For the latest issue of VintageKC magazine, a vintage home décor, fashion, and DIY magazine, a handful of other bloggers and I were challenged to create wind chimes out of vintage, reused or thrifted materials. Immediately, I thought of skeleton keys. What’s more wind chime-y than keys clinking together? Luckily, I had quite a few on hand. After I expressed my love for old skeleton keys to my tool-savvy grandpa a while back, he gives them to me any time he comes across any—and I’ve amassed quite the collection. (You can find them at flea markets, garage sales and thrift stores, too.) The next question was how to structure the wind chime. What was going to hold my skeleton keys in place? I wanted something that would hold up outdoors and that would go with the rustic look of the keys. Randomly, I’d purchased an old mattress spring at a flea market for $1 a while back. Don’t ask me why. I thought it would come in handy sometime. And it did! I decided to use the mattress spring as the base for hanging my skeleton keys. I strung the keys to the spring using 24-gauge craft wire. An old keyhole...
Do-It-Yourself Yarn Pom Pom Garland
I’m always looking for a yarn craft. Yarn is inexpensive and versatile. I like using it because I don’t feel bad when I mess up, which tends to happen. I’ve really enjoyed crocheting and finger knitting recently, so when I came across yarn pom poms, I knew I wanted to try to make them. Making yarn pom poms was a super simple craft and fun to do. Here’s a quick tutorial that explains how to make your own yarn pom poms. A few tricks to keep in mind You can use anything to wrap the yarn around. It doesn’t have to be cardboard. You can even use your hand. Just keep in mind the size of the item you wrap the yarn around will determine what size your pom pom is. Make sure not to wrap the yarn too tight. You have to carefully pull the yarn off the cardboard and keep it in place so you can tie the string around it. If you wrap the yarn too tight this is really hard to do. I learned the hard way. There are lots of different size options. I chose to make bigger pom poms, about the size of a tennis ball....
Scrapbooking Fun: Christmas Card Scrapbook
It’s February, so you’re probably wondering why I’m doing a Christmas post. But it’s more of a what-to-do-with-your-Christmas-cards post. If you’re like me, then around this time of the year you’re wondering what to do with your Christmas cards. Do you throw them all away? Or, toss that pile of Christmas cards in a box and forget about them? I can never bring myself to throw them away. It feels like I’d be tossing out all of that happiness, cheer and memories. But I always have a hard time figuring out what to do with them. And I have quite the paper pile up. This year, I decided to scrapbook my Christmas cards. It’s been a while since I made a scrapbook. When scrapbooking first got popular, I was obsessed with it. But making a big 12×12 inch scrapbook got tiring. Every page started to feel like a huge project. So for my return to scrapbooking, I experimented with a smaller size. It’s 8×8 inches. The hangup a lot of people have with scrapbooking is the expense. Buying a bunch of scrapbooking supplies can definitely get pricey. So for this book, I challenged myself to use what I had. The only supplies I bought for...
Easy DIY Key Garland
It’s almost Valentine’s Day and I haven’t decorated my home at all. I’m not big on tons of frou-frou décor anyway, but it is nice to at least recognize the holiday. So, I put together this quick project. It’s a decorative key garland. In honor of Valentine’s Day I’m thinking of it as a “key to my heart” garland. (Any other time of the year it can just be a plain ol’ key garland.) This do-it-yourself key garland is about as simple to make as it gets. Take some twine and some vintage bone keys, loop the twine through the keys, string them up and you’re done. When I think about it now, it might seem kind of strange that I just happen to have a bunch of old keys stored up waiting for me to use them in a project. You don’t have things like that just laying around your house? In that case, you can definitely scope out antique malls, thrift stores and and secondhand shops for a few of these vintage gems. They’re not too difficult to find. Would you do this five-minute project? Do you have an obsession with old keys too? I want...