Dollar store finds

It's no secret folks, I love the dollar store. There is such a plethora of wonderful, weird, ugly, cool, awesome and sometimes useless stuff. And it's all $1. All of the fake flowers for my wedding came from the dollar store (used to decorate the pews in the church). And gift bags, bows, wrapping paper and ribbon I buy almost exclusively at dollar stores.  I even made a reuseable grocery bag from ugly tea towels I found at my local Dollar Tree.

This trip I was short on time so my finds are limited.

I found glitter!

 

Its fine and comes in a ton of colors. I don't use a lot of glitter, so this was a perfect amount for the small projects I do.

And I found this cute puppy... He was on clearance for 25cents!

 

He has a few paint imperfections, and I thought about repainting him, but from a distance you can't tell. I did take him off of his perch though.

And He has a new home on our TV stand next to a stack of vintage books!

Glasses Case- revamped!

I got new glasses yesterday. And by new glasses, I mean I have never worn glasses before, and they are COMPLETELY new to me.  I scored a great deal on frames online, and am totally thrilled with how my glasses look! I was not, however, thrilled with the case they sent with my glasses (honestly though, it was a free case, and I am not complaining!)

Here is the before: totally boring, plain blue plastic.

So I started by spray painting it silver:

And added some detail by covering it with a piece of lace, and spraypainting a coat of red.

Heres how it looks!



I thought it was still a little too plain, so using modpodge, I added some glitter to a few of the details and around the edge, once dry, add another layer of modpodge to seal.

So now the outside is pretty, how about the inside? using fabric, batting, thin cardboard and some hotglue, I made the inside both soft and pretty!

The bottom part also lifts up, leaving enough space to stash a cleaning cloth!

All finished, and ready for glasses!

Let's Go, Dodgers! A T-shirt quilt

I finally finished my most recent T-Shirt quilt!  I made it for a former boss, who is totally obsessed with the Dodgers! These are all shirts from her collection (no where near the whole collection though- that would have made a massive quilt!)

This is the first quilt I have ever finished with binding for the edge. It turned out ok, but not my favorite way to finish. I have another quilt in the works that requires a binding as well.

Gallery wall

Yesterday I posted a Decorated Cross that I made to add to my gallery wall. Well, here is the gallery wall!

This entire wall of art cost me less than $30!! Here's the breakdown:


1- clock, purchased at BigLots for $12
2-Picture of my in-siblings and niece, gift, $0
3- Painting by my husbands grandma, $0
4- Art my husband had $0
5- A framed card in a frame I had $0
6- A picture of my sister and I $-0
7- Signlanguage alphabet (made by me) in a frame purchased for $4
8- A drawing by my father, frame cost $6
9- Packaging from a Dickies shirt, frame cost $4
10- Decorated cross, $3
11- A drawing my husband had, $0
12- Wedding photo of my husbands parents, $0
13- Art from Thailand (souvenier from my uncle), $0
14- A painting by my best friend in a frame I had, $0
15- A painting I bought at goodwill for 50 cents!!! $.50

Here's a closeup of #7-

And a closeup of #5

Decorated Cross

I purchased this unfinished cross at Walmart for less than $3 to fill a hole in my gallery wall... ( yes, I have a gallery wall... I know how "trendy" they are, but I put one up to save money on decoration costs! I basically used as many pieces of artwork of mine and my husbands that I could find and suplemented those with some other inexpensive pieces and some that I made! Like this one...)

I painted it brown, and used mod podge to glue a thrifted map to the top layer. (The map was not a normal city map, and I'm not sure where it was for, but it had foreign sounding names. I bought two at goodwill for 99cents each!)

And I used some gold glitter glue around the outer edge to add some sparkle, and to help it pop a little.

Americana Trinket Shelf (or Junk Drawer Art)

Both my spare bedroom and bathroom are americana themed. The bedroom was easy to decorate, but the bathroom had me stumped. I had the red shower curtain, and some easy to sew decorated towels , but there wasn't much wall space to work with as far as hanging art. I purchased a small, unfinished trinket shelf at my local dollar store and painted it navy blue. And it sat waiting for inspiration  as to what to fill it with. My first thought was to make some tiny art squares to put in each space, but that didn't work out so well. So I dug through my stash of whimsies (read: junk) and pulled out as many red, white, silver and tan trinkets I could find. I used broken jewelry, old game peices, buttons, and other bits I had floating around. I started by arranging them in the squares and rearranging as needed to make them look nice, then I hot-glued them into place. Ta-da! Easy, and cute artwork for the bathroom! Total cost was $1.00 for the shelf, all the other materials I had on hand!

Here is is with the other small art piece my husband found for me at goodwill.

Ugly Tea Towels to Reusable bag

A few months ago I was wandering through my local Dollar Tree (one of my favorite stores!)  and stumbled upon some really fabulously ugly tea towels.

They called, no, screamed my name. I mean, who could pass up a pink tea towel with a strange soup print on it? I still can't get over how glorious and weird the print is. So there I was giggling to myself  in the middle of the aisle wondering what I could do with such a treasure. I bought 3. One I sent to my best friend, who was just as amused by its kitchyness, and the other two sat around for a while. I washed them.... and stared at them... and waited a few weeks for inspiration to hit me. those few weeks turned into months and then it hit me... a reuseable bag! Then I could strut my stuff at the grocery store with a little beauty made of odd soup print fabric.  I used another bag I had as a template, its basically two rectangles sewn together with the bottom corners squared up.

I added a piece of cardboard to the bottom for stability.