A week of Craftiness

[Jennifer Grant]

Seems like everywhere I turned the past 7 says, the homemade crafts were abundant:

Started with teaching canvas art in North Carolina at the Inspired Artist Event:

and then I came home and helped the kids in Brad's class paint frames for their moms:

And now I'm on a mission to finally finish and sell all the half done projects Dan & I have cluttering up our small garage. This was the quickest one to start with--Full size headboard Dan made by copying from a
Pottery Barn catalog. One of the first wood projects he ever did. It
was an easy finish--he already had it painted, I just had to rough up the edges and add a 2 coats of Briwax. I had hoped to sell it on Craigslist, but no bites. (was only asking $100!!)

NEXT!! Decided to finally tackle redoing the seats on 2 chairs that I bought for under $10 last year in the hopes of making them beautiful again. First on the chopping block was this cute little red chair I grabbed for $6 (it had a cute little ruffle on the bottom, but I started ripping it off before I remembered to take pics):

I couldn't decide what fabrics to use and its so cute, I didn't want to use the wrong ones, so I moved onto my other half finished chair and did the top of it:

Not too bad for a first timer if I do say so myself! :) I love this fabric and hopefully I'll have enough to finish the seat too--if not I'll use a nice small plaid.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to Lee's (Dan's bff)for Kylee's bday party(Lee's daughter) (and my belated) and look at the cutest little welcome sign the girls had sitting on the back deck when we arrived:

I was blown away by Marilynne's new blouse -- and of course she MADE IT -- said she was watching Sandra Lee on Homemade Gourmet one day last week and loved her top so much she took a picture of the TV, and then ran back into her sewing room and just made one for herself (she seriously makes me ill)(Lee's mom)

And then of course she made the cakes too:

and if you wonder how in the heck you get striped borders of icing? "...oh its so simple...you just stripe the bag..." whatever. ;-)

and yes I am officially closer to 40 than 30 now :(

and finally--since Kylee is into tigers right now and Gramma couldn't find any Tiger print paper, she made her own by buying Orange craft paper and using acrylic paints to add black tiger stripes. WHO THINKS OF THIS STUFF!?!?! :) Marilynne Adams.

[Kris]

Marilynne is unbelieveable! The problem is, she sounds so darn nice in all her blog posts, etc., that you can't even hate her! All the projects look great (including the blouse). I have several pieces of furniture to re-do if I ever get this house organized. What is your favorite product/technique for stripping furniture? And tell me abour Briwax. Thanks!