Shamrock Silhouette by Sassy Sanctuary

Hello everyone!  Krystal from Sassy Sanctuary here today!  So are you in love with the silhouette bunnies Crafty Sisters made?  I am!  I totally am going to have to make some for Easter.  Silhouettes are such a fun theme and really about anything goes.  I'm excited to see what the other ladies came up with!

Any-who... for my silhouette project I decided to make a Shamrock.  It was such a fun and EASY project!  I love those kinds!  Ready to see?

Isn't it cute!  It actually inspired me to decorate a little vignette on the shelf-wall of my family room.  This is the first time that I have decorated this spot and I love how it looks!

To make your own shamrock silhouette all you need is an unfinished frame, a shamrock cut from 1" pine, some paint and some ribbon.

A shamrock would be an easy cut for a newbie with a jig saw or scroll saw... but I actually found mine already cut at a local scrapbook store for only $6.  Sometimes the short cuts are worth the time they save!

I painted the frame a dark grey and the shamrock green and Modge Podged some scrapbook paper to it.  Then I hot glued the shamrock to the frame and tied a big ole bow around the whole thing.

I LOVE the pattern of the green houndstooth!

Seriously, this was way easy... one afternoon from start to finish.

So that's it.  My simple shamrock silhouette!

Be sure to come back to see what Melinda and Wendy come up with!  They always make the cutest things so I'm sure they will be awesome!

Crafty Sisters Silhouette Bunnies

Hello! It's Nicole and Candace from Crafty Sisters.
  It's great to be crafting with Wood You Like To Craft again!
The theme this month is SILHOUETTES,

and of course we had to do something Easter/Spring related!

We drew our inspiration from some fun 

weather vane type accessories we've seen from Target and Pottery Barn.

We found this great rabbit silhouette from The Graphics Fairy.

It was the perfect shape for what we had in mind.
We blew it up to be about 21" wide
and cut it out of 1" pine.

We then gathered our other supplies:
1 7" section of 3/8" dowel
1 chunky table leg from Home Depot
1 cedar fence cap

1 2 3/4" square cut from 1" pine scraps

You can really use anything to build up your base.

Candace used some scraps from her garage and

a ball finial from her son's bunk beds~it's been used

as a weapon being thrown around for a while

so she figured this was a better use for it!;)

After drilling the holes into the bunny and the table leg,
we glued everything together with Gorilla wood glue.
Once dry we stained everything with a coat of stain.
I used Min wax Dark Mahogany Wood Stain,

 and Candace used watered down, dark burnt umber acrylic paint.

When it had dried we tried 2 different paint approaches.

I used some cream acrylic paint that was watered down

to a 50/50 consistency, applying a generous coat.
After letting it sit for a few minutes, it was wiped away with paper towel.
This made the grain of the wood pop through and gave the bunny
a nice translucent weathered warm grey look.

Candace applied some furniture wax to her bunny before

she coated it with a thick coat of cream paint.
The wax allowed the brown stain to peek through quite nicely
when she lightly sanded it.

We always love playing around with paint and trying new things out!

Most of all we love playing around with silhouettes!
We're thinking we might have a whole week dedicated to
all things Silhouette.....
We'll see!
Can't wait to see what Krystal, Melinda and Wendy have
coming up in the next few days!
Stay tuned and don't forget to link up your favorite
Silhouette project this weekend!
Our linky party will start Saturday.

Love Linky Party!

I just {LOVE} Wood you like to craft!!!  It is so much fun seeing how one idea can translate into so many different but equally fabulous projects!

In case you missed it, I kicked things off with my "love" heart door hanging...

Then the Crafty Sisters shared their take with a natural, woodsy heart hanging of their own.  Isn't it lovely?!  I just adore all that wood grain!

Wendy followed with her little love birds and tree.  Aren't they just the cutest?!  I just love all the little details on the birds... but I think that tree is particularly wonderful!

And then Melinda wrapped it up with her book-page heart.  I had no idea you could cut a whole book with a scroll-saw.  Isn't she brilliant?!  And her heart is totally adorable!

Thanks so much for playing along ladies.  You guys always impress and inspire me!

But now its your turn!!!  We want to see all on YOUR "Love" wooden crafts!

Please include our button in your post or on your blog somewhere so others can join in...

<a href="http://woodyouliketocraft.blogspot.com/"><img border=”0” src="http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss229/krystalwinn/wood%20you%20like%20to%20craft/Wood-you-like-to-craft-011-button-resize-1.jpg" /></a>

And please remember, this link party is for WOOD projects only with the "LOVE" theme.  Thanks!

Can't wait to see your great ideas!!

Ruffled Book {Heart}

Hey!  It's Melinda from over at Under My Umbrella.  I'm a little behind today.  I tried to sign-in to blogger and it told me I changed my password 24 days ago.  The only problem is I don't remember doing it or what I changed my password to :)  My excuse is I have four kids and I'm a little low in the brain cell department.  I finally figured it out and I'm ready to share a project with one of my favorite themes {love} and two of my fav crafting materials...books and wood!

I'm calling this creation my ruffled book heart.  Interesting, right?!   It's different and I'm not sure I love it in the picture but I LOVE it in my house.  The best part of this project is out of one book you get two projects that are easy to do.  Stay tuned for the second project later in the post.  

This project cost me $1.00.  I went down to the dollar store and grabbed a hardcover book.   I traced a pattern of a heart onto the cover.   For the next part all of the tutorials I have seen for making a Christmas tree or pumpkin shape from a book you then have to cut out the shapes by a few pages at a time.  This is where this project would have lost me as a crafter.  No patience or time here for that!   I'm going to share one of the best tips ever with you....  Use the scroll saw and just cut the whole thing out at once.

Easy and fast!  It took me about a minute.  It makes my {heart} happy!!!  Here is what you have...

 I then opened my book, decorated it and folded down a few pages for the ruffles.  I left the hardcover part on the book and could have left the project that way but I wanted a little extra support and I couldn't leave my friend wood out of the picture.  I traced a heart on a 1/4 inch thick piece of wood and glued it to my book.  It makes the whole project more solid. 

 

You now have a ruffled heart book!  I think this project *might* make a great teacher gift.

Here is that second bonus project I mentioned before.....  Takes about a minute and it sure makes me want to go read a good book!

So "Tweet!"

Hey there everyone!

It's Wendy here today to share my "lovely" addition to this month's theme...

I've been wanting a set of chunky little birdies for awhile and Krystal's theme was a perfect excuse to make some. These are my little "LOVE" birds.

As I said I wanted chunky so I used a pine 2 x 6 and my jigsaw to cut them out. The wings and feet are cut from 1/4 inch MDF.

Just a quick saw note...if you're cutting wood that thick the jigsaw is the way to go. It's SO much faster than a scroll saw and you won't go through 700 blades trying to cut out one little critter!

I painted the bodies but paper covered the beak, feet, and wings. I used my drill to make a small hole in the top of each one to add some feather hair and then drilled through the boy's beak so he could hold the flower for his lady friend.

To make the flower I rolled a small strip of felt into a rosette and then glued it onto a twisted piece of craft wire. I twisted the felt leaves into the stem and also added a small scalloped felt circle to the back of the rosette to cover the wire. Then just slipped it through the drilled out hole, adding a little bit of hot glue to keep it in place.

I cut the tree trunk from the 2 x 6 and the leaves from the 1/4 inch MDF.

I used the milter saw to cut a well into the center of the trunk for the leaves to sit in. One, so that it was balanced and two so that I can take it out and easily store it.

The trunk was painted the leaves took paper and mod podge.

Definitely a fun and not to hard project.

 Just what I was needing!

{I'm sharing the patterns for the birds and tree trunk on my blog if you'd like a few birdies of your own!}

It's good to be back and crafting with WYLTC again!

These ladies I get to craft with each month are pretty awesome and too, I can't wait to see what all of you are making for your February decor.

Thanks Krystal for a great theme and inspiration project! Until next time...

Happy Crafting.



Valentines Crafty Sister Style

Hi it's Nicole & Candace from Crafty Sisters

showing our take on Krystal's hanging Valentine!

This year we have really liked the soft subdued natural tones

for Valentines day so we were excited to

implement them into a Hanging Heart door hanger.

Santa brought me a Sawzall for Christmas

and we eagerly put it to use cutting down some branches from my yard.

You guys know us and how giddy we get for any excuse

to use power tools!

We cut down a branch that was approximately 6 feet long

and about 2 inches at the thickest diameter.

You can use rose snippers or a chop saw to cut the branch into 1/2" pieces.

We recommend using a saw if one is available

or your going to have a tired and sore hand....

Next we cut out a chunky heart from a 1"x12" pine board

with a jigsaw and sanded it smooth.

Using wood glue we then adhered all the little branch pieces.

Since our branch was fresh it took a while for it to dry.

What was cool was that as it dried the little branch pieces cracked.

It was completely unintentional but we loved the effect!

To paint it we made a cream "white wash" that

we literally poured over the top and let drip off in the sink.

It would take way to long to get into all those nooks and crannies

if you did it by brush alone.

After it dried over night we lined the edge with a strip of cream burlap

that we just glue gunned on and also created a bow tied with twine for it to hang from.

Pretty simple and fun to make!

You could really do a wash of any color over this and it would be great!

Thanks for the great inspiration Krystal!

We can't wait to see what the rest of you gals do!

{Love} Heart

Hello everyone!  Krystal from Sassy Sanctuary here.  It's my favorite time of the month again!  Wood You Like to Craft time!!!!  Since we are in February I naturally wanted to make a project for the big "LOVE" day and I needed something for my front door.  So this is what I came up with.

I never know what to call these kind of things..... I guess its a wreath but not really.  The official title could be a wooden-heart-mobile-door-hanging-thingy.  :)

Whatever you want to call it, it was super fun to make!

All I did was get some plywood and cut out the heart shape with my jig saw.  From there you can decorate it however you want!

I covered the center heart in a piece of scrapbook paper.  Distressed the heck out of it and then hot glued on the little wooden letters.  I got them at Hobby Lobby.

The outer heart I just painted by hand in stripes using colors from my paper design.

As you can see the stripes are far from perfect.  I knew perfect wasn't going to happen so I varied the width and style of each strip so the imperfections would look on purpose.  And I distressed the heck out the that too!

It still needed a little something at this point so I made some felt flowers and put an arrow through the whole thing.

The arrow was a last minute add on.  I ended up just using a couple of skewer, like the ones for kabobs, that I had in my kitchen stash.  Its just hot glued to the back of the heart and then further secured with some felt hot-glued over the top.  The arrow tip and bottom are also just hot-glued on pieces of felt.

It was really a simple thing but I think the arrow made a big difference with the cuteness factor!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the two hearts are simply attached to each other by a peice of ribbon stapled to the back.  I also made a little loop at the top to hang the whole thing from.  You need that! :)

So that's it!  My Valentine's wood project.  And it does look pretty dang cute hanging on my front door.  Love it!

I can't wait to see what the rest of the WYLTC ladies come up with!

And in case you haven't figured it out yet, our theme this month is "LOVE" and we can't wait to see all the cute, wooden, Valentine's Day projects out there.  The link party will start on Friday so be sure to come back and link up!

Thanks for reading!