This little light of mine...well not mine but my sister's

 

My sister is truly amazing.  When she told me about one of here most recent projects I kept thinking about that old show McGyver. You know...the guy who can make anything out of the most basic materials.

Here is how the story played out in my mind. My sister (a.k.a. McGyver) was given a challenge by her tween daughter to create a beautiful light for her bedroom.  McGyver was given one day and only a handful of materials to complete this challenge. Here is what she had to work with: Embroidery hoop, various beads in the tween's color of choice (sparkly white, purple and pink), thin gauge wire, an old lamp base and some spray paint.

You and I would look at this and laugh thinking there is no possible way...but my sister McGyver knew there was a way of doing it!

 McGyver spray painted the old lamp base Heirloom White and while it dried she started to work on creating a beaded shade. She strung a variety of colors and sized beads down one long piece of wire being sure to place a large bead at the bottom for weight.

This strand was then attached to the metal embroidery hoop by simply looping it around, making sure it was the length she wanted. McGyver repeated this step until the embroidery hoop looked 'full.' Then McGyver knew her tween would want some more bling, so she added some beads around the lip of the embroidery hoop.

Now that the shade was done, McGyver set out to create the ceiling light. She cut the plug off the end of the lamp and pulled the chord through the base. She drilled two holes in the base of the lamp so it could be hung onto a standard ceiling light fixture.

Using some more fine gauge wire, McGyver secured the new beaded shade onto the light base.

Another successful mission...McGyver wins again :)

Great job McGyver...oh sorry, I mean Carol!

Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z

You light up my life....my Pottery Barn knock off light does

We have a water closet (a.k.a WC or a toilet in its own room) in our master bathroom with a horrible builder grade light.  I personally thought the separate room for a toilet was a little odd when I bought the house, but now I do like it. It is one extra door that I can close so I can pretend I don't hear my two kids screaming for me. Is it the same in your house? You decide to sit down for one minute of privacy and the kids seem to know you are alone and start to hunt you down.

Well I have been eyeballing this light at Pottery Barn for ages. I absolutely love it and thought it would look great in our WC, but like everything else at Pottery Barn, I do not love the price. Really $269 for a light? I guess you can say it is on sale for $215. I, just like everyone else in this world, love me a good sale...but come on $215 for a light that will only be seen by a person sitting on a toilet.  I knew I could do better!

Source Pottery Barn

So I ventured to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and found this lamp for the bargain basement price of...hold on to your seats...$5!!!! I immediately scooped it up and ran (drove) home in excitement. Again my husband looked at me and said "What are you going to do with that!?!" No faith :)  I knew I could make this light look almost exactly like the Pottery Barn one!

 

I suspected I would be able to disassemble the light completely but  I also knew the worst possible scenario would be me taping the glass with some newspaper before I pulled out my spray paint.  I got lucky and was able to completely disassemble the light by removing 10 screws.

 

 After taping off the electrical chords and the light sockets I brought all the brass pieces into the garage to spray paint. Two light coats later this is what I ended up with, GORGEOUS!!!

 

 I ended up switching the bolts from the bottom of the light to the top because I liked the look of the flat bolts on the bottom better. I don't think you really notice but it is how I preferred it.

 

 

My husband, being the loving man he is (or he knew I would nag him until it was done), hung it for my this evening as I sat on the floor of the bathroom watching. I feel like a kid again. I am so happy with my Pottery Barn knock off!!! I can't believe I got this light for $5 vs $215.

 I bought some fancy LED lights for it since we are trying to save some money on electricity. In the end the light bulbs cost more than the light itself :) 

 

I LOVE IT!  Here it is from outside the WC.

This has inspired me to post all the lights I have redone and not yet shared with you. So this week I will post them all: 2 drum ceiling pendants, a table lamp for my daughter's room and an amazing beaded ceiling light my sister created.
Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z 

Ruched leggings - Take them from too short to too cute in 10 minutes

  

How come when spring comes, not only do all the weeds shoot up but so do my kids. I find every spring my two kids outgrow all of their pants and I end up buying new ones only for them not to fit by the time fall rolls around. This year I am determined to save a few dollars and outsmart this growth spurt. 

My daughters leggings are too short to look normal but are too long to look like they are capris. I hate hemming so there is no way I am going to take a few inches off to make them capris. So I searched online and found this technique  (ruching the bottom)  to solve my short pant problems (with my daughter at least).

Before:

 After:

I purchased a spool of elastic thread at my local fabric store for $1.50 and ruched both sides of the leggings. I have never used this product before so I did some searching on youtube on how to use it. After an hour of playing around I finally got it to work the way I wanted it to.

This is the method I used:
Hand wind the bobbin with the elastic thread. Do not pull the elastic; let it go on the bobbin at the same tension it comes off the spool. If you pull it tight, the area you sew will not pucker.

Load the bobbin into the bobbin case the exact same way you would with normal thread.

Set the tension on your machine to 9 or the highest.

I did a long straight stitch; set my stitch length to 3.5.

 I loaded the top thread with a matching color to the legging.

I then measured and marked 5 inches up both sides of each leg of the legging and sewed three parallel lines (approximately 1/4 of an inch apart) up the sides.  IMPORTANT - Be sure to reverse your stitch at the start and the end of each row. This allows the elastic to stay put and not pull through. As you can see I didn't really manage to get the lines straight but once it is ruched, you can't tell. (this is the underside)

I heated my iron and sprayed the ruched area with water and ironed it. I found this shrunk the elastic and made the ruching stand out more.

 

I managed to get a couple of 'after' shots even though my daughter went immediately back to skipping.


I am really happy with the end result and will continue to do this with all the other slightly too short leggings she has. At least this will get me through the spring and summer months :)

Sewing with the elastic thread was far easier than I expected. I might try my hand at ruching some t-shirts that are just a bit too big. I will let you know how that goes.

I hope this helps some of you moms out there who are afflicted with suddenly long legged kids :)

I hope everyone has a Happy Mother's Day!

Linking to some great parties including The stories of A2Z

Matching T-shirts for kids - Version 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0

To all you moms out there I want to start off by saying Happy Mother's Day weekend! I hope you all have a wonderful time with your families.
 
When my sister-in-law had her third son a few weeks ago, I was determined (aka fixated) to make the little one some absolutely adorable onesies. I was extremely happy with how the first three onesies I made turned out (see the previous post for all of them).   But this last one is by far my favorite!

With husbands in the IT industry, this onesie was very appropriate to them. But I decided to take it one step further and created a matching T-shirt for my two other nephews too. I purchased Tshirts in contrasting colors and rotated the stencil colors so they all matched. Using freezer paper cut out with my new Cricut :) I stenciled Version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 on the shirts.

Aren't they just the cutest things? I don't have a picture of the boys wearing them, but I will get it!

Wouldn't it be a cute Mother's Day gift if a dad could take a photo of the kids wearing these to surprise his wife..or for a Grandmother? Hey hon are you reading this..wink, nudge, whatever it takes?

Aren't they great!?! So freakin cute.

Linking to some great parties including The stories of A2Z

Custom baby onesies - The cutest things in the world besides the baby

Happy Easter everyone!

As you know, we have a new little one in our family and we could not be happier! He is absolutely adorable.

I thought it would be really cute to make him some little onesies that were personalized to him and his family. I love freezer paper stenciling for how easy it it and how it always turns out so well. So I picked up a pack of 5 thick white onesies ($9) and started my endless debate as to what to put on them. I have to say I am the most indecisive person in the world.

I knew immediately that I had to make this one. My brother-in-law (and husband) are Korean so I thought this would be adorable "Made in Canada with Korean parts". It would work for all of you in the US too just change it up to say "made in the US with ______ parts".  I am going to put a big old Maple Leaf on the bum but I need a different cartridge that I will have to borrow from my mom. I LOVE THIS ONE!

Then I thought since all the boys on my husband's side like to pretend they are little martial arts experts, we would make a onesie to look like a karate outfit. My husband will put our nephew's Korean name on the one side like they do in martial arts classes. Isn't it adorable!! There was no freezer paper used for this one...just free hand by my husband.

For the third one, I thought since my brother-in-law is always wearing a Flash T-shirt (the DC comic Flash, not the program Flash) I could create a mini Flash onesie. I created 2 circles out of freezer paper and stenciled the space in between red. I then printed a Flash lightening bolt and cut it out on the freezer paper and stenciled it yellow.  Not 100% accurate to Flash but still CUTE!

 

As you can see there are only 3...so there are 2 more to come! One is done and it is absolutely adorable but worthy of its own post and the second is still being debated :)

What do you think! Do you love them as much as me?

Oh and people have been asking what paint I use. I use the puffy type of paint but I brush it on so it is flat.

 Have a Happy Easter!

Linking to the following amazing parties:

Personalized Birth Announcement Art

As you know my favorite post of all times was the Name/Established Art. I have given these as gifts for teachers, weddings and any other occasion I can think of.

When my new nephew was born, I knew I had to make him one.  I knew I wanted to include some additional information on this, like his weight and the date and time he was born, so I put a black line to frame his name and put the date and time on the top left and his weight on the bottom right.   I blurred out the details but you get the idea :)

Here is what the draft image looked like. I created this before I had the exact details for him.

For instructions on how to make this and where to find the letters, see the Name/Est art post here.

I knew the frame I was going to purchase when I created the art, so I made the image to fit perfectly.  The image you see is approximately 15x7 inches but I had to create an image that was 18x12 inches for printing ($3.49 a Costco). (Update: I have been having a lot of questions as to how I am printing at Costco. I am not sure if Costco US is different from Costco Canada, but we can print photos in sizes up to 12x18 for an extremely reasonable price. After uploading the image, I can simply select the large size from the pull down menu. I am sorry I do not know how the US version works. If there isn't the exact size I want, I create a photo to the print size available and leave white space around the image. Then crop the paper once I get home. hope this helps.)

I purchased this frame at Ikea ($12.99) and my wonderful husband cut the mat so it held one photo as opposed to three small photos. He used a metal ruler and an Exacto knife and cut the mat on an angle. You really can't see where he removed the sections.

 I am really happy with how it turned out. What do you think?

Linking to the following amazing parties: