Kalia's First Birthday Party : Fabric Heart

I have about a million posts to write on everything I did for Kalia's First Birthday Party.  I kept the decor pretty inexpensive, more work on my part than actual cost.

I'm not really good on 'themes' with parties.  For a baby shower I was helping throw, one of the girls asked what kind of theme we wanted to go with (I was in charge of decorations) and I said "baby".  When they said, yeah, but what kind of baby theme, I replied with "baby girl."  For my own wedding, when the florist asked what kind of flowers I wanted, I said "pretty ones".  When it comes to parties / events, I'm not really big into themes, I just want everything to mean something and look cool.  Does that count as a theme??

But for Kalia's invites I sent out, I used pictures, so I guess that was sort of my theme.  I decided to mimic her nursery colors of both blue and pink as well, and went forward with a game plan from there.  I am a little crazy about pictures...especially of Kalia.  I have always loved capturing moments, so I decided to incorporate some of that into the party decor / events as well.

I've seen photo booths used at events before, so I wanted to recreate something like that, but a lot less pricey, and something relating back to Kalia.  So here's what I did :

I picked up a large piece of clearance fabric, and had Chris hold it up where I wanted it to go to make sure the empty wall I was putting it on didn't dwarf the fabric.

Then I drew a large heart in chalk on the fabric.

I used Kalia's ottoman from her nursery to trace the circular parts of the heart, and then a ruler to draw the straight part.

After that, I took a pink and a blue paint pen and got to writing Kalia's name.  Over.and over.and over again.  I sort of felt like I was in elementary school and had gotten in trouble and had to write my name on the chalk board about a million times.

In all honesty, it took me probably about 15 minutes to write it out.  It just seemed like a lot longer than that!

The fabric needed a large frame to go in, and there is no way I'm dishing out the cash for one of those, so I made one.  I wanted the frame to have a little more detail than my normal picture frames, so I whipped out my router tool for the first time.  That thing is amazing.  So easy and so fun to use!  Here's an in action shot :

and here's what the wood looked like afterwards.

I initially glazed the frame to bring out my routing detail, but the glaze just didn't go with Kalia's fabric heart, so I nixed that.  After I nailed the large frame together, I gave her a few coats of white spray paint.

From there, I just stapled the fabric to the back of the frame.  I can't decide if I want to reuse the frame for something else, so I didn't put too many staples in it.  In hindsight, I should have either glued the fabric around it and cut it off, or just gotten over it and put enough staples to pull it tight.  The fabric wrinkled a bit more than I would have liked.  Overall though, I was still happy with the final product.

Besides this being the photo wall, we also did Kalia's smash cake using this as the back drop.

Kalia wasn't sure what to think of the 40 people singing Happy Birthday to her!  I'll have more in action shots of the photo wall coming up shortly, so stay tuned for that.

Hope everyone's had a great week so far!

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Nursery Room - DIY Wall Art

I really wanted something big and personal to balance out the mirror above Kalia's dresser.  I wanted to incorporate Chris and I's baby pictures, and add Kalia's pictures inbetween ours when she gets here so we can have fun comparing.

I actually am starting to get pretty tired these days, so I initially bought two 16 x 20 picture frames to do this with, and then my frugal side kicked in and I decided it was absurd to spend $40 on frames that I didn't love (on sale with a coupon at Jo-Ann's) instead of spending $4 on wood to just make frames that I did love.

So, I got out the miter saw and built myself two 16 x 20 frames (for a tutorial on how to build picture frames, click here), and spray painted them black.  No pictures of this, but there's a million pictures of picture frames around my blog if you really want to see any!

After the picture frames were built and spray painted, I laid out the pictures I wanted in the frame, and measured where I wanted my rope to go to hang the pictures from to get the proper length.

I glued the rope on the back of the picture frame, which is why you see the wood in the picture above.  I waited to glue the rope until after Chris seared the edges of the rope to ensure that the edges wouldn't fray.

I'm pretty sure the glue would've just done the trick (I used quick grip), but my pyromaniac husband insisted on doing it this way!

After the ends were seared, we added the fabric to the back.  We both held on pretty tight to opposite ends and I pulled and stapled along the backside.

We didn't cut the fabric off on the opposite side until after we stapled everything together.  That way we didn't accidentally short change ourselves!

You can see the staples if you look closely.  I guess this was a 'posed' picture...the scissors aren't doing much here, but you get the idea!

Here's what she looked like from the front.

Almost done...next up was to spray paint the baby clothes pins I got at Jo-Anns from wood...

to white ...

and then add the pictures, and wala!

Custom, personalized wall art for the nursery for less than 10 buck-a-roos for both picture frames.  Not bad, eh?  I found the fabric at Jo-Ann's too...it matches the hue of pink I have going on in Kalia's room perfectly!

I repeated all of that for the second picture frame.

Unless Kalia's blessed with some sort of miracle, she is going to be a bald, bald baby!!  Look at those baby pictures and how bald both Chris and I were!!  And what a chunky monkey I was too!  Here's a few close-ups...

Chunky and bald me!

Bald baby Chris!  At least he was a boy though!!  Everyone thought I was a boy for the longest time!

Stay tuned to see how this ties in with the mirror!  Happy Wednesday!

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Building yet another Picture Frame

This past weekend one set of my parents were here. I got out the mop to start mopping the floors, and decided that they'd MUCH rather me make them a picture frame than have clean floors, so I headed back into the garage. Clean floors are so over-rated anyways.

I've written out instructions before here on how to build a frame, but I thought I'd give an updated tutorial on how to build THESE flat picture frames in a 4x6 size.

Step 1: If you tend to be absent minded like me, write down your measurements. Each mitered edge adds an extra 1.5" to each side, so add a total of 3 inches to each measurement.

Step 2:  Mark off your 1x2 where you're going to cut, and if you have a long piece of wood like I did, enlist the help of a trusty assistant to hold the other piece of the board while you make your cut.

Oh, you don't see my trusty assistant?  Here, let me show you a close up:

Hey...I work with what I've got!

Step 3:  Make your first cut on either side, making sure that the 45 degree angles are opposite of each other.  You can either flip your cut piece over and saw from the same side, or you can rotate your miter saw to 45 degrees opposite of what you just cut.

Step 4:  Take your cut piece of wood and line it up on your existing board.  Mark off the end.  You want your side pieces and top and bottom pieces to be the same exact size.  It's okay if you're a little off measurement wize, so long as your corresponding sides are equal.  It's better to error on the size of too small than too big though.  Too big and your picture won't stay in the frame.

Step 5:  Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the 2nd measurement.

Step 6:  Glue all four pieces together.  Be generous with your glue, but make sure to wipe off the excess that gets between the edges, especially if you're using stain.  Nail the frame around the four corners.  I used 1 1/4" nails.

Step 7:  Admire your edges.

Step 8:  Stain / Paint your frame.  For this frame, I used this stain:

Step 9:  After your frame has finished drying (I left it over night), decoupage pretty paper onto the back of the frame.  I had an old 4x6 picture frame that I was about to toss out, so I took out the glass from the inside of that and glued it to the back of my frame using Quick Grip.  After that, I stapled in a thick piece of scrap paper to the back, making sure to leave room at the top to be able to slide a picture in and out.  That way the picture is interchangeable.

 Here's a few pictures of the front of the finished product.  These frames are relatively easy to make and they make great gifts!  They're a great idea for a homemade Christmas gift.

Yes, I know...the picture is missing.  I was too anxious to get pictures of the frame before my 'rents got here!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Stay tuned for more fun stuff coming up this week...'till then, Happy Monday!

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Building Another Picture Frame

I've been itching to build something. It's been entirely too long, but I have a new rule that I can't go to the store to buy anything without finishing the projects I already have the materials for at the house. Unfortunately that means very little building, and a whole lotta painting. Boooo!

Chris's Mom and Step-Dad are coming into town this afternoon. The above paragraph and this might seem like they don't have too much in common, but they do. Because they're coming, I had the perfect excuse to use some of my left over 1x2 scraps and bust out my Chris's our miter saw to build a picture frame as a welcome gift.  Chris was still at work, so I asked him to pick up something for dinner (we rarely do that), and I got busy sawing...then sanding, then painting.

For detailed instructions on how to build a picture frame, please see my post here.

I used Krylon's Ocean Breeze spray paint, and then took my small foam brush and added the black details to the edges and all of the sides.

For the back, I attempted my first try ever with decoupage.  Being impatient and decoupage doesn't really go hand in hand, but I was excited to get this done and working.  Sooo...you'll notice that there's some ripped pieces of scrapbook paper around some of the back.  Oh well, it gives it more of a rustic look.  The important side is the front.  And because I only did this one one layer instead of two, I didn't have a ledge to put my picture on.  Insert staples and thick scrap book paper.  Hey, it works.  

And for any of you looking for advice with decoupage...I am not the person, yet, to ask.  Paint, sure, building, definitely, crafting...ehhh...that's not really up my forte just yet!  But, I will tell you that it is not a good idea to use the big fat kitchen scissors to cut out your paper instead of looking to find your small shears.  The cut is pretty important for decoupage, and cutting off excess at the end with big fat kitchen scissors leads you to something like the above picture.

Hope my mother in law enjoys her picture frame...it was either the picture frames or mop the floors...she can't take the clean floors home with her though, so I opted to make the frame instead!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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