I Love Love Thrift Store Shopping!

I was on a fast.  A deprivation fast. You know the kind of fast where you are not allowed to have something you love?

Oh this was a fast that would not allow me to visit my local thrift stores until I got thru a majority of projects I designed from previous purchases.

The fast lasted 2 weeks and then I cracked, I just had to go and see and buy and I did. So glad I did cause look what I found.

These lovingly made white crocheted flowers for $2.00. There are 3 flowers and three leaves to each part.  I already had planned on making a black and white fabric rose wreath and oh  I thought wouldn't these look fantastic on the wreath.
 

I separated the flowers and used only two flowers and 2 leaves for this wreath. As you can see I added some little mini buds with coordinating fabric to the center of the flowers.

Black and white flowers look so good up against a burlap wrapped wreath.  Fabric roses are so much fun to make. Do a google search for tutorials on fabric roses if you haven't  made these yet.

This wreath was made to hang on a wreath chair which will be an addition to an entry way. Right now the wreath is just sitting in the seat of the chair. Chair is missing it's wreath hook. (I'm working on that)

So glad I gave into my urges to shop and found these so very pretty flowers. It actually made my day.

Getting Ready For A Craft Show!

This upcoming weekend will be my first craft show. I've been working hard re*cycling, re*designing and re*purposing items I've purchased from the local thrift stores.

This white container is a  left over from my soap business. I used them as gift basket containers. So to have it come with me to the craft show I had to do something crafty to them. I remembered a tutorial for a large burlap flower that might work and I thought I give it a try.

I was inspired to do this from Tatertots and Jello So I had some toile fabric just hanging around that I thought would be a good match.  My top measures 6" and per the tutorial I was to cut a square double the size. Now the instructions was for a burlap flower and my fabric is a little less stiff so I decided to iron on some fusible interfacing to give the fabric some body.  I cut the points off of the square to give the shape of a circle. Now to attached the fabric to the container I used a hot glue gun and just turned the ends under and hot glued like crazy.

So after the fabric was attached I then started making folds going all around the container and held it together at the center with pins. As soon as I was happy with the look I hot glued the center to get the folds to stay in place. I then made a matching fabric rose and put that in the center to cover the glue.

So I'm thinking this will pass the crafty judges at the show.

Shirt Collar Fabric Rose Wreath

Collar Roses Wreath

FIRST THE BASICS:   The wreath is a 12" straw wreath purchased at Joann's for $1.80 ($2.99 less a 40% off coupon) Wrapped in burlap that I also purchased at Joann's for $3.99 a yard and also applied a 40% off coupon to that. I purchased 4 yds so I would have quite a bit of length to my strips. I cut one strip about 3" wide then hot glued one end of my strip onto the wreath and started wrapping the burlap around the wreath overlapping about half of each strip so that there wouldn't be any see thru of the straw.

COLLARS BECOMES ROSES:  (if you haven't made fabric roses before do a Google search for a tutorial "how to make fabric roses")
So the above image is the collar and how it looks after being cut from the shirt. There are two sections of the collar, the collar band (the part that wraps around the neck) and the collar points (the other part of the collar)

One Collar Becomes Two Parts

I've separated the collar into two parts and trimmed the collar so that it's cut right up to the stitching on both pieces. So now one collar will produce two fabric roses.  The collar band makes for a smaller rose and I just start rolling from one end to create the inside bud (about 1/4 of the way) and then  twirled and secured. My glue of choice is Fabri Tac. it's tacky right away which helps to keep the rose from unraveling.

Collar Band Rose

The collar point is quite wide and would produce too big a rose for my liking so I folded it in half and secured it with fabric glue to keep it in place. (picture not shown) I'm then ready to twirl and secure.

WREATH FINISHING: So I had collected a number of different color blue collars (as you can see in the wreath image) and was happy with the color composition of them and I just arranged them on the burlap covered wreath and secured them with pins to make sure I liked how it looked before I committed to glue. I tend to leave things to sit for a bit to make sure I'm happy with it and it became apparent to me that something was missing. So I made a few 1 1/2" covered buttons in matching fabric and I think that helped.  So I removed the pins, hot glued the roses and buttons in place and then hot glued some pins into the roses to really secure them so they would stay put. 

My plan is to display this wreath along with the Men's Shirt Pillows at my upcoming craft show. 



Stick around because I'll be posting those pictures of the pillows I've made from these shirts along with a simple How To