Business is Blooming!

About a week or so ago, I was rather sick and so I was home from work resting. Which actually means I was home from work playing on Pinterest. I found this blog post as I was pinning and I thought two things. 1. It looks more like a zinnia to me, and 2. Instead of a mirror in the center, I could finish them and make them more like a flower and hang them in my office.

Zinnias from my mom's garden.

I have a pretty big office, most importantly, it has high ceilings and to add more interest I have been trying to find something to put along the back wall that I could hang from top to bottom. So this fit the bill and my decorating scheme that I have going. 

This also means that I needed a lot of spoons because I made nine of these. I also used 11" plastic plates as my base, using the plate made the spoons fan nicely as opposed to a piece of cardboard or something flat. I found that I used 62-63 spoons on each 11" plate. Something to keep in mind if you are not making a lot of them. One thing I needed not shown in the picture above was spray paint. Rust-oleum makes a spray paint now that works on plastics!

Before I started, I added a ribbon loop to the front of the plate for hanging. Saved me frustration later.

Tiny score for breaking the spoon apart.

I started by trying to cut the spoon from the handle. Apparently I purchased the most durable spoons ever because I almost died twice trying and got a piece of plastic in my eye. I quickly changed methods and got a serrated knife and made two score marks on the back of the spoon as shown. Just putting a little score on the spoon made them easy to pop apart with my hands. There are other spoons that are probably better to cut with scissors, but mine were not. 

Crap-ton of spoons.

Once I had cut/snapped a ton of spoons I started gluing. I found it was better to put a blob on the spoon as opposed to putting a line of glue on the plate and setting them on the plate.

Then I did the first inner layer...

Another Inner Layer

And voila! The base of the flowers is complete!

I then made the other eight, two of them, I cut the plate down and made smaller versions.

Spray Painted

Then comes the painting. I painted one by hand first without spray painting it. You can do it this way, but I think it doesn't look as nice because its hard to get all of the white of the plate painted that way, so I stopped and went to spray paint them all first.

 After that I proceeded to paint them with additional colors and blending. On each I just did what I liked and made them look more dimensional.

Once I had them all painted I made centers to finish them off. I found some golden colored cardstock, made a tube, fringed it a little, folded the fringe, added some glitter and there you have it, a pretty center! This was something simple that I made up out of the blue, you could do anything to finish it off.

Then I glued them to the centers of each flower and they were ready to hang!

 

They turned out just as I imagined! I may make a few more to really fill up my wall or add stems or something to them, but for now I am very excited about how they turned out!

Never Settle!

Oh Hey! Its been a minute since my last post. A LOT has happened.

My company has moved. Therefore I did too. But not too far from my ATL home base. Just a few cities north. I also moved to a bigger place. Translate: I GOT A CRAFT ROOM. WIN. I also got a cat.

So since I moved, I also got new towels. I would like to stop and proclaim my love for Amy Butler. Dear lord. I love that stuff. Particularly her fabrics and sheet sets. So naturally my new towels were Amy towels. And naturally she had matching shower curtains.... Oh wait. There were shower curtains, but they did not match! UGH. So I looked for an alternative to match my sea foam and coral towels, but nothing made me squeal so I did the normal thing and went to Fabric.com and bought my own Amy Butler fabric and made my own shower curtain.

I have been moved into my new place for almost three months now. So naturally now that my lease is almost up, I decided to do this now. Anyway, I wanted to used two fabrics. I felt like if I was to make my own shower curtain then it should be ruffled. As everything should be.

So I chose my two fabrics based on this double sided quilted fabric. I liked them and figured they matched. So I just bought the regular, non-quilted, versions of the fabrics. I bought three yards of the floral fabric, and two of the paisley fabric.


So, as I began this endeavor, this was my design.


I then decided I was not a huge fan of the two together, so I would use just the floral and be done with it. Then I realized I did not have enough fabric to make a long enough curtain with just the floral because I bought three not four yards. Oops. So I changed my design to this! Sorry for the primitive illustrations.


Anyway, things to keep in mind when making your own shower curtain.

1.) Why?

2.) The best thing about this: No pattern necessary... Unless you have issues making a square...

3.) This requires lots of ironing. It brings out the domestic in me.

4.) Cats LOOOOVE large quantities of fabric.

KITTY! This is Milo. He is very considerate and likes to help.

Two things I made sure to do that I normally do not do. first, I made pretty seams!


Second, for the bottom ruffle, I doubled it up. I did this for two reasons. One I did not have to hem it later, and two I wanted some weight on the bottom to hold the curtain down. You know, for those breezy showers.


This was my near finished result! I took a moment to do some math and evenly distribute the button hole marks for the hangers.


Button holes are the bane of my existence. However, my mother would be proud! I finally got it together and made my one step button hole work for me. WOO!


And finally! The end result. I am crazy happy with how it looks and I am glad I did not settle for a boring store bought curtain. It is bright and fresh! Something I needed with the lovely weather we have been having recently.