Dream Bubble Pillowcases - Cute Wedding Gift Idea and Tutorial

My cousin's daughter was getting married and I knew I wanted to make something.  Usually I'm a stickler about keeping to the registry (since there's a good reason those things exist!) but I wanted to give them a little something interesting and unique.  Besides, by the time I got around to ordering a gift I realized it wouldn't arrive in time for the wedding.  Oops! 

So I turned to my newly-discovered provider of ideas wonderful, unique and fabulous -- Pinterest.  I did a quick search for "wedding gift" and ran across lots of great ideas.  Including this one:

I thought it was rather adorable and knowing the happy couple is very fun-loving I decided it would be perfect.

So I headed on down to my local Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up some plain white pillowcases.  ... I was blown away by the prices!  Holy cow!  Who pays $60 for two pillowcases?!  Yeah, so they're 750 thread count, so what?  I just need something basic.  The most basic they had was 200 thread count for $15.  I still think that's a bit much.  Unless, of course, they are sewn in the USA with fair wages and decent working conditions... which I doubt.  (But that's a rant for a different time and place)  I picked them up anyway because I didn't have time to go anywhere else.

I pre-washed them so it wouldn't cause any problems if it shrank after painting.  I'm not sure if that step was necessary, but I've seen far too many things bunch up in strange ways because they were not pre-shrunk.

Using a water-erasable marker (found in the sewing notions department of a fabric/craft store) I drew a cloud and circle shapes. If you don't get it right the first time, just redraw until you do.

If you want to you can erase the lines you won't use prior to painting, but you MUST be sure it is completely dry before painting. I'll show you what happens if you don't later.

I used this textile paint:

Using a foam brush (to better achieve a sharp edge) I painted around my outline.

At one point I messed up and smeared some of the paint. So I tried wiping it off with a damp cloth. It worked well enough that I could just paint over the worst part of it, so I did. BUT I didn't let it dry completely beforehand, so when I painted over it the paint bled.

Noooooo!

So if you need to correct mistakes or erase guide lines, make sure it is totally, completely, 100% dry before you continue painting! Unless you want the paint to bleed... which could be cool, too, depending on what kind of effect you're going for.

So even though it was a little bit of a fail (including the fact I think I should have placed the circles a little lower to have them point to the cloud in a different place), but I still like the idea and thought it turned out pretty well. At least it was only intended to be a stand-in gift until I sent them something from their registry.

P.S. Did you know Amazon has wedding registry now? Man! I wish they had that when I got married!


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I'll be linking up to the wonderful parties listed below!

Monday - Craft o Maniac Monday -- Pink Hippo Party -- Craft Catwalk -- Craftastic Monday -- Amaze Me Monday -- Polly Want 2 Party -- Making the World Cuter Monday -- Making Monday Marvelous -- Tuesday - Get Your Craft On -- Sew Cute Tuesday -- Tip Me Tuesday -- Take a Look Tuesday -- Show Me What Ya Got -- Tuesday Time Out -- Show and Tell at Blue Cricket -- Tutorial Tuesday -- Anti-Procrastination Tuesday -- Anything Related -- Wednesday - Seven Thrity Three -- Wallet-Friendly Wednesday -- Show Off Your Stuff -- Create and Share -- A Crafty Soiree -- Whatever Goes Wednesday -- We Did it Wednesday! -- Your Whims Wednesday -- Linkin’ with Lil’ Luna -- We Did it Wednesday -- Passionately Artistic -- Thursday - Strut your Stuff Thursday -- Transformation Thursday -- Thrilling Thursday -- House of Hepworths -- Chic and Crafty Thursday -- Friday - Remodelaholic Friday -- Flaunt it Friday -- Frugal Friday -- Weekend Wander -- Furniture Feature Friday -- Show and Share Day -- Fun with Food Friday -- It's Fun to Craft! -- Tickled Pink Fridays -- Weekend Wrap-up Party -- Catch as Catch Can -- Friday Flair -- Feature Yourself Friday -- Fantabulous Friday -- Simply Link {Party} -- No Rules Link Party -- Pity Party -- Saturday - Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special -- Saturday is Crafty Day -- Let's Get Crafty Saturday -- Show and Tell Saturdays -- Saturday Spotlight -- Sunday - The DIY Showoff Project Parade -- Sunday Showcase Party -- Creative Bloggers Party -- I Heart Naptime -- Think Pink Sundays

WARNING! Not for Long Term Storage!

Many of you probably know already, but I thought I would "blow the whistle" to alert anyone else who may not be aware... CDs / DVDs are NOT intended for long term storage.  [Recommended 2 years or less.]  I found this out the hard way.

I had every intention of linking up to laxsupermom's Before Blogging Throwback link party.  It's an awesome idea she came up with to help us showcase projects we did before we started blogging.  So I thought I would link up my wedding dress and flowers.   I pop the CD with our wedding photos on it into the computer and... nothing.  "Do you want to burn to this disk?" -- aka. BLANK disk.  I even downloaded some software that's supposed to recover lost files on CDs, but it found nothing.  Nooooooo!!!

To be reasonable, this is probably not the end of the photos all together.  The family members who took photos (we couldn't afford a pro photographer!) probably still have them... although hopefully they didn't move them to CDs!

Going on a Fast

I've decided to go on a fast.

A project-acquisition fast.

Why?  Because this is what my creative space looks like right now.  

I have so many things I've purchased (including decor, furniture, fabric for clothing, clothing to refashion, etc) that I just haven't gotten around to completing!  I've decided it's time to actually start completing those unfinished projects (or get rid of them completely).  I'm going to see how far I can get on just the things I have right now.  I will allow myself to purchase some small supplies to help me complete the projects such as buttons, thread, glue, paint, sandpaper, etc, but no new projects to work on.

I especially need to get started on using my fabric stash.  I got a little addicted shopping Fabric.com's clearance section (with free shipping after $35 and frequent 15-20% off total purchase coupons) that I acquired a lot of great quality fabric for awesome prices. The big obstacle right now is making slopers (basic patterns used to create other designs) custom with my measurements so I can start designing and creating clothing that will fit me perfectly.  Being tall has made it very difficult to find anything that will fit me right (so I don't really have many clothes currently available to wear).  Also being "cheap" I find myself purchasing ill-fitting clothing on the clearance racks (like cute shirts at Macy's for $5 each!) with the intention of altering it... but then getting around to doing it is another story!

So.  No more new projects for me until I work through what I've got.  How long will it take me?  We shall see!

P.S.  Are there any other project hoarders collectors out there like me?

Tips for Small Home Business Taxes

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Aka "Don't do what I did" (mostly)

With so many women starting their own home businesses these days, it's a good idea (and best, legally speaking) to include the business in our income taxes.  It can seem daunting, overwhelming and rather confusing at first, but if you keep things organized and maintain monthly it will be a whole lot easier. 

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day working on taxes.  This was after another full day or two of organizing, going over Paypal reports, receipts, categorizing and marking (followed by procrastinating for about a month), then more organizing, double-checking and adding.  It would have been SO much easier had I just kept everything organized from the start of the year and tallied things up after each month.  What did I do instead?  I just tossed everything into a file box and waited until the end of the year to sort through everything.  BAD idea!  It was hard on me and hard on my kids -- me trying to focus, organize and think for long periods of time with antsy, cabin-fevered toddlers running around [literally] bouncing off the walls.

I'm sure many of you are more organized than I was with these things, but I hope this advice will be able to help someone.  If not, at least it will help me from now on!

source

So, without further ado, here are my tips to lessen stress with business taxes...

1.   Have a separate bank account and/or credit card for your business.  Keep business transactions out of your personal accounts.  It will make it so much easier when trying to keep track of everything... and that way you won't have 4 different accounts to look through (for the entire year) picking each business transaction out of 35 million personal transactions.  Just saying.

2.  Save every single receipt.  Especially when you use cash and the transaction won't show up on any other account statement.  But even if it will show up on a statement be sure to keep the receipt so you know if it was actually a business or personal transaction (or if you slipped in a candy bar when you were purchasing shipping supplies... and if you did you can recalculate the actual business expense, with tax, without the candy bar). 

3.  Keep track of the price of inventory and materials for products.  You will need this for two reasons: one - inventory, two - "cost of goods sold".  It's much better than sitting there wondering "how much did I pay for this again?"

4.  Keep business materials and craft supplies separate from personal.  If you take something for personal use, write it down along with how much it cost.  You can probably let a little glue here and there slide, but if you bought some packages of beads for your shop and want to use one to make a necklace for yourself, write it down. 

5.  Take a look at the tax form 1040 Schedule C: Profit or Loss from a Business.  What are they going to want to know?  What categories do you need to put things in?  Decide where to put things ahead of time so you don't end up spending 20 minutes each year trying to figure out where to put postage costs.

6.  Set up a file box with a folder for each month of the year, or each category from the tax form (I use one for each month since I have the monthly summaries from Paypal to print out).  Drop in your receipts as they come. 

7.  Complete a summary and totals every month.  Go through all your receipts and the summaries for Paypal or whichever merchant account you may have.  Categorize all your expenses (into those categories from the tax form) and sales, returns and interest/dividends.  Total everything for each month.  That way you will be able to just go through and add the totals for a category from each month and get the grand total for the year in just a few minutes. 

8.  Don't forget business use of your home.  If you have a home office, work space, studio, or a corner of a room where you work on your business, measure the square footage.  Using form 8829: Expenses for Business Use of Your Home you figure the percentage of the total area of the home and you can write off that percentage of your taxes, mortgage interest/rent, utilities, insurance, repairs, etc. 

9.  When you're getting down and dirty with numbers, have a supply of calculators.  One for each of your children plus one for yourself.  That way you won't have to ask your 2 year-old to give the calculator back every 2 minutes.

And finally...

10.  Go to the IRS website to find and file your taxes with a free e-file company.  Most people can e-file and it saves a lot of time and effort.  You do have to have all the information, forms and totals, but the company does all the calculations and determining if you qualify for something.  Plus if you're going to get a refund it will arrive a lot sooner!  I will get my [fat] refund deposited into my savings account in one to two weeks.  This is the one time of year I'm happy I'm poor with two kids!  (When I'm rich I will be more than happy to pay higher taxes... but until then, yay for tax season!)

And I should also mention, after all this you need to congratulate yourself on being a savvy business woman and give yourself a big reward... say, a week long vacation?  Tee hee, I wish!

%&@#! Popcorn Garlands

I love the way popcorn garlands look on Christmas trees.  They're fun, festive and the white looks great on the evergreen tree.  Has anyone else ever made a popcorn garland?  If not, they are not as easy as they may seem.

Okay, I should say it depends on the kind of popcorn you make/get.  The larger pieces the better, but the popcorn I used was about 1/3 the size of the piece pictured above (from a cheap, old air popper that is on the fritz).

I thought it would be a project that my small children and I could do together, but unfortunately, with the sharp needles and thin thread required, it doesn't work out too well with them.

Some tips:
     - use a very sharp, narrow needle.  If you use a thicker needle it will break the popcorn more often and frustrate you more.
     - use thin thread (since I couldn't get thicker thread to fit through the eye of the smaller needle)
     - practice self calming techniques and hold your tongue when you're tempted to spout expletives after the tenth piece in a row crumbles in your fingertips or your children step on the middle of the five foot length you've already completed.

My verdict:  Not worth it.  Only if you've been snowed in for a week and have finished all your other projects.  Or you have no small children or anyone else to possibly get in the way and 10 hours of free time on your hands.

P.S.  None of the pictures are mine.  I was too frustrated to take any photos myself.  And, incidentally, I found the last picture on Bizrate.com where you can purchase a 12 foot length of wax-covered popcorn garland for $20.  Hm... tempting...

Painting a Mat and Frame

My mother-in-law sent us these two framed drawings of San Francisco a while back.  I really liked the drawings but the mat was a strange orange/peach color and the frames had gold trim which didn't fit in with our decor (or at least my idea of what I want my decor to be... not that it's at that point right now!).

So I decided to paint both the frame and the mat.  I started to paint the frame by hand, but it was taking so long and the black was showing through too much, so I ended up spray painting it.  It had to dry overnight (I hate waiting!).  Then I added a little antiquing (sort of).  The mat I painted by hand, and had to be very careful because the drawing was glued to it and I didn't want to tear it by trying to take it off of the mat. Now that I think about it, though, I could have just covered the mat with some really pretty scrapbook paper.  Oh well!

I didn't think it was necessary to show steps for this one, so here's the end result. 

Now they're just right for my [someday] blue and white bathroom.

Mirror to Bulletin Board

On one of my few recent trips to the thrift store I found this mirror made to look like a window, with a shelf and pegs underneath.  I loved it and thought it had great potential (although not in it's current red state, at least not for me).

My son holds it up while my daughter does what she does when I tell her to "Smile!"

I took the screws out of the back (thank goodness for power tools!) and took the mirror out.  I had to paint about 4 layers of white to get the red to stop showing through.  Although I could have either stripped off the red, or primed it first to help.  

Ah, that's better!

Thankfully the pegs came out very easily, and I filled the holes with caulk (although I think I should have used wood filler).  Then I mixed some brown and white paint to make a lighter brown and very lightly brushed it on with a dry, stiff-bristled brush. 

Kind of gives the effect of chipping paint without the mess or potential lead!

Then I added the new hooks I bought (being careful to avoid the peg holes).  For the cork part I SHOULD have just purchased a roll of cork sheeting, cut it to the size of the mirror and secured it to the backing board, but unfortunately I didn't have that thought until after I had already started meticulously measuring and cutting cork tiles to fit each rectangle in the "window". 

The finished product! (I had to make every caption have an exclamation point)

I'm linking to this party.