FInal Reveal

I just finished my latest project!

Here are my before pictures

Yellow Headboard 

Dresser and night stands

And here are my after pictures!

 I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how these turned out and I am kinda sad to see them go.
They are up for sale on craigslist! Click here to see the add.

Meet & Tweet

It's the official Meet & Tweet Twitter HOP!

Follow your host:

Laura @ Our Reflection
 

Tweet

This week's co-hosts are:

Katie @ Little Becky Homecky

Tiffany @ Blabbering Thoughts

Leigh-Ellen @ Little Waterlily in a Big Pond

Jen @ Our Love and Our Blessing

Emma @ Your Doctors Wife

Robin @ Garage Sales R Us

The Rules

1. Follow your hosts

{They are the first 7 in the linky.}

2. Follow at least 5 new people via Twitter

{Or more! Introduce yourself... Its a great way to make new friends!}

3. Spread the word!

{The more the merrier! Grab a button and add it to your blog, 

Tweet or Facebook about the link up.}

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One lucky link up person will WIN a FREE

solo guest post on Our Reflection blog!

Drum roll please....

Last weeks Meet & Tweet winner is Jordan from Makin Memories of Us!

Congratulations! You have 48-hours to claim your prize.

Please link up your Twitter account, not your blog.

Want to be a future co-host? Email me at momsgonnasnap@gmail.com.

FYI Ace Hardware

FYI everyone Ace Hardware is giving out a free quart of paint this Saturday, May 5th! And it's not a Mail-in Rebate! You go in and fill out this form (which they should have in the store) and you get to walkout with a free can of paint! Don't miss out! I know I will be there. It will be a great way to keep the cost of your next project down! 

ReStore tile

Today I stopped by my local ReStore because I happened to be in the area and they had just gotten a HUGE donation of tile in. The ReStore is a Goodwill for building materials. If your redoing bathrooms buying tile form the restore when they get big donations like this is the cheapest way to go! It's also a great way to raise the value of your home for a very minimal out of pocket cost! All the store proceeds also go to the government program called Habitat For Humanity so your also donating to a great cause!

The biggest donation of tile they had looks like this. It's just your standard neutral 6x6 tile. 

And look how many boxes of it they have! You could update all the bathrooms in your house using this tile! 

And it would be so cheap! I found the same tile for 24.75 a case/box at homedepot.com!

I bought tile almost exactly like this from the ReStore down in Vegas and paid $10 dollars a box! I will be using it in my little girls bathroom that we will start working on after we finish our guest bathroom!

They also had lots of decorative tiles. I bought some decorative tiles that will be used in my girls bathroom as well!

They had several styles to choose from. I went online to see if I could find the same tiles to compare prices. The white rope tile on the third row, very right was $3.26 per tile at homedepot.com at the ReStore they were $1 dollar! The tile on the second row and most right was $5.20 per tile at homedepot.com.  At the Restore these were $1.25! The two white matching tiles on the second row in the middle are the ones that I bought for my kids bathroom. The larger one is $9.83 per tile at homedepot.com. I paid $2.50 per tile! The smaller one was $1.25 per tile at the ReStore. At homedepot.com it is $2.95. If you look close at the top left hand corner there are some tiles sitting on top of some white and black tiles that look like this.

These were $1.25 per sheet! These are $26.98 per case at homedepot.com.

 They also had this one which I didn't see on the counter. Here is the same tile at homedepot.com for 8.88 each!

Here is another one I saw that was not on the counter. These are $1 at the ReStore. They were $2.87 per tile at homedepot.com.

You Seriously can't beat these prices! If your here locally in St. George, UT and you have a tiling project, get on over to the ReStore before its all gone! 

DIY Farmhouse Table

CHECK OUT FARMHOUSE TABLE #2 WITH AN EASIER TUTORIAL AND CHALK PAINT! (HERE)

This is a post I have been meaning to finish up since I started this blog. It's crazy to see how far we have come since this post!

Farmhouse Table

 I LOVE this Farm house table I saw on Pinterest but after looking at the tutorial I knew there was no way I could complete the project. My husband and I had never built anything in our lives nor did we have the right tools to do this. As I sat on my couch a little disappointed I decided there had to be an easier way for those of us who are not builders!

Pinned from The The Tommy and Ellie blog

I went to Desert Industries, which is a lot like a Good Will or Salvation Army. I love these second hand stores because they are the next best thing to a garage sale and you can find some awesome deals! I found a table with legs I liked for $20. Then I came home and had C.J. unscrew the table top so it looked like this.

Sorry I completely spaced the before picture!!! The legs to my table were painted brown so after beating them up a bit (you will use the same distressing techniques you use for the table top which I go into detail about later in this tutorial) I repainted them a cream and after letting them dry put a glaze on top. Glazing gives your projects a nice antiqued look. You simply paint it on and then wipe however much you want off. You can get glaze at Lowes or Home Depot but remember glaze has to be tinted. If you buy just straight glaze it will be a clear color. You can either have the people in the paint department tint it for you with your paint color choice or you can tint it yourself. If you are going to be doing lots of projects where you might want to use different colors of tint you might want to do it yourself, otherwise I would just have the people in the paint department do it for you.

Here is me painting the glaze on first. I prefer a brown tint over black most of the time so I just went in and picked a brown I thought would work well with my project. After you wipe your glaze off as much as you want and that layer dries then brush a polyurathane coat on to give it a nice top coat that is wipeable.

Now for the table top.

We went to Home Depot to pick out our wood. Normally I prefer Lowes over Home Depot but when it comes to wood I always go to Home Depot because they let you buy it by the foot. At Lowes you have to buy the entire piece of wood even if it is longer than you really need it to be. When you are picking out your wood, pick out the most unique pieces you can. Pick pieces that have lots of knots and other imperfections. When you stain the wood these imperfections will be brought out giving it that barnwood look we like. One very important tip I would give you when choosing your wood pieces is to lay your wood out while you are at the store and make sure the pieces fit nicely next to eachother. This will make it easier for you when it comes time to put your wood together to make your table top. We ended up buying 4 8x1's that were 6 feet long each.

Distressing the wood.

There are so many ways you can distress wood. To be honest there really isn't a wrong way to do this. All your doing is beating up the wood. I looked at several sites on how to distress wood but here was my favorite tutorial I found on Youtube.

After watching this video we did our best to make similar tools.

Here is our chain. C.J. linked the screws and bolts into the chain using washers to make sure they didn't fly out when he would swing the chain. TIP: If you are staining your wood use a plain silver chain that is not painted. We used a black one and it left small black marks on our wood from the black paint on the chain. 

Here is our worm hole tool. C.J. just nailed a few nails close together into a piece of wood that fit in his hand well. There were about 25 small nails that were very close to each other in a piece of 2x4 that stuck out of one end.

side view

bottom

The guy in the video used an awl, which is used for reupholstering furniture.  We didn't have an awl so we just used a flat head screw driver. It works just as well.

So with these makeshift tools we (and by we I mean C.J.) started beating up the wood. Each tool made a unique dent or chip in the wood so was not uniform and gave it more of an authentic look.

Here is C.J. using the screw driver to make the wood looks like it had cracks in it.

He mostly did the end pieces with cracks because that is where you would normally see real cracks in the wood. However, he did put a few cracks throughout the middle of the pieces. Then he beat up the wood with his worm hole tool. This was my favorite distressing technique because he would really concentrate on one area which really helped to bring out an aged look in our wood.

After fully distressing our wood we started with the stain. Staining is an easy way to make wood look beautiful! Just take an old rag, dip it in your stain and rub it on your wood until it is all soaked in. We also put a few coats of polyeurothane on it so it could be easily wiped off for all the future messes.

Now comes the hard part.......
If you laid your pieces out in the store to make sure they fit well together and didn't let them sit around for a month before you started your project this step shouldn't be so bad. C.J. and I did not lay out pieces in the store and we let our wood sit for several weeks before we started this project. By that time one of the pieces of our wood had warped. Instead of going to buy a new piece we decided to use it anyway. If I could go back and do it all over again I would have bought a new piece of wood. For some reason the left end of out warped piece of wood started to lift. I am not really sure why but it made connecting our pieces together really difficult. To connect our wood planks C.J. drilled holes for dowels and used wood glue to glue the dowels in to keep the pieces of wood together. Here is a picture that might explain this process a little bit better.

 Because of our warped piece of wood the hard part was keeping the wood together and tight. We had to get 4 kreg jigs to hold our wood pieces together until the wood glue dried. This WILL NOT happen to you if you lay your wood out in the store and start your project right when you get home! When I was reading about this project on the Tommy and Ellie blog they used one kreg jig. Because of our one warped wood plank we even had to lay the original table top on top of our four pieces of wood in order to keep the wood in the right place.

After your wood glue is nice and dry you can then screw the base of your table to it's new table top! The table top screws on the same way that the original top was on there. Using the original screws would be the easiest and cheapest way to accomplish this. However, if your not able to just make sure your screws are the right length and not too long otherwise they will come up through the top of your beautiful table you just worked so hard to make!

Here are a few pictures of our wood after being distressed and stained.

You can see all the dents from using the chain.

In this picture you can see the cracks C.J. made.

Here is the piece of wood we had such a hard time with. In the end everything turned out as planned and I have a new beautifully old looking farmhouse table!

Here it is after getting the wall behind it decorated.

The total cost of my table was about $45 dollars! I spent $20 on the base on the table and $25 on the four wood planks and dowels.
 To see the post on my wall collage and how much I paid for everything click here!

This is my first project that has been featured!!!! I am so excited about that! Thank you Allison @ A Glimpse Inside and Rebecca @ The Crafted Sparrow!

Linking up to these parties:

{W}

http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/

{TH}
A Glimpse Inside
House of Hepworths

{F}
Nap Time Crafters

{M}
Homemaker on a Dime

http://thecraftedsparrow.blogspot.com/

Flower Bow Tutorial

I realize that most people know how to do these flower bows. However, there was a point in my life when someone had to teach me. So for those of you who have not been taught yet here is a tutorial!

You will need:

one silk flower

glue gun and glue sticks

center piece of your choice

one ribbon lined alligator clip (click here for that tutorial)

Ok so here are the flowers I am using. I bought these at a garage sale over the weekend for .25 cents for all of them! There are 8 flowers. These are $1 a piece at Michaels! I saved $7.75!

What you will want to do first is detach the stem from the flower.

Then you will turn it over and pull off the floral backing from the petals.

Then turn your flower back over and pull out the center of the flower.

Now at this point you can do one of two things. If you just want your bow to be a flower without any jewel or button as the center, then you will just cut off the stem of the center piece. If you don't want to use the original flower center then pick out something you feel looks good in the center and that also fills the gap that is left. This is important. If you have a larger space for your center and you use a tiny button your flower is going to look a little goofy and unproportionate like this...

Next you will separate all your petals and individually glue them together.

 Start with the largest petal first. I just take my glue gun and make a circle around the center on the flower.

 Then take the next largest flower and place it on top lining up the center holes. If you don't do this your flower will look lop sided when your done. 

Remember, you can always use a second flower of another color to make your bows more exciting!

Since I am making these flowers for my sister-in-law who is having her first little girl I wanted to make sure and give her a pink and green bow. This is a necessity in a little girls closet! There wasn't a pink flower in the bunch that I got for .25 cents so I went to my bag of flowers, which I also bought at a garage sale for $3 dollars a few years ago and found a pink daisy I could use.

After pulling off the stem and center of the pink flower I glued my petals together interchanging the colors.

TIP: To make your petals look more full don't lay the petals directly on top of each other. Using this picture as an example I lined my pink petals up so that there was a green petal showing through each one of the spaces between my pink petals. This will allow you to use layers in your flower!

After you have all your petals glued on pick out what center piece you want to use. I have a bunch of pearls, jewels, buttons and old jewelry I keep in these jars. I find them all at garage sales for dirt cheap so making bows never costs me too much! 

 After you have picked out your center piece, glue it on. Sometimes if you are using old buttons or jewelry you may have to get some wire cutters and cut off the backs so they lay flat in the center of your bow. I used an old earring as the center piece of my orange bow and had to snip off the post on the back with some wire cutters. After your center is glued on, turn it over and glue on your ribbon lined alligator clip and your done!  (click here for a tutorial on how to line your alligator clip with ribbon) 

I made a total of 7 bows using the flowers I found for .25 cents and a few others I had in my flower bag. If I had to estimate how much these seven bows cost me I would guess $2 dollars but $1.50 of that goes toward the alligator clips! 

Here is the cutest model in the world modeling the bows I made for my sister-in-law!

You can also use this tutorial to make hair pieces for adults! I don't wear a lot of flowers in my hair but you could really dress these up so that they would look cute in an older person's hair too!