A couple of month’s ago I was seriously inspired by Trish Turay’s dress garland featured on Get it Scrapped. I instantly knew that I wanted to create a shadowbox for my new niece’s nursery. So I bookmarked the website and ordered a 9×20 Shadowbox online.

On Saturday I had a whole day to do whatever I wanted with it. So I hopped out of bed and got to work! The first thing I did was create my own cutting files. I have a Cricut Expression and use SCAL to cut all my own custom files.

I created 2 dresses, 1 apron, 2 over-skirts, and a collar. This made really short work of my project because I didn’t have to hand cut anything.  I love my Cricut.

All the paper that I used is from my Quite Contrary line – Hello Beautiful color set by My Mind’s Eye.

With all my dresses and items cut out, I grabbed some Lush embellishments also by My Mind’s Eye, and my awesome new Glue Arts Glue Glider Pro and started embellishing!

For the first dress, I used ribbons, paper and brads to create some cute hand-made flowers. I also added some tiny rhinestones for buttons and made a glittered sash.

The second dress also got some glitter on the collar and layered skirt. I ran the top skirt through the sewing machine and topped it off with a ribbon sash and a button. I also added a playful pink pom pom trim using my Glue Arts Glider.

For the third dress, I wanted to gather some wide organza that I had lying around. So I pulled out my sewing machine… I barely know how to sew, so pardon how messy this is… but at least you know beginners can do it too!

I traced where the apron hit the dress so that I would know where I needed to start my skirt and how long of a gathered piece I needed.

Then I grabbed some yarn and sewed it loosely to my organza – about twice as long as the skirt.

Then I gently pulled on the yarn to gather it, and then sewed it to the bottom dress, so that none of my bad sewing would show!

The gathered skirt was a little unruly, so I used my glue glider to help it stick down. You couldn’t see any of the glue in the final product.

I also wanted some ric-rac on the bottom of the apron to finish the transition. The best way I know to create adhesive ribbon is to run it through my Xyron. This really makes it easy to get ribbon down securely especially on curves. I also used it on the green ribbon on the first dress.

Once I was happy with how all the dresses turned out, I decided to make a banner with the new baby’s name.

I just hand-cut a bunch of triangles and then ran them through the sewing machine with some crocheting string. I did it really SLOWLY so I had control over the string and the placement on the triangles.

I chose a contrasting color – brown, to give the banner a more detailed effect. Then I simply added some glitter sticker letters.

Once I decided how everything would be placed. I grabbed some teeny clothes pins and some cream seam binding to hang the dresses on. I also found some eye-screws to hang the ribbon by.

For the banner, I used some small pins and tied the string around them.

You can also see that I added a few pins in the middle of the banner to create a scalloped look. This was the final product and I absolutely love how it turned out. The hardest part was having to give it away! But I can’t wait to see it in my new nieces adorable nursery.

For the wrapping, I wrapped some tissue paper around the frame and had my cricut cut out another dress and apron. I only added one embellishment to this dress — a little rhinestone necklace. Then I clothes-pinned it to the ribbon with a little congratulations tag.

If you’re interested in doing this or a similar project, I actually took the time to build all the files (SVG, GSD, JPG, AI)  for the various cutting programs and am selling them at Design House Digital starting Thursday May 2oth (2010). These files should work for any die-cut machine including the Cricut (with SCAL), & Silhouette. I’m giving away this digital kit to one of my readers, all you need to do is comment — tell me what kind of cutting machine you have — and I’ll choose one random winner on Thursday Morning!

The lovely Holly Koenigsfeld created this amazing ornaments pillow. If the ornaments look familiar it’s because she printed them on fabric using my Ornament Stamps and Brushes Kit — amazing, I know!

Check out Holly’s blog for more fabulous projects! Here are her basic instructions so you can make your own:

I created a Photoshop document that was the size I wanted my pillow to be and created a layout for the pillow first, so I could know what sizes I need the ornaments to be. I erased the bows and the hangers on the stamps, because I wanted to recreate them with cording and embroidery floss. I then copied the stamps into an 8 1/2″ x 11″ document for printing. I chose to create a smaller pillow – about 5″ or 6″ x 7″ – so I could print the ornaments and the fabric for the back of my pillow all on one sheet. I had some printable fabric sheets from a project I did years ago, and I don’t think the kind I used are still in production. Avery sells these Printable Fabric Sheets, which have a heat seal backing. They would work well, but I wanted my ornaments to pop up a bit on the edges, so I would recommend these Printable Fabric Sheets from Joann’s instead. Here is another brand: EQ Printables Inkjet Fabric Sheets.

Which ever sheets you choose will have printing instructions, but for mine I just set my printer settings to “best,” and also told the printer I was printing on the thickest media available.

After you print, you’ll need to trim out the ornaments out. I left about a quarter inch edge around each of the ornaments. The fabric I used for the pillow was very tightly woven, which made embroidering very hard. I had to work really hard to get my needle through that fabric! If I make another one I will probably attach my ornaments to a different fabric, but for this pillow I just used the printable fabric for all of the pieces so they would match. Also I embroidered the ornaments onto the front cover of the pillow directly. Next time I think I’ll just embroider the fabric of the ornament and then attach it to the pillow with Heat and Bond. Hopefully not having to go through two layers of that tight fabric will make things easier.

After sewing the ornaments onto the pillow I embroidered French knots where the hangers were on the stamps. This tutorial on Purl Bee has pictures that show just how to make a French knot. I just sketched the word “Joy” on the largest bulb and embroidered over it, too. I used some silver cording to recreate the ribbon on the ornaments in the kit. Any kind of ribbon or cording would work. I did stitch those to the pillow too – I don’t think glue or Heat Bond would work as well for that part. I stitched the two fabric pieces together with my machine, left a hole in the bottom seam for stuffing, and then slip stitched the rest. (The link will take you to a great slip stitching tutorial). Voila!

I finished this project forever ago, but It was in my entry and the light-bulb had burnt out! This week Mr. Project replaced it so I was able to take pictures!

I love this chicken wire board. It keeps me super organized. I keep my bills, out-going mail, reminder, notes, calendar etc. all up here next to my doorway so I don’t miss a thing.

I especially love the calender, its super simple and easy to get a lot of writing in each of the days.

The process to make this board is SUPER easy. You just need a few simple items. 1. A Frame, 2. Chicken Wire, 3. Nail Gun, 4. Tin Snips, 5. Spray Paint (optional), 6. Bulldog Clips

You can get a frame anywhere since it doesn’t need glass or a back. You might have one laying around, or you could find one at goodwill or a garage sale. Once you have a frame, the first step is staple the chickenwire to the backside of the frame. After you have stapled the wire around the edges, go ahead and snip the excess chicken wire. I recommend gloves and protective eye-wear for this step.

That is the bulk of the hard labor for this project. If you want to make it a little shabby, spice it up or just make it look new, grab a can of spray paint and go at it. I like how the paint looks on the chickenwire, so I didn’t mask mine off. If you don’t want your chicken wire painted, you can paint your frame before you put on the wire.

Once your frame is painted, you’re all ready to decorate it! I made these cute labels & a calendar for you to download. Or you can design your own!

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Here is how I organized mine. I hung up the tags & calendars with some silver bulldog clips. I love those things!

Here are the download links for the Tags & the Calendar. The calendar is actually 13 months long Sept 2009-2010 (the PDF download is 13 pages long).

As always, free downloads are for personal use only. Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own tags & calendar. I would love a comment if you do download!

But today I happened to be on Target.com and I saw that they have a much cheaper similar desk:

That’s close enough for me! They even have barstools that match. Too cute.

This desk prices at $619.97 + shipping & tax! That is almost half price for virtually the same thing! Love it!

I have the cutest little pantry in my kitchen. It is about 4.5 feet tall and has a little glass door and a nice wide ledge. Ever since I moved here, I have been wanting some fabulous and large glass canisters to put on top. I was so happy a few weeks ago, when I found these beautiful 2.5 gallon canisters at Amazon:

My birthday just happened to be this week, and I asked for three of these puppies (I put a few more on my wedding registry because I love them so much. I want to do one for Rice and one for Bread Flour).

As soon as I got them, I filled them up with flour, sugar, and rolled oats. But what I really couldn’t wait to do, was to make labels for them! Here they are looking adorable on my pantry:

The glass on these jars is a little wavy and imperfect, and I love the dark lids – they definitely have an antique feel. So I made some cute distressed labels (available for download at the end of this post). I printed and cut them out and they were super cute…

… but I really wanted them to have an older feel than just flat printed paper. So I pulled out some supplies:

> a moist/wet paper towel

> distressing ink – Tim Holtz Antique Linen & vintage photo

> emry board – fine sand paper will do

> A flat clean work surface that can get wet/messy.

I printed my labels on regular bond paper. I recommend testing your distressing process on some test paper before going at the printed items. Also if you get water on an inkjet print, it will run, so if you want to get really down and dirty, print your labels with a laser printer. I didn’t worry about the ink running on the lighter parts of the design, but I did try and keep the paper away from the letters since they are so dark.

Step 1: Crinkle your labels. I recommend bigger, deeper folds and creases. As long as the paper is dry, you can be pretty rough with it. I bent and tore and creased quite a bit so that the ink would have a lot of fun detail to hold onto:

Step 2: Wet your labels. I used a wet paper towel to dab water around the edges. You definitely want the paper soaked, but not so much that it tears or bleeds into the center. You have to work fast at this point because it needs to be pretty wet for the next step. You may want to do step 2 & step 3 to one side at a time to keep your paper from drying too fast.

Step 3: Once you have a wet edge, go ahead and use the lighter ink on the wet parts. The ink should bleed as soon as it hits the water and create a “dying” effect as opposed to an “inking” effect. This will make it look aged and not just inked. After a little light inking, I applied just a tiny bit of dark inking on some of the edges:

At this point your paper will be pretty wet and your wrinkles will have disappeared, but they will come back. Just finish each label and set them aside to dry. I let mine dry about 30 minutes. Here is how they looked after I let them sit for a bit:

I love how aged they look and how stiff they feel after drying. I will definitely use this technique on more projects in the future.

If I had printed them on a laser printer, I would have made the entire label more “dyed” looking, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

Attaching the labels was really easy, I used a large glue-dot in each corner. I don’t recommend this if you have a lot of people accessing your canisters, but I know its enough adhesive for my uses with the upside being that I can change them out pretty easy when I get bored of the look. You could use spray adhesive or run them through a larger xyron after they have dryed completely. If you printed on a laser printer, I imagine you could use Mod Podge, just test it on the glass first to see if it drys clear enough.

Here is a before & after shot. I really should have taken a before shot when the pantry was covered in half-empty flour and sugar bags, paper plates & food boxes.

I love how they look, how big the labels are, and just the overall vintage styling with the large black lids + the aged labels. So yummy.

You can really see the variety in the glass from this photo. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out!

As promised, here is the label file. I did have to make it just a smidge smaller than the one I used in order to fit all the labels on one 8.5×11.

Download this label file and enjoy (for personal use only ). Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own labels. I would love a comment if you do download!

Each of these files are a 8.5″x11″ PDF. Use Acrobat Reader to open the file and print as many as you like! Happy project-ing!

If you are another blog or crafting site and would like to link this project to your site, please contact me. Thanks!

xoxo Jen Allyson

Choosing the paint wasn’t too hard, I’d been toying with the idea of painting one room a warm golden wheat color and the other a dark taupe color (The Kitchen and hall need to be painted as well, but thats a project for another weekend). We decided the gold would look awesome in the bedroom (yes that is a pantone book — but its one for home decor). We got the paint all mixed and jumped right in!

The painting didn’t take too long, because of all the moldings we didn’t tape off anything, and then we just did it as fast as we could. The two rooms each took two coats of paint and from start to finish it took about 3 hours. Then of course we had to go shopping for a new bedspread. I found this cool one at EQ3!

That’s my cool after shot! The apartment looks so great! And you can see a rare photo of “Mr. Project” though he is trying to hide with that hoodie. It’s still a major work in progress, but it will be fun to post all the decorating projects that I do.

If you’ve been thinking about painting, just do it! It really doesn’t take that long and its a pretty inexpensive way to change the look of a whole room (especially if the walls are ugly pink!)