Pintester Movement- Em's Full Post

For those of you who saw the post from yesterday here is my full post on the Peacock Canvases and a tutorial which had been condensed for fast-ish reading sake (Marquette and I combined posts yesterday for the Pintester Movement!!)
Enjoy!!

So we got a challenge from Pintester to try a pin we were scared of, hadn't had time for, or had been on our board for forever and just hadn't gotten to. I pulled up my Pinterest and got to looking around.  I narrowed it down to four and got to work. Here I will share my whole tale, because as I have come to understand, these escapades hardly go as planned! This is both 1) A story and 2) A tutorial!! Enjoy!!

I asked the hubby what he liked best and he chose the lamp shade.  You see the lampshade we currently have in our house is in desperate need of some help...

Water stained from when our house flooded, and cracked from the move...I LOVE the base (it was my grandmothers) and so I have just been waiting for the right opportunity to spruce it up, and this seemed like the perfect time!!

Well Marquette and I took a trip to our good ole' local Wally World and I found absolutely NO fabric or paper that I liked to redo this lamp shade (which means a trip to Hobby Lobby and JoAnn's is inevitable in my future...oh darn). When I researched the original lampshade pin, I found out it was an art piece made solely of paper! No instructions or anything like that were included, so it was probably best that I didn't attempt that pin that day.

 So I moved to the next project on my board that spoke to me, the peacock canvases! Love these!!

http://thediyclub.com/2012/03/peacock-triptych-by-roeshel/

 I did find what I needed at Wal-Mart, however they only had two canvases of the size I liked, but I was sure I had one of that size at home...I am a bit of a canvas hoarder.

These are only some of them...I have an addiction.

So I get to looking at the sizes and realize I don't have what I need. So Marquette and I start brainstorming, because another trip to Wal-Mart is out of the question and I had bought the last two of that size anyways. *le sigh* 

I end up having three matching canvases of the XXL size but I'm not sure I want a single peacock feather to be 3 1/2 feet tall, I just don't have enough duct tape sheets for that!

If you are wondering what I mean by that let me explain my improvising.

The original peacock canvases were made using a vinyl cutout machine, like a Cricut or a Silhouette. The vinyl sticker is laid on the canvas, painted over, then the sticker is removed and voila!

But I unfortunately don't have one of those so I had to get creative.

Fortunately Wal-Mart sells duct take sheets now which are 8x11 inches and which were perfect for this! I figured I would attach them together, draw my image on the back, cut it out and voila! My very own custom peacock feather!

I did not however have enough sheets to make a 3 1/2 foot tall peacock feather (although looking back now that would have been amazing!).  So I decided to make three canvases, using the same peacock "stencil" on each and paint them each one of the following colors: dark purple, navy blue, then teal for a ombre effect.

This way they all look cohesive, I only have to draw and cut out one stencil, and I don't have to worry about a gorilla sized peacock feather.

But this meant I would have to salvage a board I had used for another project.

(The above picture was a project I did around Christmas, with the two below being my inspiration for the project.  We ended up updating the room with a  giant map tapestry and I haven't decided what to do with all the canvases yet, so they have been stuck in a  corner for six months till now!!)

I used my large center canvas ( the C G E one), repainted over it white, and got down to the nitty gritty.

I gathered my materials, and combined my duct tape sheets...

Next I painstakingly happily drew my peacock on the back of my combined duct tape sheets.

Next I cut it out on a cutting board using an Ex-Acto Knife.

Here is what it looked like all cut out! Remember whatever you draw on the back will be backwards when you flip and stick!!

 At this point I had already put my base glitter gold spray paint (a shout out to my sweet husband who ran to Wal-Mart after work to get me more glitter spray paint!)on the canvases and had let it dry. This will be the color that the actual feather will be when it was all said and done.

  

Next I placed the stencil on the glitterific canvas after pulling the paper backing off my cut out stencil:

And then sprayed my over color on top!

Then when it is all dry you slowly peel the sticker off. Looking back I would have split the sticker into three or four sections and then pieced them together on the canvas. Getting the original backing from the duct tape off was a nightmare and I spent a good hour un-sticking the duct tape from itself.

 By the time I got to the third canvas I had split the sticker into four pieces, and upon removal from the previous canvas I put the pieces on wax paper to keep it flat and untangled. I HIGHLY recommend this from the get go! See below!

Here is the final result!

All three just finished. Hello toes!

A close up of the glitter detail.

In their final place! I love them!! They match the style of our room perfect and were just the right size for the space!

And here is what I looked like after 8+ hours of Pinterest Crafting...

(I can't decide if I was Pinterest exhausted or if the Strep I came down with the next day was catching up me...)

 So there you have it! I stared off needing a new lampshade and ended up with three peacock canvases that look nothing like the original pin.

Such is the story of Pinterest!

                                The Original                    The Pinstrositeer Version                          

It's your turn now! Get out there pinners! Try something you have been putting off! I finally got off my butt and I LOVE the results of my project! When you finish your projects send them our way and we can do a compilation post! Good or bad, finish your pin and let us know how it went!

Pintester Movement

Emilee and Marquette here! Duo post, yea!!! Earlier this month we got an awesome email inviting us to join in the first ever Pintester Movement. What is the Pintester Movement you ask? Sonja asked us each to find "a Pinterest pin or some kind of project you've had on your Someday list for a while. Maybe it's slightly beyond your skill level, or maybe it involves a power tool you're scared of, or maybe it's a recipe that uses the dreaded candy thermometer...", but the idea was to finally do something we've had pinned. We were all over that. Why? Because that's kinda what we're all about! We're always telling you to get out and try your pins...and now there's a movement you can join to do just that. 

So we jumped on this right away. We knew it was going to be an adventure (any crafting/cooking experience in our lives turns into an adventure). We both turned to our Pinterest boards to find the project we each wanted to do. Emilee narrowed it down to 4 pins:

Marquette got it down to four as well...fourteen that is (making decisions isn't quite her forte):

Comparing boards we saw there were some similarish pins, so we thought we'd make an awesome girls day/crafting extravaganza. We'd each do our lamp shade pin, our panel painting pin, and then have a yummy Pinterest inspired meal to end the day. It was going to be epic, awesome, and uber productive. But, as Emilee describes it, "these escapades hardly go as planned". We spent the morning perusing thrift stores and Walmart for our final supplies, took our sweet time with a nice sit down lunch, and meandered back to Em's place to whip together our projects. We weren't in a hurry. How long could these take? Oh boy.

Em's Saga:

I decided to start with my lamp shade pin. You see the lampshade we currently have in our house is in desperate need of some help...

Water stained from when our house flooded, and cracked from the move...I LOVE the base (it was my grandmothers) and so I have just been waiting for the right opportunity to spruce it up, and this seemed like the perfect time!! Well Marquette and I took a trip to our good ole' local Wally World and I found absolutely NO fabric or paper that I liked to redo this lamp shade (which means a trip to Hobby Lobby and JoAnn's is inevitable in my future...oh darn). When I researched the original lampshade pin, I found out it was an art piece made solely of paper! No instructions or anything like that were included, so it was probably best that I didn't attempt that pin that day. 

So I moved to the next project on my board that spoke to me, the peacock canvases! Love these!!

http://thediyclub.com/2012/03/peacock-triptych-by-roeshel/

 I did find what I needed at Wal-Mart, however they only had two canvases of the size I liked, but I was sure I had one of that size at home...I am a bit of a canvas hoarder.

These are only some of them...I have an addiction.

So I get to looking at the sizes and realize I don't have what I need. So Marquette and I start brainstorming, because another trip to Wal-Mart is out of the question and I had bought the last two of that size anyways. *le sigh* 

I end up having three matching canvases of the XXL size but I'm not sure I want a single peacock feather to be 3 1/2 feet tall, I just don't have enough duct tape sheets for that!

If you are wondering what I mean by that let me explain my improvising. The original peacock canvases were made using a vinyl cutout machine, like a Cricut or a Silhouette. The vinyl sticker is laid on the canvas, painted over, then the sticker is removed and voila! But I unfortunately don't have one of those so I had to get creative. Fortunately Wal-Mart sells duct take sheets now which are 8x11 inches and which were perfect for this! I figured I would attach them together, draw my image on the back, cut it out and voila! My very own custom peacock feather!

I did not however have enough sheets to make a 3 1/2 foot tall peacock feather (although looking back now that would have been amazing!).  So I decided to make three canvases, using the same peacock "stencil" on each and paint them each one of the following colors: dark purple, navy blue, then teal for a ombre effect. This way they all look cohesive, I only have to draw and cut out one stencil, and I don't have to worry about a gorilla sized peacock feather.

But this meant I would have to salvage a board I had used for another project.

(The above picture was a project I did around Christmas, with the two below being my inspiration for the project.  We ended up updating the room with a  giant map tapestry and I haven't decided what to do with all the canvases yet, so they have been stuck in a  corner for six months till now!!)

I used my large center canvas ( the C G E one), repainted over it white, and got down to the nitty gritty. I gathered my materials, and combined my duct tape sheets...

Next I painstakingly happily drew my peacock on the back of my combined duct tape sheets...

...and cut it out on a cutting board using an Ex-Acto Knife.

Here is what it looked like all cut out! Remember whatever you draw on the back will be backwards when you flip and stick!! At this point I had already put my base glitter gold spray paint (a shout out to my sweet husband who ran to Wal-Mart after work to get me more glitter spray paint!)on the canvases and had let it dry. This will be the color that the actual feather will be when it was all said and done.

  

I placed the stencil on the glitterific canvas after pulling the paper backing off my cut out stencil:

And then sprayed my over color on top!

Then when it is all dry you slowly peel the sticker off. Looking back I would have split the sticker into three or four sections and then pieced them together on the canvas. Getting the original backing from the duct tape off was a nightmare and I spent a good hour un-sticking the duct tape from itself.  By the time I got to the third canvas I had split the sticker into four pieces, and upon removal from the previous canvas I put the pieces on wax paper to keep it flat and untangled. I HIGHLY recommend this from the get go! See below!

Here is the final result!:

All three just finished. Hello toes!

In their final place! I love them!! They match the style of our room perfect and were just the right size for the space!

And here is what I looked like after 8+ hours of Pinterest Crafting...

 So there you have it! I stared off needing a new lampshade and ended up with three peacock canvases that look nothing like the original pin. Such is the story of Pinterest!

Marquette's Saga:

For my first project that day (oh I had grand and deluded plans for the day) I decided I wanted to tackle the lamp shade pin from mymistermischief.blogspot.com that I have had on my board for forever (I figured I'd have time to whip this out and then start on my panel painting idea, as well as try the new recipe): 

Before, I didn't really have anywhere in the house to put a lamp shade like this (even though I love it!), but now that I get to set up a kid's room I knew this would be perfect!

 I already have a bag of orange and blue fabrics and fabric remnants, all I needed was a lamp shade. Unfortunately, all the lampshades I have are round and only have 2 or 3 support rods, which would make for a really weird looking rag lamp shade. So I knew I'd have to find something else. Rats...that means a trip to the thrift shops and antique stores down town. Oh it's a rough life. The first store we came to had the perfect lampshade..and it was only $5. Major score!

I almost felt bad when the lady at the register said, "Isn't that beautiful?! That'll make any room elegant." I didn't have the heart to tell her I was taking it home to tear it up. I think the most fun part of the whole project was the 5 minutes it took me to go from the above picture, to the one below:

Little did I know I still had roughly 7 hours to go on this project. Although the original pin had the fabric scraps in no particular order, I knew I wanted to have alternating "panels" of orange and blue. I thought it would look cool to have the fabric strips running vertically instead of horizontally, but then I knew I'd lose some of the shape. So I tied a horizontal framework of fabric to hold the vertical strips in shape...

And it looked awful. I didn't take into account that the top section is way smaller than the bottom section and that I'd have to either super crowd the top or way space out the bottom. Not to mention I didn't realize I'd have to weave some of the strips to get the shape I wanted. I wasn't happy. So I cut the framework off and went on to plan B: doing the pin how the original tutorial suggested. 

But I didn't like that either. I didn't get a picture of this...but because there are so many "sides" to this lamp shade, as opposed to the 4 in the original pin, the tied ends ended up dominating the lamp shade and making it look way more messy than I wanted. It just wasn't it. So I had to come up with plan C, and this one finally worked. 

I wrapped the top wire in an orange fabric strip to hide the metal, and then I attached a fabric strip to the top of each wire post (alternating between orange and blue). 

The idea of the project here is to wrap the fabric strips back and forth, zig zagging down the side of the lamp shade. I found it was easiest to work in rows, rather than columns. If you want your fabric to look like it's all interwoven, here's the easiest way I found (but this isn't easy to figure out how to describe it...I hope this makes sense). Take your first fabric strip and wrap it once around the wire post to the right of it, going from back to front, and secure it to the top wire with a clip. Do the same with the next fabric strip to the right of the one you just wrapped. Continue until you have done your first wrap with each fabric strip. Then, you start with your first fabric strip and wrap it back around the post to the left (the first post it was attached to), and clip it to the top. Do the same with each fabric strip. Continue zig-zagging the fabric strips back and forth. Tie on extra strips as more length is needed. 

Clear as mud? Yeah...it was kinda a pain in the butt to figure out, but that's how it ended up working the best. 

So I sat there and wrapped fabric strips over and over and over again, while Emilee sat and peeled duct tape off of everything:

Finally though...after nearly 8 hours of working and reworking the project I ended up with this:

I wasn't sure I liked it at first...but never judge a project at 11 o'clock at night. It looked way better in the morning and it's really come to grow on me. I love the huge splash of color it adds to the room. I did try putting the shade on a white base, but the orange base truly does look better. Good thing I LOVE orange! 

Needless to say that was the end of the day. While we only got 2 of the 5 intended projects for the day done, we still see it as a huge success. These projects took FOR-E-VER, and we had to struggle through them, and even though they didn't turn out like the originals, we love them. Best of all...we now each get to move a pin off our regular boards and onto our "Pin There, Done That" boards...and that was the whole point of this! 

So now it's your turn! Get out there pinners! Try something you have been putting off! We finally got off our butts and we LOVE the results of the projects. When you finish your projects send them our way and we can do a compilation post! Good or bad, finish your pin and let us know how it went!

Be sure to head over to Pintester.com to see all the great projects linked up for the Pintester Movement!

Tumultuous Torn T-Shirts

I love creating new things from old things that no longer serve their purpose. Marquette and I were just talking about that Saturday when we had a Pinstrositeers Day (it had been WAY too long). You all will get to see our creations from the weekend in Thursday's post!

I am super excited to show y'all what we made!

 

Well Nikki tried just that, making something new and fabulous out of something old and icky. Hers didn't end well however, check it out!

 

The Original

http://buntefreunde.blogspot.de/2012/06/tutorial-t-shirt-cutting-weaving-braidi.html

 

Unfortunately, the website is in German. I don't speak German (although I wish I did, anyone want to online tutor an awkward Irish lady?!). I tried Google translate but there are always going to be some language inconsistencies, the instructions were pretty close to exactly what the picture shows though. I should also add that the original blog had a few variations on this shirt and Nikki's is kind of a combination of them.  Here is Nikki's version!

 

The Pinstrosity

So what happened here?

 

I think the main problem here is that her first cuts weren't long enough, that would be step number 3 on the tutorial picture. Other than that I think it looks a little off center but not so much that I wouldn't wear it. If she were to try this again and correct those two problems I think she would end up with something much closer to the original picture, and hopefully something she would be happy with. With that being said I think this is cute, it's a little detail and she could even wear this without an undershirt because it's not too revealing and I think it would look cool and cute for a fun summer shirt! But that is just my personal opinion.

 

Anyone have any extra tips for Nikki?!

Let us know below!

Happy Wednesday Pinstrosipeeps!

I'm off to work on a special post we have for tomorrow! It's a joint post! I don't think we have done that before so stay tuned!!

 



Ointment Straws

Don't you love going on vacation and reaching in your bag to pull out your hairbrush only to find that you are now the proud owner of an over sized, pre-pasted toothbrush? Not to mention the clothes that are now soaked in shampoo. How about those hikes when you reach in your bag to pull out your awesome sandwich you've made for lunch only to find it slathered in first aid ointment...even when the ointment and sandwich were in two separate ziplock sealed baggies. That's always a happy discovery. Blech. 

Sarah was thinking ahead and decided to prepare for their travel adventure and set out to fix the problem. She found a pin all about preparing one-time-use packs of ointment, toothpaste, or whatever. 

The Original Pin

(I'll get to the source of this photo in a minute...it's part of the Pinstrosity, so keep reading). 

The caption on the pin she found said this, "Use straws to bring small amounts of toothpaste or lotion with you on a trip. Cut and burn the edges to make tiny sealed containers for things you may not need a lot of."

Sarah thought this was genius and got working. She said, "This seemed like a really cool idea for travel! The instructions didn't specify how long to cut the straws, whether or not to hold the straw in the actual flame or not, or if you had to pinch the ends of the straw first. So I thought, "Hey, this seems easy enough, I bet I can figure it out!" I cut the straws about 2 inches long, and started to burn the ends together."

The Pinstrosity

"I held the straw directly above the flame, but instead of the ends sealing together, they started to open! Basically what I ended up with was half melted, still open straws. I didn't even attempt to put any toothpaste inside, but I'm sure it would have been even more pinstrosity-er."

Not so helpful for not making messes. 

But this had to have worked for someone, right? So I set out looking. The pin led to a blog with the same vague instructions that didn't help Sarah out so well. It was a post of various camping ideas this person had found, but they didn't include any sources to where they found the ideas or pulled the photos, so I turned to my good pal, Google Image Search. The first link it pulled up was perfect. How perfect? It was the original site that the photo originated from...and it even had the guy's watermark (which was missing from the photo pinned on Pinterest):

http://briangreen.net/2011/07/diy-single-use-antibiotic-packs.html

Finding the original post made all the difference with the instructions. Brian gives an excellent tutorial on how to successfully and correctly make these ointment packs. He suggests using clear straws, using pliers to pinch the ends together while you burn/melt the edges, and then cutting the straws as you fill them. For his excellent instructions, head over to Brian's Backpacking Blog. 

So one of the morals of the story...if you re-blog someone's idea and/or photo...please give them credit. It helps acknowledge their work, it helps people find the original instructions (rather than the watered down or condensed versions), and it makes our job a lot easier when we're trying to track down how to actually do a certain project. 

What great tricks do you use to keep things from becoming a mess during camping, hiking, or travel? 

Mix It Up Monday: Memorial Day

I find it only fitting to pay tribute this day to our great country and the brave men and women who have fought to make it that way.

 

Thank you does not seem to suffice for all that has been done for our country, but I will say it anyways.

 

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts to the brave men and women who have, and are currently serving our country.

Also thank you to the many loved ones of our service men and women who have also sacrificed that our great country might be free.

 

May God bless this great country.

Please everyone have a great day with family and friends and be safe!

 

Love, The Pinstrositeers

 

P.S. If anyone is interested in writing to our soldiers, here is a link to a website that specializes in just that. I have participated in the program and would highly recommend it. I am sure these letters are really meaningful and welcome to those who are currently serving away from home.