Handmade 3D Butterfly Art on a $0 Budget

Do you remember one of last year's favorite crafts, specimen art? You know, where you cut out a hundred butterflies and beautifully arrange them in a frame. I had intended to create one for my daughter's room but just never got around to it. With an electronic cutter (i.e. Silhouette or Cricut) or a paper punch in the correct shape, the project would have only taken 30 minutes but 30 minutes I just didn't seem to find. Until now.

I wanted to make something a little more unique than the specimen art so I hunted around Pinterest and Etsy, two of my major suppliers of inspiration, and found these two items that I love:

Source Ikea - $15

Source Etsy - approx. $40

 These can be made with a Silhouette, a Cricut if you have Sure Cuts a Lot or by hand. So for those of you who do not have an electronic cutter, don't worry, this is a simple project that anyone can do.

The first thing I did was found a few free jpeg images of butterflies online that I liked. I saved them to my computer and opened them in Picasa. Since I did not want the entire butterfly cut out and wanted the wings to pop out of the page, I cropped the image so I had two separate halves. 

 If you have Sure Cuts a Lot (sorry this software is no longer available for the Cricut), insert both halves of the butterflies and line then up. Group them and then you can resize, rotate etc. You can see, that the Cricut will only cut where there are lines. The middle of the butterfly will not be cut.

If you do not have a Cricut or Silhouette, design the page in Microsoft Word. Using an 8.5x11 blank page, insert the jpegs one at a time to create the design you like. Reformat the page to be grey scale making the lines a really light grey. Print the design on a nice card stock and cut the grey lines carefully with an Exacto knife. A little more time is needed for this, but it will still produce the same amazing end product.

I did this one..sorry it is hard to see but you can get the idea.

After I cut the card stock using my Cricut it looked like this.

 I have a pointy tool that came with my craft knife set that I use to score things. I placed my metal rule between the two points of the butterfly and gently scored where I wanted the butterfly wings to pop up.

 Sorry the photos are dark. I was too lazy to go get my good camera so these are from my horrible little point a shoot.

 After each butterfly is scored twice, carefully bend the wings back.

I had a DollarStore frame on hand for this. I had to remove the glass because there is no depth to the frame. Ideally I will eventually do this with a shadow box style of frame so the paper will be behind glass..

My daughter selected a bright pink piece of scrapbook paper to put behind the butterflies since her room is pink.

 Isn't it pretty?

It was my neice's birthday yesterday, so my daughter wanted to give her one too. We used the same DollarStore frame but spray painted it with glossy purple and a piece of purple scrapbook paper. To be honest, I like this one better because of the contast between the paper and the frame. My daughter's one might have to venture into the garage for a little spray paint.

 I love this!

I might be pulling this downstairs soon for my Easter decorations.

Grand total for this was $0..I had the frames, scrapbook paper and card stock all on hand. If I had to buy everything, I think it would be under $2!

I think I will design a dragon fly one next or maybe hearts.  I will share those when/if I finish them.

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

Stephanie

Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z, Thrifty Home

Giving Hydrangeas New Life with Spray Paint

As you may remember, I made gorgeous fresh hydrangea wreaths for my front doors a year and a half ago. I absolutely loved them. I loved how they looked, I loved the bright and vibrant colors and I loved that they cost me almost nothing at the time to make.

They stayed that way for about a year and a half. Unfortunately, they now they look blanched because the color has fully leached out of them.

They are still pretty but not something I want to hang on my front door. I honestly thought my only option would be to throw them out, but I had one of those aha moments when I was redoing (aka spray painting) some accessories for my family room (I will share those soon). I was spray painting all sorts of things and thought, why can't I spray paint the hydrangeas? What would be the worst thing that could happen? I might ruin them? Well they were already destined for the garbage so it was worth a try.


Here is what wreaths looked like before they ventured into my garage for some spray painting:

 Here is what they look like now after a few different colors of spray paint:

 

 

Not bad huh! Sorry the photos are a little dark...it is pretty dreary here today.

Here is how I did it. I pulled out four colors of spray paint that matched the original pre-dried color of the hydrangeas. I only have 3 in this picture but I also used a bright lime green.

 I started by painting the entire wreath a light green.

I then progressively got darker. So went next to the lime color, then the celery and finally the brick color. I made sure to do sections with just one color to mimic how the hydrangeas look when fresh.

See how parts are green and others deep red? If you look really closely you can tell it was spray painted...but if someone wants to look that closely they can just go home! :)

I will probably make these again with fresh hydrangeas again next fall, but for now, the wreaths have new life and look great all over again.

Can you image the possibilities? Hydrangeas come in so many different colors so you can match any room in your house. If you have some dried on your bushes outside, go cut them and grab your favorite colors of spray paint. See what you can make.

What do you think?
Stephanie

DIY Large Burlap Star on my $0 Budget

This project was inspired by two posts I pinned a while ago. The first was Choose to Thrives DIY tin stars. I have wanted to make one for a long time but just never knew how I wanted to finish it. Then I stumbled upon my second inspiration The Douglas Family where she took a metal star and covered it with burlap. I knew I had a DIY project merging the two ideas together.

I made this star using a tin oven liner I purchased at the Dollar store months ago and then covered it with burlap I had left over from my custom burlap covered cardboard storage boxes.

Using a 12 inch star I cut out on my Cricut as the shape, I added 1.5 inches around the outer edges to enlarge it. I traced the star onto the tin, plus the width of my ruler, with a scoring tool that came with my Dollar store craft knife kit.

 

Here is what the scored tin looks like.

I then cut along the lines with my craft scissors; I thought I might have needed tin snips but the scissors did a great job.

I had to unravel a couple of the edges of the liner to get the points.

Here is what it looked like after it was cut out.

Using a good ruler, I scored from the center of each star point to the middle. By scoring it you can see how the star is taking shape.

I then flipped the star over and scored the lines from the center to where the two points meet. I made the shape of the star by using these score marks as the creases.

I decided to give the outer part of the start a quick coat of white spray paint so that I wouldn't see the shiny tin through the burlap.

 I covered the entire outer star with ModgePodge and flipped it over to stick on the burlap.

I cut around the star leaving about 1/2 an inch of excess burlap to fold over the back. Here is where I had to play around for a bit. I had a few failed attempts securing the excess burlap but eventually got it to work.

First I tried ModgePodge to secure the excess burlap on the back. That didn't work at all. Then I thought I would use a little clear tape to hold it until the ModgePodge dried...well the tape could not stick on the ModgePodge. So I puled out my favorite backup tool...duct tape :)  Yes, it worked but it looked horrible. I know that no one will see the back but I just couldn't live with it.

I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier, but hot glue worked the best. I ran a bead of hot glue and folded the burlap over. Stuck instantly and gave nice clean edged.

I had a ribbon and bow saved from a Christmas gift I got; I love to save these because the bows are perfect (something I can never seem to master). I glued the bow to the middle of the star and then the ribbon to the corners.

I had made the star to hang over one of the most difficult spots I have had decorating in my house, my three sided fireplace. This fireplace is huge and such a focal point in our family room and kitchen.

Here is what I have so far. I moved my toilet paper art from the dining room to here. I am still not 100% happy but feel I am getting closer.  Please HELP if you have suggestions.

 

Please don't mind the plastic on the candles, I am not sure if I love them so I refuse to take off the plastic :)

What do you think? Any suggestions?
Stephanie

Delicious Rotisserie Chicken on my $0 Budget

Sorry for the limited posts lately. I am having a tough time balancing work, home, being a mom, exercise and my blog.  So the blog has fallen behind. I have a huge backlog of posts on my $0 budget so they will continue to come well into February. Please stop by and see what I did with my $0 budget over the next couple of weeks.

For those of you who know me this is not something new, but for everyone else...I hate touching meat. I do not like thinking about where it comes from; I would love to believe (and I do try to convince myself this) that meat grows in those white Styrofoam containers with plastic wrap around it :). I am not a vegetarian but I can understand why people are. Unfortunately, I also hate most types of beans so that definitely eliminates vegetarianism for me.

Why am I telling you this? Well with my $0 budget month, I cleared out the majority of my freezer and ended up finding two whole chickens. Do not ask me why I bought the stupid things to start out with, when I had no clue how to cook them and absolutely no desire to touch them. I do actually know why I bought them and this will just reinforce to you how cheap I am...the grocery store was having a sale for $4 for the ugly things. I saw it as though, I could buy one boneless chicken breast for the same price and this would feed the 4 of us. So I snatched up two..because dealing with the thing wasn't enough once, I had to do it twice :)

I am honestly proud of myself and thrilled with how they turned out. So thrilled in fact, I took pictures when I made the second bird. I am by no means going to start sharing my daily recipes and photos of my cooking with you. So don't worry :) I officially am not a food photographer! My photos look horrible but this was the best chicken I have made so I had to share. I will never buy a store bought, precooked chicken again!

Source Food Network- you can see my finished photo later. It isn't this pretty.

I got a new toaster oven about 6 months ago and it came with a rotisserie feature in it. At the time I thought it would never be used...but I love it now. I have made these chickens and the best pork roasts with it. Yum.

I go this chicken recipe from the food network here.


Recipe:
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 whole chicken


Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Rub dry mix over the entire chicken.

 Secure chicken on rotisserie spit. Cook on the rotisserie (I broiled at 450 degrees) until fully cooked (180 degrees internal temperature) for approximately 1.5 hours. 

I cannot describe how good this was!

See this is why I will not post recipes...that chicken looks pathetic :) Doesn't the Food Network photo look so much more appealing.

I am just happy to be able to use those chickens up from the freezer. Had I not have done my $0 budget month, they would have sat there and never been used. Now I know I can do it and I might try some other recipes.

Do any of you have great rotisserie recipes? I would love to hear them!

Have a great day and happy cooking,
Stephanie