Fun With Numbers

Hey friends.  I haven't been around much the last few days, thanks to what the doctors call "acute asthmatic bronchitis with moderate toxicity and severe dehydration".  Yuck.  I'm still coughing up a lung, but I ended up at the ER yesterday and got dosed up with fluids, antibiotics, and some breathing treatments that have me a lot more functional today.  I'm still hanging out mostly on the couch and trying to take it easy, but I didn't want my creative blitz to get too far behind, so I managed to pull myself together for a bit and hop on my Cricut for a few projects.  The first, which I'll show you today, was part of my long-in-the-works master bedroom makeover.  Because it's hard for me to find time to work in there, I'm giving myself until the end of the month to have that whole room completed, but I'm trying to work on things here and there.  I'm usually more of a whirlwind re-decorator -- throwing together a new room in a day or a weekend, but this is going to require more patience and methodical work.

For those of you that don't know, I live and work at a Christian children's home as a housemom.  This means that we live in a big house on campus with lots of kids (at the moment, we have 8 boys + our 3 kids, for a total of 13 people living in this house).  Since we live in provided housing with most of the furniture already existing here, my decorating freedom is limited by 1) not being able to do anything permanent like paint, upgrade furniture, take out the ugly carpet, etc., 2) working with a vocational ministry budget (funds are always tight, as is space around here), and 3) having to work in the few pieces of furniture we brought with us into this place and make it look alright with the outdated donated furniture that fills up most of the space.  Anyway, there is always a design challenge to work around here, which is both fun and frustrating, at times.  Vinyl is proving to be a great medium for me to dress things up, since it is both long-lasting and also easily removable.  Here, I used my Cricut to make Vinyl cutouts to dress up this ugly dresser.
 

Before:

After.  Well... kinda.  More like, in process.  

I still have to replace the knobs on this bad boy before it's truly finished. 

 

Isn't it fun?  Since the carpet is a not-so-wonderful greenish-turquoise color, I'm going for neutrals in the rest of the space.  I thought the black vinyl on the wooden dresser made a cute touch for the look I'm going for.  Can't wait to finish the room and show you when its done!

Whatchu working on out there?
Whatever it is, Have Fun and Get Smitten!

Linking to:

This week's typography challenge at:

Wall Hanging for a Buck

The first promise I make and I already break it -- go figure. Forgive me for not sharing sooner. Come have a seat on the patio with me. This is one of my favorite spots.


Anyway, as it often does, life happened, and while I had intended to get right to work creating something fabulous to kick off my blog blabber, that just didn't quite happen. While I do have bigger and better projects I hope to get to soon, we just found out the house we're living in is being put on the market, which means some serious cleaning and home staging has taken priority, at least for this week.

I do have some photos to share, but accept my apologies for their quality. I recently got a new camera that is turning out to be terrible, and I need to mess with some settings and see if I can figure out how to improve things, as its guaranteed to be operator error.

Here's something I whipped up on the cheap with just a few minutes and the help of the Cricut.

Before: Plain dollar-store plaque.

I painted it with gesso and then dry-brushed on some aqua craft paint (I cheated and didn't even take the ribbon that came with it off first -- that's lazy!).


Cut some vinyl in the font I chose (using Make The Cut software, along with the Cricut)


And transferred the image to the plaque using clear contact paper as transfer tape. It needed a little something, so I added the bird graphic with a rubber stamp... and... voila! Cute little wall hanging in a jiffy, and for barely more than a buck.

Hope it's been a beautiful weekend for you all, and welcome to my new visitors. Thanks for stopping by!

Edit: I was SO excited to discover that this week's CSI challenge was a dollar-store theme. I really wanted to participate in the Martha Stewart challenge last week but once again, life got ahead of me, so without further ado, I'm linking up to my first official link exchange and entering into my first challenge with this super-thrifty lil' darling. Check out the CSI Project page and enter your own dollar-store treasure!



Have fun and Get Smitten!