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Christmas Ribbon Candles

December 14, 2011 5 Comments
Hello lovelies!!!
I am really enjoying fancying up these pillar candles for my two candles stands!!!
It’s fun to take something you use year round and adjust it for each holiday/season, don’t you think?!?


You can see my here and my Thanksgiving Candles here. 


For Christmas here’s another (EASY and CHEAP) candle decorating idea!!!
First seen on An Irish Italian Blessing! Thanks Katherine!!!

Christmas Ribbon Candles

Materials needed:

1-2 (or more) pillar candles
Ribbon of your choice 
(You could make these for anytime of year depending on the candles and ribbon you choose, by the way!)
Scissors
Spray Adhesive
Glue gun

Eyeball Carefully measure around your candles, then cut your lengths of ribbon. 
I cut three ribbons for each candle for a total of six ribbons, alternating the colors. 

Spray the adhesive around the inside of the ribbon then attach to your candle, pressing down so it adheres. 

Then to make sure it stays put… 
I just dabbed a little hot glue on the outside end of the ribbon. 

Match your ribbons on both candles if you want a cohesive look. 
If not, you can alternate ribbon placement.
And viola! 😉 
Really, this whole tutorial is a glorified set of instructions for glueing ribbon onto some pillar candles to spice them up! Easy peasy, right?!? Haha. 
We like easy and inexpensive projects here in case you haven’t noticed… 😉

What easy Christmas decorations are you/have you been working on?
Or not so easy… We’d love to hear about those too!
Linking this here and here and .
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Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, Holidays, Home Decor, Tutorials Tagged With: ,

Personalized Initial Tote Bag

December 6, 2011 8 Comments
Hello dolls!!!
Looking for a fairly easy sewing project/Christmas gift idea?
How about a personalized initial tote bag???

personalized tote bag
I made two of these for my sisters in law so far and each one was fairly easy to put together.
(They were birthday gifts that they’ve already received… so no worries on a spoiler alert! haha)
Each one was also completed in just about half an hour.
You could easily whip up several of these for your loved ones this Christmas!
First, I used some of the sew-able interfacing from Silhouette America, cut it down to the size of my fabric and ironed them together per the instructions on the interfacing package.

iron on interfacing
Then you can use your Silhouette SD, Cameo, or other cutting machine to cut out your fabric initial. Or if you don’t have a cutting machine, you can trace then cut an initial with scissors.

Silhouette SD cutting fabric

Once it cuts the initial out and you peel away the extra fabric, you’ll have your letter to sew on to your tote.



The interfacing is meant to be ironed on to hold down whatever you are planning to sew on, until it’s sewn of course.
So… you’ll need to iron the initial to the tote, then you can start sewing.

iron on interfacing
Be careful while sewing not to sew one side of the tote to the other… Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything… I may or may not have done that with a pillow cover recently… 😉

sewing an initial tote bag
Once your initial is sewn on you can add some pretty embellishments like rolled fabric rosettes or ribbon around the top. For the ribbon I just hot glued one end on to hold it in place, then sewed around the top and bottom of the ribbon.
I used for my rosettes, but here’s a little tip I just figured out…

fabric rosettes
If you want an idea of how the rosettes look before gluing or sewing them on… Pin them to your tote first, then you can rearrange them to your liking BEFORE affixing them! 😉
That may sound silly to some of you, but to me that was monumental! haha

personalized tote bagpersonalized tote bag
There you go! 🙂
You can now stuff with goodies or gift as is for a fun personalized gift your recipient can use all year round!
What are you hoping to receive this Christmas???
P.S. Linking this here and here and .

Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, Sewing Tagged With: ,

Halloween Spider Web Candles

October 26, 2011 14 Comments
Halloween is now less than a week away!
Here’s a quick, easy Halloween craft for those last minute decorations!! 

Spider Web Candles


I bought two white candles at Wal-Mart. 
Then used my Silhouette SD to cut out two spider webs in black vinyl. 
The spider web is another FREE shape included with the software. 


Carefully stick them onto the candles and smooth all edges. 


Done! Quick and easy! And so cute!


What are you scaring up these last few days before Halloween lovelies?? 

By the way… I am guest posting over here today! 
It’s not my usual crafty post either… This time I’m talking….
MARRIAGE!!! Hope you’ll stop by and say hello!

Linking this here and here and .
P.S. Thanks to Kara for letting me share this here first! 🙂
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Filed Under: Crafts, Holidays, Home Decor Tagged With: , ,

Painted Pyrex

October 25, 2011 9 Comments
Hello friends!! 
A couple weeks ago my sweet friend, the new Mrs. Knight, got married. 
The same sweet friend who did MY hair at my wedding!
So I wanted to make her something special for a bridal shower gift. 


She had a set of Pyrex bake ware on her registry… 
But naturally, they needed a little Truly Lovely spiffying up. 😉


This was a project that plagued me for weeks.
I had two FAILED attempts before I found something that worked, and turned out the way I wanted.


First… Don’t buy this stuff. It doesn’t look like glass etching at all.
More like gunk just globbed on there. Unless that’s the look you’re going for of course…
And it my case it wasn’t… So off it came!

Second… If you’re going to paint glass… You have to be very careful and very patient.
Otherwise it leaks and streaks and just looks yucky.
Those pictures up there really don’t even do justice to the craft fail that they actually were… haha.


Mrs. Knight’s kitchen and home in general has a western/country look and feel to it.
Her kitchen is red and brown.

So, in the method that worked out the way I wanted, I used brown glass paint and Silhouette cut vinyl stencils to add her new last name to a set of Pyrex dishes. 

What saved me SO much time and trouble was using a foam sponge (makeup dept.) to dab the paint onto the glass dishes instead of using a paint brush. 

Foam sponge and after math of my other attempts… 🙂


I also used the stencils as the INSIDE of the letters so that it didn’t have to look so precise. This is one of those projects where exact perfection isn’t going to happen… BUT that was perfect in this case leaning toward my rustic-y theme.

Following the directions on the paint I used, I let the painted dishes dry for several hours, then cured them in the oven. 


In the end… I really like them! 
I think they have a rustic-western-y quality to them. 
Plus, they’re different, and personalized. Can’t go wrong with that! 



All wrapped up and ready to be boxed and sent to the bridal shower! 
Mrs. Knight says she likes them too! 
Guess all that crafty trial and error was worth it!
P.S. I’m sharing a quick and EASY Halloween craft over here today! 😉
P.P.S. Linking this here and here and .
P.P.P.S… I am sharing my picks from the Take a Look Tuesday party at Sugar Bee Crafts over here today too! 🙂 Check out Mandy’s blog by the way… I LOVE it! 🙂
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Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, Tutorials Tagged With: , ,

Ruffled Fleece Pillow Cover

September 28, 2011 4 Comments
Hello friends! 🙂
Remember for my wedding I made my bridesmaids ?
Well, I have about a yard or so of material left from almost every one… 
So I made a pillow for Kayli to match her paisley fleece blanket!! 

To start with, I based my pillow cover loosely on this tutorial from Jen at Tatertots & Jello. 
A I’ve had saved for a long time, mind you! 😉

So in the interest of full disclosure… This is NOT a good tutorial. 
This isn’t even really a tutorial… BUT there is a good tip for you at the end… 
So stick with me! 😉
This was my very first pillow cover ever! 
If you want a good tutorial on how to make an envelope pillow cover check out that link up there from Jen!

Moving on…

My pillow form was a 12″ by 14″ purchased from Wal-Mart, so I cut my front piece with an extra inch to allow for sewing, so 13″ by 15″. 
The two back pieces (to make the envelope) were each cut a little larger to form the overlap of the envelope. 


Then I cut two, two inch wide strips, about 30 inches long to make the ruffles. 


As per Kayli’s suggestion… 
To create the ruffles, I sewed a top stitch all the way across the top of one side of each strip.
Then gently pulled the bottom thread of the stitch to bunch the material. 
They’ll look like so…


Then you just sew your panels together inside out, flip them around and sew on the ruffles! 


Viola! Fun, ruffled, fleece pillow cover! 🙂


So ready for some more full disclosure?
See how I purposefully made that top ruffle a little crooked for that eclectic look everyone’s been talking about? Well that’s a fib. My sewing skills failed me dear friends… 
And the COMPLETE crooked-ness that were happened on accident. 
Granted it wasn’t that crooked when I started, but check it out… 
I went with it. Sometimes you just gotta make it work. 


And sometimes… 
You just gotta listen to your sister saying, “I like it… the way it is” and roll with it!
You never know… Might even like it better that way anyway. 😉

Linking this here and here and .
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Filed Under: Crafts, Kayli, Sewing

Vinyl + Tile = Booth Sign

September 21, 2011 9 Comments
Remember in having a Scentsy Booth at the County Fair?
Well, here’s a quick little lovely I crafted up to display at my booth. 


Materials needed:
A tile from my local Home Depot (they cost less than $1)
Purple Krylon spray paint
White vinyl 
(Did you know the vinyl you can purchase at Wal-Mart for the Cricket machine works just lovely in the Silhouette SD? You just gotta trim it down to size.)
And a small tabletop easel

I spray painted the white tile with a couple of coats of the purple paint. 
(Purple for Scentsy of course)
Cut out the wording in the white vinyl using my Silhouette SD.


Then using transfer paper applied the lettering to the tile. 


By the way, if you’re interested in hosting a Scenty Catalog/Online party to earn FREE Scentsy products, let me know! We can ship all over the U.S. and Canada, so you can host a party anywhere!

See the sign? There toward the left corner of the picture.
And speaking of the County Fair… 
How cute is my niece, Taylor, showing her VERY first lamb! 
She won THIRD place in the fair and was able to sell her lamb at the auction. 
We were all VERY proud of her! 


Well done Miss TayTay!!! 

Have a lovely day friends!!!

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Filed Under: Crafts, Tutorials Tagged With: , Tile,

My Stashe Jar

September 14, 2011 20 Comments
Did you know, Miss too?
I’ve talked about before…
And we’ve shared some projects from my Pinterest like .
But today, how about a Kayli pinned project??
How fun is this that she pinned?
Our inspiration…
The end of a foam paint brush… 😉
Then I just stuck the mustashe on… Smoothed it out… And viola!
Kayli’s very own My Stache jar!
The pink matches her bedroom at college!!
I think she likes it. 😉
Happy crafting lovelies! And happy pinning!!!
By the way… a follow too! 😉
Linking this here and here and .
AND
P.S. Linking this to The CSI Project as our Most Viewed project of 2011!
Visit thecsiproject.com
Filed Under: Crafts, Kayli, Pinterest Tagged With: ,

My First Printable!

September 7, 2011 4 Comments
I’ve mentioned it before… A time or two… 
But in case you missed it, Miss Kayli, my baby sister, started to college last month! Whoot!! 

Mr. M and I bought her a new bed set for her graduation gift. 
This lovely from Target. Cute, right!?


So I wanted to make her a little something to match her bed set that she could display in her new room. 
I used Microsoft word to create a FUN printable to match her bedding, then saved it as a image file in Paint. 
It features one of her favorite quotes. One that I think is quite befitting a young lady about to start to college, but any young lady in general. 

“Be strong and of good courage. You are truly royal spirit daughters of Almighty God. You are princesses, destined to become queens. Your own wondrous story has already begun. Your once upon a time is now.”
~Deiter F. Uchtdorf


So, if you’d like, please feel free to click on the picture to enlarge, then save to your computer.
*It’s not blurry when you enlarge it FYI! 😉

You can make a lovely for the young lady in YOUR life! 
Courtesy of Truly Lovely! 🙂

I framed it in one of the frames I made for our wedding. I’ll share those sometime… 
But until now, here’s how it turned out! 


Have a lovely day sweet friends! 


P.S. Today I’m sharing a GUEST POST over at THE IVY COTTAGE BLOG! 
I would LOVE it if you would pop over and say hello!! 🙂


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Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, Kayli Tagged With: Picture Frame, Printable

Lovely Little Gift Boxes

August 31, 2011 11 Comments
How about a tutorial on making lovely little gift boxes today?
I’ve BEEN so anxious to get this post together for you guys!!
So, finally… here you go! 😉

I made these little lovelies to hold a surprise for each of my bridesmaids for my wedding back in July. 


Each of the girls, myself and my wedding day coordinator all received an aqua chrysanthemum necklace purchased from Brittany at . 
You should definitely check out her shop! 
Such little pretties to be bought!! 🙂 


I used my absolute favorite crafting mechanism EVER, my Silhouette SD 
(which battles it out with my sewing machine for top spot…) 
to cut these box templates from heavy scrapbook paper. 


I used the free box template that came with my Silhouette SD software. 
You know, by using the free shapes, I have only actually purchased about three things!! 
Anyway…


Once you pull the shape from your cutting sheet, it looks like this. 
The box shapes are really easy to fold up into little boxes. 
I used Elmer’s Glue Spots on the inside tabs to hold the boxes together. 


Once I had them all folded up I cut several small pieces of white tissue paper to fill the inside of the box and keep the necklace from rolling around. 


I cut several pieces of left over zebra ribbon from to add some fun to each of the boxes. 
The Elmer’s Glue Spots came in handy to hold those in place as well!


Next, I used my Silhouette to cut out a flower shape for each box in it’s coordinating color. 
Once the flowers were cut, an Elmer’s Glue Dot was applied to the back. 


I just pulled a few petals up gently so they looked a little more “alive”, not in the literal sense of course… 
haha
Cute, right?!? But they still needed a little something….


Some Acrylic Jewels and some more Elmer’s Glue Dots!!! 
Each box got it’s own little sparkly center. 🙂



They made the perfect finishing touch to my bridesmaid gifts. 🙂 
I gotta say… I was pretty proud of myself with these!
ALL of the materials were things I already had in my craft stash!!! 


Happy crafting lovelies!! 🙂
Linking this here and here and .

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Filed Under: Crafts, Wedding ideas

Office Art and Wordle

August 24, 2011 4 Comments
Back to prettying up my office space!!
If you missed the first two posts in this series, go here and here.

Before I share the third frame in my office prettying project… 

I’d like to share my recent discovery with you.
Maybe I’m the last one to know, but if not, you’ve gotta check out this cool website called Wordle.

It lets you enter either a paragraph of text, a website/blog/any other url and then makes a word cloud from the most used words within what you provided.

 For example, I made a wordle using the .

 COOL, right?
The site chooses the most used words and creates your word cloud.
From there you can customize the colors, shape, and even remove words to make it your own.
Then you can print or share it as you please. 🙂

A Wordle made from my wedding blog, My Road to Mrs. 

You could frame a custom word cloud to be used as wall art, as a gift, or even to label random items!
I made a Wordle from my work website and framed it in the pink frame I talked about here, to display in my office!

I think I might frame my blog wordles as wall decoration for my craft room! 🙂
The ideas are endless!!!

*Wordle does not know who I am or care I’m sure… 
This is just a fun idea I found and wanted to share with others. 🙂

So… Wordle away friends!!!
I would love to hear about what you create!!!
There’s one more post to come in my office pretty-fying series…
Then the reveal of all the projects combined! So stay tuned!

Have a lovely day!

P.S. I’m sharing a Cupcake recipe I just kinda made up 😉 over here today!!
Hope you’ll come say hello and check out all the other 
CUPCAKE AWESOME SAUCE!!!

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Filed Under: Crafts Tagged With: Picture Frame, Printable
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