Crafting – How I Can Do That

Fill Up On The Fillings

The holidays are all coming up. And this can bring many feelings to different feelings. When adulting, the hardest part of the holidays are when finances are tight.

To help lighten the mood and bring a little cheer with the gift of flowers.

I’m going to show a simple and easy to make arrangement that you can personalize any way you want because it’s a blank slate. The beauty of it is that I reused some items and others were given to me. I had no out of pocket expenses to share this post with you.

So let’s start with the materials.

Vase

What inspired this post was the vase that my mom had sent me some flowers in.

Fall is my season. I love pumpkin everything. In fact I grow and purchase pumpkins to have all my pumpkin goodness that I can preserve for the rest of the year. And yes, I make pumpkin scones year round because their deliciousness transcends what is in season.

Unfortunately I can’t send you a picture of what the floral arrangement was that my mom sent. Mostly because I want to keep the blank slate in your mind and spark your creativity.

What I like about this white pumpkin is that if you remove all the floral it is literally a cookie jar. So feel free to use this idea any time of year and use cookie jars, old tea pots, water pitchers, even a shoe box (hello baby shower with baby shoe boxes!) Literally, use what you have on hand that brings you inspiration.

If you’re using a cookie jar or anything else with a lid, let me show you the parts of this vase and how it works.

This lid stand/holder is very specific for floral. I’m sure with today’s online offerings, you could find these. But you’re going to have to know what your lid size is and go from there. I have one other cookie jar, but the lid is smaller and this stand/holder definitely will not fit in it.

However I do have two options off the top of my head that I could use from items I have in my house.

I have porcelain dolls from my childhood, and this stand/holder immediately reminded me of the doll stands I have that go around my dolls’ waist. The tension part is too small to fill the lid like in this pumpkin vase, but with two or three I could position them in the smaller lid to make the tension and platform to raise the lid.

Another option is making one from a thick gauge wire. If your local store has a DIY floral department or aisle, you will find wire thick enough to hold its shape and hold the weight of a lid. If you want to price comparison shop, go to an automotive shop or aisle. You’ll often find that you will get a better price in that department, but also walk out with a larger quantity of wire.

Once you have the wire, you can make your own custom holder/stand by leaving several inches of one leg sticking out as you then go in and create a loop of wire inside the lip of your cookie jar lid. I would make a few loops inside that lid to ensure that when you move and manipulate the legs that you don’t shrink your loop and allow your lid to fall. Once you’re confident in you loop, bring out a second leg and then use wire cutters to cut the wire. You can always add more than two legs if you feel like you need to add more stability.

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Inner Stability

For lid placement, you will need something to anchor the stand into.

I’m choosing to reuse the oasis that came with the flowers my mom sent me. This is an amazing product because it not only allows you to place flowers like a pin in a pin cushion. It also allow absorbs and holds water, keeping your flowers in water much longer than free standing in just a vase of water.

If you want to use silk flowers that you have on hand, feel free to use a Styrofoam ball or block. (I don’t recommend styrofoam for fresh flowers because the plastic will kill your flowers and won’t allow them to be properly hydrated.

Once you’ve decided what you’re using as a structure (of if you’re even using a structure), you may find that you need to piece bits together to keep them from falling into your cookie jar and becoming lost. Flower stems are enough to keep bits together. However if you need everything to be in place before you get started on your flowers, know that toothpicks or a couple inches of wire are your best friend.

As you can see here, a single toothpick is all that was needed to hold up a water logged piece of oasis.

This is a beneficial trick if you only have a small sliver of oasis that doesn’t touch the bottom of your vase. Or even if you find that your oasis fell apart on you. Or maybe some oasis you salvaged was a different size than the vase you are working with. You can certainly make your oasis fit the vessel you choose to use.

TIP: Please note that placing a toothpick or wire in a 90° angle is going to cause frustration. The weight of wet oasis and flowers are going to collapse. So instead, angle the toothpick at a 45° angle. That way when gravity starts to work against you, the toothpick will hold its place. This will be further reinforced by the flowers that you soon add.

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Flowers

The Flowers that I was gifted after an event I attended was baby’s breath and eucalyptus. Often we look at these as just fillers to make an arrangement look larger than the more desired stems.

I wanted to use these fillers specifically because they are often overlooked for being used as flowers on their own. Maybe you have a lot of fillers left over from other arrangements that you made. Or maybe your budget is tight and these are the only flowers that are in your price range.

There are so many other fillers that you can find in your grocery store. So please keep your eyes open. And not all stores offer the same offerings. The grocery stores don’t supply very many filling options. However, stores like Trader Joe’s offer the best selection of filler flowers in my area. And their prices are quite affordable.

TIP: If your local store doesn’t offer many choices for filler flowers take a look at what is available for discounted flowers. They’re the ones that have the more delicate flowers that are wilted. These discounted bouquets are often cheaper than just fillers flowers, but the fillers used in these bouquets still have a long life to them. There are a huge number of flowers that will last weeks without even having water available to them. So know that even all that you can afford is a heavily discounted, on its last leg bouquet, if there’s a decent amount of fillers included, you can make a decent arrangement even if you have to throw out the wilted roses, lilies, and other delicate petal flowers.

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Arranging

When looking at using long stems of filler, like eucalyptus, you will be happier in how these stems lie when you hold them up and see which direction they are naturally bending. (See the right picture below.) If you want the stem to cascade down, angle the bend down and also put it in the oasis by entering from the bottom and putting the stem upward. This can be seen in the picture on the left.

See the difference between placing firm eucalyptus stems. Using the left picture (above) the stems you see in the bottom right corner are the stems that I angled from the bottom of the oasis and pushed upward. The one stem that is in the upper left corner is the one that I pushed from the top and downward. But this stem I also used a second trick. Even with the curve of this stem, it had the tendency to stand upright. So I curved the stem in a C shape and kind of hooked the stem in the oasis. Then I put the pumpkin lid over this stem to weigh it down. Even with this trick, the stem never gave a cascading down effect like you see with the bottom right corner stems.

How you place the stems is everything about how it stands up or lays down.

The baby’s breath is much easier to shape the way that you want. For this cookie jar I used about four stems of baby’s breath and snipped them down into smaller branches. And with an arrangement like this, there’s no need for long pieces. All you need are the “scrap” pieces or bits that are the size of your hand or smaller.

If you “scrap” pieces or the bits that you cut down are too small, it just means that you need more of them to fill larger spaces.

One work around for filling empty spaces quicker is to take larger pieces like this. In the below picture on the left is a stem that is about the length of my elbow to my wrist. It could have been trimmed down into four smaller stems, but I wanted to fill a large hole with just this one piece.

To close up the gap spacing between these branches, slide your fingers up the main stem, gathering all the stems up the main stem. That gathering bunches all the stems up to achieve what you see in the right picture. You will have to hold you stem in this position until you push it into the oasis. At that point, the foam holds bunching in place.

Before you place your first gathered stem, I want to draw your attention to a stem feature that has the potential of causing you some up front frustration.

The weakest part of the baby’s breath stem is the joint where all the branches merge. The times that stems snap, when placing them in oasis, is when I try to push these joints in without giving them assistance.

If you have an arrow tip like you see above, it’s easiest if you just snip that off. It causes resistance, when pushed in the oasis, that you don’t need, because those stem numbs have no flowers.

Look further up on the stem and you see what it looks like when you have attached flowering stems. When I don’t need the height from the stem, I snip it right there at the base of where all the stems merge. Then I slide my fingers down to make more of an arrow point instead of a tear drop. That fat end of the tear drop is difficult to push into oasis. However, if you make a sharper point, or a smaller surface area to push in, the stem slides right into the oasis.

If there are any other merges in the stem, it’s easiest if you pinch it smaller to get it to go into the foam. Depending on how large of a cluster you have, there may be a few of these joints that you have to manipulate into the foam.

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Final Adjustments

Once you’ve filled in all your empty space, there’s a few decisions to make.

Do you add more of one filler or the other?
Was there too much and some needs to be removed?
Does placement need to be adjusted?
Is something missing?

I looked at the final arrangement here and went through these same questions. All the holes I filled with baby’s breath as that’s what I chose to be primary flower out of these two fillers.

The thought crossed my mind to add more eucalyptus. But I opted with the creative decision of having less leaves on my pumpkin “vines”. So that meant instead of removing branches of eucalyptus I chose to weave the branches through the clusters of baby’s breath.

As far as “am I missing anything?” that is the question that is always there when you have a blank canvas for an arrangement.

Right now this is how my pumpkin sits in my living room. But it also allows me to keep this long lasting arrangement in season through the rest of the year. For Thanksgiving, I could add fall leaves or any other fall accent pieces. For December all the fall accent pieces can be pulled out of the oasis and winter pieces added. For example, I would put in snowflakes or mini presents. In fact, I’m eye balling some mini glitter snowflakes while writing this. The question is if I want to keep with the white color and add silver glitter snowflakes. Or do I want to add a splash of color and put in gold snowflakes?

But that’s the beauty of making a simple arrangement like this. I can dress it up and change it.

In fact, I could keep this up for the New Year and put in foil clusters that look like fireworks.

For now I’m just going to have to contain myself and not entertain my kids. It’s so easy to grab their small stuffies and other toys and use them as props to make little scenes. We don’t do Elf on the Self in our house, but just like there’s millions of Pinterest posts on Elf on the Shelf ideas, there’s just as many possibilities for arrangements like this. It doesn’t matter if you have a pumpkin cookie jar like vase (like I used here) or a teapot or coffee cup. No matter what you are using as a unique vase, you have just as many options to accessorize and decorate without limits.

How would you dress up a pumpkin arrangement like this?

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Ombre Fun

While I made a component for last weekend’s Maker’s Market I played with glitter. I slowed down my mass production to share an easy way of creating an ombre effect that’s nearly effortless and will take every time for me.

The secret is all about your glue choice.

Growing up I always used Elmer’s Glue for sticking power. For ombre work, I find it’s the worst glue. There’s a few reasons for this, but for me the biggest problems I had was holes between two colors, awful looking clumping, and stark lines that just looked weird.

I’ve switched to using cheap watery glue instead.

Have you ever watched a professional cookie maker flood the icing to get that smooth design? Using watery glue has the same effect for creating glitter ombre!

So whether you’re new to crafting with glitter or use glitter on everything, more fluid glue is going to be your best friend. You can glue the sections you want to use one color glitter. Or you can lay down all your glue at once. The fluid movement of this type of glue is going to cause the glitter to drift a little and cause a natural blend. Not only that but if you have to go back in and add more glue because a spot was unexpectedly dry, a single drop will fill that hole and spread into the already laid glitter with no gaps.

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Laying Down the Glue All at Once

This is my favorite way of doing ombre, particularly because I want to move quickly and optimize my production time.

First I get my glitter selection lined up. This is what allows me to lay a handful of colors while the glue is still wet.

Before I lay down the glue, I also decide which direction I want my colors to run; horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

With that all prepped, that’s when I go ahead and lay the glue. I start at one end of my element and shake the glitter side to side to make a straight line. (Or a zig zag if I want peaks and valleys.)

If I’m going to make my own color blend, I’ll go ahead and shake out all the colors at once, without stopping between colors to put them back in their containers.

However, if I’m keeping my colors true, then I’ll lay that first edge color. Then shake off the excess with the glitter side down. Put the glitter away. Then grab the next color, shake out that next line. Shake off the excess with glitter side down. And repeat the whole process until all my glitter is put away.

Just so that you can go into this with confidence, I want to share with you the colors that I used here in Welcome Fall. The first color I used was a pale gold (as opposed to the bright and bold gold you usually see during Christmas). I followed that up with a bright pumpkin orange. And the final was a cherry red. I didn’t have concerns with the gold and orange because they had a similar base color that matched perfectly. The red doesn’t look bad here. I pulled it off in the final project that this was going on. However if you ever find that you’re questioning your color choices before you glue, I highly recommend taking some of the neighboring color and adding it in with the color you are hesitant with. This will tone down, and help bring the color into the family.

OR… another option, which you’ll see in the second picture above, let your middle color slide down on the glue and creates a drip effect. This will help from creating a stark line that can potentially form with colors of glitter that compete with each other.

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Making Your Own Blend

As I mentioned above, you can blend your colors together. This green that I made is a perfect example of what happens when you blend.

The only green glitter I had on hand was a lime green that I bought from a spring line of glitter. There was no way that I could make that Easter egg green work in a fall theme. So I grabbed my blue and purple glitters to blend a darker green. If you look closely at this picture, you might be able to pick up the different colors. Around the middle, you’ll see some grains of blue that has a turquoise to it. And then around the perimeter you see the darkness of the purple glitter.

Maybe, you don’t want to make your own darker shade of green. Maybe you want a different color. How do you mix it?

Think about mixing paint and how when you use primary colors (red, yellow, blue) you make secondary colors (orange, green, purple). Glitter is going to work in the same manner. The big difference is that you’re not changing the individual grains of glitter to a new color. You’re creating the illusion of a new color by mixing different colors.

For the green that I made, I used the blue to take away the brightness of the lime. These two colors still have a fresh spring green color, so the addition of a darker color, like purple, makes the green dark. I didn’t use precise measurements. I added a little bit at a time so I don’t use my whole glitter stash and run out of colors to make corrections. Over all, it came down to the ratio of the lime taking up 50-60%, blue 30-40%, and purple 10-20%

The cherry red that I mentioned earlier, I partnered it with maroon that I absolutely love. The thought crossed my mind that I might need to make more of it because I bought it last fall and haven’t seen it since. My plan was to take the cherry red, mix a little bit of navy blue glitter (bright reds have an orange base and rich reds have a blue base–my reason for adding blue), and then black to get the red darker without changing the base color of the read. Brown would be an option if I wanted a lighter maroon. But for this dark maroon, black is the go to glitter.

The added bonus of mixing your own glitter blend is that you add dimension and something dimension to look at. Don’t get me wrong, glitter is enticing enough on its own. But the next time you play with glitter, mix a small batch of a color and look at it in comparison to the original flat color. You’ll understand what I’m talking about when it gives you something a little more.

Other Ideas

Before I close this post, I want to offer one more idea of what you can do to give your glitter work some dimension and adding a little “extra” to your work.

Take a look at “Give Thanks” in the picture above.

This one is a bit more subtle than the striped ombre, so you may need to get a closer look at this wooden tag. The picture doesn’t do it justice in comparison to what it looks like in person. But this is two different shades of gold. The darker (and more orange) gold is applied as a shadow on the left hand side of each of the letters.

Earlier I mentioned shaking glitter in a v or w shape to create a chevron pattern.

You can easily make poke a dots by dropping spots in one color and then surrounding the dots with a different color.

Feel free to not just play with colors, but also experiment with shapes and patterns. Depending on what pattern you’re making, you may need to be specific with how you lay down your glue. But there is no reason why you can’t make leaves, plaids, or anything else in glitter. If it becomes difficult to maintain shapes, take breaks between your layers. This will keep the glue from running and distorting the shape/pattern you make.

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A Finishing Tip

The one disadvantage to working with fluid glue is that your glue might shed glitter because it doesn’t have the stick to keep the glitter in place. There are a couple of options that you have to seal in your glitter to minimize or eliminate shedding.

The first thing that I used, many many many years ago, was hair spray. This has the least about of stick out of the options I’ll share. It’s great if you’re in a pinch and don’t have any other products on hand. But the only shedding this is going to stop is contact shedding when you tap it. There will be some transfer if you run your finger in the glitter.

I love using clear acrylic spray! This is a great sealant that dries in a couple of minutes. The disadvantage is the fumes. But those disappear when the spray paint cures. I really don’t notice glitter loss through touch or contact/tapping. The finish is also the best option. However, you might see a dulling of the glitter’s sparkle depending on which brand you use.

If you have the time, polycrylic paint is the best as far as it goes to completely seal in all the glitter. This can be the determining factor if someone in your house, or the person you’re gifting too, hates glitter with a passion. This is completely sealed and there is no glitter loss. Just be aware that the fumes are strong and curing can take 24-48 hours. But the fumes will dissipate. I highly recommend that you dab polycrylic on. If you try to brush it on, you will get streaks, glitter will clump on your brush, and there will be brush tracks in your glitter.

How do you like using glitter?

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Reverse That Frame

While getting ready for an upcoming Maker’s Market, I’m reminded of a time I was in a crafting group. A couple of times a year the group would do a special session of crafting binges. One of the first things I made with this group was a reverse canvas. It’s one of the simplest crafting transformations that is so satisfying.

If you haven’t heard of a reverse canvas, or have yet to make one yourself, grab a framed canvas, screw driver or staple remover, paint, exacto knife, and stapler or staple gun. This is all you need to make your own reverse canvas.

At any of your craft stores, or even dollar store, you can find two types of canvases: frames canvas and canvas flat. The flat looks like canvas that has been glued to a piece of cardboard. (You can make this in a similar fashion as you’ll see with this reverse canvas.) A canvas frame is the one where you see the canvas stretched over a wooden frame.

First, you want to flip your canvas frame over and remove the staples from the back. I’ve had some frames where this was easy. And there have been a few frames where I had to work to get those staples off. If you find that the staples don’t want to release from the wood, grab a piece of needle nose pliers. This will give you enough leverage where you can wiggle the staples out.

Don’t worry if your prying scars this side of the frame. With all the holes and splintering, this side of the frame will remain the backside that no one will see.

I’ve heard many crafters recommend using the exacto knife and cutting the canvas free from the frame by cutting on the side of the staple between the staple and the outside edge of the frame. If you don’t want to spend the time removing the staples, this is the method that you will love. The down side of this option is that the finished back of your reverse canvas is not going to be smooth as it could be But as I mentioned before, no one is going to see the back of the frame once it’s on the wall.

The rest of this walk through is under the assumption that you remove the staples. There are also other ways of reapplying the canvas, such as using hot glue, but I’m going to show you how to stretch the canvas. This is going to give you the best quality and make it look less DIY and more professional in finish.

Paint to Dress It Up

Of course you have the option to paint your frame and canvas at any point in time. My timing of choice is to paint the frame and canvas once they are separated from each other.

As you can see here, for one of my Market products, when you paint them separately, you are free to personalize and customize your project anyway that you want.

If you want to spray paint, you can. You can use glitter or other crafting medium. When the pieces are separated, you will never have the accidental over spray or find the need to tape off to protect one element while you’re working with the other. And if you want to try your hand at free hand painting one element, you can work absolute certainty of the work that you’re doing.

Once canvas and frame are dry, you are ready to put your canvas back on your frame.

TIP: If you wanted a pattern on the canvas (like I did above), make sure you take a look at your frame on top of your canvas. Make sure your lines, design, landscape or portrait are lined up like you want them in the frame. You may find that what you painted on the canvas doesn’t line up inside the frame like it did when you were just looking at the canvas.

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It’s Time to Stretch

If you pre-lined up your canvas and frame (as described in the tip above), you will need to hold on to both pieces and carefully flip it over. Make sure that the canvas doesn’t slip. If it does, you may need to reposition it.

If you have a solid canvas, or one that doesn’t need positioned, start of by putting your frame front side down on your table or work surface. The staple holes side should be up. Next, place your canvas down with paint side down.

Find the center of the long side of your frame and staple your canvas to that spot.

Next, find the center of the other side of your frame and pull the canvas tight to that spot. You may need to use both hands. This will give you control in how tight you will make the canvas in the end. Once you feel the tension, staple the canvas, tight, to the center of that frame arm.

Find the center of the short end of your frame. Pull the canvas tight to that point. You should notice that you can pull it more than you did with the first pull you made. Staple it in place.

Find the center of the last side of the frame and pull the canvas tight. At this point, I start pulling the canvas to the outside edge of the frame and using the frame edge as leverage to keep the canvas tight as you staple.

As you look at these pictures you are going to really see the warping in the canvas just from these initial 4 staples. This is normal and in no way reflects the final product. In fact, the more that I pull the canvas, the more tension that I add. I find that if I gradually add more tension as I go the least likely I am of ripping my canvas from pulling too hard.

After these initial staples are in place, the next step is to aim your stapler about 2 inches to the side of center staple. Pull and stretch the canvas toward the nearest corner, in a diagonal pull. The original pulls were in an up/down directional pull. But after you place the first 4 staples, you want to pull diagonally to prevent bubble like ripples from forming around already set staples.

Another benefit to diagonal pulls is that this is how I get my canvas to keep tight like the skin stretched on top of a bongo.

Another truck to keeping a tight canvas is that as you start pulling diagonally, you want to alternate directions that you’re pulling in.

For example, if your frame (after the 4 initial staples) is orientated in front of you with the long frame size on the top and the short on the sides, keep your frame in this orientation. Start with a staple 2 inches to the right of the staple on you top long side. Then drop to the bottom long side and pull the canvas to the bottom left corner with adding a staple 2 inches to the left of the the bottom long frame side center staple. Then for the short frame side on your right hand side, pull the canvas toward that right bottom corner and place your staple 2 inches below the center staple. Finally move to the left hand side short frame side, pull the canvas toward the upper corner , and place the staple 2 inches above the center staple.

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With these four staples in place, we’re now going to staple on the other side of the center staple to balance out the tension that we’re putting in the canvas.

The last pull was toward the upper left corner (on the short side). So now we’re going to go to the bottom right corner (on the long side). Pull to the lower right corner and staple to the right of the bottom center staple. Next, pull to the upper left corner and staple to the left of the upper center staple. Then pull to the upper right corner and staple above the right center staple. Finally pull to the lower left corner and staple bellow the left center staple.

At this point the canvas has an even pull and it’s a good time to check the front to see if any adjustments need to be made. If there is no design to the canvas you can keep stretching and stapling in opposite directions until the canvas is fully attached to the frame.

If you have a design, now is a great time to check to make sure that you are stretching with enough balanced tension that the design is still straight.

Is the design pulling or warping toward a short/long side of the frame? Then you pull the canvas tighter in the opposite direction. This will take pulling toward the two corners opposite of where it was gravitating toward.

If the design is gravitating toward a corner, you want to pull tightest on the opposite corner to bring the design back to its original orientation.

Once you’ve made the corrections that needed to be made (keep checking back to the front after each set of 4 staples to keep an eye on what you need to do), continue with the stretching and stapling until the canvas is reattached to the frame.

Time for a Trim

As you see here, all of the original funkiness from the 4 original staples has worked itself out. The center is smooth and tight. On the outside edges of the canvas you can still see bunches and creases of where I pulled tight against the frame (using it as leverage to pull the canvas tighter). None of this matters because we will trim off the excess canvas.

Flip the canvas over so you can see the front face. Grab your exacto knife. You are going to cut into the canvas at about a 45° angle behind the frame. This will cut enough of the canvas back so that you won’t see the edges from the front of the frame. The benefit of the exacto knife is that you can run the flat edge of the knife against the edge of the frame and cut a straight line.

It is possible to cut away the excess canvas with a pair of scissors. You will want to pay a little extra attention to where you are cutting. You will want to get the scissors in there so that you are cutting behind the frame. But at the same time you want to make sure that you aren’t cutting too close to or between the staples. Just like any taunt fabric, canvas will rip along the grain. This is particularly true when you have the tension that we built in with stretching the canvas.

And now you see the final product with the excess canvas cut away!

This particular canvas is ready for the next step in the product that I’m making, which is a 3D wall art.

But you can consider this as a crafting blank that you can add anything to it. You can stencil paint a design on it. Maybe you want to mod podge a photograph or note from a loved one. Or there could be a decal that you want to attach to this canvas. You could also have an early childhood stick figure drawing from your child or grand child that you want to frame in a unique way. This may be what you’re looking for.

There are so many different things that you can do with a reverse frame. You are only limited by your imagination.

One last thing I want to mention, before you add your favorite decorations to this canvas, think about how you want to hang this reverse canvas. The frame can stand by itself on a counter or table top as long as what you add is very light. Otherwise, like in my case of 3D art, you will want to add a mode of hanging.

Some options for hanging your art are:

drill a couple of holes into the back of the frame where finishing nails can hold up your frame on a wall
staple a long bit of ribbon to the two top corners of your frame
nail a portrait anchor on the back

You’re not limited to these ideas. But they are a few of the most common ones.

How do you use reverse frames?

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New Life to Wicker

There’s something about those moments in life when money is tight and you
try to do a lot on a dime that’s worth one cent. Here’s one of those
transformations from yard furniture that my husband brought home years ago.

I don’t remember exactly where my husband found these two wicker chairs. It
was from a stage in our marriage where he would regularly hit garage and estate sales. If memory serves me well, these were a yard sale find.

The price was right, even if the quality wasn’t there.

In the above picture I invited a few friends over for a yard party and needed the seating. So even though the fabric siding of the chairs were ripping out and had be hot glue gunned back to the wicker from the people who previously owned them, I hid these flaws by throwing blankets over them.

Close inspection will tell you that the falling apart wasn’t just on the side fabric. The wicker was unweaving on the bottom. The seat cushions were not only out of date by a couple of decades, but also starting to have holes.

We contemplated just throwing these chairs out.

The budget wasn’t there to replace them. And it was hard to toss them when they have always been our favorite seats to sit in during the summer and we have a nostalgic thing for wicker.

We just love them.

So I bought paint and made them over.

Prepping the Chairs

The first thing I had to do was rip all the fabric off and remove the staples with needle nose pliers. There’s no real trick to this, just a whole lot of patience.

The hot glue was easy to remove from the wicker and didn’t have any cosmetic damage. Once I saw this, I had no problem with this being the solution to the issue of the stripping that was unraveling on the bottom of the chairs.

Even though I thought I was going to have to buy new wicker stripping to replace what I thought was lost, I didn’t have to buy any. All that I needed to do was wrap the stripping back around the bottom frame and periodically drop a dot of hot glue to the frame as I re-wrapped the stripping.

I highly recommend using glue to hold anything you’re wrapping in place. There will always be a moment (or a dozen) where stripping will slip from your grip. And a small dot is all you need to keep from the whole section from unraveling and making you redo your work.

And if you’re afraid that you’ll use too much glue, make sure that you’re gluing on the “inside” of the chair. No one will see glue seepage when the chair is on the ground, so even the bottom edge of the chair is also a great place to secure the stripping.

Due to the age of the chairs, there were a few nails that had worked their way out. This made one chair in particular have the seat framing fall down under the rib that it was nailed to. That’s not a problem, because you just remove the nail, put the seat back on the rib and nail it back into place.

Fortunately, I had some extra finishing nails that were in my tool box.

While I was already repairing I decided to do some preventative work. To add additional support to the seat I nailed a few extra nails through the rib into the seat.

A Touch of Paint

There are a few different options that are out there for painting outdoor furniture. I didn’t want to deal with a primer or cleaning up brushes. So I opted for a spray paint with primer.

The one thing that I will say about wicker is that it takes more paint than you think if you want to get in all the nooks and crannies for a even coat. And for my own sanity, I did paint from different angles. One time through I painted the chairs from the upright position. For the second coat I flipped the chairs upside down.

If I do a wicker project again in the future, I will definitely paint in both directions again. There’s something about spray paint. It’s good about getting in tight places, but it really does need the extra help by changing paint directions.

These two chairs took 6 cans of spray paint. If you’re looking to do your own furniture spray painting project, this should give you a decent enough estimation on how much paint you should purchase for your project.

What about the Cushions?

There were two options that I had. At first I was leaning toward making a slip cover because that would be the easiest and quickest option. The only problem was that at the time that I was doing this project, outdoor fabric was more expensive then what I was willing to pay (starting at $15 a yard and I would have bought 4 yards).

My second option was fabric spray paint.

No one that I knew had ever worked with this type of spray paint, so I had no idea on what to expect. The only knowledge I had was watching a fashion designing competition. There was one contestant who used fabric spray to create a certain effect.

I’m sure fabric spray paint is perfect for a fabric that is a solid color.

Print on the other hand….

My pictures here don’t really show you the original print very well. But it’s a slate blue base with flowers (peach to dark rose color) and brown swirling flourishes.

I had chosen brick red fabric paint because it complimented the chocolate brown paint I picked for the wicker. And I thought that it would have great coverage since it’s a darker color.

Yeah, no.

I originally bought one can of fabric paint thinking that it would be more than enough. However, in reality I was only able to paint the top of each of the cushions because of the color disparity of the blue and brown in the original print. The short story is that it took nearly three cans of fabric paint to cover both sides of each of the cushions.

Another problem is that I left the covers on the foam form.

I chalk this fact to being the worst mistake I made for this project. The foam no doubt soaked up the paint, creating less coverage on the front of the fabric. And at the point that I did this project, my kids were babies and I had mommy fog brain. So now I would have removed the cover, but it just didn’t cross my mind then.

The good news is that the second layer of paint was thicker in coverage than the first. So if you wanted to get a solid color off of an old print, I’m absolutely positive that it is obtainable with 3 or 4 coverages. Just know that if you paint over a print, you’re going to have a phantom print showing through.

I wasn’t too opposed to the phantom print because it sparked a creative idea that I absolutely loved. Art Deco!

While Art Deco is more noted for being angular, the beauty of art is that
you take a style as your base and tweak it to fit what you see in your head. So
I took the squares and sprays seen in 1920’s architecture and added circles and
chandelier elements that matched the opulence of the time.

Truth be told, I had to work in the circles into the design to cover the
largest hole (which you see above).

Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV) was my material of choice because I wanted the permanent
design and I wanted to keep the cushion weather friendly. It never fails that
our outdoor furniture gets caught in a summer rain a time or two each year.

Once the design was weeded, I cut the elements out and pieced them together
on the cushions in relation to the phantom swirls.

Now this HTV “print” that I made isn’t exactly everyone’s esthetic. I did want to share it with you because I wanted to show you how you can save furniture from being thrown out. Also, you have your own option for making your own design with materials that you have on hand in your home. And to encourage you to play with colors and designs that just are not on the market.

The one thing that I LOVED about this project was that I took chairs that I was constantly making excuses for, to my guests, and turned them into something that we’re happy to have in our yard for the next several years.

Do you have old lawn furniture that you can give new life to?

Comment below! Let me know what you did to rejuvenate a piece of furniture that you almost evicted.

Making Flowers Possible

When I participate in wedding open houses, one of the most common things I would hear is “I/We can make that.”

Each and every time I heard that phrase I cringed. It didn’t matter if I heard it when I worked for an event decorating company (where I participated in over the top large event decorating) or when I branches out on my own. This phrase makes every professional cringe.

Just like a plumber who hears someone say, “Oh that’s easy! I can do that and save on a plumbing bill.” That plumber is not only cringing, but he’s laughing at you and thinking that he’ll see you in a day or two. You might very well fix that plumbing issue. But experience says that it’s a DIY plumbing job that will go wrong. And instead of paying a couple hundred dollars to the plumber, it’s a couple thousand dollar repair for a DIY “fix”.

That’s one reason why I started this blog. I like to contribute to the creative community, pass on skills that aren’t generally being passed down anymore, but also to help the DIY person succeed.

Here’s a glimpse of how you might receive your flowers from a distributor.

Here’s the thing, a professional is going to have inside deal on material costs and more importantly the knowledge and muscle memory on how to do a particular skill. They’re going to know the short cuts that save time. They also know all the wrong ways of doing things, know how to recover from a failed idea, and when to move on to the next idea in an expedited manner.

Is it possible for you to do your own wedding flowers?

Absolutely!

(The following pictures are the flowers that I used for this job. I’ve included names if any of these are unfamiliar to you. There are so many beautiful flowers in this world! Please don’t be limited by the ones that you see here. In these pictures I’m showing how I strip the stems bare in my prep work. I’ll talk about that in just a moment.)

I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks talking you through how you can make your own floral arrangements. I won’t share all of my trade secrets because I still love playing with flowers, but I want to help you avoid a head ache or two, plus a panic attack. I DIY most everything for my wedding and still after all this time, I remember the melt downs I had, especially when it came to the wedding invitations.

The stress on a DIY bride is real. So I want to help you, so that you can trust to come to me when you need a professional.

First things first, you have to prepare before you start.

The best way to kick start this is by having an inspiration picture. This will help you navigate through the online sites where you can order flowers to be shipped to your house or when you talk with a flower producer/distributor.

You might not know the names of the flowers you want to order.
You might be able to find a deal on a look alike flower.
There could be a budget friendlier alternative.
You can upscale with a rarer look alike.
An out of season option can be switched out with an in season look alike.

Inspiration pictures also give an idea on which flowers look good together. Nothing is worse than ordering flowers that you like individually but when you put them together, something just isn’t right.

Even with this wedding, which I made floral arrangements for last weekend, I went into my local flower distributor with a list of flowers I picked out (to imitate an inspirations picture) from online. But when I looked at the flowers in the walk in cooler, there were other ones that jumped out and added further inspiration so I couldn’t wait to arrange. When it came time to pick up the sales person helping me pulled a couple of additional bunches of other flowers that my flowers insured her with. From that additional pull, there was a different flower or two that looked better in the collective whole than the ones I originally thought I wanted.

(I’ll come back to this thought in two weeks when I show you additional arranging options using the same flowers!)

Once you’ve put in your flower order, you’ll want to schedule your pick up with a minimum of two days before your wedding or other special event. You will most definitely need two days if not three to make your arrangements. I don’t play with flowers every day and this job took me two days and some touch up work on the day of before loading up the flowers for the wedding.

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The Schedule I Gave Myself:

Day 1 Thursday–I picked up my flower order from my distributor. I took them back to my work space and got out buckets and vases and filled them with water. Then I went straight to work to prep my flowers for the next day.

Day 2 Friday–I spent all day arranging.

Day 3 Saturday/Wedding Day–examine all the bouquets and other arrangements. Does anything than to be adjusted or flowers switched out? Put on decorative elements, such as ribbon. Cut fresh ends, place in fresh water, and load up for morning delivery.

Your DIY arrangement schedule may need more time. You may need to start your prep work on a Wednesday, so you have an additional work day. The important thing to remember is that these flowers are going to take longer than you think they will.

If you are a bride who wants to do everything yourself, this schedule is probably something similar to what you will need to implement. If you like working in groups and want to make a flower arranging day, it might be possible to do this in one day. After all the more hands you have, the less work and time is required from you. Just be prepared that if you have others working with you, nothing is going to look the same. There will be variations in assembly and placement. So please make your choices based off of your expectation level. This will give you the least amount of stress and make DIY floral arranging more pleasurable.

For this wedding I made 3 bouquets (that were doubling as table centerpieces), 3 boutonnieres, and 6 large submersible vases.

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Preparing Your Flowers

Hopefully when you pick up/receive your floral delivery, the flowers were kept cool in transportation. Heat is going to make your flowers wilt. But don’t stress out! They will bounce back. The Purple Stock that I used was the bunch that wilted the most in transportation. They were the first bunch that I stripped the stems, cut the bottom of the stems at a 45° angle, and put in water in front of an air conditioner.

Prep your stems first, so the flowers can drink while you’re prepping other stems.

If your event is in this wonderful summer heat, you will want to make sure that you keep your flowers in a cool room. Heat is not your friend with many types of flowers. So if you’re event is outside in hot weather, also make sure that the flowers you use are hardy and won’t wilt in the heat.

At the bottom of this post, I’ll post some links to items that can be helpful not just for prepping your flowers but also items that you will need for assembling (the topic for next week) your floral arrangement.

So trimming the bottom of the stems at a 45° angle is what all florists will tell you is the optimum cut to allow your flowers to drink and hydrate themselves while you are working with them. By cutting at the bottom portion of the stem, you leave yourself length for making tall arrangements and giving yourself plenty of room to make additional trims if your flowers need another stem clean up.

Make sure that your scissors are brand new sharp. Old scissors will mash up the bottom of your stem and you will see that you will need to make a new trim on your stems in a day or two. The flowers will just struggle. Also, gardening sheers are amazing to have on hand if you are using flowers with thick stems (roses, Asiatic lilies, sunflowers, and others). Even new scissors will struggle with these larger stems.

Cleaning up the stems is definitely a task you want to do before you start making your arrangements. There are a few different reasons why you want to clean off the stems from leaves and thorn.

Thorns hurt!
Leaves take up room–anything not around the bloom face is just going to get in the way and not be seen.
Leaves resting in water will decompose quickly and make the water look muddy.
Cut flowers drink up water and try to keep everything on the stem alive. By removing the leaves, the flower focuses on keeping the blooms beautiful and fresh.

Once all your flowers are cleaned up and in water, you’ll also want to take the time to also break down your greenery and filler into more workable sizes. Most of my eucalyptus came as branches. Baby’s breath and other floral fillers come in poufy branches also.

If you’re not a fan of baby’s breath, my current favorite is Misty Blue Limonium. It’s a tiny robust flower just like baby’s breath, but tends to have a fan shape bunching of flower. Not to mention that Baby Blue has a hint of blue that still looks white from a distance. (You’ll see Baby Blue in a picture below where I show you my flowers all prepped and ready to work with.)

Do you need to add flower “food” to the water?

Because there is product, there is going to be an industry that tells you that you need to buy this food. I personally choose not to buy the flower preservation crystals. Even with the flowers that I keep around the house, they last longer when I just use filtered water and change the water every day or two. In fact, I have a bouquet of flowers from my husband that is 3 weeks old, and all I did was change the water frequently.

Other methods I’ve tried are sugar in the water and carbonated clear soda. These two methods work just the same as the flower packet I’ve gotten with the bouquets my husband buys.

If you want to use a plant food, you’re welcome to go that route. However I don’t want to you feel pressured to buy one more thing. Good filtered water is more than enough. If filtered water is not an option either, than make sure that you have water sitting out over night before your flowers arrive. This will allow chlorine and other chemicals to evaporate out.

Now that your flowers and greenery are drinking, stems cleaned, and voluptuous bunches are broken down to smaller, more manageable sizes, you are all prepared for assembling your arrangements.

For this first night with your flowers, give them space to breath. This is valuable for flowers like Asiatic lilies, whose buds will pop off if you accidently brush them. You want to keep them cool. If you don’t have a root cellar or other cold place, you’ll want to consider a well air conditioned room.

Avoid using your refrigerator to keep any of your flowers cold. Some flowers have sensitive petals and will freeze. Another thing that is not common knowledge is that certain fruits and vegetables can also influence the overall health of your flowers. For example, onions on the sandwich you have in the fridge for lunch is more than enough to cause petals on your flowers brown. So if you have a soda cooler available at home or your wedding venue, make sure that no one has left their lunch or other meal in the cooler!

Prep all your floral and greenery into separate buckets.

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Things To Watch Out For

The expectation when you purchase flowers to make your own arrangements is that the flowers you receive are perfect. Unfortunately, even with pesticides and herbicides used in commercial floral fields, there is going to be some damage that you may find in your flowers.

Two different diseases that I found on different flowers (rose and delphinium) in my purchase.

If you have diseased stems, you will notice this when you clean your stems. These are important to find. When you make arrangements, all your stems are right up against each other. And depending on the damage being caused by bacteria or viral infection, mold, or even burrowing pests, direct contact can potentially cause damage to the rest of your flowers. Unless you have experience working in a home garden, you probably haven’t seen instances like this and wouldn’t know how to deal with it. So the best thing to do is take these stems away and dispose of them.

This is one reason why I make sure I have a floral buffer. I have enough stems to do my job even when I have to dispose of a few flowers.

Another reason why a buffer is a great idea is that flowers can bruise.

Here are different types of bruising to look out for.

As you can see here, whether from harvesting or shipping, flowers can bruise. You might be fortunate and find that removing the outer (buffer) petals you can remove the bruised portions (which I did with the red bud.) However, it is possible that the bloom is bruised beyond an acceptable standard.

If you find blooms that are this damaged, you will want to catch this quickly! For example, I had five roses that disintegrated from severe bruising like this. The distribution center that I got these from have a policy where when you notify them/return the flowers in a 24 hour period there are options available; refund, exchange.

Before you make your floral purchase, find out what kind of return policy they have. Know in advance if there’s a chance that you’re going to be stuck with flowers that you can’t use. Is this company’s policy an acceptable risk?

Needless to say, it’s a very good practice to prep your flowers once you receive them. Not only does it help organize you and better manage your time. It also keeps the window of return/refund open for you.

As I mentioned above, even when you buy from a reputable company, your flowers may arrive in a condition that can surprise you. This picture, above, is pretty standard for buying from a field or wholesale distributer. These flowers are not damaged. This is real life. The industry calls these busted petals “buffer petals”.

Think of these petals as being your insurance policy. Roses are packaged together for shipment. Petals are going to be rumpled and discolored. When florists receive roses like this, they simply remove these buffer petals and reveal a pristine flower.

TIP: If you’re working with a budget wedding, these buffer petals (and other broken or too small flowers) are perfect for flower girl practice or even photo props for your photographer. With many wedding pictures taken before the ceremony, it’s a great option for your photographer to have a little something to play with if they’re inspired by your flowers!

Now that you’re flowers are prepared, you’re ready for a good night’s sleep!

Come back next week to get some ideas on how to construct your bouquet.

Here are some Products that can assist you in your floral arranging.

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets and floral wholesaler.

Rose Cleaner Rose Stripper Thorn Remover Stem Cleaner Tool

I have this tool. It works for cleaning the stems of more flowers than just roses.

Premium Garden Shears

The larger shear is the one that I use for trimming larger flower stems and branches of greenery.

Floral Arrangement Kit

This is a good starter kit that has everything that is useful for making arrangements.

1/2″ Wide Floral Tape

This is a must have, even if you’re trying not to buy any extra items. I’ll go more into this next week. The trick to this tape is that you stretch it to make it sticky.

What’s your favorite flowers to play with?

3 responses to “Making Flowers Possible”

wedding bouquet

August 12, 2023

I think the admin of this website is truly working hard in favor of his web page,
since here every material is quality based material.

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Same Flowers Other Styles – How I Can Do That

July 29, 2023

[…] see below the rose. This is red yarrow and I wanted to spot light it for a moment. Two posts back, Making Flowers Possible, I mentioned how the sales person had pulled additional flowers for me that had inspired her when […]

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Making Arrangements – How I Can Do That

July 22, 2023

[…] the last post, Making Flowers Possible, we went through the process of cleaning your flowers and preparing them to assemble your bouquets. […]

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