Bobble Candle Holder

This project serves 2 purposes in 1, giving us a little green in our world to help celebrate St. Patrick's Day and I'm using materials from the Dollar Tree to participate in Linday's upcoming >$5 Challenge.

Materials:

 

• Bag of Bobbles ($ 1 at Dollar Tree)
• Votive Candle Holder (2 for $1 at Dollar Tree)
• Medium Candle Holder ($1)
• Tea Light (already had it...)

Total cost, $3.50

This is so super easy...

Remove the Tea light from the little holder, and drop it in the bottom of the medium candle holder:

 

Place the votive holder on top of the tea light holder (This helped elevate the votive up a bit.) And then start filling the medium holder with the bobbles. I separated out and only used the green ones, giving us our bit of St. Patrick's Day flair.

 

That is it... just keep filling until you've reached the top.

 

What I really love about this, is the shadows it casts and the way you see the light through the bobbles. (Forgive the photo, it is hard to take a photo of a shadow, can't use a flash or there is no shadow...)

 

 

I think it would be cute to use the clear bobbles, I'm sure they'd look adorable as well.

Generally Creative Recap

When I started this blog a year ago it was just a way for me to keep track of my projects, how I got from point A to point B. I never imagined I'd really have any followers or anyone commenting.

I'm so flattered that so many of you have been enjoying Generally Creative and been so supportive and encouraging with your comments.

Remember - if you were one of the 14 winners of the silhouette giveaway, you've got 'till Sunday at midnight to submit your photos and then I'm going to get to work so please don't miss out!

For now, sit back, browse through the archives, and I'll be back with more project recaps in the next couple of days. (And I do recommend having chocolate handy whenever you visit my blog... I find chocolate to be essential to creativity.)

For those of you who missed the early days of my blog, which I think is pretty much all of you... here are some of my favorite projects from the past year: (some don't have tutorials, sorry, it was before I realized how helpful tutorials can be... feel free to ask any questions on any posts without tutorials)

 

Crayon Crazy

 

Decoupaged Switch Plate Cover

 

4th of July Jammies!   

 

Dreams Sign

Blog Meet Bench, Bench Meet Blog

I have a story to tell you... it is about a woman who wanted to freshen up her master bedroom. She had already investing a lot of time and money, especially money, into this bedroom. And yet she hated it.

HATED IT.

She decided she had WAY too much invested to hate the room so she set off to TJ Maxx with the intention of spending about $100 to get what she needed to upgrade the bedroom.

And it worked!!!

She found everything she needed, a new quilt, pillows, a curtain panel and a few accessories. But wait... what is that over there. Over there in the furniture section.

A bench.

A glorious bench, nothing like that the woman would typically buy. It was very different. Iron base... which was good, the room already had too much wood. Zebra upholstered top.... ZEBRA I TELL YOU!!!

It was too different. It was too much.

She left it.

She went home and feel back in love with her bedroom as the new items fixed all that was wrong with the bedroom. Paint landed on a desk and her workspace was transformed.

But, she coveted the bench. She couldn't live without it. It was all she thought about.

So just few days later she returned for the amazing bench.

It. Was. Gone.

GONE I TELL YOU!!!

She visited every TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods in the area. She enlisted the help of friends (Hi Cass!!!), Googled herself silly.

No bench.

And then, last week... she returned to TJ Maxx with her good luck charm (Hi Cass!!!) and what did she find... no, not the exact bench, but just about as close as you can imagine. This one, has a brown base, not black, and the top is brown and black zebra not white and black.

Oh yes, It because mine!!!

Blog Meet Bench, Bench Meet Blog.

 

Soooo now... the question is, do I just live with this bench, or do I try to transform it into THE bench... I turned to my friend photoshop for some advise.

Here is the bench with black legs:

 

 

Me likey.

And here is the bench with the black legs and white and black top:

 

Wow.

Do you have any idea how out of character this bench is for me??? Do you have any idea how much I love it!!!

I'm going to live with the pictures for a while and see what I want to do... either way, that tag is coming off. The bench is MINE!!!

Toile Trio

With Valentine's day over, it is time to say goodbye to the Heart Art Trio...

The series of frames worked so well over my Knock-Off-Wood Bookcase, that I wanted to keep the frames, just not the hearts. So I popped out the hearts will display them again next year. I'm not sure I'll do any St. Patrick's Day decorating so for now, I decided to do something neutral with the frames. More importantly, I did something FREE with the frames by using up some scraps of the Toile that I used for the Photo Boxes and Coloring Book Holders.

Materials:

• Previously used 5"x5" frames
• Previously used toile fabric
• Double stick tape
• Scissors

Step 1 - Place the back of the frame over the fabric and lightly mark about a half inch around the back. If you're using a fabric with scenes, like my toile, be sure you're over the portions of the fabric that you really want to feature.

 

Step 2 - Take a couple of pieces of double sided tape and place them on whatever your wrapping around, in my case, the glass from the frames.

 

 

Step 3 - Wrap the fabric around the glass and pop them back into the frames... mount to wall.

Ta - daaaa!

Here are a few close ups, I really do love the scenes from this Toile fabric.

 

  

 
 

The funny part about this project, I've been telling friends and family to do this for years... frame fabrics you love!!! And yet, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've actually taken my own advice.

I know I've got a VERY neutral vignette going on here... but that really is my plan, I want to keep the basic everyday things here very neutral for two reasons:

1. The kids books on this shelf are already VERY lively, I don't need to compete with those
2. It allows me to bring in seasonal things without worrying about if it will match the other decorative decor.

Zig Zag Ruffles

Let's get right to the point, this is how I ruffle.

Step 1 - Take your piece of fabric to your sewing machine. (I've got mine threaded with black thread so you can really see what I'm doing here.) Pull the thread from your need to the length of what you are getting ready to ruffle plus about 3-4".

Step 2 - Set your machine to sew a zig zag stitch, we'll talk specifics of the stitch in a bit, for now - lets just focus. Sewing machine, thread pulled out from needle laying over the fabric... new sew straight over that thread with your zig zag stitch all the way to the end.

 

Step 3 - With your finger on the end of the zig zag stitch, pull the thread that you just sewed over and watch your fabric ruffle up right before your eyes.

 

 

Now you can see above how my ruffle is tight in the middle and not so much at the right. That is because used a very long stitch on the left, and a very short stitch on the right. The longer the zig zag, the tighter you can get your ruffle.

There you go... 

Attach to your project and cut your extra threads. I do find that attaching with a small zig zag stitch, short and narrow, helps the ruffle stay ruffled on your project.

So, like I said yesterday, I'm not sure this is the best way to ruffle, if you've got a better way, I'd love to hear it. Doing 20 ruffles plus this tutorial took me about half an hour... with the "help" of Bug.

Ruffle Scarf

Winter may almost be over, but now I really don't want it to be... well, ok, maybe I do want it to be over, but until it is, I'll be happy to wear my new scarf!!!

I was inspired by this scarf over at Make It and Love it. And who wouldn't be??? Adorable!

I decided to do mine just a bit different by ruffling the strips that I was sewing onto the scarf as well as how I bought and cut the fabric. So, or should I say "sew," here we go...

Materials:

 

• 1 Yard of knit fabric, color of your choice
• 1 spool of coordinating, or complimenting thread
• Scissors
• Pins
• Sewing Machine

Right off the bat, my scarf is a bit different, by going with 1 yard of fabric instead of 2. The knit fabric is only 56" wide, so I couldn't cut a continuous piece that was 80" long per the original instructions. I didn't want to spend twice as much on the fabric... So I found a way around it.

Step 1 - Cut 4 strips of fabric that are 8" wide by the full width of the fabric, 56". 1 strip for the front, 1 strip for the back, 1 strip to add to the length of the front and back and the last for the strips that you will be adding to the scarf.

 

(Puffy orange cat is optional, though I do find it helps most projects.)

Step 2 - Cut one of the strips of fabric into 4 equal sections each 14" long by 8" wide.

 

Step 3 - Pin the 14" section of fabric to the ends of the front and back of your scarf.  14" + 14" + 56" = 84" - 1 inch for seam allowance give us our 83" long front and back pieces for the scarf. Sew.

 

 

Step 4 - From your last strip of 8" x 56" fabric, cut 20 pieces of fabric 12" x 1.5"  - or however else you'd like to do it... this is what worked for me, I wanted a subtle ruffle. Perhaps you want to double the 8" width and go for a 16" strip, or maybe you want a narrower ruffle and want to go with 1" - that is the advantage of doing it yourself, you get exactly what you want.

 

Step 5 - Ruffle your strips. I'm going to post my method for ruffling tomorrow, everyone has their own way of doing ruffles and I figured lets not get off on a ruffle tangent here. Ruffle however you like and if you don't have a favorite method, check back tomorrow and see what I do. And if you do have a favorite method, I'd love to hear it 'cause I'm not sure mine is the best.

Step 6 - Pin your ruffles to your scarf, starting by covering up the the seam of where you attached the end of the scarf. See the seam:

 

 

 Now you don't:

 

Step 7 - space out your remaining 4 ruffles for this end of the scarf and sew them. 

 

Ta-daaaaa!

 

Repeat steps 6 & 7 for the other end of the front, and then both ends of the front and the back.

Step 8 - Lay one side of your scarf right side down:

 

Step 9 - Then place the other side of your over the top so that you've got your wrong sides together... I know this flies in the face of all sewing projects, it is always right sides together, not wrong sides together but we are wild and crazy like that. Then pink all the way around the scarf - making sure that you've got a lot of pins, this sucker is 83"x 8"...

Step 10 - Sew all the way around and you've got a scarf!!!

(In my case you've got a scarf that you are going to spend the next 2 months snipping the threads off of.. but that could just be me.)

 

  

  

  

I think if I had it to do over again, I might have shortened the scarf by about 4-6" per end and tightened up the spacing between the ruffles... But then again, that might have been too cute and this scarf is already way too cute for me. I'm not cute, I have a hard time pulling of the "cute" look. You can't be 5' 10" and cute, at least I can't be 5' 10" and cute... it doesn't work for me. 

But I'm sure going to enjoy my cute scarf, for however much of winter we have left.

(Oh and by the way, total cost for this project, $7... sweet!)

My Budget Book

I'm a big fan of the Envelope Budgeting System. Where you use cash and have envelopes for each of the line items in your budget and keep the cash for each item, in each envelopes. I used the system for about 6 months last year and it was amazing how on budget I was each week.

Then life got busy and just like my workout intentions everything goes out the door around July when life kicks into high gear.

Well, I'm ready to get back into it, which is why learned how to make my own envelopes last week, so I could make a book of envelopes. (Sort of like Megan did, though I went about mine a little different.)

Here is what I started with:

Materials:

• 6 Envelopes, 1 each for groceries week 1, groceries week 2, Target, date night, "bonus*" and receipts. (These are the items I pay cash for in a 2 week pay period.)
• Pretty fabric
• Pretty paper
• Chip board 
• Glue
• Straight edge
• Box cutter
• Letter stickers to mark the purpose of your envelope
• 2 pieces of ribbon, cut to 6-8 inches

You don't need to make your own envelopes as I did, that was just me being a freak... well, because I'm a freak. And please, there are other tutorials for this online, which are likely better than mine, but I couldn't find some of the supplies that Martha Steward called for... my AC Moore doesn't carry book binding tape. So this is how I did it, feel free to look to someone else, or make your own way.

1st step - Cut strips of fabric about 1.5" inches wide by the height of your envelopes.

Step 2 - Take 2 of your envelopes and place them side, one facing up, the other facing down.

Step 3 - Coat one of the strips of fabric with glue, first I used regular white glue, that took forever to dry. So then I moved onto a quick drying craft glue from 3M that I really ended up liking.

 

Step 4 - Apply the glued strip to the envelopes butting them very close together.

Repeat step 4 until you have all the envelopes bound together. I first bound 3 sets of 2 together, letting them dry. And then bound the 3 sets together...

Step 5 - Cut 2 pieces of chip board .5" taller than your envelopes and .25" wider. Then cut a strip of chip board that is equal in height to the other 2 and the same width as your bound envelope. (No picture of this step, but you'll see in steps 6 and 7 what they look like)

Step 6 - Lay your pieces of card board down on your fabric and coat the chip board with glue. Note the slight .125" gap between the front and back covers and the spine of the book. This is important to allow your binding space to bend.

 

(Brush the glue, don't just leave it swirly like my picture... you couldn't really see the glue once I'd brushed it in so I took the picture while it was swirly like.)

Step 7 - With all 3 pieces of chip board glued to the fabric, slip the fabric up to the corners of the chip board

Step 8 - And then glue and fold in your fabric.

 

  

Step 9 - Time to bind the envelopes into the binding. Using 2 more strips of fabric, attach the last envelope to the back cover and the 1st envelope to the front.

 

Step 10 - Cut 2 lengths of ribbon to 6-8" inches, and 2 pieces of paper to .25" smaller than your front and back covers.

Step 11 - Glue the ribbon half way down the outside edge of the back cover.

 

Step 12 - Glue the pretty paper to the inside back cover of the book.

 

Repeat steps 11 & 12 for the front cover.

Step 13 - Label each of your envelopes... I decided just to use the initials for each of my categories. And I also labeled them on the front and back... just because I could.

And here is my finished budget book.

 

 

And of course, use of these isn't limited to a budget book, I can see making these to hold any variety of things. Favorite cards from the holidays, pictures, treasures from special trips... all kinds of wonderful things.

I'm thinking of coating the outside of my book with a bit of mod podge, not sure about it though.