Iron Craft 2016: Flowers, Hearts, and PIGS!

It's Reveal day for Challenge #2 of Iron Craft 2016! The theme for this challenge was "Hearts and Flowers".

I'm not a big hearts and flowers kind of girl...so at first I was stumped (as I usually am the first day or two of each new challenge). After a few days I still kept coming up blank, until I decided to integrate the challenge theme into my decorations for the Baby's Corner (with Darrow I got to decorate his own room, but now that we're all in one room, I'm just decorating the corner where the baby bassinet lives). I turned to my Pinterest boards and found two adorable pins that suddenly gave me an idea!

The pig mobile Created by Eleni and the wedding photo is via The Amy and Jordan Blog, from a fabulous workshop wedding! 

I LOVE the hanging embroidery hoops with flowers and knew that could be the flowers part of the challenge. And while I wasn't making a mobile, I wanted pigs and flying pigs incorporated into the theme, so I set off to look for ideas and printables and found some great ones (and one that incorporated the heart part of the theme!)

This color scheme is my obsession right now, so I decided to run with it for the colors for the corner as much as I could (these are hard colors to find in the crafting supply world!). 

My inspiration for incorporating the hearts into the whole project was this find on etsy:

I'd already had a similar free pattern pinned (I'm guessing this is what the creator of the above photo used too, but who knows).

by mausimom

I got this adorable free Pride and Prejudice movie quote printable from Kendra (a long time Pinstrosipeep!). It's so cute and it makes me giggle. At some point in March I will be producing a "piglet" and we'll have to chase it.

Get the full size printable on Kendra's Blog. 

And then through Pinterest I found this adorable pattern on Etsy, but was sad to find that the shop is on break and I couldn't order it. But I still used it as inspiration.

http://thelittlefrenchbullblog.tumblr.com/post/22300535484

This quote was all over Hobby Lobby when I went for supplies and I knew it had to go up in the mix. I couldn't find a design I liked online to order (or one that I thought was a reasonable price), so I made my own.

And then I found this adorable cutie by Elizabeth Rose Stanton on The Whatsits. .

by Elizabeth Rose Stanton

So I spent a furious few days cross-stitching, flower arranging, and trying out different printing methods. But finally it all came together and I LOVE it! 

Putting it together was the part I was nervous about. I wanted to be able to arrange it first and then hang it up exactly in position without having to move things around and poke new holes in the wall. So I got freezer paper out, laid it on the floor, and then arranged the items on the papers. Once I had two arrangements I liked (for the two walls), I traced the circles onto the paper, took pictures with my phone and then took everything into the bedroom to hang.

I taped the freezer paper up onto the wall, and then tapped the nails in through the paper exactly where I would need them.

The paper pulled off the wall easy and left the nails intact and in place. All I had to do then was just hang the items on their nails!

For the flower hoops I had 6 bundles of florals (hooray for 50% off days at Hobby Lobby!) and I cut the flowers and greenery off and mixed and matched until I got what I liked, using the Amy & Jordan photo as my general guide and inspiration for arranging.

I did two cross-stitch pig designs, one in a 4" hoop (the hello pigs) and one in a 6" hoop (the print pig).

I planned on doing the rest of the designs printed on muslin fabric and stuck in the hoops, but I had a hard time getting everything to work just right. I found a great tutorial for printing on fabric that I decided to try, and it works!  The polka dot dress pig was printed using that tutorial.


After that though I kept fighting with my computer to print them the way I wanted to and by the time I figured it out I'd used all my muslin. So, I just decided to print the rest on cardstock and glue it to the hoop. It worked!

Finally at the end I had left over florals that I just couldn't throw away, so I tied them in a bundle and included them in the decor!

I'm pretty tickled with how it all came together. I wasn't sure if it would or if it would look weird, but I like it! And, I got flowers and hearts into the project in a way that I LOVE and that fits me. Hooray!

And, since I worked on this all day Monday (I did the cross stitches earlier, but everything else was Monday)...NOTHING else got done. Nothing. Darrow's toys were everywhere. We ate just Mac and Cheese for lunch and snack. I stayed in sweats until 4pm. So the corner was cute by the end of the day...but that was the only space in the house that looked good! But, it's done and today I can hit the house. 

To see Challenge #1 of the 2016 Iron Craft Challenge click here.