Enter Tami -- she's been working on her childhood home on the family farm in Red River Parish (Loggy Bayou, to be precise!). The 50-year-old house has some areas that have been completely re-done (a gorgeous bathroom, for example), while other areas have been kept lovingly intact -- including the turquoise kitchen and a blue-and-white tiled bathroom. Her dream is to honor the memory of her gregarious dad (Mr. Ralph) and her mom, a well-known cook and gracious hostess (Miss Aline). The house is filled with history and a sense of warmth, comfort and family is immediately evident. Tami invited a few friends (Lisa, Ginger and I) to the farm for a trial-run craft weekend (in the middle of the week) and we loaded up bolts of burlap, spray paint, fabric scraps and glue guns and headed for the hills!
Here are a few of the crafts we completed, in between yummy meals prepared by our hostess and lots of good conversation. (Prepare for a photo/link onslaught!)
First up: a variety of boxes (mostly diaper boxes) were spray-painted black and...
Covered in burlap! (Also embellished with more scraps and fabric flowers -- more on fabric flowers to come!) They can be used to store anything - most of these were going to be used for magazines in their respective homes. Burlap was cut and attached with hot glue. The original idea came from this post and here's another tutorial.
Here's a close-up of some of the fabric flower embellishments! These turned out to be surprisingly simple and fun to make. The felt flowers could NOT be easier. A circle of felt is cut into a spiral and rolled and hot glued! (Most of these were made using a cd as a template!)
The "pouf" flowers were also simple and so pretty! Fabric can be cut in circles or a simple flower shape (templates here) then folded and glued to a circle and either finished with a pouf, button or even vintage costume jewelry!
The top two flowers were made with fabric scraps from my daughter Jess (thanks!). I added a pin-back to a couple of them and a barrette to another. The bottom flower shows layers of fabric (burlap scraps and some fabric from Blessings All Around). So cute! Here are a few of the other collections of completed flowers...
In addition to felt rolled flowers and poufs, there is a rolled rose pictured in the photo at top left (black gingham) and a dahlia (gold flower in the photo at bottom left) which involved multiple pieces and hot glue burns -- but worth it!
We also had a couple of scarf options -- Ginger and Lisa were looking for a light-weight scarf and crafted these from cascading squares:
I found a large remnant at Blessings All Around for pennies and it was enough to put together an infinity scarf (which I kept calling an "eternity" scarf) for each of us - we embellished them with more of our fabric flowers! (forgive the poor selfie!)
Another fun project -- we spray painted bottles with chalkboard paint. Easy, fun and versatile. I'm tempted to spray chalkboard paint on everything in my house now!
Also -- book page pumpkins! We tore some pages from some thrifted books and mod-podged them to these pumpkins ($1 each at Wal-Mart.) Messy, but cute!
I already had a kind of black-and-white theme on my fall mantel -- here's my chalkboard bottle and book page pumpkins at home:
Here are a few other random crafts...including dollar store vases wrapped in pretty scrapbook paper with a decorative punch pattern (insert a tea light or votive and...voila!); a crepe-paper-wrapped mason jar jack-o-lantern; burlap table runners and placemats; "mercury glass" jars (a semi-craft-fail!) and layered cookie mix and "fireside coffee" mix for gift-giving!
Overall -- I'd say craft weekend (in the middle of the week) was a success! Here are a few parting pics of our beautiful setting - and our farm hostess with the mostest!
Thanks, Tami, for the hospitality! Here's to many more gatherings at the farm - filled with laughter, good food and wonderful stories!
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