{HOME} Wall Hanging Re-vamp

Jordan and I actually received this beautiful "HOME" wall hanging decoration as a wedding gift. Well I'd been wanting to hang it up for-ever but I wasn't sure how long we'd be in the first house (hoping and praying it wasn't going to be for very long) and didn't really want to put up all sorts of decorations just to hopefully regretfully take them down shortley after they went up. But, now that we're in this house and will definitely be staying for quite awhile it was time to throw it up on the wall. However, where I wanted to put it has white walls (currently they're a more cream color but there's a paint job in the future) and the sign itself is white so that just wasn't going to work so it was time to have some fun re-vamping it.

~*~Note: If the couple that gave this sign to us is reading, I once again thank you so much for the gift! It fits beautifully in our home!

Okay, ready..........set........craft!

For the Wooden "HOME" sign You'll Need:

paint

sand paper

Elmer's Glue

brush (bristle or foam, whatever you have on hand)

Unfortunately I didn't take any picture of the "before" but I think you can imagine how it looked. White. Yep, all white. Basically I just took all the silver nobs off as well as the inside part of the "O" that a black and white photo will go in later and began to paint everything. The room I'm going to be putting it in is our mud room that has white walls, big red closet doors, and then most of my decor is going to be my accent black pieces so naturally I painted the sign black. I absolutely love the whole rustic look so when I was paint it I didn't strive at all for a perfect paint job. In fact, the bottom of the slim shelf I didn't even really look at it when I was painting it. The actual letters I did do a second coat on just because they're the main part of the piece but after the paint was dry I sanded all the corners and edges of the entire thing to give it a worn look. Now, as for the Elmer's Glue. If you read one of my earlier posts on the Nightstand I re-did this sign is actually the first time I tried the crackle finish technique using the Elmer's Glue. Now the glue I used for this project had been stored normal at first, then it ended up freezing in storage for a few months and basically came out of the tube in a giant white blog so I used my fingers to scrape a thin coat of it on the part where the nobs screw in. It's best that the glue is tacky before you paint your final top coat on and this glue was definitely tacky so I didn't really need to wait long before I put my top coat of black on. Remember to only brush on your glue surface once or else the crackle will not actually crackle. And whatever color you put the glue on is what color will show through the crackles.

For the Fabric Flowers You'll Need:

felt

scissors

iron

pen/pencil

hot glue gun

super glue

cute buttons of jewels (whatever you find or prefer)

band-aids (for after all that hot glueing...ha ha!)

So I had been seeing these flowers everywhere and I do mean everywhere and I had been wanting to try and make some for a long long time. Finally I took a chance and made some. It was a lot trickier than I had expected but after the first flower I got the hang of it and it was smooth sailin' after that.

First, the fabric I used was 45" in width (lucky for me I had some fabric on hand from years ago that went perfectly with my future mud room) and cut a strip. For my big flower the strip was 4" wide and for my smaller flowers I cut it 3" wide. 

Take the fabric strip, wrong side up, and fold the sides on top about 1/4" and iron down. This create a crease that really helps make it easier when you start to make the flower.

Then once you've ironed the two side, fold the entire piece in half and iron again

Then, fold the strip again, and iron once more. Promise this is the last time!

Okay, now take your felt. Most blogs I read said to just start gluing and not cut your flower off the felt until you were done making it, just in case you didn't cut enough felt but after the first flower I decided it's a big pain to keep a full sheet of felt attached to your flower and still be able to work with it so I just cut a decent size square from the beginning with the other flowers. First I just rolled the end to make a little bud for the center of the flower and glued it onto the felt...

Then you pretty much just keep wrapping it around and around the center twisting the strip every so often (depending on the look you want) until your flower is as big or as little as you want. 

The tighter you wrap the strip around the center the tighter the flower will look in the end. Twisting it more often and sort of scrunching it against the center and gluing it that way makes it look less cookie-cutter perfect and more natural I think. Like with the picture below I basically did a single fan fold and glued it like that.

When I got to the end of the strip I trimmed off all the extra felt around the bottom of the flower and secured the end to the side and/or bottom of the flower itself. Just so that you couldn't see the actual end of the fabric strip. To finish it off I found some buttons from Wal Mart. Two for $1.58. A little pricey for some fancy buttons but I was getting impatient trying to find what I liked and these worked perfectly with the fabric so I gave in. And the good thing about using the buttons is the piece that sticks out on the back with the hole in it that you thread the thread through to actually sew on the button. Well smothering that piece in glue and stuffing it into the center of the flower helped secure it on even better.

After this big flower I decided to make two more in a white and black fabric pattern I had that were smaller than the red one so I just repeated all the above steps to do two more white flowers.

Lastly, when I put the flowers on the "HOME" sign it seemed like it needed a little something more so I decided to make a couple "leaves." I used the exact same fabric as the flowers I had already made. This technique is a way I've seen other flowers made. The only difference is to make the flowers you usually have to use around 30 of the circles I cut out and for these leaves I only used one of each color fabric.

Finally the moment I'd be waiting for..........putting it all together.........

sorry for the bad lighting, finished it kind of late so no natural lighting

add an extra button and leaf

a couple leaves added

 the crackle finish