HARVEST WELCOME BOARD

Yesterday I spent the evening making a "porch board." It's just a tall sign that is meant to stand by your entry, out of the way, to welcome guests.

Since Fall is on it's way, I thought I'd make one to say "Harvest Welcome," to place in my new booth.

Here was my plain old wooden fence board before and after:

I ended up using the other side that didn't have the light colored streaks. First I took some cinnamon orange colored craft paint and a wide paint brush and started to freehand the letters.

I didn't know how much space I'd have in the end, but I started by doing the first word, "HARVEST."

And I knew if I did have enough room that I wanted to also write "WELCOME" to the end, for "HARVEST WELCOME."

Most people will lay it out, but I just don't really take the time for that anymore. I knew I could always cut it off the bottom if there was too much room left, or fill it in with something.

Yep, that's a hammock on my side porch. I love it there. lol

The wide paint brush makes it easy to freehand these type of letters.

Or if you don't fell good with free handing  them, print you off large letters using Word in whichever font you like and just trace them real hard onto your board to give you an outline.

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW I DID THAT IN A PREVIOUS POST

After the wide orange letters were done, I went back in with a country tan color and outlined a fine line around each letter.  I used a very fine tip paint brush that is actually meant for decorating nails. It works perfect.

Once it was all painted it, I did have some room at the bottom left over but not too much. I decided to just draw in a pumpkin to fill it in.

And there's some grapevine garland I was about to use also to trim it up.

Look how cool the grapevine twirled up at the bottom to form a cute little pumpkin!

 I left the extra hanging as a stem also.

Here's a shot from the side, hard to get a good pic cause the board is so long.

As you see, I just ran the grapevine garland from the top down the sides and to the bottom.

I loved how the grapevine was making it look that far.

And here it is sitting beside my door:

I like how it takes up that empty space that really doesn't have much room for anything else.
And now seeing it sitting there, in a pic, I think I'm going to go back and add a touch of burlap to the top.

Here's a few other pics of how I've started decorating the porch already. Since we had a bit of a cool down spell yesterday, it has really gotten me in the mood.

I'll probably keep this porch board for myself, but I'm off to make a few more in the same theme for my booth right now. I think I will probably price them for $19.99 each.....or um, maybe $15.00.

Anyways, hope ya'll got some sort of idea from this post.  And now I'm off to add a bit of burlap to the top of the board someway.  After seeing the pic here, it looks like it just needs something there.
Happy Crafting,
-Lisa

MASON JAR BIRDFEEDER

I love Mason jars old and new.  And therefore I'm always looking for new everyday uses for them. And by looking on Pinterest I ran across this idea. A chick feeder, old jar and lid as a bird feeder!

For this easy bird feeder craft, all you need is:

-chick feeder base, approximately $3 at feed or animal stores
-A mason jar, new or old
-a metal or enamel lid
-E-6000 glue

Super simple. Just steady your lid upside down ((I sat mine in the feeder)) and squirt e-6000 glue on the bottom of you Mason jar.

Then sit the mason jar bottom onto the upside down lid to dry.

Drying takes about 24 hours to cure completely as this is strong glue.

Then after completely dry just flip it over and screw the jar into the chick feed base.

Now you can start to see that when we unscrew the base , we flip the jar and lid  top upside down to fill with birdseed.

The lid acts as a topper to keep the exposed birdseed dry and the handle on the lids makes for an easy way to hang.

Here it is hanging out on a shepherds hook.

And here it is over beside my little chicken coop. The bits and pieces of corn and seed that falls are soon found. (Look in the bottom right of the corner of next pic down.)

When I take it down to refill it, I have plenty of help from the Gerty, Myrtle and the girls.

My little chickens are so curious about anything I am doing.

I loved how simple and beautiful this craft turned out to be that I am also going to go ahead and use a chick feed waterer base to make a hummingbird feeder this same way.  Remember, in case you don't know, you can't use a chicken feeder base like this to hold hummingbird liquid. I tried! It all runs out! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by ya'll! See ya' next time.

~Lisa at www.booth555.com

MASON JAR LID WREATH DIY Craft Tutorial

MASON JAR LID WREATH

Want a cute way to use up all of those extra Mason Jar lid rings you got laying around? I recently saw a  few posts on Pinterest about these and I couldn't wait to give it a try.

I have quite a few...

  And this is how I did it.

Super easy.  Seriously.  Just take some sort of heavy wire,  or in my case, I used a wire clothes hanger.  I used wire cutters and clipped one end open so I can string the rings on them.

 

Then I just bent it to the shape I needed and started sliding them on.

 

 

The number of lids basically depend on how big you want your wreath to be.  Oh, and these ones I was using are Regular mouth, standard lids. So just play with it.  But I'd recommend at least having 30 to 50 rings on hand. More for a larger one or so on. 

 

You could also experiment with "fillers" in between each ring to save on using so many. But for my first one here, I'm just gonna keep it as simple as I can.

And seriously, that is it.  After you have strung enough, just twist up your wire together and if you can, leave the hook for easy hanging. Otherwise you can tie on some sort of fabric hanger if you have to.

You probably will have to go back, once it is hanging and straighten out the rings. They tend to move and shift while working with the wire a lot.

See how they shift. But it's easy to straighten them up. And after it's done, they stay even with the door opening and closing.

Super easy and cheap craft that definitely screams country any where you place it.

I'm already thinking of making another one.

But for it, I am thinking of experimenting with those foam floater sticks for swimming. I bet they would hold good, as long as they will fit inside the rings. And I bet with those, I'll definitely have to use some sort of filler to hide the foam rings. 

See ya'll next time,

~Lisa

ROLLING PIN IDEAS

A few weeks ago, I had an idea after watching an "Everybody Loves Raymond," episode. If you haven't seen the show, over at Raymonds Moms' house, she has a rolling pin on the wall that holds mail.

So I went and bought a handful of rolling pins at the Dollar Mart for only $1.19 each, the wooden ones. And I tried my hand at making them. Well, turns out I'm not great at cutting the back off of the round rolling pins to make them flat against the wall. And the cuts to hold the mail.....well, they turned out awful. Take a look:

See how the lines came out all uneven? I had used a table saw for that and apparently it wasn't the right tool. lol.

And anyhow, I then came up with an idea to use some country homespun fabric and cover up my mess. That way I could try to salvage the wooden rolling pins. And here's what I decided on doing:

As you see in the photo above, I cut a piece of fabric to fit over the pin itself. Then I used a hot glue gun to glue it around the pin. I only glued the back of it. And it has held fine like that.

I also painted the handles in a flat back with some craft paint from Michaels. It just gave them a little bit more prim look.

And I took some craft wire and attached a metal star just to prim it up a bit more.

Lastly, I attached a sawtooth hanger on the back, which is the flat side, to make for easy hanging. I nailed in the small tacks that came with the kit. The kit was found at the Dollar Mart also, for only $1.19.

And that was pretty much it. After taking the pics, I decided to take some sand paper and rough up the handles a bit more. And they did look better after that. And that's all there was too it.

It was a craft fail that actually turned out salvageable. lol.

Happy Crafting Ya'll,

~Lisa

TOBACCO STICK STAR | DOOR WREATH

Here is my Tobacco Stick Star

I used some of the old tobacco sticks I had laying around.
 I had my husband nail them with a nail gun in the shape of stars.  

The basic star pattern, laid out on the ground. 

Here they are in full size, laid out. For this door star I had to cut the full size sticks down.

For decoration, I added a handmade bow and glued on some gold beads and here you have it.

But after looking at it with the beads, I really prefer it plain with some homespun ribbon instead of the fancy, gold bow.

It's for sale in my Peddlers Mall Booth #555

Price: $9.99 Sold 
THANK YOU!



Here are a few more tobacco stick stars that I made without anything fancy:

I just dry brushed on some red paint to the edges and added a grapevine wreath to the center

This is one plain before I did any painting or decorations. I sell them like this also. They are great hanging on barns and sheds.

Here is a larger tobacco stick star that I had him nail together so I could stick it around behind my flowers for interest. 

For those of you that don't know what a tobacco stick is. It is actual sticks that are sharpened to a point on each end. 

They were used when growing fields of tobacco. 
And after the cutting of the tobacco in the fields, the sticks (along with spears on the ends) would be shoved through the stalks of the tobacco, one by one, until the sticks were full of tobacco, and then that is how the tobacco was hung in the barns to cure.

Anyways, I cut the ends of each stick (because they are pretty long) and shortened them to make a small enough star for my door.