On Hold...

Just wanted to say thanks for all the awesome comments and emails I received today on my Karma Karma Karma post. What a nice surprise. I will repost it shortly. I'm doing a fantastic giveaway tomorrow and want all the focus to be on that!!

My fans and supporters are truly the best!!! We at Crimson Clover ♥ YOU!!!

tia

Valentines love.....

About a month ago, I was in our local Hobby Lobby Store and I got an idea for this wreath. I love to walk through Hobby Lobby for ideas and I'm known to be spotted there at least once a week. I was shopping with my friend Valerie this time and we were looking at the Valentine Decorations. There was a wreath that was really cute but had been damaged. It was similar to this one but it was made out of rolled wood to make the "rosettes". l looked at it for a minute and said to her that I bet it would be cute to make that out of pages from old books. I had seen similar ones in a traditional round shape but a heart shape was perfect for Valentine's Day.

To make the flowers I did google the best way to make them and I found an awesome Tutorial here. She gives step by step instructions with pictures. :) Thanks Stephanie for inspiration and Hobby Lobby!!!

I bought books at Goodwill for 50 cents to make the flowers with. The wreath took about 250 sheets out a book to make all the flowers to cover the wreath form. The heart form was hard to find in sytrofoam so I used a straw form from Michaels instead. This wasn't my preference but it what was available. I did wrap the wreath in a leopard print ribbon to hold all the straw in because it was coming out all over the place. The ribbon helped keep the shape of the wreath too. Made lots and lots of rosettes. I added a bit of Bling to the wreath by adding glitter to the paper rosettes. I was going to use some homemade glass glitter from ornaments but it really had some sharp edges so I opted for some chunky red glitter from the craft isle at Michaels. I used glitter glue from Martha Stewart to hold the glitter. That stuff is great for holding glitter in place and it even has a brush built in the lid. Once all the rosettes had been glued down, I sprayed the entire wreath with lacquer several times. I thought that would help keep the glitter from falling off and protect it from the weather.

Close up of the rosettes. Please excuse the glue strings. I didn't even really notice till I loaded the pictures on here.

I do have a love/hate relationship with this project.

I love it hanging on my door!!

I love the flowers are made from old romance books ( not that anyone would know that!!!)

I love that I did complete it before Valentine's Day!!

I loved playing in glitter!!!

I loved working on it with my friend Valerie. (She made a super cute one too!!!)

I hate that it took forever to make all those flowers. I am an instant gratification kinda girl!!!
(brighter note: I did make them while watching my favorite TV shows and I did get a rhythm to making them.)

I hated cleaning up all the red glitter!! It was everywhere!!!!

I hate all the burns from hot glue that I got. Even said a few bad words on that ;)

Enjoy!!!

♥

Happy Crafting!!!

Andrea

L♥VE frame

Ok so this has to be the easiest, least expensive, fastest craft I have done in a long while!!!
I L♥ve it though!!!!
I picked this gem up at AC Moore for a whopping $1
spray painted it the Heirloom White spray paint
added glitter glue and chucky red glitter to the frame backing and it was done!!
L♥ve it!!

Happy Crafting!!!

Love Andrea

All you need is love...

Love is all you need! I just L♥VE that song! And as you all know, I also LOVE burlap! I've been very very busy with the jewelry business, Crimson Clover these days so I haven't had a lot of time to do my usual decorating. But I wanted to share with you some burlap that I dyed pink. It turned out fabulous. It is the yummiest shade of bubblegum pink! This necklace has been one of my top sellers this year. I just finished dying a bunch more burlap and getting ready to start making a wreath, so stay tuned for that. I found these cute little mini picture frames in the dollar section at Michaels last year and stenciled the number 14 on burlap and framed them. It just adds a subtle touch to my entryway.

The burlap banner with red glitter letters and hearts made by my sweet friend, Amanda is the perfect addition to what I call "the love nook".

An antique pewter compote dish holds numerous strands of pearls and red glitter hearts...

Another mini frame painted red with a burlap and stencil 14 has a home under the cheese dish that I painted winter white.

Happy Decorating!

♥

tia

What a Deer!

As most of you know, I ♥ deer! They are so stinkin' cute. Must have something to do with my childhood and Bambi. Who knows, but whatever it is, I just think they are so sweet. This time of year always presents challenges for me in the decorating department so this year since we are in a new home, I've decided to go with a neutral winter theme. It's all about winter.

I found these gold paper mache deer at Michael's in the 50% off section. I was surprised they were 50% off before Christmas, but yay! I'm not a big fan of gold but I liked the shape and size of them.

With quite a few coats of Heirloom White spray paint, I just love how they went from cheesy shiny gold Vegas deer to these classy neutral winter deer. While I was taking down my Christmas decorations, I decided to leave out the German glass glitter deer and love how they look with the new winter white deer on my dining room table. And no....our chairs still haven't come in.

Using a little burlap ribbon, the large deer got his own natural winter scarf. Voila!

Happy Winter!

xoxo,

tia

Snowball Wreath

Two Junk Chix got to ring in the New Year together! Whoo hoo! Andrea came to Virginia to visit me with a big bag of goodies so we could make these fabulous snowball wreaths. She found a similar wreath on Tatertots & Jello blog but we can't find who made the original one. If you all know who did it, we'd love to thank them and give them a shout out. I went with a large size wreath since my front door is really big. This was a great project for this time of year. I always struggle with what to put up after Christmas so I decided to just decorate in a neutral winter theme.

Andrea gathered up most of our supplies from the Dollar Store and different craft stores.

Since we both love grays, we purchased our yarn in gray tones, white, and off white.

We wanted to add some natural elements to our wreath so we spray painted these fallen sweet gum balls a stone gray color. I just LOVE sweet gum trees!

Andrea was certainly a pro at wrapping her styrofoam balls in yarn. In fact, I've never seen anyone make as many as she can. She did all of these in a matter of minutes!!

As for me, here is my lonely yarn ball. I wasn't as good at it as my sidekick. I think I should stick to making jewelry. But in my defense, I did have a few texting conversations going on, bathing kids, putting kids to bed, etc. But since I have such a fabulous sister in law, she came through for me and helped me get all of my yarn balls wrapped. ♥

Once we wrapped all of our styrofoam balls in yarn and we did a few in jute, we wrapped our wreath forms in burlap, of course. Then the fun part was assembling all the goodies onto the wreath. This project uses a lot of hot glue and whatever hot glue Andrea got from AC Moore...well, I just have to say that stuff is crazy strong! Shhhh....don't tell my husband we had a time getting it off of his precious hardwood floors. :)

Andrea and I went shopping the day before and we found these beautiful snowflake ornaments on sale at Potterybarn. We thought they looked great hanging down the middle of our wreath. Here is Andrea's final product hanging on one of my back doors (below pic). I just love how they both turned out.

Happy Crafting!!

xoxo,

tia & andrea


*****check out our new wreath here . Tia and I did a spinoff of the original. -Andrea &Tia

I'm dreaming of...

...a white Christmas? Me? No, I'm dreaming of a robins egg blue Christmas. After spending many Christmases in Chicago, I have had my share of white Christmases. As much as I love Chi-town and always will, this cowgirl is certainly glad to be back in the South! Spending our first Christmas in a brand new house has it's challenges. Where do I put this? Where do I put that? So this year, I did put up two trees but kept the smaller pencil tree in the dining room just for me. This is where I can add some of my robins egg blue treasures. I love how the old skates look in this vintage frame with the robins egg blue tinsel banner that says "winter frolic". The robins egg blue glittered Santas have found the perfect spot on the dining room table. Unfortunately I didn't get out all of my beloved Wendy Addison stuff this year but that's OK....there is always next year.

I was so excited that the Restoration Hardware table arrived on time for Thanksgiving, but we weren't so lucky with the chairs. Looks like they will be here the end of January. Once the chairs arrive and the vintage ceiling tins are up on the ceiling, it will have all been worth the wait!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!!

♥ tia