Canvas drop cloth,, a lifesaver!

Some things I done at Christmas time that I never posted


Some of the keychains I made for my girls friends and coworkers


Bag I made for my niece for her mother-in-law.. all of these were made from
canvas drop cloth..

Tiered plate/cake stand

I've been eyeballing all the tiered plate stand things i've been seeing around blogland and wanted to try one out for myself,, I picked up the two glass candle sticks at a yard sale for 50c each and the other stuff I had already. The top and bottom tier are lids from some tins and the middle one is the top of a sturdy gift box. The very bottom base is part of a candle holder. I just used my glue gun to put them together, cause i'm impatient like that, but really should've used gorilla glue or E6000.. for now its holding its own and will stay the way it is,, later i plan to prime and paint it. I added a simple burlap table runner underneath. I made a runner with drop cloth and some christmas fabric and within an hour had spilled melted candle wax on it,,, thats so not right,, maybe i'll share that one later.


I'm linking up to the Saturday nite special over at Donna's place - Funky Junk Interiors - If you've never nosied around her site,, you are missing out,, she is really creative and loves to make unique and unusual home decor and other things. And the best part is she shares all that info with her readers.. Thanks Donna . So go now to the Saturday Nite Special. and see what everybody else is sharing tonight.

DIY day -- lunch bag

I'm linking up today to Kimba"s DIY day ,, and if you wanna see a lot of cool things others have done and leave with lots of inspiration go by Kimba's blog ~ A soft place to land and you wont be disappointed..



Here is a little bag i whipped up just using ideas from several different tutorials that I had seen,, Its replacing the ugly plastic bag i usually take my lunch to work in,, (dont look too close or you'll see all the flaws,, IT. IS . NOT. PERFECT and I dont care.. i still like it..
















WOO HOO,, its been a year since i started this blog and I'm just now getting to my 100th post,, maybe i'll make something and have a give-a-way..

Sign your name .. Hang it high

When the kids were little and we were going to birthday partys for cousins and neices and nephews all the time we got in the habit of signing the card ... The Mann Clan...just cause it was easier than signing 5 names to the bottom of the card ... mainly because it was usually last minute and done ,, in the car... on the way to the party.. Anyway,, so i've been wanting to make us a sign with our name on it.. I thought about doing the usual ,, (Mann,, est. 1987,,) but decided to do our usual signature .. The Mann Clan.

Used just a "scrap" piece of wood, printed the letters out in Microsoft word, size 400, cut them out and decoupaged onto the board. And voila,, this is how it turned out.

Is it perfect? NO.. Will you be able to see flaws if you enlarge the picture? PROBABLY ... Do I care? NO,, Because as a this blogger says,, It Doesnt Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful !! And it'll be hangin high in the living room and noone will notice . Have a great weekend everyone!

repurposed shutters

Ever since my adventure into the blog world i have seen shutters used as home decor everywhere,, I kept my eyes open for some at yard sales and flea markets but never found any and then one day we found some on the side of the road and Jeff rescued them for me.
I was first inspired by thehappyhomebody and how she uses shutters to hang pictures on and from.. and then i've seen them used plain as wall decoration.. as headboards and the list goes on and on.. recently I saw where somebody ( and for the life of me i cant remember who.. i'll give proper credit later) used a shutter to hold magazines. And thats when i decided what to do with mine... I combined two ideas that i found in blogland. The other day while reading through thediyshowoff blog , which is really great for DIY'ers.. lots of good ideas.. anyway I saw this post where the diy'er used alphabet stickers and made a really cool alphabet chair. I had purchased some chipboard alphabet at walmart on clearance and knew they would be perfect for this project.


So to begin with I picked out all the letters to spell "magazines" and glued them across the top using tacky glue. After that i spray/primed with gray primer, let it dry and used Bahama Sea spray paint to finish it up.. applied 2 saw tooth hangers on each side on the back and hung 'er up.. thats it ,, easy as pie and now i have a place for all those magazines... I hung the other shutter as is and it looks good too for what it is.


I dont have a before shot,, but it was a white shutter,, just imagine it,,

and here is a close up of the letters at the top.. I love it!

Projects on the cheap!

I used this little sheet of letters I got at HobbyLobby ironed Amberly's initials on the purse (a garage sale find) and Melanie's initials on the bath robe (also a find) . . .

For this little sign I typed and filled the entire page with the saying "Laundry~loads of fun", Used word art to put the Help Wanted on top of that and printed it out,, I tried to stain/age it a little with some tea bags,, and then I used my ModPodge and stuck it to a scrap pc of wood ,, Its hanging in my laundry room.

This last project was inspired by Kara at Creations by Kara , She made the cutest letter project using a scrap pc of wood and making her own patterned paper. She has a blog that is definitely worth checking out,, so go say "hi".

Burlap anyone??

Have you done anything with burlap lately or in the past? Rhoda at SouthernHospitality is having a burlap party. So jump on over there and share what you've done,, We all like to be inspired by others. This is a frame that i found at a yard sale for just a few cents,, painted it red, wrapped some burlap around the pc of cardboard popped this saying that I printed from computer on top of the burlap and put it back in the frame. Not bad for an almost free decoration. You can also see the picture holder I made for Melanie using burlap on this post.

Making Magnets

Recently I was priviliged to be able to help Rachelle over at She's Crafty with her gift bags for the Relay for Life event where she lives. She lost a very sweet friend to cancer and does this in memory of her. You can read about it at She's Crafty. Anyway, she makes the cutest magnet boards and needed(still needs) donations of magnets to go with them,. You can find more information HERE if you would like to make some magnets or some of the other things to send her.


Here are the ones I made, (kinda hard to photograph, they look better in for real ) And just for making these I was featured on her blog here. These are super simple to make but look really pretty on your fridge or magnet/message board.

Trash to Treasure

How about a little trash to treasure, go on over to Kimms place and check out all the other trash that has been made into treasure.. ,, this was made using 4 pieces of scrap wood that I saw in the back of J's truck as I was passing ,, and thought they looked too good to just throw away,, . I laid them out on the floor,, and stapled them together with my little staple gun,, they didnt even fit flush together,, but that didnt matter cause they were getting covered with torn bits of brown paper using watered down tacky glue. Elmers glue would've been cheaper but I didnt really think about it at the time. It really didnt take much anyway. After all the board was covered , I stapled a pc of chicken wire across the back(note to self,, wear gloves next time u work with chicken wire) , then a piece of burlap and finally covered them both with a scrap pc of felt. I stapled a string of wire across the back to hang it with. And to finish it off I added some clothes pins that I covered with two different pcs of scrap paper. My daughter is using it to hang pictures on in her bedroom. ( The pictures arent great but hopefully you get the idea)