DIY felt letters

I saw these felt letters in Copenhagen and fell in love. I really wanted to figure out how to make them. They are really cute and sweet toys. They make a great Christmas gift or would even be cute attached to the outside of a gift. It’s a pretty simple process and the materials are common household items except for the wool roving which can be found online or at most crafting or knitting stores. See the instructions below.

Material Needed: Wool Roving, Bubble Wrap, Soap, Rolling Pin, Scissors, Hot water, Bowl

Step 1: Lay your bubble wrap (bubbles up) and tear small strips of wool roving and place on top of the bubble wrap creating the shape of the letter. Continue to tear and place the felt, layer upon layeruntil it is around two inches high.
Step 2: Dampen your felt pile with warm soapy water and cover the letter with bubble wrap, bubbles facing down (towards the felt) and roll with rolling pin.
Step 3: Open the bubble wrap and using your fingers roll the felt together to create the desired shape – make it compact as it will expand
Step 4: Place the letter in a dish of hot water. Remove the letter from the dish and squeeze out excess water
Step 5: Start rolling the felt together in between your hands or fingers (creating heat and friction)
Step 6: Use the scissors to help shape the letter (cut if one side is longer than the other or if you need the inside of a letter cleared out)
Step 7: Continue dunking your letter in hot water and rolling the letter in your hands (area, by area – ex. Legs of the “A”, inside of the “A” – you need to work each and every part.) Once your letter is the desired shape and tightness – squeeze out any excess water and let it dry. Each letter takes about 20 minutes.

DIY glittery elbow hearts

Valentines Day is right around the corner. You’ve started buying fancy paper and ribbon to make your valentines, you’ve put up the heart garlands and filled your candy dishes with conversation hearts… but what about yourself? Show yourself some love and spruce up a sweater (old or new!) with some glittery hearts to show just how much you love this time of year.

Keep reading for the full tutorial…

You’ll need a sweater or sweatshirt (peach shown from old navy), leather scraps, sequins to match leather, and STRONG glue, E600 shown (think about how many times a day you put your elbows down on something, you don’t want these babies falling off).

1. Trace or draw a heart onto the back of your leather and cut.

2. Pick a design… polka dots and stripes are a few of my faves (if you’re ambitious, go for the whole heart!), and glue. Can’t get much easier than that.

4. Put on your sweater, bend your elbow and mark center with a pin, this will be where you want to center your patch.

4. For those of you that like simple and quick diy’s (i’m raising my hand), slap some glue on the back of your finished heart and attach. For those of you that like to go the extra mile, break out your needle and thread and stitch your sparkling number onto your sweater (cough, teachers pet).

5. Style with some casual jeans, red pumps, gold adornments, and you are good to go. Now find somewhere fancy and take yourself there to show of your new sweater!

trend crush: SCARVES

If clothes were boys then scarves would be my kindergarten crush. I’ve been a fan of scarves since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Maybe its their versatility across the seasons, maybe its the cozy factor, maybe its to cover up my long neck…. either way, I’m crushing. My next goal and dream in life is to knit me one of these beauties!… Probably just in time for next winter.

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DIY wall!

A statement wall can be a great way to spice up a plain white room. Rather than add a bold color to the walls, we decided that a nice print would be a good change. The best part about this wall is that it's a low-cost, high reward project!Supplies: craft foam, a small piece of cardboard for mounting, super glue, scissors, small paint brush, black paint (I used acrylic), masking tape 1. Draw out an image for your stamp onto paper. Cut it out and trace the image onto craft foam. 2. Cut out the foam and mount it onto a piece of cardboard with super glue (I used ). 3. Measure out where you want your stamps and mark with masking tape. That way there is less room for error. 4. Begin stamping your wall. (I used a small paint brush to apply the paint to the stamp.) If you are stamping on a textured wall like I did, the stamped image will be imperfect. 5. To make the anchors look solid and less like a stamp, I went back over the anchors with a small paintbrush and filled in the holes. Depending on how textured your wall is, this can be a couple of dabs or possibly reworking most of the image. 6. Keep stamping and filling until you're all done!
This wall only took about a day to complete, and it adds such an adorable touch to the back room. Definitely be careful with your touch-ups, but don't expect the anchors (or whatever image you choose) to be absolutely perfect! There will be slight variations, which in my opinion, add even more character to the wall!  Happy stamping! 

DIY thank you cards

DIY photo wallpaper

I have always wanted a wall in my home that was completely filled with photos! A couple weeks ago I got it stuck in my brain that this wall in our studio was the perfect spot. There were a couple challenges, though: 1. The wall is HUGE. 2. I don't have that many instant photos or film. 3. Even if I did buy enough film to fill the whole wall it would cost thousands of dollars and probably take months (or years?) to take enough photos. 

So, I came up with a solution. We "wallpapered" this wall with color copies. The cons: They are not real photos, and they do repeat. The pros: It was done in a couple days, and I can now (slowly) cover the repeats with real photos over the next few years. One more pro: We're in love with it! The photo wall makes our studio room a happier place to work. 

Here's how we did it:My brother helped me design 11x17 inch images with 9 Instax wide sized photos per sheet. We then created 4 different sheets with different photos. You could always do more if you wanted to reduce repeat photos! We measured the wall and ordered about 130 sheets on 80 lb card stock. We found an inexpensive local printer that did them for around $1 per sheet, so the entire wall only cost about $130! We got the sheets printed and trimmed. Next, we adhered them to the wall. We started with just sturdy double sided tape strips. This didn't work for our wall, so we started using a staple gun. Obviously, someday we will have a lot of staples to pull, but I am ok with that. I plan to keep this wall up for a couple years, so It was worth it to me. If you have satin paint you may not need a staple gun. I made an instagram collage in our last home using only masking tape. It was up for more than 6 months with pretty minimal curling. 

So, we adhered and stapled the sheets to the wall. We had to cut some to fill in the leftover space around the edges of the wall at the end. This took an entire afternoon with Katie and Kinsey cutting and stapling. Not bad considering the size of this wall!  

Note: We created the wallpaper to match the exact size of Fujifilm INSTAX Wide photos. We chose this instead of polaroid because the film is fairly inexpensive and accessible. It's our favorite instant camera.Now that it is fully installed I will be covering some of the repeat photos with real Instax photos. I love that I can do this over time and that I don't have to wait until I collect a thousand photos to create the wall! It's so much less pressure. :)Ta-Da! Here's a photo of the finished product! I am super thrilled with the outcome. It has so much personality. I hope that this tutorial encourages some of you to try a photo statement wall. I am completely pleased with the quality, the price and the time it took us to install the wallpaper. It was a fun project and something we will enjoy for a long time. Have any of you created a photo wall? Is this something you would try?