crafty sisters summer garden stakes

It's still Thursday somewhere right?

In my mad rush to head out of town to a Lacrosse tournament,  I was barely able to get my pictures uploaded to post for this month's summer project!  I even forgot to upload my original wood cuts for a full tutorial.  Sorry!

OK...to get to the point of my project...I love summer!  I love love love being out in my yard in the heat but most of all I love gardening!  There is honestly nothing more I enjoy then digging in the dirt.  So my daughter and I made some quick and easy garden stakes made from a fence board.We cut our cat heads into various squares and rectangles about 8 and 9" high, did a few rough cuts to add some ears and sanded down the rough edges.  For the noses we used left over pieces of wood lathe which was the purrrrrfect width.....sorry I couldn't resist that one!

I found these cool little screw on caps in the electrical department that I used to hold my stake in place.  I used my miter saw to cut different lengths of metal stake that was 1/4" in size.  Watch out when you do this cuz sparks will fly!

We used acrylic craft paint to customize replicas of our own kitties, nailed on the noses, sanded off the edges for a little pop and then sealed with a couple of coats of polyurethane to protect them from the elements.

Super easy and a fun project you can do easily in an hour with your kids!  

I see some more to be made in our future.....ducks....squirrels.....options unlimited!

Happy Summer from Crafty Sisters!!

Phoebe, Fluffy, Callie & Morris.  Four very spoiled kitties!

Crafty Sisters Mother's Day Bouquet

Hello from Crafty Sisters!  We are hosting Wood You Like To Craft this month and thought that
"Mother's Day" was a good theme to inspire us!  We are so excited to share with you just in time for Mother's Day this fun personalized Wooden Flower Bouquet!

Our Mom has each of her children's 8 year old pictures framed and even uses them as contact pictures on her phone.  Our folks have been busy recording all our old home videos off onto DVD so they are especially sentimental right now.  We knew this project would be perfect for her!

 

This project is pretty easy and inexpensive to make, all you'll need is:
Flower shapes cut from 1/2" Mdf (ours are 4- 4 1/2" in size)
12" long 1/4" dowels
2x2" blocks to anchor the dowels into
Paint
Paper/embellishments/ribbon
Glue/glue gun
2" pictures
A vase to put them in with some candy filler (this is for Dad to snack on and so he doesn't feel left out!)

All you need to do is paint, paper and embellish the flowers.  Make sure your dowels are glued in and dry before you start to assemble them!

A great tip we use when we are drilling into flowers or smaller shapes is to tape off the depth with a piece of masking tape on the drill bit tip.  It's a great guide and it comes off easy when you are done!

Floral foam isn't strong enough to hold up the weight of these flowers so using some scrap 2x2" wood

we hot glued them together to fit into the vase and then drilled the holes at desired angles to hold the flowers in. You'll also use the glue gun to glue them to the bottom of your vase for stability.  Make sure to leave enough room around the sides for your treats to fill in.

We did a few extra dowels with leaves cut from the Cricut to add in as fluff around the flowers and then printed out a cute saying we tied on with a ribbon for the front.

We just know our Mom is going to love it~this is her sneak peek!:)  We're even more excited we got it done a month in advance!  Stay tuned to see what the Krystal, Wendy & Melinda have to share!