Fun, Easy, 20 Minute Pillow Tutorial!

I have come into a large stash of 27" squares of upholstery samples. This is a pretty decent size piece of fabric, but not really enough for one pillow and if you use two pieces, one for each side of the pillow, it leaves a lot of waste. So I figured out this super simple method to make one piece of 27" square fabric into a 15" pillow.

My fabric samples are discontinued upholstery samples, but you can use just about any fabric that you want, in varying sizes as well. This tutorial is meant to show you how to turn a large square of fabric into a pillow, with very minimal waste.

Start with your fabric, right side up. My fabric is 27" by 27" 

Fold all of the corners into the center, to meet at the center. 

Sew along each of the 4 sides, leaving half of the last seam open for stuffing. 

You could potentially stop here, turn it right side out, stuff it and close it. But I wanted mine to have more dimension, so I took it a step further. 

Fold each corner flat (think the opposite of how it will be when the pillow is finished). Mark a triangle that is 2" high and 4" wide on the corner with a fabric marker/pencil/chalk. 

Sew along that line and clip the corner off.

It should look like this. 

Turn it right side out..

And stuff it!

*This is where I took a break and waited patiently for Amazon to deliver my stuffing and forgot to take a picture when I finished up the other pillow.*

Once you have the pillow stuffed, close the seams with pins and close up the seam with the blind stitch (or whatever you choose to call it). 

These pillows look great with the seams up front, 

Or in the back! 

I love this pillow design! With all of the funky, trendy fabric samples, I've been making pillows for all my friends and family. It's a simple, easy and clean looking design. 

DIY Custom DVD Storage

Our Entertainment Center situation was getting out of hand. We had an old TV stand meant for a 30 some inch tube tv, holding our 46" flat screen TV. On top of that, we have over 300 dvds, which my husband needs to display, on a shelf, in the living room. We wanted a new tv stand, but we needed something that worked with our DVD storage, or new dvd storage. After searching everywhere we couldn't find anything that could meet our needs. So we started looking into making our own storage. We found this post for making your own DVD shelving. I sent the Hubby off to Home Depot, $20 of wood and a $30 Kreg jig later, we had ourselves a plan. 

We mounted the tv so that the shelving did not have to hold the tv.  After that, we measured the space that we wanted to fill and built the shelves accordingly. We used common wood and stained it to our desired color.

This was the finished result: 

But we didn't stop there. 

Because we still had more DVD's to store, we decided to add towers on each side.

Again, we built them according to the space we had available.

All of the pieces are connected as one unit. It is pretty sturdy, but we used some L brackets to anchor it into the wall, just in case.  

We ended up with way more DVD storage space than we needed. So we have room to grow and until them we can keep our knick knacks up high where the kids won't destroy them! 

DIY Ombre Sunset Love Birds Wood Art

This is my favorite wood art project so far. I loved the lovebirds but I really wanted them to have a sunset in the background. I browsed a couple Ombre painting techniques and came up with my own technique. I've been using more of a "color wash" (watered down paint) technique on wood, so the grain shows through. I wanted to keep this effect in my sunset project. 

I starts with four sunset-ish colors. I put a glob of each on my "palette".  Start out with a piece of wood that is sanded to your preferred texture. My wood of choice is old, weathered fence paneling. 

With a damp foam brush paint your sun, and a circle of orange, pink and purple around the sun.

Keeping the foam brush damp, take some pink paint and drag from the pink circle halfway into the purple area. Blot the two colors together. 

Continue blending the rest of the colors and let it dry. 

After it dries, give it a few swipes with a fine grit sandpaper. Trace your love birds onto the wood.

And fill it in! 

Simple and Easy DIY Jewelry Hanger

As my jewelry obsession grows, my storage needs grow as well. I was putting hooks directly in the wall, but everytime I put another hook in the wall, I felt a little more guilty for putting another hole in the wall. So I came up with this project in my never ending attempt to re-purpose all our fence panels. 

I started with a piece of old fence paneling. I sanded it, painted it and then sanding off a little of the paint to make it look "rustic". 

I marked 2 rows for hooks, spaced every 2 inches, and staggered from one row to the next. I drilled pilot holes with a 1/16" drill bit to make it easier to get the hooks in. 

Then screw in all the hooks! I used vice grips to save my fingers from the screws. I added eye hooks on the top for hanging (not pictured).

After haning all my jewelry I realized that I should have made it bigger because I am out of hooks. 

Our refinished dining room table

We have a beautiful Amish Oak Dining room set. It was a fine set, structurally, but years of wear had taken it's toll on the finish. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the table before we started, but this is the only before shot I could find of the finish. Ick.

We started with the leaves, to make sure we weren't going to really screw it up. I was amazed how white the wood was after all of the sanding.

We learned a lot from the leaves and moved on to the actual table. Sanding and more sanding...

The stain we picked was pretty close to the original because we didn't need to refinish the base or the chairs. 

 1 layer of stain

 3 layers of stain

We added 3 layers of Glossy Polyurethane

And it came out Oh-So-Shiney! I am in love. The polyurethane really holds up to the kids abuse!

It took us several weeks because it requires a lot of waiting in between coats. Definitely not the easiest DIY project we've taken on, but not to bad. 

How to transfer designs onto any canvas, with no artistic talent.

I am have creative talent to spare, but artistic ability... not so much. I get so frustrated sometimes when I'm working on a project and it doesn't come out perfect because my artistic ability is lacking. So I stumbled on this technique a while ago and felt like the internet needs to know about it!

First, find the design that you want to put on your piece. Re-size it on the computer and print it out. I do most of my re-sizing in Paint, it will even print big images onto several pages so you aren't limited to an 8.5"x11" design.

I didn't get a picture of the tracing paper, but you can purchase tracing paper in most craft stores. This is typically used for copying patterns onto fabric (at least that's what I remember using it for in 7th grade Home Ec. class). Place the tracing paper, color side down, on the wood, and place the design, right side up on top of that. Tape it down so it doesn't shift while you trace.

Trace the outline of the design.

After tracing is done, go over the design with your medium of choice. I generally use Sharpie, paint pen, or a fine paint brush. 

It's as easy as that, if you can trace, you can create!

Now go create: 

Wood Art Ideas here

How to make a wood Canvas

Pallet Wood Canvas

Here is the tutorial for making a wood canvas for whatever wood art you want. I use fence panels that have been "weathered" in my back yard for years. But you could easily use pallets for this as well. 

Decide on your dimensions and cut your pieces accordingly. I always cut two supports just and little bit narrower than the width of the canvas.

Wood Glue doesn't offer much support when it's wet, but I felt it would help keep it together once it dried. 

  

I measured depth of the board and doubled it and found nails that were just a hair shorter in length.  When hammered through the back it won't come through the front. No visible hardware. 

 I hammer in 4 nails for each board, and each overlap. That is a lot of nails, but it holds!

That's it! Sand it until the texture is to your liking, then be creative! 

Use eye hooks or drill holes and use twine to hang. Beautiful!

Wood Art Ideas Tutorial

Design Transfer Techniques