testing one of my Pinterest pins!

I am always trying to come up with a great backdrop for taking my product photos.

I love the outdoor shots but sometimes that can be too busy for the jewelry.

So one day this summer I see this pin on Pinterest.

I bought a square piece of wood so I would have lots of surface

for taking my jewelry photos.

I soaked the steel wool in the vinegar just as instructed in the original blog.

and this is what I got...

brown

wouldn't you say?

not black

So I tried it again for another overnight and it didn't change.

I'm not sure if it was the fact that the wood was new and quite hard or why it didn't change it to a nice grey/black finish.

Not to be defeated, I bought some black stain and rubbed it on.

I thought it would rub off easily with a rag for the look I wanted.

no, it didn't.

So I grabbed some sandpaper and sanded away.

I even added more black stain

rubbed it 'off'

and sanded some more.

Eventually, I decided to be satisfied so I rubbed a finish on it.

Here is one of the ways I use it.

Here is what shows up in my Etsy Shop

the Pallet project

Holli - "Mom, we're going to do a project from Pinterest over Thanksgiving"

Me - "Can't we just do nothing?"

Holli - "No"

Then about a week before she came home I saw my neighbor had a pallet laying next to his truck.

I asked him if he could get us 3 more.

In the mean time Holli came home and Kirby, Holli and I ran some errands including a fabric store in North Raleigh.  I just wanted to stop there 'for a minute' to get some feather pillow inserts.

An hour and a half later we had a huge piece of foam 80"x27"x5" and some fabric for making pillows for Holli's future Pallet sofa!

We also saw a couple pallets outside of the store and asked if we could have them. They said yes and we loaded them in the car.

We quickly learned that pallets are different sizes and we needed four to match pretty well.

Our new find did not match the one from my neighbor.

Holli and Kirby took a little trip in the car around town looking for more pallets. They traded their original pallets for some that would more closely match each other.

Is that stealing?

I think it's trading.

Now the 4 pallets needed to be cut down to size.

We just happen to have builders working on our screened porch ceiling. So of course Holli got them to cut our pallets!

We started small by making a couple pillows first. 

Then we moved on to covering the big piece of foam.

The challenge was getting it ON the foam!

It took a team of three.

Thanks Amanda S!

At this point we loaded the 4 pallets in the car

along with the foam cushion

and the 2 new pillows

and headed back to Nashville.

At Holli's house we finished the pallets with six 3" locking swivel casters

and a few metal plates to hold it all together.

A little drilling then nuts and washers and bolts

The pallet boards are all different sizes

so the center caster had to move in a row.

The finished product!

Those crates at the end were a nice little discovery while Holli and Kirby were on their pallet hunt.

Thanks to Pinterest and the blog

Under the Sycamore

for the great idea!

crafty in Nashville

So I've been spending time with Holli in Nashville this week.

One entire week.

Tuesday to Tuesday.

Bliss.

We've shopped, dined, run errands, exercised, and shopped a little more.

Holli worked too.  She is getting ready to take kids to camp and there is plenty to do in preparation for "the best week of their lives". 

But, since this was sold to me as "the best week of my life" we've been on the go for days, building up to Holli's 26th birthday.

There is so much to see and do in Nashville and we have so much fun together.

But let's face it, for Holli and I nothing is as fun as our craft time together.  Holli had saved an idea from a blog and we spent her birthday afternoon on our Book Page Wreath.  We started out by stopping by a used book store to pick up a book from the free pile.  This is a very inexpensive craft project. 

In addition to a couple books

you need a foam wreath

some brown craft paint is nice

a glue gun

and lots of glue sticks!

The project could be finished in an afternoon but we started late in the day, stopped for snacks and birthday dinner out, and even made cupcakes.  So our wreath wasn't finished until after church the next day.

Here's a few photos we took along the way but, if you want the real directions to do this yourself please refer to the original blog.  She even has a video that we thought was helpful.

 aging the edge of the pages with a little brown paint

 starting the ring of rolled pages on the back of the wreath

 the completed back

 working on the first row from the front

 lots of variation in rolling the paper

sometimes in an S, sometimes loosely, sometimes not

 looking good but still a ways to go!

 finished!

or

was it

that we were out of glue sticks?!

 the original instructions said to glue a piece of ribbon to the back to use as a hanger.  I didn't trust that so we stuck a piece of wire around the wreath and twisted it.

much better!

 the end