Stuffed Monsters

For cb, Barracuda, and E's birthdays, and for T and M for Christmas this year, I decided to make them some stuffed monsters. I got the idea from here and pretty much followed her instructions, so I won't repeat the instructions on my blog. Just a few additional tips:

- To get a larger variety of colors, I bought a packet of paper-sized felt instead of buying it by the yard. This way, each monster required 2 pieces of felt (one for the front and one for the back) with plenty of scraps to use for eyes and other accessories.

- Don't make the arms and legs (or any other part for that matter) too narrow. The more narrow, the more difficult it is to stuff. Try to keep everything wide enough that you can fit your index finger in after it is sewn together. Even if your finger doesn't fit, you can still use a pencil or other similar device to stuff those areas.

- Once you've sewn the front and back together, make sure everything you thought was sewn together is actually sewn together. Once I started stuffing, there were a few places that I noticed holes in my top-stitching. I ended up having to close those by hand, which was really annoying.

- Also, make sure the opening you leave is as small as you can make it and still stuff through it and make sure it is on a straight edge. The closer it is to an arm or leg or other non-straight part, the more difficult it will be to sew closed because those other stuffed parts will get in the way, especially when back-stitching.

I think these little guys turned out adorably - too bad I have to wait until December (and February and June) to get the kid's reactions.

Chair Upgrade

I know I've mentioned it somewhere on this blog but to recap, a long time ago, like February 2013, I bought three chairs for the purpose of re-upholstering and repainting them in order to customize them so they'd look really nice in my house. Well, I finally finished one. Yes, it took about two and half years but I'm done. . . with one. I actually finished it several weeks ago but I've been busy so I haven't posted yet. Busy with what? Well, I'm selling the house, so I've been busy getting it in order. That was also my final motivation for finally finishing the chair.

My original plan was to do a detailed blog about how to do something like this, but two and a half years later I've decided I'm not going to go into detail. There are already lots of blogs out there with all the details so I'll keep mine pretty top level.

Overall, it was a fun, not too hard, not too expensive project.

The "before" chair just before getting started. The first steps, obviously, were taking it apart. The base of the chair was pretty easy - a couple of screws. Getting the fabric off was another story. There were lots and lots and lots of staples. Lots of staples and each had to be taken out one at a time. To do so I used a flat head screw driver, some needle nose pliers, and lots of elbow grease. I got blisters from this but it was kind of fun. Once the staples were off I set aside the fabric and piping and took the batting and cushions off. The finished chair has the same seat base with the original springs.

I decided to leave the black stuff in the middle. I think it might have some cushion in the middle but it all seemed to be in pretty good condition so I figured I would save myself a few steps and leave it. After getting everything apart I made an attempt to use some kind of liquid sand paper stuff to take off the original finish. I don't think I'll do this with the other two chairs. It was a ton of work and I'm not sure I did a great job. Plus, the step afterward is priming with an oil based primer (the same primer I used with those gross shelves) that sticks to everything. I don't see the point in doing both steps in the future. By the way, I think I did two coats of primer.

After priming I painted. This chair is yellow; it is the same paint I used on my dining room walls. I had a really hard time getting the lid off the can of paint so what was left is all dried up now so my other chairs may end up being a different color. This should be fine since they will also have a different fabric (the white backed floral in the top photo). I did two coats of paint.

For the new fabric, I kept all the original fabric (I labeled it as I took it off so I would know how to put it back together) and laid it out on the new fabric then cut the new fabric using the old fabric as a pattern. This worked out really nicely. I also used the front and back original fabrics as well as the seat's original fabric to create a pattern for the cushions. I don't have any pictures of that but it was easy enough. After the fabric was cut, I sewed the the seat fabric together and sewed the piping. For the seat's piping I used the original piping, which worked out beautifully, but my sewing machine didn't like the original piping that was on the front and back of the chair so I bought new piping for that . . . and hated it. It was a lot flimsier than the original piping so I didn't know how I was going to end up stapling it to the chair without the staples showing. Once I had everything sewed, I avoided putting it back together because I didn't like the piping. Then I had an epiphany - don't staple the piping, hot glue it. Duh, right? So I staples everything (which is so much fun - I love my staple gun!) then glued the piping, screwed the cushion back on, and now it is all done and I'm really happy with it.

Pocket Pillows

Yes, I originally saw this on Pinterest and I immediately loved it. What's better than having a pillow with a pocket? (Ok, dresses with pockets are up there but this is still super cool.) I've decided that my nieces and nephews are getting these, plus a book of course, for their birthdays this year.

The original pin I found didn't have very straight-forward instructions on how to make the pillow so I figured it out myself.

Fabric you'll need:
A - (2) 20 x 20 inch
B - (1) 11 x 21 inch
C - (1) 13 x 21 inch
D - large-ish scraps for letters (optional)
E - (2) 11 x 1.5 inch

Yes, B & C are wider than A. This will help ensure that the pocket is big enough to actually fit stuff in it. You'll also need thread and about 14 - 20 ounces of filling, depending on how firm you want the pillow.

Steps:
1. Sew both E pieces right side together on the long sides only. Turn it right side out.
2. Sew B and C wrong sides together so that three sides meet, only sew those three sides.
3. Fold over the extra fabric on the top twice (so the outside edge is the nice edge) and sew.
4. Sew your letters to A1.
5. Place A1 right side up. Lay E on top so that the ends meet the edge of A1 and the middle is on the inside (Once you place the rest of the layers down, you will only be able to see the ends of E). On top of that place B+C B side down and A2 right side down. While pinning you'll notice the extra inch on B+C; make sure the pin the edges so they meet the edges of both A fabrics. This keeps the extra inch of fabric in the middle and gives the pocket extra space.
6. Sew on all sides leaving about 1.5 inches open.
7. Turn the pillow right side out; stuff it through the opening.
8. Hand sew the opening closed.

Sharpie Art on Cavnas

I saw some sharpie art on Pinterest that looked really neat. The post I saw was for decorating small, white tiles, which I didn't want to do, so I went looking for something similar on canvas. I didn't find anything. I did however, find a blog about using sharpies to tie-dye shirts. Also not what I wanted but still a cool project. I decided to try this one on my own and I learned a few things.

My goal was to see if this would work well on canvas instead of the other mediums I had seen it on. So I went to Walmart and bought a 3-pack of 8 x 10 canvases for $3 total. I have sharpies laying around the house but I wanted to use new ones to make sure I didn't run out of any color (because the ones I have around are pretty old). Unfortunately, Walmart didn't have the big pack of Sharpie brand so I went with the Bic brand. I also purchased some rubbing alcohol and used a medicine dropper that I already had. I made sure to set the canvas on an old towels that I didn't mind having the colors bleed on to and I think that was an excellent idea. I also elevated the canvas a little by putting it (and the towel) on some cardboard to ensure that I didn't get any color on my table.

I started by coloring lines on my canvas. I left some white space between each color to allow some space for the colors to move around without getting too mixed up. Then I dropped alcohol onto the white spaces and slightly on the surrounding color. I let this sit until the alcohol was almost dry-ish. 

As you can see, after waiting, there are sill lots of white spaces where my colors didn't mix. I dropped alcohol onto just these white spaces in order to fill them with color. Again I let this sit. I probably could have filled in a few more white spaces but I dropped my dropper into my alcohol container and didn't feel like doing anything else after getting it out.

The final product is the top image in this posting which is also the image below. Like I said, I learned a few things and I have highlighted those things in my three test subjects below.

The blue circles below show where too many or the wrong colors mixed together to make kind of an ugly brown patch. I would be careful putting non-primary colors next to any other color that didn't create that color. Those colors mixing together are often (but not always, read on) what causes the brown spots.

 

The yellow circles highlight places where you can see my pen mark. In most cases, I think this could be avoided by coloring the marker on thicker. This is especially obvious on the last image below.

The gray circles (sorry they aren't easier to see) are where you can see my alcohol drops. This is really only an issue when I dropped single drops on just one color. It gave the canvas kind of a polka dot effect and I don't care for it. I fixed a lot of it by adding more alcohol so there would be some more interesting shapes.

 

The green circles (above image only) are where two primary colors came together to make another color, I really like these spots.

The orange circles (below image only) are where two non-primary colors that I probably shouldn't have put together actually look ok. The image below was my first attempt, where I could just do stuff to see what happened. I started with purple and green because I like that color combination. (Some of the colors below look like pink and turquoise - they were purple and green before I put alcohol on them. The alcohol changes the colors a bit.) I think there isn't more brown with these two colors because this shade of purple often drowns out the shade of green I used.

Overall, this was a fun project. I don't think I'll ever do anything more than 8 x 10 because of how long it would take but I think the rainbow canvas and the primary colors canvas both turned out nice.

Activity Days: String Art Temple

A while ago we had an activity on temples. Since 8 year old girls don't sit still or listen for very long, I decided to do a craft along with the lesson. I had seen string art all over Pinterest and thought it could work for a temple.

One of the issues, however, was that the tutorials I saw all involved nails on wood boards. I was very much uninterested it handing nails and a hammer to the girls and I was also uninterested in doing all the hammering before the activity since I was never sure how many girls were going to show up (I think 2 showed up for this activity).

While walking around Jo-Ann for ideas, I came across these small, square cork boards and figured they, with push pins, would be perfect for 8 year olds. (I bought the clear push pins at Walmart because they were significantly cheaper there than Jo-Ann.)

Unfortunately the push pins didn't fit really well, they were longer than the cork board was thick. This means that the pointy end of the push pins would hang out the back or we had to be careful not to push the pins all the way through.

For the shape of the temple I drew out a few different designs on paper. The girls chose their design and cut it out. Then we placed the design on the cork board and put the push pins in around the edges of the design. Taking the paper out afterword was not as easy as I thought it would be so we ended up leaving a few scraps in there figuring the string would hide it. I had pre-cut long pieces of string and let the girls go to town filling in the shape.

Overall, it was an ok activity. I probably wouldn't do it again with this age group - maybe 11 year old girls - and I would definitely make sure the cork board was thick enough for the pins.

Dress Alteration

A few months ago, maybe mid-December, I went to JCPenney's to do some dress shopping.  I probably tried on 30 or so dresses because I went in with low expectations.  I was sure I was only going to be able to find something that needed some kind of alteration.  Well, I found three dresses that looked good on me and (probably) wouldn't need any alterations to make them work.  Unfortunately I only had the budget for two, so the one you see here is the one I didn't get.

Fast forward a month or so and I was at Penney's again. I decided to stop by the dress section and I found that third dress on clearance for $14.  By that time I had $14 in my budget for a new dress so I scooped it up.

While trying it on it felt like it was going to be long enough but the first time I wore it it felt just a little too short.  So I decided to lengthen it.  The original hem used that fancy stitch (I can never remember what it is called) that doesn't actually show the stitching and I don't remember how to do that and I didn't want to figure out how to do that plus everywhere else on the dress had a little black lining, so I decided to finish the hem with a similar black lining.  And it was easy.  Here's what I did.

Step 1 - Take out the hem.

Step 2 - Do some measuring. I measured the width of the black lining on the other parts of the dress (about 1/4 inch) and of the stitching at the hem (also about 1/4 inch).  This led me to believe that I would need at least a full inch of fabric for my lining: 1/4 inch on each side to match the lining and hide the stitching + 1/4 inch on each side for a seam allowance.

Side note: I actually used about 1 1/4 inch fabric just to be sure.

Step 3 - Cut and iron the fabric.  Once I had a long strip of black fabric, long enough to go all the way around the bottom of the dress, I ironed it.  If you are a talented enough sewer, you could probably skip all or part of this step but I'm going to say what I did even if it wasn't necessary.  I started by ironing the strip in half width ways.  After that, I folded the outer sides into my new crease and folded them down.  That is all.

Step 4 - Pin and sew.  I started by laying the black fabric so that the ends that were sewn to the middle were on top.  I then placed my dress hem on top - right side up (this means the dress was inside out and the inside of the dress was toward the black fabric's ends).  Then I pinned.  Then I sewed.  To finish the ends together I did it kind of like I do the binding on a quilt - when I got close, I sewed the two ends together so the black strip was one big circle, then just finished sewing the strip onto the skirt hem.

As you can see in the last image, I got about 1 1/2 inches of extra length on the dress, so it should be perfect now!

New Wall Decor

I actually have something on my living room wall now!

As you can see from this first picture, it was just a big, ugly, beige wall.  From the second picture you can see that it now has decor.  It is just a cheap poster frame with some fabric in it but it sure is better than nothing.

I got the frame from JoAnn.  It was originally $60 but I had a 40% off coupon and a 20% off the entire purchase coupon so I didn't pay anywhere close to $60.  The fabric is left over from when I re-upholstered my kitchen bar stools.

The plan for the future is to paint the frame the same green color that is on the opposite wall, but I don't really want to do that now.  My goal for this iteration was just to get something up there so the wall wouldn't look so empty.

Now for that room all I need to do is replace those ugly folding chairs with actual sitting chairs. I have my eye on some old restaurant chairs that I've seen on KSL that I'll re-upolster and re-paint but I haven't gotten around to buying them yet.  Hopefully they are still available when I do go to buy them.

DIY: Bench From A Coffee Table

I made a bench seat.  From a coffee table.  It was easy.

I got part of my inspiration from this blog that I found via, you guessed it, Pinterest.  There was another pin that was similar too but I liked the above linked to blog better.

You can tell simply from looking at the pictures that my bench is a little bit different from her ottoman.  She covered the top and sides of her coffee table with foam, batting, and fabric then stapled it all underneath the coffee table.  I didn't want to do it exactly like that because I wanted to keep the drawer in the coffee table functional. . . and my way was a little easier too.

Materials Needed (based on the fact that my bench was about 40 inches x 20 inches)
- foam to fit the top - you may need to cut it to fit
- batting to fit the top, sides of the foam, and go under the foam- I got 28 inches of 48 inch wide batting.
- fabric to fit the top, sides of the foam, and go under the foam - I got 28 inches of 54 inch wide fabric.
- hot glue

Step 1: Cut the foam to fit.
The foam should be exactly the size of the top of the coffee table.  I bought two pieces of foam that were 2 x 22 x 22.  I used a ruler to measure where to cut on the foam and a sharpie marker to draw a cut line.  Then CJ found some exacto-knives and we simply cut on the lines.  The lady at Jo-Ann told me an electric knife works really well but I didn't have one so I made do.

Step 2 (optional): Glue the pieces of foam to each other.
I call this step optional because it is possible to have just one piece of foam or if multiple pieces of foam are used it is still possible to continue with the other steps while the foam isn't glued together - I just figured it would be easier if they were attached.

Step 3: Lay the batting flat on the ground then lay the foam in the center.

Step 4: Glue the batting to the foam.
I did the long sides first then folded the corners of the short sides in and glued them in place.

Step 5: Lay the fabric right side down on the ground then lay the foam/batting in the center.

Step 6: Glue the fabric to the foam/batting.
Again, I started with the long sides.

Step 7: Glue the foam to the top of the coffee table.
I put a line of glue down the middle of the coffee table then put the foam on top of that.  Then I lifted the sides of the foam and just glued near the edges all the way around.  Seems as though it worked pretty well since the foam padding is attached to my coffee table pretty well.

Done.

I put the bench in my entry way. The first picture below shows my entry while we were still using the coffee table in the living room.  The second picture is the entry after we bought a new coffee table (with matching side tables!). The last in the entry with the finished bench.

Christmas Decorations

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I like to get the Christmas decorations out, so that's exactly what I did today.  I've been excited about today for a long time - since last December.  Last year on the day after Christmas I bought decorations for a whole new color theme - a white tree with only green ornament.  And now that it is all put together I can officially say that I love it!

Anyway, I also made a new wreath this year.  It is based off of all the picture frame wreaths with ornaments that you see all over Pinterest.  Instead of using a square frame I wanted to use a round one, so it was more wreath-like.  Sadly, the white oval frame that I found and loved wasn't on sale like every other frame at Michael's that day and I wasn't about to pay $20 for it.  Instead I found a round piece of MDF that is made for making wreaths - it cost less than $4.

All the materials that were needed for this super easy project were the circle, some ribbon, some extra ornaments, white paint, a paint brush, and hot glue.

Step 1: Paint the MDF white.  I wish I would have had a smaller paint brush to get the inside and outside edges but I made due with what I already had.

Step 2: Place the ornaments on some of the ribbon and make a bow out of some of the other ribbon.  I made the bow directly on the wreath so I wouldn't have to worry about gluing it on.

Step 3: Glue the ornament's ribbon to the top, middle of the wreath and glue down the bow's ends.  Originally I was just going to try to tie everything onto the wreath so I could re-use the ornaments and plain white wreath other years but I couldn't figure out how to get that to work with the type of hanging device I had.  Oh well, I guess this just means I don't have to make another wreath when I do this color theme again.

Done.  I think the wreath would look a lot better on my red door if we didn't have a door knocker but whatever.

For your viewing pleasure, here are images of my other decorations:

These are my favorite ornaments on my tree.

The first is a bottomless glass ornament with some tiny pine cones in the middle and some ever-green-like painting on the outside.  Even though the brown doesn't fit 100% with my green only theme, I love this ornament and if the store had more I would have purchased more.

The second is just some glittery green branch like stuff with some glittery green pine cones.  I just set these on some of my white branches to add some tree-like green to the white tree.

The third is a green poinsettia.  It has a clip on the back so I just clipped a few of these to the tree.  I like how they are big and add another dimension to the tree.

This is the whole of my tree.

I took the green candle and white rocks out of my normal centerpiece and replaced it all with some extra green ornaments.

Activity Days: Felt Piggy Bank

Our activity for Activity Days is tomorrow and we are going to have a lesson and activity on Tithing and Budgeting.  A while ago on Pinterest (duh) I found this pin - four super cute felt piggy banks.  I was hoping the link went to a tutorial but it didn't, it went to a store where you could buy the product.

Anyway, I thought these would be a really cute handout for the Tithing and Budgeting lesson so I decided to make some myself, which was super easy.

Step One: Cut out an even number pigs from felt (see below the pattern that I used).  Honestly, this was the hardest step.

Step Two: Sew a button hole near the top of half of the pigs.  Because these were going to be used for money, instead of using a button to determine the size of my button hole I used a quarter.

Step Three: Top stitch together one pig without a hole and one pig with a hole.

Done.

Activity Days: Decorating Pumpkins

I'm an Activity Days leader.  When I was called to that calling I had no idea what it even meant; I'm too old to have ever been in Activity Days in Primary.  To be honest, I'm still not sure about the point of the whole thing but I do it.  Some times we do churchy stuff, some times we just do fun stuff.

For the activity before Halloween we just did fun stuff because we couldn't think of anything churchy that had anything to do with Halloween.  We decided to decorate pumpkins but just decorations, not carving.  We did not want to have to be responsible for 8 year olds with knives.

I bought the googly-eyes, pipe cleaners, and puffy things at Walmart   They all came together in pretty little, matchy packages, which I didn't expect.  I thought I'd have to buy all that stuff separately.

My co-leader brought the jewel things and the genius idea to use hot glue instead of Elmer's - Elmer's did not work, at all.

Anyway, below are some of our creations.

Sewing Room Shelves

Here are what the selves look like with some sewing stuff on them.

1. Supporting materials such as a quilt batting and interfacing.  These were too tall to put on the regular shelves so I put them on the top shelf of the shelf that didn't have a top.

2. Large bolt fabrics.  There was too much of these fabrics to put on the smaller bots so they also ended up on the only shelf they would fit on.

3. This is a project in process - right on top and easy to get to.

4. This is an organizer for smaller, notion type things.  It doesn't have much in it right now but in mine I have thread, pins, elastic, safety pins, etc.

5. Patterns.  My mom has a lot of patterns.  The large, clear box (provided by Mom) has non-adult girls patterns, the larger purple box (provided by me) has adult women patterns and the other, smaller purple box has adult men/unisex patterns.

6. Flannel. JoAnn had a sale on flannel earlier this year and this is what Mom got.  There is some really cute stuff here.

7. Felt scraps.  The container (provided by Mom) is about the size of a piece of felt so all her single pieces of felt plus all her scrap felt is in there.

8. Felt by the yard.

9. Heirloom scraps.  Mom is going to make an heirloom quilt using memorable fabrics so, if I recognized a fabric from my childhood or as something special, it went in this box (provided by Mom).

10. Other fabrics such as lace and tulle.

11. Patterned fabrics.

12. Patterns.  The box on the left is costumes while the box on the right is craft patterns.

13. The fabrics on the bottom shelves are solid colored or mostly one color.

14. Other scraps.

Painting Laminate Shelves

For Mother's Day I made my mom a Birthday Board.  Because I wanted the birthday board to look good in the room where she would put the birthday board I went through her craft/sewing room looking for leftover materials from which her curtains were made.  I never found them.

That was when I began my plan for Mom's birthday gift: a sewing room redo.  For my mom's birthday I am going to organize her sewing room.  While on Pinterest I found this blog where the blog writer cut up diaper boxes to make mini bolts for all of her scrap fabric - which I found absolutely brilliant.  I decided that step 1 would be that mom was going to need some shelving so we had somewhere to put those mini bolts.

Step One: Buy Shelves

Now is September but I decided on the project in July.  I wasn't working then and needed a cheap way to find some shelving.  I turned to Craigslist.  I occasionally found some shelves that would work but July wasn't going to be a good month for dipping into the budget.  Then August came around and I got a job.  While perusing Craigslist I came across two "garage shelves" for $5 each.  Win.

By the way, this was my first ever Craigslist purchase.  When I went to pick up the shelves, I immediately realized why they had been listed as "garage shelves" - they were disgusting.  But they were the right price so I loaded them up into my car (well, I helped the seller load them up - they are heavy!)

Step Two: Clean Shelves

Because of the (very, very) dirty nature of the shelves, I left them in the garage.  The following Saturday I set out to clean them which turned out to be about a 4 - 5 hour project.  I equipped myself with hot soapy water, a rag, gloves (omg I am so glad I had gloves so I would have to get my hands anywhere near that nasty water), and Lysol wipes.

I started with the hot soapy water and the rag.  Well, these shelves didn't smell great to begin with but when i got them wet they smelled horrific.  If you look really close in the Before picture above, you can see some streaky stuff on the back near the corner.  I think that is some kind of animal urine.  Gross.  (Again, totally grateful for gloves!)  I scrubbed and scrubbed (the middle picture is where the shelf above the one in the Before and After pictures is clean but the shelf below it has not been cleaned yet) and scrubbed some more until it was clean.

Unfortunately, after all this scrubbing, the shelves still stunk to high heaven and I still wasn't convinced that they weren't going to give me some kind of disease.  This is where the Lysol wipes come in.  I think I used about 1 wipe per shelf on the first shelf (pictured) and probably 2-3 wipes per shelf on the second (by the time I got to the second shelf my rag and water were dirty, so the scrubbing probably wasn't as effective - I should have gotten new water and a new rag for the second, oh well).

I let the shelves sit and air out for several days then I cleaned them with Lysol wipes again.  They still had a odor but that will be taken care of in step three.

Step Three: Primer

Long before taking on this project I found a few blogs that discussed painting laminate shelving.  I had painted these kinds of shelves in the past but the paint didn't go on well and it didn't stay on well.  All of these blogs (including this one) basically said the same thing: use Zissner oil based primer.  After doing some research on Lowes.com I decided to go with Zissner's B-I-N primer in the red can because it not only would stick to laminate but it would also stick to other surfaces (the back of the shelves isn't laminate and the black part on the front is plastic), cover up stains (which my clean shelves had some of), cover up water damage (which there was some of on the shelves), but it would also cover up odor (win!)  Unfortunately this is also the most expensive of Zissner's primers at about $42 a gallon.  Luckily I didn't use the whole gallon (not quiet half even) so now I have some left over for another laminate painting project I have in the works.

This time I equipped myself with 2 paintbrushes, a face mask (oil based primers and paints can really stink), gloves (oil based paints and primers don't come off the skin as easily as latex based), mineral spirits (for my attempt to clean my brushes), and primer.

Each self got two coats of primer in four sittings:
Sitting 1 = prime the first coat on the front/inside/top/bottom of both shelves (about 2 hours) while laying on their backs.
Sitting 2 = prime the second coat on the front/inside/top/bottom of both shelves (about 2 hours) while laying on their backs.
Wait about 4 - 5 days for the primer to cure then flip over.
Sitting 3 = prime the first coat on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Sitting 4 = prime the second coat on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).

Once the primer was on and the garage no longer smelled like primer, the shelves started looking and smelling like something I would allow someone to put in their home.

Note about oil based primer: it is a beast to clean up.  A beast.  I read a blog (sorry, I didn't copy down the URL for this one) that said cleaning oil based primer and paint off of paintbrushes was easy with mineral spirits and dish soap.  But it was not easy.  I let my paintbrushes sit in mineral spirits for about 32 hours and with a bunch of hand work I still couldn't get those sucker clean.  Next time I'm going to buy cheap $1 brushes and just chuck them instead of trying to clean them.  Also, between sittings 1 & 2 and between sittings 3 & 4, I didn't worry about cleaning my brushes, I just put the brush in a Ziploc sandwich bag over night to keep it moist for the next sitting; works like a charm.

Step Four: Paint

Finally I was ready to paint these shelves.  I chose a white with blue undertones for the outside and back of the shelves and a sky/robin's egg/watery blue for the inside. I wanted these shelves to be bright, happy, and relaxing in their color.  I chose latex based paints for the ease of cleaning and just equipped myself with 1 paintbrush and the two paint colors.

I did the painting in six sittings:
Sitting 1 = paint the first coat of white on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Sitting 2 = paint the second coat of white on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Wait 4 - 5 days for the paint to cure then flip over on their backs.
Sitting 3 = paint the first coat of white on the front (the black plastic part), top, bottom, and sides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Sitting 4 = paint the second coat of white on the front, top, bottom, and sides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Wait 1 - 2 days for the white paint to begin to cure.
Sitting 5 = paint the first coat of blue paint on the insides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Sitting 6 = paint the second coat of blue paint on the insides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).

Now, after the shelves have time to sit and cure (the paint can says to wait 14 days to clean them or put anything on them) they will be ready for Mom's sewing room.  I'll blog later about the other ways I'm going to organize that room.

Birthday Board

Here's another find from Pinterest: a Birthday Board.  When I first saw this I thought it would make a great Mother's Day gift, so I pinned it and decided I would make it for my mom for Mother's Day.  Then Mom also pinned it and mentioned that she was going to make one for herself, so I had to tell her that I was going to make it for her.  I would have liked for it to be a surprise but this worked out alright because I was able to borrow paint from her that matched her walls.

I didn't keep my receipts from this project but the whole thing (including materials I didn't end up using because of a mess up) cost about $30.

Materials Used:
- Background Board.  Make sure it is large enough to fit 12 small dowels for each month and whatever text you want to put on it.  Make sure it is small enough to put wherever you want to put it.

- Text.  I couldn't find letters in the exact size I wanted so I also bought round dowels to put behind the text.

- Month and Day Dowels.  Make sure you have enough to have one for each month (Jan - Dec) and one for each birthday plus extras for an expanding family.  This is where my mess up happened but I'll get into that in a little more detail later.

- Hooks and Eyes.  Really you can attach you birthdays anyway you want but I wanted to use hooks and eyes so it would be easy to add new birthdays.  Make sure to get enough hooks for every month and day dowel and enough eyes for just the day dowels.

- Paint.  You'll need paint for the background board, the text on the background board, and the dowels but you'll also need a paint pen to add names and birthdays to the day dowels.

- Paint Brushes.  I had three but wished I had more because the paint dried faster on the dowels that the paint brushed dried after being cleaned.

- Hot Glue and Hot Glue Gun.  If there is a better way to attach everything to the board, by all means use that.

- Hanger.  I don't remember what this is really called but you'll need a thing to put on the back of the board so it can be hung on a wall.  I have a picture of one later on if I'm not being clear here.

Steps
1.  Paint everything that needs painting.
2.  (Optional) Glue text onto background dowels.
3.  Glue text/background dowels on to background board.  In the picture this looks really pretty with it being centered and all but the truth is, I wish I had glued them just a little higher on the Birthday Board.  From the first picture in the post you can see that the month dowels are really close to the text.  If I had glued the text higher, their wouldn't be so much empty space at the top of the Birthday Board and the whole thing would just look better.

Here are my side steps because of how I messed up.  The month and day dowels that I bought weren't thick enough for the hooks and eyes that I bought.  Dad was going to help me drill holes in the dowels for the hooks and eyes but we kept breaking the dowels.  So we went to the hardware store, bought some MDF and a hole saw (Dad had been looking for an excuse to buy one) and we cut out the dowels ourselves.  The side steps are for that process.

S1. Cut out dowels using the hole saw.  Make sure the saw is set up in a way that you won't be getting a hole in the middle of your dowel.
S2. The dowel won't be perfect, so sand off any awkward edges.
S3. Paint (see Step 1).  Painting these wider dowels was much easier than the thin ones because I didn't have to worry about getting paint everywhere.

Now back to the regular steps.

4.  Make a hole in the dowel in which to put the hooks and eyes.  Because my dowels were made from MDF, I could just use a push pin to make the holes.  If your dowels are made of something a little thicker, you may want to use a drill.  Remember that you month dowels only need one hole.
5.  Screw in hooks and eyes.  I used pliers (CJ's idea) to help screw in the hooks and eyes, it really ended up being easy after step 4.
6.  Use the paint pen to add names and days to the day dowels and the months to the month dowels.
7.  Screw the hook to the back of the board.  I also glued it on there, just to be safe.

Now, once all the days are hooked in the right order, you have a Birthday Board.