Tea Cup Pincushion

Mother's day is quickly approaching, and there are gifts to be made, flowers to be sent and cards to be crafted in the Carman house. Today I am going to share another handmade gift, perfect for a sewing Momma. This is a super cute gift that is very budget and time friendly, from start to finish it took me a little over five minutes to finish this adorable gift. To make this gift you need a teacup and saucer, I got mine for $1.00 from my local thrift store. You will also need fabric, steel wool, some batting, a rubber band, and a hot glue gun.

I began by cutting my fabric into a decent sized square and hot gluing the steel wool onto the fabric. I used steel wool because it will actually sharpen your pins and needles!

Then I added the batting and hot glued it to my steel wool. I only added it to get it to sit in the teacup the way I wanted.

Next, I gathered the fabric tightly and rubber banded it. It is important to make sure you are satisfied with how the fabric lays, and the way the pincushion fits into the teacup.

Now, all that's left is some simple hot gluing! You want to coat the inside of the teacup with hot glue, and then insert the pincushion. I then hot glued my teacup to the saucer, this can be done or skipped.

There you go! A simple sweet handmade gift that any mother or grandmother would love and cherish!

Note Holder!

I am also a firm believer that God gave us hands for a reason, and I love making things, and giving handmade.

Craft Room

 Our new apartment has two bedrooms! And they are two nice sized rooms, both of them are big enough for a King size bed.  We decided to take the second bedroom as our bedroom, and use the Master Bedroom as a shared craft and office room. Now going from a corner to a room has been a huge jump. We are still figuring out how we want to set up the room, but one thing we knew for sure was that we we're going to need a desk for Joel and at least a craft table for me. Well, it just so happens that my Mom's work was moving some offices around and changing out furniture. So my Mother, knowing that we were searching for a desk, made arrangements for us to get one of the wooden L-Shaped desks that they were getting rid of. All we had to do was pick it up! While picking up our free desk, we also scored 3 office chairs!
  At first Joel didn't want the desk, so he was just going to use a table like he had at our old apartment. However, that quickly changed once we got the desk set up in our room. We decided to let him have it, and I would use a table or search for a desk online. After a few days of searching, I was beginning to give up hope, all of the desks that I was finding were several hundreds of dollars USED. The most expensive furniture purchase that we have ever made was our bedroom furniture. There was no way that I could justify spending that much money on a desk. Just when I was about to give up hope, I found this!

Yes, I got a tanker. For $70 bucks it was mine. Sure it doesn't look amazing but it's mine and beautiful things will be made on it. Now, those of you who know me, know that there is no way that I'm leaving my desk looking like this. I picked out the colors for my craft room and should have a total transformation for you soon!

May Flowers

I can't believe that it is already May! This year is flying by and I am so excited that it is finally May! So much has happened since I blogged last. My brother is now one of the few, the proud; he’s a United States Marine!

We moved! To a new apartment, we are still settling in and unpacking, but we love it! I can’t wait until it’s all done! Our new apartment has two bedrooms, and we are using the second room as an office and craft room. I am hoping to have this room unpacked and somewhat organized by the end of next week. I am no longer a stay at home wife. I was offered a wonderful job, and started working full time this week. I am still trying to get used to being back in the working world, I think that once everything settles between moving, school, and going out of town life won’t seem so crazy! I am also thinking about opening an etsy shop, but we’ll see how life goes. I hope that your May is off to a wonderful start! I can’t wait to get back into the swing of blogging and project sharing! I have a few projects that I am planning and I cannot wait for Summer!

New paint for my new end tables!!

As most of you know we were supposed to make a cross country move to Houston this May. I say supposed to because our plans have changed and Joel's conflicting school schedule is keeping us here until December. Awhile ago we had picked out colors for what will be our new bedroom. I had begun putting together this room in my mind with colors and furniture, and since we recently found some of the key pieces to what I have in mind I decided to keep putting the room together like we were moving. The main colors that we have picked out for our new room are gray with a white accent, we also picked teal and purple as our pop colors. Our new found end tables are going to be our nightstands in our new bedroom. I really love the shape of them, and they have so much room for storage that it's ridiculous! So last night after Joel got out of class at 10 we made a walmart run for spray paint. We wound up getting some Kylan duel spraypaint, it has primer and paint, we went with white, boring I know but I love how it turned out. We knew that the end tables needed a little bit of sanding,so that the paint would stick, but that they wouldn't need to be completely sanded. Since we had some sanding blocks at home we didn't buy any. I started this project by taking the hardware off of the tables, and removing the door from the tables, when I say I did this I actually mean that Matt did this :] I started by lightly sanding the doors, then I gave them a gentle coat of Krylon Dual spraypaint. I also lightly sanded the tables and gave them a few gentle coats as well. Amidst my coating I ran out of spraypaint so I ventured to the store to get some more, and I might have gotten a Diet Cherry Coke from Sonic during Happy Hour. When I got back I finished spraying and went to a meeting. After my meeting I painted the pops of color on the tables. This took forever to dry and I feel like was the most time consuming process in the entire project. Once the pops of color finally dried, it was time to glaze. I was most excited to glaze and to finally have my side tables done! Below are pictures of each step! Now to figure out what to do with the hardware. My tables, prior to transformation.

Prepping to paint.

Paint!!!

Pop goes the color!

Glaze and Amaze!

I think it's fair to say that I'm just a tad excited to finally have them, and for them to be painted. I had the best time painting my day away!The darker color is purple in real life, the same color as our cross candle holders, I'm not sure why it's turning out so dark in the pictures. I really love how they turned out! I feel like our new room is starting to fall into place, now if I can only find gray paisley Hillcrest king sized bedding my life will be complete! Ok...maybe not my life, maybe just my dreams... I think for now I'll stick to trying to figure out what I want to do as far as hardware goes.

At last my love has come along...

Ok so I know that my love has been apart of me for the past five years...the love that I am referring to is my new end tables. Anyone who knows me knows that I have been stalking craigslist, thrift stores, and even peoples homes for hexagonal end tables. You know the kind that were a household decorating staple in the 1970's? I have even had end table jealously, my wonderful Mother in Law, and my Nana have a matching set. I have even recruited dozens of people to aid in my search, but alas my years of searching is over. I have finally found a matching set!!! I was scouring craigslist this week and came across a posting that was a few weeks old for the end tables that I have been looking for. The posting was only asking for $5 for one and $10 for the set. Even though the posting was old I said a quick prayer and sent out an email inquiring if they were still available. I spent the next several days obsessively checking my email. Then last night right before bed I check my email one last time and saw a miracle! The seller replied that they were indeed still available and that for the astronomical price of ten dollars they were mine! So today during my husband's only break from class he came home and went with me to pick them up! I am just going to take a minute to brag on just how amazing he is. The man has class from 10am-10pm and he used his break to go get my end tables, because he knew they were so important to me, I am a blessed woman! So without further ado let me introduce you to my loves! Please excuse the pictures, I only had time to snap a few quick shots on my cell phone since Joel had to get back to school!

They are so worth the wait! I cannot wait to get to work on them,in fact I'm headed out to get paint now! The next time you see them they will be even more wonderful!

Time Flies

I hate to admit that I have spent the past two weeks working on just about everything except for my blog. I have found myself ridiculously busy in this new year, and unable to keep up with all of the changes that life is bringing.I thought that I would at least show a few highlights of what has been happening in the Carman household. On January 8 we celebrated my Husbands birthday, I am constantly amazed that it has been 5 years since we started celebrating birthdays together. It's the little things that make growing old...older so much more special. We celebrated all weekend long. We started our celebratory weekend with a special night out, just the two of us! We went to town center and enjoyed some wonderful food and quality time! After we finished our delicious dinner we rented a blu-ray and spent the rest of our evening snuggling and enjoying the wonders of blu-ray. On Saturday we had a show, at the venue that we started, two of our favorite bands played. And on Sunday we spent the morning at church and had lunch with my parents and grandparents. Then we ventured back to church for Mosaic and ended the night with dinner with friends at Bdubs. I really enjoyed getting to spend such a wonderful weekend with my husband.

Since I last blogged we have hosted 6 shows at our venue which naturally makes us incredibly busy. We and by we I mean me and our friend Matt also spent several days painting the room that we have shows in. This room has always bothered me, I have always felt like a Mexican restaurant threw up in there. And for the entire time we've been involved at our campus ministry I have BEGGED to paint it.

We spent several days giving this huge room two coats of primer AND two coats of paint! We still need to bring in some accessories and pick fabric for new drapes but I could not be happier with how it turned out.

The light gray is the wall that the stage is on, the dark gray is the color of the rest of the walls and the blue is the alcove/back door. Now, that some of the craziness of a new semester is over I am hoping to be blogging more by Monday :] I hope that this year has brought you new memories and projects!