;-)

Have a great day guys!
Heather