DIY Dog Rescue Wall Art

I have been waiting anxiously to share this project with you but couldn't until after Christmas as it was a gift for my sister. She is part of a dog rescue group and I knew it would be perfect for her.

We started with four 1x10x4ft pine shelf boards, and cut them down to 37" each. I wanted the sign to be square and 10" boards are actually only 9-1/4" wide, so four together are 37" total.

The boards would only be glued together (Oh, to have a biscuit joiner!), so we wanted to reinforce the sign to add strength. Tom clamped the 4 boards together and cut two channels down the back of the sign, crossing each of the boards. He then cut two pieces of scrap wood to the same size and length of the channels.

Once the boards were glued and clamped together again, he glued and stapled the strips of wood into the channels. A couple of the shelf boards had a bit of a bow to them so they didn't line up perfectly.
While the glue was still wet we clamped them tightly together at the ends and they dried flat and level.

I gave the glue a couple of days to really dry, then sanded the entire front and edges of the sign, first with 60 grit sandpaper, then with 150 grit paper to finish. A few knots also had to be touched up with wood filler and sanded once dry.

I stained the entire sign with Minwax's Jacobean brown, then brushed over it with watered-down white paint, to give a weathered look. I considered waxing the wood afterwards, but I was afraid that the paint for the letters wouldn't stick. Waxing also removes some of the whitewash - it was exactly the shade I wanted so I wasn't going to mess with it.

I use a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine to cut my stencils these days.  I used to cut them freehand, but it is slooooow. Here are a few projects I've done with stencils - fold-down patio bar, cottage sign, Christmas song sign, and personalized dog bowls.

Because of the size of the sign, I had to cut the words out in small sections. The font on all of the words except "Love" is Lucida Handwriting. Love is written in Times New Roman (except the paw of course.) Excuse the different vinyl colours - I ended up using all of the vinyl I had on hand.

Once I got to the point where I was ready to lay down the stencil I started to get stressed about keeping the words lined up. Tom came up with a great trick: We have a small level with a laser at one end. He clamped the level to the rafter above my work area (I was working in the basement) so that the laser pointed down towards the floor. The laser beam can be either a point or a line, so he switched it to "line" and it made a perfectly straight line across my sign. I could then move the sign around as I worked, always having a reference line for the words.

The letters are painted in Benjamin Moore's Edgecomb Gray (i.e. my bedroom wall colour). The secret to sharp edges on your letters is to do multiple thin coats, brushing away from the stencil edge as much as you can. Once you have a few layers down, you should have a pretty good seal around the edges and you can brush all in one direction to keep a uniform look.

After peeling off the stencil I did some touch ups with a razor scraper and a tiny artist's brush.

The final step was to add a French cleat to the back for hanging. A French cleat is a wonderful way to hang items. It's made up of two horizontal pieces - one attached to the back of the item to be hung and one mounted directly to the wall. The two pieces hook into each other and keep the mounted item extremely secure. The cleat can be made from just about anything - pine, plywood, or metal. We bought a metal cleat - it also came with all of the necessary screws and a mini level.

And so, the finished product! I'm really happy with this. I kind of want to keep it for myself.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cereal Treats

Looking for a Valentine's Day treat to make for that special someone or just for yourself (You're special, too!)? I have an easy, no bake recipe for you that will push all the right flavour buttons - butterscotch, peanut butter, sweet 'n' salty, and crunchy. What do you mean, "Crunchy isn't a flavour"? It should be.

You might call these clusters, or haystacks, or cookies, or balls - I can't decide so I'm going with "treats". No matter what, they still taste amazing. I'm thinking of making them in a pan next time and then cutting them into bars like brownies.

Ingredients List

6 cups of cornflakes (or other favourite non-sweetened cereal)
1/2 cup of peanut butter
1 pkg of butterscotch chips
1/4 cup of chocolate chips

Optional:
sea salt
dried cranberries
mixed nuts (chopped)
red pepper flakes


Directions:

Start by melting your butterscotch chips and chocolate chips in a saucepan over very low heat. Once they are smooth and melted add your peanut butter and stir to combine. If you are also including dried cranberries or mixed nuts, add 'em now.
 

 

Slowly add your cornflakes a little at a time, stirring as you go. You can press down a bit with your spoon to break some of them up - the smaller pieces will help the treats stick together.

Drop your mixture a teaspoonful at a time onto a wax paper-lined cookie sheet. The wax paper isn't crucial, but it sure does make for easy cleanup.

Here comes the fun part. If you are adding sea salt or red pepper flakes, sprinkle them - just a few! - on top of each treat. Put your pans in the refrigerator to cool and then transfer your treats to an airtight container once they have set.

 

 

 

I'm afraid I don't have any pretty packaging to show you for this one as we ended up eating them all! But if I'd wrapped them it would look something like this (a treat that actually made it to the intended recipient). The dollar store is a fantastic place to find inexpensive gift packaging.

However, if you choose to keep them for yourself - and I don't blame you - Enjoy!

One-of-a-Kind Gift - Handmade Receiving Blankets

We have a new baby in the neighbourhood. Our next-door neighbours just had a sweet baby boy two weeks ago. These are the people that we share a "party wall" with, and it's a testament to the builders that we haven't heard a peep. (That also makes me feel better about all the noise our dogs make when they're crashing into things.)

So what kind of gift to get them? I'd mentioned in the Blue Mountain post that we'd planned on buying them a rocking horse, but the woodworker at the farmers market didn't have any in stock. I couldn't think of anything that they probably didn't already have - they both have large families. Tom pushed hard for me to make more receiving blankets like the ones I made for my cousin's baby.

Off I went to the fabric store for supplies.  So many patterns to choose from. But since I only needed a little piece of each (22" x 36") I went with a package of mixed patterns instead.

My original post on making receiving blankets has all the detailed instructions if you're looking for them - I'll just show some photos here. I went with a group of patterns in soft shades of blue and yellow, and a group of louder prints with bright orange and turquoise.

I had forgotten how much I like making these - except when my discount bobbin kept messing up the tension and I had to pick out the seams THREE times. Sometimes it'd not worth it to try and save money. Those 12 new bobbins went right into the trash - but at least I'm only out $3.

Which one is your favourite? I like the train wheels - they look like peace signs. Tom likes the bright stripes. Hopefully the baby likes them all. J

Photo Gifts - Let's Get Artistic

I took some pictures of my aunt's little fluff of a dog at Christmas time and decided to give my aunt a framed copy of the best one for her birthday (which was yesterday).

This is the original picture. Her name is Desi and she's a Coton de Tulear. Cute, right? She's over-the-top friendly and happy all the time. She has this way of flashing a smile, front teeth on display, that's just hilarious.

While this picture was great, I'd recently downloaded a couple of artistic photoshopping iPhone apps that I wanted to try out.

The first one is called Waterlogue. I've written about it before, and it's really fun. There are different settings depending on how intense you want the colours to be, or how much detail you want to show. I find that it doesn't capture people's faces very well, but for animals & scenery it's terrific.

Here is Desi "waterlogued":

The second app is called Artist's Sketch. Pretty self-explanatory, it turns a photo into a black and white pencil sketch. The options are a bit limited right now, but I really like just the basic one anyway.

Here is Desi "sketched":

Great detail on the fur, isn't there? The sketch was definitely my favourite so that's the one I went with.  I found a grey and black fabric photo frame at Target and had her gift ready just like that. I also printed out the other two pictures and put them behind the first one, so she can change it out if she wants to.

I also tried my hand at making a pillow box for the first time. It took two tries, but it isn't bad. It was a bit hard because of the size - I couldn't print out a template big enough so I had to freehand a lot of it.

And the only thing large enough I had on hand was plain white poster board. I love how Rebecca at Older & Wisor makes them from leftover cereal or pop boxes. I will definitely try that when I need a smaller one in the future.

Have you used these two phone apps yet? What do you think of them? Are there other ones that you like better? What about gift boxes? Do you recycle what you have or buy new ones?

Please Mr. Postman (Valentine's Gifts)

I had a little fun making up care packages for some of my favourite girls this Valentine's Day - those girls being my cousin, my aunt, & my sister.

The whole idea was built around this stuff - Speculoos Cookinotti Cookie Butter. Have you tried it? It has the consistency of peanut butter, but it's cookie butter. COOKIE BUTTER. Such beautiful words. I can't even describe it - it's like a gingerbread cookie, ground up and made spreadable. Just heaven.

You can put it on a bagel, on ice cream, even make a sandwich with it. Here is a cute article showing 12 ways to eat cookie butter. I like to spread it on crackers. So I bought each of my girls a jar of cookie butter, a box of crackers, and some chocolate hearts - because everyone needs chocolate on Valentine's Day.

I bought some mailing boxes from the post office - a little too big, but that's all they had. And who doesn't like receiving a huge ol' parcel in the mail? I filled in the empty spots with purple tissue paper, tossed some chocolate around, and added a card. I designed the card using Picmonkey and printed it out on cardstock.

And off they went in the mail. Here's hoping they got there on time!

What did you do for Valentine's Day? I had lunch with Tom (and his co-workers - very romantic!) It was nice to get out of the office if only for a short while. And the fries with my lunch were fantastic! 

Click here to see my "hot" gift to Tom in 2013, and my chocolate-dipped pretzels from 2012.

Lego Table from a Coffee Table (Flashback!)

When I was putting the bookcase back together after painting the front room, I came across a photo of my very first DIY project. This thing has to be 10 years old at least. Before I even knew what a blog was.

The table was a Christmas gift for Tom's nephews and I was so darn proud of it. Unfortunately I only took one picture of the finished product, and no pictures of the steps taken to get there. Please excuse the Nascar blanket thrown over the couch - it was that era too.

The table started out as a plain coffee table that my mom found for me at a resale shop. I was in college and didn't have very much furniture of my own. The center had a glass insert, and the shelf underneath was perfect for storing remotes, books, cookies...you know, the usual. Years later we upgraded our furniture and I almost got rid of this guy, but then inspiration hit.

First I removed the glass insert (I wonder what happened to it?), and stripped the honey-coloured finish off of the wood. I remember I then restained it in a dark, dark shade (think ebony) with a poly topcoat. But I didn't like it, so I stripped that off too and tried again. I think this might be Minwax's Provincial.

There is a mesh net in the center well to hold all of the loose Legos. It was the bottom of an unused laundry bag - something like this:

source

We glued the raw edge of the bag around the frame of the well, and then finished it with some white cord as the glue was a little rough to the touch.

We bought a huge sheet of grey Lego baseplate and cut it to fit the two flat surfaces on the top. We just glued it right to the table. This gave the kids a place to build at a comfortable height, and all of their Legos were right there close by. There was some baseplate left over, so we cut it in two and glued each piece to the edge of the center shelf, to give them a couple of extra places to build.

Nowadays, you can find hundreds of homemade Lego tables out there, but back then, we were feeling pretty original. We had seen a couple of pre-fab, factory-made tables, but I liked the sturdiness of ours. And with that solid wood, I think it's something that could get passed down from generation to generation. Do you think Legos will be around in another 60 years?

Handmade Receiving Blankets

This weekend was filled with two things - a baby shower and a basement clean out.  Which one would you rather see pictures of? I thought so.

My favourite cousin (technically my cousin's wife, but we're not that technical around here) is due in June, so her mom and sister threw her a baby shower this past Saturday. Yes, they did in fact pick the coldest day of the month. Near freezing temps here. Crazy, because it was 22 degrees (72 F) on Thursday. I'm going to have to get another closet so I can have winter & summer clothes available all the time, just in case.

For months I have been planning on making receiving blankets for her - you know, the ones made from cloth diapers and patterned flannel - but it was impossible to find cloth diapers anywhere. Unless I was willing to buy $100 worth from a diaper service. Not really in my budget. So instead I bought about 5 metres of white flannel and some assorted patterned flannel pieces from the fabric store. My idea was to sew them together with white on one side and a pattern on the other.

The first thing I did was wash and dry all of the fabric so that it was pre-shrunk. There's nothing like the feel of fluffy flannel right out of the dryer. I may or may not have snuggled up to it for an extra minute or two. Be warned, if you are using fabric with raw edges it will fray in the dryer.

I estimated that each blanket should be about 26" x 30", but the printed fabric was only about 22" wide, so with the white flannel being 30" wide I decided to leave it uncut and wrap it around to the front to make a two inch white stripe down each side of the patterned piece. Does that make sense?

I cut the white flannel to 31" lengths, then matched up the patterned flannel and cut each one to the same length. I pinned the long side of one white and one patterned piece together with right sides facing in and sewed them together with about a 1/4 inch seam. I did the same with the other long side, so I would end up with a "tube" of material.

I then flattened it so that there were two inches of white on each side of the patterned piece and sewed the short ends together, leaving about three inches unsewn on one end so I could turn it right side out.

Once right side out, I ironed the blanket flat and sewed all around the four edges so that the blanket would stay flat, especially after washing. The hardest part was pinning and carefully sewing the small opening that I'd left before. You could also hand sew it closed first but I don't think it would look any different. And my hand sewing skills leave much to be desired.

I like that finished edge. It makes the blanket look a little more upscale. Once I got the hang of it, they were done in no time at all.

And now some gratuitous photos of me showing off the blankets. 

At the party, my cousin received some other handmade gifts as well. Here are some shots of just three of the quilts she received (from grandma, grandma, and great grandma).

Are those amazing or what? That baby is a lucky little girl. 

~~~~~

I'm linking up here this week!