Happy Friday, friends!
Today wraps up a week-long craft-a-palooza here on the blog.
(If you're tuning in for the first time today, you can see the 4 other crafts from this week HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. And again, while this is a crafting week series, each post can stand alone, just like those Indiana Jones movies. You don't have to watch them all in order, but who doesn't want to see Harrison Ford four times in a row?
Am I right?)
Since the crafting this week has been all about using things you already have
or
spending the least amount of moolah possible, it seems only appropriate that the last craft of the week didn't cost me a penny.
While doing the great closet clean-up of 2011 a couple weeks ago, I came across some canvas bags-
exhibit A:
One of them is sporting the TCT logo and one of them was plain-jane. I got both for free- one as a gift and one from our church library so that we could use it to transport our library books back and forth.
I figured one or both of them could do with a little embellishment, so I went in search of some ideas...
along the way, I came across bags with:
crocheted flowers from HERE,
monograms and pretty doilies from HERE,
painted leaves from HERE,
and ruffles from HERE.
While each of the above examples is fabulous in its own way,
I decided to go a different route with my plain-jane bag and paint a pattern on it.
What's my favorite pattern at the moment?
Well friends, it still happens to be chevron.
Remember when I made my chevron with techron mantel?
I pulled out my blue painters tape, and my measuring tape and I got to work.
Using the same tutorial I shared in THIS post, I measured every 2 inches along the top, and every 2 inches along the sides and made a tiny dot where each of those met using my jumbo pencil-
again, for a more in-depth tutorial on how to create a chevron pattern, check THIS post out.
Once I had connected all of the dots with a zig and a zag, it looked something like this:
(and did anyone else just sing, "connect the dots, la la la laaaa..." in their head or was it just me? Good ole' PeeWee)
As you can clearly see, the zigs and zags aren't very neat.
This is when you'll need to grab something very sharp, but do it carefully.
An exact-o is the perfect thing...
See the messy zag?
Take your knife, slice off the messy part, and...
a perfect zag!
Do that to all the zig-zags, and you'll have something like this:
Now it's paint time!
If you don't have any acrylic paints on hand, they are super-cheap at hob lob and Michael's. I just happen to have quite a few, so I looked through the colors to find one that suited my fancy...
Island green it is!
A beautiful turquoisy-green.
Yep, just made turquoisy a word.
It's official.
I also keep some of those cheap little 25 cent sponge painter thingys on hand for just such occasions, so I went to town with it painting in my pretty chevron stripes.
Once an entire side was finished, and my girls were up from their naps, I let it dry for a good 6 hours while we had some fun in the pool. Once the kiddos were in bed for the night, I quickly finished the other side, and this is why the other side went 'quickly'-
I kept the taped chevron stripes in tact when I pulled them off so I could reuse them.
Genius, no?
Genius, yes!!!
Well, ok- so I kept two of the stripes in tact because it didn't dawn on me that I could actually reuse them until I'd already wadded one of them up.
ahhh...live and learn.
Still, it was better than having to measure and mark off all of the zags and zigs.
Once the rest of the tape was in place, I quickly painted in the stripes and left it to dry overnight. The next morning, I had a cute little chevron bag all ready for some goodies!
Doesn't that look cute a-hangin' in our mudroom too?
And yes, that little cut-out area in our kitchen constitutes a mudroom.
I checked.
That's a princess Belle wand in the bag in case anyone was wondering.
So-
if YOU had a plain canvas bag, how would you embellish it?
Fabric or felt rosettes?
Maybe some ric-rac sewn along the top and bottom?
Maybe add a monogram to it?
Or maybe sling paint at it Pollock style?
oooohhhh...the possibilities...
And, because I likes me a good recap, let's take a quick look back at the projects from this week and just how insanely cheap they were to make-
1 sheet of posterboard- $1
scotch sticky putty- $2.59
cardboard for the pattern- already had on hand
total= $3.59
formula cans, craft paper, ribbon- had on hand
chalkboard labels- $2.99
white paint marker- $2.99
total= $5.98
Day #3- framed houndstooth monogram
chipboard letter 'M'- had on hand
white posterboard- $1
houndstooth fabric- had on hand
11 x 14 frame- $5 at wal-mart
glue/glue sticks- hand on hand
total= $6
Day #4- fun with iron-ons
tee-shirt for O-man- $3.88
tank for me- $3.88
black makeup bag- had on hand
iron-on letters- free, thanks to my sis
total= $7.78
Day #5- embellished a plain canvas bag
canvas bag- had on hand
paints/paint tape- had on hand
total= 0
p.s.- I hope you've had as much fun as I did with craft week! I actually have a few other, more time-consuming crafts lined up that I'll be sharing sometime in the near future. Also...can't wait to begin sharing the progress we're making in the kitchen. For those of you reading for the first time, we're about to completely gut our 1960 kitchen and I'm oh.so.pumped. Stay tuned...
p.p.s.- the Jackson Pollock site I linked to above actually lets you paint Pollock-style using the curser on your computer! So cool!
