No-Sew Scrap Fabric Bunting

In preparation for our Easter festivities this Sunday, I whipped up this easy, no-sew, fabric bunting to stretch over our outdoor dining area.  Everything’s better with bunting, right?  All you need is rope (I chose a rustic-looking jute variety straight off the shelf from Home Depot), and one inch wide scraps of colorful fabric (I used quilting fabric).  Oh, and to get a little sparkle, I also added chandelier crystals every so often.

Choosing colors at random, I tied the swatches of fabric every six inches or so (the fabric scraps were approximately eight inches long each), but I certainly did not try to make them perfectly spaced–symmetry is overrated.  I just tied a single knot.  Good enough.  That rope is grippy.

Then, every few feet (again, never measuring perfectly), I attached a crystal with fine wire.

I wish I had video of these little pretties fluttering in the breeze….they look like little birds, and the chandelier crystals bounce some lovely sparkle around the yard.

I’m thinking that after the party on Sunday….the bunting stays.  Me likey.

Eggshell Peony Easter Wreath

As part of the decor for our upcoming Easter party, I created this sweet little wreath.  It sticks nicely to our ‘rustic with a bit of glitter’ decor theme for the party; a natural twig craft store wreath is a great backdrop for a touch of golden sparkle, don’t you think?

The egg flowers are the only tricky thing about this, but they are actually pretty forgiving to make.

Start with your raw eggs (I wanted five blossoms so I did five eggs), and, using a butter knife, crack them anywhere from about halfway to three quarters of the way up to the pointy end (depending on how tall you want your ‘blossom’, I actually cracked each of my five at different points on the egg–some shorter, some taller.)  Use a knife because you want a controlled crack.

Separate the two ‘halves’ of the eggshell, and catch your egg guts….breakfast!!

It isn’t going to be a perfect, clean break–there is going to be some shattering….don’t worry.  Use the bigger, lower half of the eggshell as the center of your blossom, but save the smaller, upper part to use later on as a petal.

Carefully snap bits of the raw edge of the ‘blossom center’ to shape it and give it sort of an irregular edge (this also allows you to remove some of the shattered pieces and clean it up a bit).  Leave as much of the inner membrane of the egg in tact–this helps strengthen it.  If your shell breaks a bit, don’t worry about it too much.  As long as that inner membrane is still there, it will still work, and the paint will help hold it all together.  As for the ‘tops’ (the pointy ends of the egg), break them in halves and thirds to make some various sized ‘petals’.

Rinse all eggshell pieces and let them dry.

Now, pick your paint colors.  I wanted a peachy pink, and I decided to paint the interior sides of the shells the fully saturated color, while watering down the same color to paint the exterior of the shells.  This gave it a streaky, water-colored look that I found rather pleasing.

Let all bits and pieces thoroughly dry, and then warm up your glue gun.  Choose your center piece and decide how many ‘petals’ you want it to have (two of my blossoms I left petal-less to simulate buds), and then select 3-5 petals for each blossom.  Carefully glue them on one at a time, adhering one tip of the petal to the bottom side of the center eggshell; you’ll have to really gob the glue on there to get the petals to sit at an ‘open’ angle, which requires you to hold it still until the glue is completely set.  It’s pretty easy to hold it still in one hand and navigate through Facebook with the other while you’re waiting.  Trust me.

When you’ve got enough petals on, and they have set completely, glue in your center pom-pom.  I selected these yellow/gold craft store pom-poms because they have little sparkly bits, and the yellow ones looked like pretty decent peony centers.  Also, they kind of remind me of little seed pods or something, so I integrated them into the rest of the wreath. But for now, just glue one into the center of the flower.

Next, I hot-glued the peony blossoms where I wanted them on the wreath form–again, over-glue.  Really get them good and stuck.  I then embellished the wreath with some craft store leaves that I had lightly dusted with gold spray paint, as well as more of the pom-poms in various sizes.

The peachy-pink of the flowers looks especially chipper against the orange of the Farmhouse front door!

That’s it!  Happy Easter everyone!

Trying Natural Egg Dyeing

I’ve been lusting after the gorgeous colors of naturally-dyed Easter eggs for quite some time now; there is something poetically lovely about the gentle colors that result from vegetables and spices.  I must admit, however, that I was overwhelmed when I first started studying recipes.  There are many, many different methods, so I decided to sample a little from here, a little from there.  Primarily, I relied on the recipes from Lakewinds.com, as well as those found at wholefoodsmarket.com.  But, I am a self-professed fiddler, so I did not leave well enough alone.

Before we begin, a few notes….a lot of recipes out there seem to call for letting these mixtures sit and marinate overnight (most times in the fridge) before you even do any egg dyeing.  I didn’t do this.  I’m impatient.  But I can see how this might be a good thing, especially if you plan to do this project with kids–the prep process is tiiiiiiiiiiiiime consuming–not gonna lie.  Let those mixtures get super-saturated.  Can’t hurt.  Another note: some recipes call for straining the solids out of the mixture before dyeing.  I also didn’t do this….this may yield more uniform coloring, with less ‘marbling’ (when there are material particles in there with your eggs, they tend to stick and create a marbled look–which is kind of cool….depends on what you’re going for).  Finally, it seems to me that any vegetable materials seem to work best the more finely they are minced–I ultimately decided to pulverize everything in my mini-Cuiz (food processor).  The more you beat the vegetable up, the more juice comes out.  It’s science.

Notes complete.

Behold the chaos:

Don’t think for one second that I didn’t start fantasizing about cocktails….but there’s something inherently unappetizing about cabbage, beets, turmeric, vinegar, and eggs….what am I saying? I’m sure there’s a cocktail to be found in there, somewhere.

Reds, Pinks, Magentas, Maroons, and Everything in Between:

Beets!  I saw many variations on beet quantity, but after much trial and error, I arrived at the following concoction:

6 tablespoons finely chopped beets

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Toss the beet pulp into your container, pour the boiling water over, add your vinegar, and give it a good stir.  Let it cool off before putting your eggs in.  I know it completely defies logic, but the longer you leave the egg in the mixture, the deeper the color.  Your mind is blown, right?  The beet coloring gets to work pretty quick; you don’t have to leave the egg in long for a lovely, soft pink color.  Also, fyi, brown eggs look pretty great with this coloring on them (the two darkest eggs above are brown eggs, the rest white).

Buttery Yellows:

Turmeric!  This one is so easy and quick and effective.  That stuff stains fast–mind your spills!

3-4 teaspoons turmeric powder

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Mix it all up, and once it’s cooled a bit, drop in your eggs.  If you want light yellow, take your egg out almost immediately.

Shades of Blue:

-To achieve a robin’s egg blue, you use red cabbage.  This is one that takes a long time to get a good saturated color–many recipes recommend letting the eggs steep overnight in the mixture.  I let mine sit for for a few hours and that seemed to achieve a pretty good result (in photo, top left two eggs, and bottom right).

8 tablespoons finely chopped red cabbage

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Same process as usual: combine all ingredients in container, let cool, drop in your eggs and wait until desired color level is achieved.

-To a get the greyish-blue (and sometimes a bit brownish) color, you use blueberries.  This is one that I fiddled around with the size of the chop on–at first, I just smashed the berries each between my fingers, and this resulted in the top right and bottom center eggs–it gave a little brown marble to the eggs that I kind of dig.  On a second batch, I finely processed the berries, and this resulted in the upper center and lower left eggs.  If I had strained either mixture, there probably would have been no speckling or marbling of the colors.

1 cup fresh blueberries (either mashed or finely chopped)

1 cup boiling water

1 teaspoon white vinegar

Mix it all up as per usual, and drop in your eggs when the mixture has cooled.

Orangey, Peachy, Coppery Tones:

Yellow onion skins.

2 generous handfuls of dry onion skins

2 cups water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

The method’s a little different on this one.  In a saucepan, combine the water and the skins until it boils, turn the heat way down and simmer for 20 minutes.  Strain the skins and add the vinegar to the leftover dye mix–once cool, drop in your eggs until desire color is achieved.  The dark coppery egg is one that I completely forgot about and left in for several hours.

Various Shades of Green:

Green is the tricky one.  I fiddled a lot with this and have several different methods to achieve various shades.

-Red onion skins: prepare this mixture exactly like the yellow skins were prepared.  This resulted in the right two eggs in the photo….kind of perhaps, a khaki-ish green?  I would barely classify this as green, but hey, still kind of a cool color.

-Spinach: This resulted in the very, very pale celadon egg in the center of the photo.

1 cup of fresh spinach leaves, finely minced

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Mix all ingredients together, let cool, then submerge egg.  The color takes a long time to come up….be patient.

-Red cabbage and turmeric: mix up your dye as you would for the robin’s egg blue, but add a 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric powder to it.  This method resulted in the top left three eggs: a very vibrant yellow-green.  This look can also be achieved by taking an already dyed robins-egg-blue egg and dropping it in a turmeric dye mixture.

-Blueberry egg dropped in turmeric mixture: this is the bottom, lone egg in the photo.  I thought this was the most ‘green’ of the bunch.  This was achieved by taking an already dyed blueberry egg and dropping it briefly into a turmeric dye mixture.

Lavender/purple was a big flop for me.  I tried the grape juice method mentioned in the Lakewinds.com recipe list and found it to be lacking.  What was also lacking?  Time for me to continue experimenting.  I feel that taking a beet-dyed pink or red egg and dropping it in the red cabbage or blueberry dyes (or visa versa) would produce a pretty good purple.  But I didn’t get around to this, so it’s just my best guess.

All in all, it was pretty fun to do, and the result wasn’t too shabby.  I am, by no means, a professional egg-dyer, so take my methods with a grain of salt.  There is definitely some recipe tweaking left to do!

The house reeks of cabbage and turmeric, but I just can’t complain.

Come on….those are some pretty eggs right there!!!

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

Rose and Vanilla Bean Crème Brûleé

Just in the nick of time for Valentine’s Day, am I right?  Rose flavoring in food is not everyone’s cup of tea, but let me tell you something….I adore it.  I love roses, I love the smell of roses, and I am quite content to put all of that loveliness in my mouth.  And then, of course, this is crème brûleé, which is something that I do not possess the will or desire to say ‘no’ to, ever.

For this recipe, you will need:

-2-1/2 cups heavy cream

-1 whole vanilla bean

-2 tablespoons rose water

-7 large egg yolks

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-approx. 6 additional tablespoons of granulated sugar for the brûleé-ing

-fresh rose petals for garnish

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees (F).  Put six ramekins (6oz size) into a roasting pan.  Set this aside.  If you intend to heat water on the stove to use for the ramekins’ hot water bath, do that now (I usually just use hot water straight out of the tap).

Split your vanilla bean and place it in a medium saucepan, along with the cream and the rose water, and turn the heat on medium.  Warm the cream mixture slowly, until bubbles form around the edge of the pot.  Remove it from the heat and let it ponder life while you go to your mixer.

Whisk together the sugar and egg yolks until the mixture begins to thicken and turn slightly lighter in color.

Strain the cream mixture and then VERY slowly, add it in bits to the egg/sugar mixture.  If you do this too fast, your eggs will scramble and it will all be for naught.  When everything is blended, divide the mixture evenly amongst your six ramekins.  Fill the baking dish about halfway with scalding, hot water from the tap (or from your pot of boiled water).

Carefully place the baking dish on the middle rack of your oven and bake for 35-45 minutes or until the custard is set around the edges and just wiggles a little in the center.  Remove them from the oven, remove the ramekins from the water bath, and let them cool to room temp.  Refrigerate them for a couple of hours (or up to three days).

When you are ready to serve them, remove them from the fridge and immediately coat the entire surface of each custard with a good layer of granulated sugar (about 1 tbs.).  Using a kitchen torch, gently melt the sugar, rolling it around a bit to coat the whole surface.  Let it cool and harden, embellish with rose petals, and then serve.

Enjoy!

DIY Primitive Heart Wreath

A little more Valentine’s Day, anyone?

This is a pretty simple way to make a basic wreath in virtually any shape you want it.  I had in mind a sort of primitive-style wreath, but of course, you could add as much embellishment and material as you want to fatten it up and make it less simplistic.

I started by using two strands of raffia-covered wire (bought in the floral section of the craft store), twisted together to make one, strong strand long enough to make the wreath about the circumference that you want it to be.  Make a rough circle out of it and twist the loose ends together. Because this is a heart shape, the fastened ends make a natural spot to make the point of the heart:

Now, roughly form this into the shape of a heart.  Again, I was going for imperfection, so I wanted it off-centered:

Now, forage for some supplies in your yard.  Woodsy vines work the best: wisteria, grapevine–anything that will hold its shape when dry.  I have a ton of wisteria, so that’s what I collected:

Take one strand of vine, and another of the raffia-covered wire.  Place the vine along your heart form and using the new piece of raffia-wire, wrap and anchor the vine to the form, all along the shape of the heart. Take a shorter piece of raffia-wire and anchor the ‘valley’ of the heart to the lower ‘point’ of the heart, so that the thing keeps it’s heart shape (as you add vine to the form, it will want to flex the heart shape right out of the form).

Now, we’re gonna switch from raffia-covered wire, to some sort of thin-gauged metal wire:

Begin adding more vines to the form and anchoring them into place with little bits of the small wire:

Add as much or as little vineage as you want until you get the rough shape/thickness you’re after–I only used about four or five pieces of vine:

Now, to change up the texture and bulk it up a bit, add in some other types of branches, moss, etc., adhering them in with a glue gun.

This is about the shape/size/thickness I was after, so, time to embellish with ribbons:

I chose a selection of narrow, Valentine’s-inspired grosgrain ribbons, and began cutting small pieces that I then tied into simple knots.  Some I tied directly around vines or branches in the wreath, others, I tied and then glued on.  Clip the loose ends of the knots short.

Add a ton of them in all different colors, in a totally random fashion.

Affix a hanging ribbon to the top of the wreath (I usually tie it on and hot-glue it just for extra hold), and hang it!

Go Paint Rocks

In yesterday’s Cupid’s Arrow Doormat post, some of you may have spied these two little glittered heart painted rocks tucked amongst the front porch decor….

I love me some painted rocks, and I must say that I am obsessing over the glittered ones even more!  Painting rocks (and using them mainly as door-stops) was something I started doing in college, when I was broke but living by the ocean where there was an unending supply of nice, smooth, wave-worn rocks to collect and use for whatever I could possibly turn them into.  This was like 15 years ago, people–where the heck has the time gone!?  In more recent manifestations, these painted rocks have been moonlighting at the Farmhouse as bookends, mantel decor, garden markers, and hostess gifts.  They are so easy and inexpensive to make that I thought I’d better share the tutorial.

I have a thing for monogrammed rocks. This is a completely normal thing to have a thing for.

A family of monogrammed rocks for my favorite neighbors’ front stoop.  Shout out to H, N, R & Q!!!

During the holidays, I made a set for my front porch decor that never actually made it into a post:

My text-transferring method for the rocks is one and the same as for my Hand-Painted Signs.  You start, of course, by finding yourself a decent rock.  The smoother the surface, the easier it will be. Design up your words, letters, or shapes on the computer, and print.

Cut each word (or design) out, and then heavily color the backside of it with a grease pencil.

Scotch-tape it where you want it on your rock of choice, and then trace the design, pressing firmly.

You should get a pretty well-transferred image if you slathered the grease pencil on there thick enough.

Now, paint!

If these are going to sit outside, it’s best to use some sort of oil-based exterior-grade paint. Finishing with a clear, protective sealer always helps, too.

If you’re adding glitter, sprinkle it on before the paint has much time to dry.

I must confess that I simply free-handed these hearts….nothing wrong with winging it now and again!

Cupid’s Arrow Doormat

More Valentine’s crafty decor!

I’m a big fan of making my own doormats.  Plain coir mats like the one above are sold for around $10.00 at Home Depot, and with some transparent contact paper (also from the Depot) to make a sticky-stencil and a bit of left-over spray paint, this is a relatively easy, inexpensive, and versatile DIY project.

For this design, I decided about how big I wanted my arrow, and then created it in a design program and printed it off the computer.  It took two standard-sized pieces of paper, which I then taped together into one design.

Now cut a piece of contact paper big enough to fit over the top of this, then tape it to the print-out, as well as your work surface so nothing slides around.  Use a sharpie to trace your arrow image onto the contact paper.

BTW….this is a great method to create a stencil for other craft projects.

Now comes the first tricky part: using a small pair of scissors, cut the arrow cleanly out of the middle of the contact paper. The contact paper is gonna wanna roll up on you, but keep calm!  It feeds off of your frustration.

Now, for the second tricky part: CAREFULLY remove the backing to the contact paper and stick your image where you want it on the doormat.  Nothing wants to stick to that coir very much, so you’ll be able to shimmy it around to get it lined up just right.  Tape it into place with painter’s tape and then use contact paper and/or painters tape to cover the rest of the mat to protect it from over-spray.

Now, you’re ready to paint!  Hit the image with spray paint in short bursts from directly above, as again, the contact paper just barely adheres to the coir and if you blast it from an angle, it will lift right on off of there and ruin the whole thing.  Hit it with one, good coat of paint.

Let it dry for a few minutes, remove the template, and then let the rug sit and dry for about an hour or so before you put it out for use.

Another simple version of this went to our side door:

The chickens are just fascinated by this little red heart on their napping-mat.

Valentine’s Candy Box Roses

I have a confession….I heart Valentine’s Day in all of its ridiculous glory.  I love the blatant pinks and reds and hearts and sparkles and chocolates and redundant red roses.  It’s all just so darn cute and girly, and I embrace it and accept it despite its pathological commercialism.  I’m really an enormous sucker for some adorable packaging no matter what.

Another thing I secretly love?  Those super-cheesy heart-shaped boxes of chocolate.  You know the ones in the drug store, just to the left of the shampoo aisle?  Yes, those!  It isn’t so much about the chocolate (I swear), as it is about that nostalgic heart-shaped box:

Come on, you know you love this!

After the chocolates have evaporated, what does one do with such an adorable box?  At my house, you fill it with flowers, of course!

Here’s how:

First of all, you can do this arrangement in either the lid or the bottom (or both!).  I chose the bottom, which had built-in candy compartments that had to be gently ripped out, first.

This doesn’t look so cute.

Now, because this is a cardboard box, we gotta waterproof it.  You need to line it with some sort of thick-gauged plastic lining, whether it be a bit of garbage bag, ziplock, etc.  I happened to use a piece of some left-over painter’s tarp.  Cut it roughly to size with a little bit of overlap.

Push the plastic lining into the box, and then, using your trusty glue-gun, run a bead of glue, bit by bit, along the top edge of the box, adhering the plastic just well enough so that it sticks, not so well that it melts through the plastic (which if you are using sturdy enough plastic and a low-heat gun, shouldn’t be a problem).  This doesn’t have to be a perfect, solid bead of glue–just enough to hold the plastic in place.

Once you are done, it should look a little something like this:

Now, run scissors along the top edge of the box and remove the excess plastic.

As long as you didn’t accidentally pierce or burn through the plastic, you should now have a cardboard box capable of holding some liquid.

Under normal circumstances, this is where I would cut and fit wet florist’s foam into the container.  Lately, I have been trying to steer away from using the stuff unless I just have no choice–it’s really rather environmentally unfriendly.  But this is a personal choice and I chose to go without.  Instead, I cut and fit a double-layer of paper towels into the bottom of the heart, then filled it about half-way with water.  The paper towels serve as a grip for the roses, and also to keep things damp with minimal water (as this is a shallow container and you don’t want a ton in there sloshing around).

Cut your roses real short–right at the base of the bloom:

Go ahead and start lining them up in the container, making sure the cut stem makes contact with the paper towel.

The flowers might tip over a bit as you work–don’t worry, the more you get in there, the more they hold each other upright.

Two dozen roses (straight from Home Depot) should about fill this size container (approx. 12″ wide at its widest point), but I went and tucked in a few coral-colored roses just for effect, so my total came out to 30 roses.

Now, you’ll probably be able to still see a bit of plastic liner around the edges.  We’ve got to do something about that!  I chose this adorable lacey, felt ribbon to edge the box in, but any ribbon or trim will work.

Run a bead of hot glue around the outside top edge of the box, and apply your decorative trim so that it overlaps the flowers just a bit and hides that unsightly edge.

Pretty!  But why stop here?  In the spirit of Valentine’s bling, let’s add some sparkle, shall we?  Give your roses a fine mist of water across the top:

Pick your poison:

I give you….Martha Stewart “Candy Apple”!

And then literally blow it like fairy dust across your flowers.  If you don’t like glitter everywhere in your house (then you have no soul!  Just kidding….kind of), please do this step outside!

How I love me some sparkly roses!

Now, you just want to top the whole thing off with a nice, diagonal bit of ribbon and a tailored bow to mimic the way these candy boxes are usually trimmed out.  Cut a piece of your trim ribbon to fit across one lobe of the heart, anchoring each end of the ribbon to the inside upper edges of the box with hot glue (so that the glue and ribbon ends don’t show above the trim).

Now, glue together a little bow:

Then adhere this to the middle of your diagonal ribbon, adding bow tails if you wish.

Add a cute tag to complete the package!

To maintain the freshness, drizzle a little new water into the center of the arrangement every couple of days.

I adore the red-on-red-on-red monochrome of this presentation, but it would be so cute done up with some different colors thrown in there, as well.  I may have to do up a pink version using the left-over lid!

Enjoy!

Best Wishes in the New Year!