Start a Craft Business

I love painting and refinishing furniture.  I especially have to say that when I have fun results like I did with this cart that I come away from a project even more motivated to paint then I started out!  I love this little cart!  And my favorite part may be that I added a little touch of meaning to it!

If you know me and my style then you know that words and quotes are my favorite thing.

And so naturally I added a quote to my cart.

A little reminder to myself that I can glance at while I am curled up on my couch sipping coffee and thinking about life and looking out at the water.

No, I will never give up, because the tide will turn.

A reminder I happen to need right now dealing with my home renovations!

I of course added my quote with rubber alphabet stamps and ink.  For this particular project I used black StazOn because I didn’t want the ink to run or rub off.

What do you think?  I like the new beautiful sugar cane color versus the bright red.  I used my new Maison Blanche La Craie furniture paint, it adhered perfectly to the metallic surface, yet another reason that I am SO in love with this paint!

I think it fits right in with my beach-y chic decor–how about you?!

And if you missed my last painting adventure check out my up-cycled chair here!

I am linking up to a few of my favorite parties, you can find them here!

I LOVE a good before and after project!  Especially when the project happens to be sitting in my house!  I had some fun using a new paint Maison Blanche La Craie furniture paint and I have to say I am completely swooning and in love.

Maybe I am so in love with my new paint because it helped me fix up this old chair that has been patiently waiting in my garage for a makeover for over two years now (head in hand with shame).

The Mega Maison Blanche Paint Giveaway winner will receive;

Two(2) Quarts of La Craie furniture paint in the color of their choice.

One(1) Tin of Antique Wax in the color of their choice.

One(1) Glacage Embossing Creme in the color of their choice.

One(1) Organaza Shimmer Coat in the color of their choice.

One(1) Le Craque Crackle Medium.

One(1) Le Dirt Antiquing Dust.

Disclosure:  I was given paint to try and I used it on this project, all opinions are 100% my own.

I love this stuff!

Its official, you are going to think I am crazy.  I mean to be honest, I think I am a little crazy myself.  BUT, sometimes you just have to jump in and swim with huge projects right?!  Well that is what I am telling myself.  Because this past weekend we got BUSY (and by we I mean my in-laws and my husband…) and stared our second phase of renovations on our fix-er upper lake house.

So what do you think, do you want a little tour of what we have been up to?!?

Meet my upstairs!  It is all bare boned and all studs as of this weekend, and honestly, I think it looks better than when we first toured our house this past winter!

Before I get into specific detail, let me ask you, can you picture it?  Can you picture my beautiful master bathroom that I am dreaming about?  In the photo above the vanity will be in between the large windows on the back wall and a jetted tub will be to the right of the windows on the side wall.  Can you just picture that?!  Because I am right now and it is what is getting me through the chaos that comes along with renovating!

Okay, so here is what we are taking on:

-full kitchen overhaul

-3 bedrooms (nursery, mater and guest)

-2 bathrooms (master and guest/kids)

Thats it, when you look at it in that little list it may not feel like such a huge project…. but ooooh it sure is!

Okay, here are some before and during photos!

Prior to us moving in I snapped a few photos the one on the left is one of them.  Even when we toured our house under a year ago I pictured the cluttered space by those windows as my master bath.  The room was more of a rec room than a bedroom but we saw master bedroom and bathroom written all over it!  I can’t believe that we are finally moving toward that goal and dream!

The guest bedroom upstairs was our only “livable” upstairs bedroom, in fact last summer I spent a lot of time getting rid of wall paper and painting the dark wood on the walls… it turned out great and dare I even say I liked the room while we used it for guests, but now it is gone!  Down to the studs!

Similar story for the upstairs bathroom.  It was livable but not super usable without an actual shower… but I painted and worked on it and we used it for the months that we lived up there… but now it is all gone!!!

I thought I would share the floor plan we are using in case you love this stuff like I do and want to get a better feeling for what we are doing!

What do you think?!  Can you picture our upstairs!?  It will be so wonderful when it is finished!  Well, lets face it, anything would be better than the house the way it was and is now!

And now on to our kitchen.

Just a few snap shots of the before us, before demo and after demo looks of the space!

I am excited to say that my tiny kitchen will be getting MUCH much bigger!  Ohh I am SO going to love my new kitchen!

And for now we are trying to survive like college kids with no stove and dishwasher or kitchen sink for that matter…

but all in the name of these beautiful visions I have for the spaces!

So here is my official sorry for being a little MIA here on the blog lately, but literally every single free moment I have has been spent talking to tile shops, cabinet people, shower specialists and the list goes on and on.  I am hoping that things settle down soon and that I get some time to get back to my normal schedule.  One that allows for a lot more time to craft and create!  I do have to say that I do feel a little giddy about the idea of in a few months from now being able to show you the final product!  I wish we could plan a house-warming party together in fact!

But until then don’t get to mad at me for not being great about posting, I will do my best!

And if you like this kind of stuff follow me in instagram–I am having fun snapping photos of our stages and steps on there!

This weeks blogging challenge was kind of fun.  Make it.  Simple right?!  Pick a pin or project that you have been meaning to do and make it!

I have boards and boards full of ideas and projects on Pinterest just waiting for me to “make them”!

This time around I was looking for something simple and something that I could put my own mark on.  And so I started out with this idea via Martha Stewart that I have had on my DIY Paper Crafts pin boardfor some time now!

Martha used cupcake liners to make her paper flowers, but I used one of my all time favorite crafting mediums my vintage encyclopedia book pages instead.

They are simple looking and they were simple to make.

So simple that I made two little bouquets for my house on this rainy snowy day in Wisconsin!

And since I did not follow the tutorial exactly I thought I would share a few details of what I did specifically!

I cut circles with scrapbook scissors and then threaded them onto floral wire I had around my house… must have been from a different project!

I then used just a bit of the floral tape to secure my flower in place.  I did this with 3 flowers and then secured them all together to make one large flower.

And finally I secured the wire around a branch.

A simple look and a fun little project right?!

What about you?  Do you have projects that you have pinned and then made?!  I can’t wait to see them TOMORROW at the “Dog Days of Winter Project Challenge”!

Next weeks challenge is “Love It”  so anything Valentines related goes!

Happy weekend sweet friends!  I am so excited to share some truly AMAZING features with you today.  I am blown away by the talent that is out there in the blogging world.  And I am blown away by the sweet bloggers that link up to this party!  But enough about that, let’s get inspired, how about some light and white winter projects!?

Valentine Posh Heart via Dear Emmeline

Little Houses in my Laundry Room via Ashbee Design

Simple Valentine Heart Wreaths via White Lace Cottage

Painted Console via Top This Top That

Weight Watchers Strawberry Cream Pie via Barns and Noodles 

DIY Valentines Garland via Nalles House

Well, it is official, I am in FULL organizational mode.  I suddenly have a bit more energy, thank you 2nd trimester!.   AND a little motivation thanks to the blogging challenge going on right now {more on that here} and the fact that round two of my home renovations is starting NOW and so my craft room is getting a reorganized and moved to the basement temporarily (more on that later).

And so, part of the deal with my moving my craft stuff to the basement was that I am allowed to keep anything I can “hide” in our main living space upstairs.  You would honestly think that I was never going to see the stuff moving to the basement again for how creative I am being with my organizing and packing things away upstairs all of a sudden!

My first organization project was to condense my out of control ribbon stash into one compact area.

And I am loving it now that it is finished!

Isn’t that kind of how organizing projects go?

I always feel dread and the good old blahhh feelings when I think about starting but then I am thrilled and excited when I see the final product.

But, maybe I am the only one 🙂

It was a lot of work, transitioning bags of random ribbon into organized spools!

I used a variety of vintage and new clothespins as a way to secure and organize my ribbon.

And then I condensed my stash into a cute piece from a vintage steamer chest that I am not housing some of my favorite crafting supplies in.

When I rolled my ribbon around the clothespins I secured them with sewing pins.  I like how you can combine multiple ribbons onto one clothespins!

Well, like I started to tell you on Sunday, it is official, we are on to phase TWO of our home renovations.  It feels like it was just yesterday that we started our first round!  Goodness, we must be a bit crazy!  So above is the BEFORE shot of the room that we are starting with.  This photo actually makes the space look “not that bad” but if you could look a little closer, you would see; 2 layers of wall paper covered in bright red paint, horribly stained carpet and electrical work behind those walls that left us with no choice but to start fresh.

But while we were busy surviving our first round of renovations I temporarily made this bedroom into my craft room storage space.

But not anymore!

And so this past weekend I had no choice but to “move out”.  My crafting supplies are now stored in the basement… and a little tough to get at.  And so here was my deal, I was allowed to keep any and all craft supplies out and upstairs that I could possibly fit into my living spaces in a discrete and organized way.

And so I have been organizing my craft supplies in every single unused piece of furniture I own!

Including my vintage card catalogue.  Turns out it is kind of an amazing way to store my crafting supplies that I couldn’t part with!

 also got creative and found that my vintage steamer trunk that use as a coffee table is actually a perfect space to store supplies as well!  I shared how the trunk had drawers, one of them I used to store my ribbons that I JUST organized!

You can find the full post on this project {here}.

And see, you wouldn’t even know that I am storing a ton of my craft supplies in that pretty trunk can you?!?

So, no fear, I am well-organized for this round of renovating.  The crafting will continue!  Especially since I am not allowed to be very involved with this part of the renovating…  this little bean of a baby in my belly comes first!

It is official, I am 100% back into beach-y decor mode!

It seems as though I have taken a short break, enjoyed Christmas andddd now I am ready to get back to the beach.

Now if only this Wisconsin weather would work with me on that one!

Don’t get me wrong, I am having a great time enjoying the big huge ice skating rink in my backyard, but boy would I rather be swimming in that lake!

Maybe another reason why I am SO edited for the warm weather is that we will be closer to meeting our little baby bean!

But since the summer weather is months away, I will stick to beach crafting to get me excited!

Since I am not naturally amazing at painting, I grabbed my good old watercolors for this project and just painted on top of a vinyl adhesive of an anchor that I had around from a different project.  After I had the watercolor just right I took the vinyl off of my canvas, and this is what I have.

A super simple watercolor canvas that reminds me of the summer!

If you want to know more about how to start a craft business check out this article.

I am still debating if I should add words…. what do you think?!

I started my Valentines Day crafting with my simple DIY canvas, and had to keep the crafting going by doing what I love to do, dressing up a store-bought candle!  This is officially the third holiday I have now covered with my candle decorating.  My painted Halloween candle, my glitter Christmas candle and now heart Valentines candle!

All I did was use my Letter Press dies to cute out my border out of aluminum foil.  I then fastened the boarder with hot glue.  And if you missed my simple DIY canvas that I used the hearts for, check them out here.

Sweet and simple, and just enough to add a little Valentines decor to an otherwise boring candle!