Hello again, it’s Colleen from Just Paint It with another fabulous homemade gift collection. Today we have 50+ DIY Gifts for practically everyone on your list! This is a diverse group including painting, quick crafts, woodworking and so much more. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of inspiration.
Have fun checking these DIY Gifts out!
Easy Pounded Flower Gift Ideas
Today I have the ever fabulous and always vivacious Corey on stage. She will be sharing how to make these Personalized Wood Slice Coasters.
Corey is the rockstar designer behind Sawdust 2 Stitches. As if you had any doubt, this girl is multi-talented with her building and sewing skills! You’ll definitely want to check out her amazing gallery of tutorials.
Hey, I think I hear a chainsaw? Take it from here Corey!
Hey all, this is Corey from Sawdust 2 Stitches. I am one of THOSE people, that when I get an idea, I run with it… and I run fast. One day I decided that I didn’t like the tree in our front yard. Long story short, I had a small supply of wood logs at my disposal.
As the Holiday Season is quickly approaching, I decided to slice up the stump and use them in a plethora of festive decor. One such idea was Personalized Wood Slice Coasters. These are great for anyone attending and/or hosting a holiday dinner! This little tutorial will have you prepared to make the atmosphere absolute perfection. Or if you are attending an event these would make thoughtful hosts gifts.
Materials:
Instructions:
As I stated earlier, I had wood logs at my disposal and I chose to slice them about 1/4″ thick on my compound saw. One thing to consider, if you are using fresh wood they will be undergoing a drying process for a few weeks, and they can crack! I had some of mine do this, but truth be told, I kind of liked it. It added a little character. However, if you would prefer them not crack-less variety there are ways to lessen the possibility. I have been told that if you store the wood slices in in a double bagged brown paper sacks, it will prevent them from drying to quickly. Simply open the bag every day to let in fresh air, and then reseal it.
HOWEVER if you don’t have time for that, many craft stores have wood slices available and ready to use.
Once the slices are ready to use, I began by drawing on my design with a pencil first. ( If you hate your handwriting you can always use a stencil or transfer paper. ) Read more
Today I have a special guest rockstar for you! Kim is here to show you how to whip up the quickest Canvas Halloween Door Decor.
Kim is the creative goddess behind Today’s Creative Life. She truly has an eye for the awesome. I mean have you seen her bathroom makeover for $110?
She effortlessly pairs colors and textures together in the blink of an eye. Get ready to learn how to make holiday decor as quick as a guitar riff.
Welcome Kim, our next Rockstar to take the stage!
Hello Pretty Handy Girl readers! I’m thrilled to be hanging out at Brittany’s place today sharing a quick and original way to decorate for Halloween with this DIY Halloween Canvas Door Decor.
DIY Halloween Canvas Door Decor
If you follow Today’s Creative Life (formally Today’s Creative Blog), then you know I’m not talented like Brittany in the ways of building, but I sure do love me some quick and easy ways to bring more creativity to my home!
I share DIY Decor, DIY Projects and Recipes for families. You’ll find easy to follow tutorials for bringing creativity to your home and a lot more for holidays!
I’m always looking for something a little out of the ordinary for decorating my door for Halloween. Sure, I could just slap a wreath on the door and call it good, but that would be way to sensible.
Last year, I created a fun Halloween wreath from a ceiling medallion.
I love the way it turned out and may use it for my Halloween mantel this year.
This year, my ideas kept coming back to using fabric or canvas somehow. My first idea was to use Iron On Transfers with the fabric from a drop cloth and then, I remembered I had some printable cotton canvas that was printer ready.
Materials:
Instructions:
1. I found and downloaded the image I wanted from The Graphics Fairy, as I do for all my iron on transfer projects. She has just about any image you’d ever want for any time of year. Such a great resource.
2. I used PicMonkey to create the text and frame, but any photo editing tool would work. Of course you could just print the image only and keep it really simple.
3. I printed it on printable cotton canvas. This particular paper ended up having a self adhesive backing, so I just left the protective paper backing in place.
4. Using a paper trimmer, I trimmed the bottom.
5. I punched a hole in each upper corner with a paper hole punch.
6. I tied a coordinating ribbon to a stick from the yard (actually I broke it off my lilac bush) and called it good!
After I got it hung up and looked at it for a day or so, I think I may try to age it a bit for an older distressed look. You can do that easily by brushing on brewed tea and lying it out to dry.
I like the way it looks. It’s original and can be used anywhere in the house. The possibilities are plenty!
Here’s more creative Halloween ideas from Today’s Creative Life.
Are you running off to make your own Halloween decor now? Me too! I hope you are enjoying the Rockstar DIY series and are ready for more talent next week.
Today on the Rockstar DIY stage is Brad! Brad is our first guy rocker to join the tour. He has an amazing creative brain and woodworking skills that will blow your mind. Brad has created this State Pride Magnetic Key Holder for you to build. And if you look close you’ll notice that it’s magic because there are no hooks in sight!
I told you he’d blow your mind. Brad normally rocks on his home turf at FixThisBuildThat.
You may have seen his amazing Party Station recently. This cart comes complete with a spot for your beverage cooler, storage drawers and speakers. See, I told you he rocks!
I hear the whine of the scroll saw now, so let’s give it up for Brad!
Hey, everyone! Like Brittany said, I’m Brad from FixThisBuildThat.com. My site is all about helping you with Woodworking & DIY Projects, Posts and Plans. And today I’m happy to be here on Pretty Handy Girl to show you how to make this fun State Pride Magnetic Key Holder. If you want to check out some of my other work you can see one of my most popular posts, the Adjustable Shoe Storage Bench.
I’ve always been in love with state signs and cut outs and I’ve made several large state signs. But I wanted do something smaller, and I also wanted to solve the issue of always looking for my keys. In my house finding a set of keys is a little like playing Marco Polo…except the keys don’t usually call back!
I had a really nice piece of figured walnut I wanted to use for something and that’s when it hit me. State sign + really nice wood + key holder = Awesome project. I’d seen some similar things around the interwebs so I knew the perfect project to solve my issue.
Here is what you’ll need for this project.
Materials:
Instructions:
Here is the piece of wood I started with. It is approximately 6″ by 6″ rough cut walnut that was just under 7/8″ thick. I had to do some serious sanding to this thing, but knew there was beautiful grain underneath to uncover.
After a ton of sanding I got it down smooth to 3/4″ and here is what was underneath it…gorgeous! (I added a little mineral spirits to show off the grain)
If you have a special small piece of wood this is the perfect project for it. If you don’t have any nice hardwoods laying around this could be your perfect chance to try working with walnut, cherry, maple, mahogany or something else. Go to your local woodworking or lumber store and see if they have any small offcuts. If you want to stay with wood from the home center then a 1×6 or 1×8 will do just fine as well.
I decided to use Ohio as my state for this project. My wife and I lived there for 13 years, but really it’s just because it fit way better on my board than Tennessee would have 🙂 To get the state shape onto my wood I used a printed outline of Ohio. I found a site called Coloring Castle that has state outlines for kids to color. The outlines are softened a little so it was just what I wanted.
I copied the image of Ohio and pasted it into Powerpoint and sized the image until it fit my board the way I wanted it. You can use a host of different programs or photo editors to do this.
After I printed out the Ohio shape I decided to take a little creative license with the shape of the state. I wanted straight sides and didn’t want to mess with some of the more intricate tight curves like the peninsula up top. So I just drew in new lines where I wanted to cut. Empower yourself and redraw state lines as you see fit!
Next you need to temporarily glue the outline to the wood. Cut the shape out leaving about 1/4″ around the edges. Then spray a light coating of spray adhesive onto the backside of the cutout. Don’t go crazy here or you won’t be able to get the paper off without scraping or sanding. Practicing with some scrap wood and paper will give you a feel for how sticky your specific spray adhesive is. Read more
Today we have Roxanne taking over the Rockstar DIY stage! Roxanne is the knock off queen. She will be showing us how to create these beautiful knock off Pottery Barn Blue Textile prints for much less. If Roxanne sees something from a high end store, she has the super power to create a knock off for 1/10th the price or less! She recently knocked off a $695 Restoration Hardware capiz chandelier for only $52!
You can do the math, but I know that’s a real steal.
Roxanne, is the talented DIYer behind The Honeycomb Home blog. She can frequently be found turning her cookie cutter home into a beautiful home on a budget. Please welcome the dynamic Roxanne to the stage!
I was recently browsing my favorite website, Pottery Barn, and noticed this set of beautiful Framed Blue Textile Art. I loved the wooden frames and the blue fabrics, but not the price! They sell for $169 for one, or $334 for the pair! I realized this would be very easy to knock-off for a fraction of that price.
To re-create this look, I ordered fabric samples from Calico Corners. To make this work, you will need the larger sized samples. Average size samples are usually around 5.5″ squared. The larger versions at Calico are 27″ X 18″. I always prefer to order the larger size because its hard to get a good sense of how it will look in the room from the small size. Here is a picture of the small sample versus the large.
I found two beautiful wood frames at Michael’s, which are normally priced $29.99, I scored them on sale for $10 each, it was a steal! I bought them in size 16″ X 20″, which is a little smaller than the Pottery Barn frames. Read more
