Hello, beautiful!

I may or may not be guilty of saying this out loud to this vintage modern dresser I just refinished and am now proudly displaying in my guest room. I took inspiration from the various paint-swatch furniture out on Pinterest - particuarly this beauty (I got pretty close, didn't I?). 

Huge improvement considering where she started out:

It took all of this to make the transformation possible:

She looks fab paired with the sunburst mirror I recently finished and hung!

Miscellaneous projects

I've tackled a number of other, smaller projects lately, including:

A yarn ball wreath for Christmas. There are so many iterations of this out on Pinterest, but this one was inspired from this version on CountryLiving,.com. The only difference in mine is that I used 10 instead of 12 of the 2 1/2" balls. I love this so much that I'm trying to justify leaving it up for a few more weeks now that Christmas is over.

And, here's my take on the Scrabble letter-based coasters you often see online, such as here:

Finally, my obsession with no-sew pillow covers continues with these two flowery pillows, using very clearance but nonetheless gorgeous silk fabric from Jo-Ann’s:

Rays of light

There is no shortage of sunburst mirror tutorials out there, and like most of my projects, the one I made is a combination of a few things I've seen out there. It's primarily based on this tutorial from Crazy Wonderful based on wood shims, but I made three specific changes to mine:

1. I chose to make the bursts on mine all consist of five shims each, and I used 12" shims. I glued each together with Gorilla Glue, then used masking tape to bind each grouping tightly together until they dried. Here's just one of my "bursts" of five shims:

2. I wanted a mirror that was more minimal than the one on Crazy Wonderful, so I just bought an unframed one from Jo-Ann Fabrics.

3. The most important difference is that I used gold leaf on my mirror. I started out by spray painting the assembled wood shims with gold paint but it still looked very wood-like to me, and it was hard to get a nice look even after sanding down the glue that seeped out during the gluing process. They gold-leafed a DIY sunburst mirror on one of my favorite HGTV shows, The High-Low Project, so I gave it a whirl too. Gold leaf sheets are pretty easy to apply. They come in a book of 25 sheets, and you also need to buy the adhesive spray. I got mine from Michael's Crafts.

Here's another take on the sunburst mirror, and a much lighter version at that, recently completed by my crafty friend, Mel. Finally, this is what my mirror looks like on the wall in our guest room. It's made even more beautiful paired with the dresser I just refinished. More on that in my next post!

Hammering to my heart's content

I've been going crazy over nail and string art since seeing the many iterations out on Pinterest. Here are just a few of the creations I've made thusfar, with many more to come - I just can't resist! Customized string art is available for sale via my window shop as well.  

Click here to see another impressive version, made by my friend, Mel.

Impressive ruffle pillows

This pair of felt ruffle pillows kept me busy for several days during my Christmas vacation this year. I based them off this great tutorial on The Etsy blog.

That said, I made two modifications to the approach outlined on Etsy:

1. The main cover is a no-sew model as outlined here, but folded and pinned in back rather than knotted:

2. Rather than sewing the ruffles onto the cover itself, I cut out a piece of felt to the size and shape I wanted, then sewed the ruffles to that instead. This will enable me to remove the ruffles and simply wash the fabric cover when needed.

The Etsy Blog warns that you'll use a LOT of felt circles, and they were right! I used about 90 for each pillow. I was able to make pretty quick work of it by tracing circles that measured just under 3" across from a mug using a regular ballpoint pen on the felt. A sharp scissors is also key to staying sane cutting out all those circles.

I really love these pillows, and am going to try making some using longer pillows, like those shown on The Etsy Blog, sometime soon!