Painting a Chandelier

First, clean and lightly sand the chandelier...

 

I barely touched the surface, was not meticulous at all and the paint adhered just fine...

 

Find a well-ventilated place outdoors to hang the chandelier.  My arbor worked great...

 

 

I hooked the top of the chandelier to some sticks I slid through the arbor...

 

Tape the candlesticks so they don't get painted...I realized later I could have removed these and stuffed the sockets with cottonballs or something similar...

 

 

Use a spray paint trigger nozzle like this one, saves your fingers.  I used flat white paint, but you could use glossy if you want that look.   I plan to distress mine eventually so the flat was a better fit...

 

First coat is on, looks better already!

 

Second coat done...I let it dry overnight.

 

Time to add twine to the candlesticks... they were discolored and I saw other people do this to update them...

 

Just pop the candlesticks right back in when done glue gunning...

 

 

Voila, a new chandelier!

 

 

 

 

 



Batman Party

My son requested a Batman party for his 4th birthday.   Here are some photos of the craftier parts of the party...

Cupcakes with fondant bats...

Birthday boy blowing out the candles...

 

Chocolate frosted two layer cake (sis in law's recipe) with fondant batman...

What Batman party is complete without a visit from the man himself?...

The favors were capes & masks tied up with "pow" and "bam" tags...

I made a bunch of centerpieces from Batman pictures attached to balloon weights... it was still too windy and they kept falling over...

Giraffe Party

My youngest son Jack turned one and we celebrated with a Giraffe-themed party...

I made the cake for him, two sheet cakes with the top one cut into a giraffe head shape I liked... then just regular frosting tinted the color I liked and some sprinkles for pizazz...

I made him a birthday shirt out of felt cut out and adhered to the shirt with pellon transfer...

To decorate the fireplace, a banner in animal print saying "Jack's First Birthday"...

We also did a smaller party with his playgroup friends.   For this party I made muffins and frosted them and added sprinkles... no complaints from the kids!  

megan's dress!

My friend Megan has made the cutest dresses by combining unwearable pieces.  I had this dress from Target that just didn't fit well.  I also had a black tshirt from (you guessed it) Target that had holes in the  bottom from one of my belts. 

Cut them apart, piece them together, and voila! a cute new dress.  This only took me a little over an hour and I was able to do most of it with Jack on the table watching me.   Great fun multi-tasking!  Thanks for the idea Megan!

I'm having a little trouble with the skirt bunching too much at the waist, i will have to work on that.  The skirt already had elastic so I used that, my first time working with elastic and it wasn't too bad.  The skirt was also a little too full so I closed the seam a bit in the back.  And to make Megan proud, this one already has pockets!!

The back of the dress had a smocked detail, so I cut that out, added the hem of the black t-shirt and made this fun little funky wrist band.  I don't know that I will ever actually wear it, but it was fun to experiment!

Doin' the Project Blog thing...

Now that I'm done having babies (holla!), I hope to have more time for all things crafty.  I was inspired by my dear friend and uber-craftonista Megan.  Her blog Mokru has the most creative projects and I love keeping up with what she's doing and getting inspired!  I think it is so fun to swap ideas with other project-lovers so I will keep a list of other fun blogs I find.  Here are some projects I've completed in the last year, stay tuned for new things!!

Some burp cloths for my friend Melanie's daughter...

A few scarves I knitted.  The blue was for my mom's 60th birthday, it didn't photograph well...

Onesies and a diaper cake made to decorate for Stacy's shower in Austin...

Rainbow Elephant for Shelby's son Miles!