Julie Vintage Craft Ideas

Julie Vintage Craft Ideas

I grew up in a very cluttered home.  Lots of books, animals, hobbies and interests.  My mother had better things to do instead of cleaning and organizing.  Clutter inspires creativity.  Clutter inspires inventiveness.  People who grow up in clutter are our inventors, our decorators, our visionaries, our architects….  So don’t be so quick to pick up that mess.  You may be stiflings someone’s creativity.

Like I said, I grew up in clutter and I live in clutter.  We have several projects always going on at once.  The black thing to the left in the photo is a car top carrier that I haven’t yet put into the garage that I just ordered through the mail.  To the right I’ve got some wooden board that we are going to cut up to make little beach bungalow doll houses for my nieces and I want one as well. 
Am I embarrassed that my house is always a cluttered mess?   No, if I was then I would not take photos of the mess and put them online.  There is nothing wrong with living in a mess.  I feel sorry for those that live in such sterile environments with everything in it’s place.  How on Earth can that kind of place inspire creativity? 

Oh, well.

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“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” – Thomas A. Edison
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My Paint Palette

I’ve had this palette since I took art classes in college.  The paint is so thick  and heavy.  Many wonderful happy projects were made with this.  Lots of good memories.

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Cinderella New Year’s Eve

I call this my Cinderella New Year’s Eve because I wanted to continue my Cinderella Christmas theme into my New Year’s celebration.

You can see my

Julie’s Cinderella Christmas

page if you like.  Look under the Christmas category on the home page.

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I had the best time creating this Christmas theme.  I think that I did do a good job creating the ‘magical’ look that I wanted with my ‘fairy godmother’ spirit in the photo above.

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My Christmas Fairy Godmother

The back story on my ‘fairy godmother’ is this is our ghost that Gordon and I made for Halloween out of chicken wire.  I had draped material all around her while Gordon rigged up an attachment so that our ‘ghost’ could hold a Halloween mask.  I thought it would be cool to change things a bit and add some lights inside of the ‘ghost’ making her more magical looking and then adding a magic wand to the attachment.

Bibbity Bobitty Boop!

(Incidentally, in my attempt to transform our ‘ghost’ into my ‘fairy godmother’ I had to crawl inside of it, she’s quite tall by the way, I had to crawl into the mass of chicken wire where I scratched myself so many times on my arms and legs.  I BLED for this project!  Once I got out alive and I plugged the lights into the socket only the lights at the bottom of my ‘fairy godmother’ were working.  Half the strand that is located at the top of her won’t light up.  At first I was a bit upset by it thinking that I would have to crawl back inside and remove them all and start over.  But then I noticed at how magical it looked that only the ones at the bottom were lit up.  It looked as if she were conjuring up a spell.  So this turned out to be a happy mistake.)

Me with my ‘fairy godmother’.

This was my inspiration.

My Cinderella Christmas Gifts

Cinderella with her fairy godmother.

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This was our Halloween Ghost and How we Made Her

Gordon and I made this one from some chicken wire and fabric.

Although hard to see, the photo above is of our chicken wire ghost.  We just kept wrapping the wire around in a large circle creating a formal dress and then a waist and then a bodice.  I had lots of ghostly white fabric left over from a previous project so I just sort of tied it all around.  It may look like a dress, but it isn’t.

Gordon used an old metal coat hanger and wound it into the chicken wire to simulate an invisible arm holding the mask.

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Pretty Wine Bottle Craft

As I said I wanted to carry over my Cinderella theme into my New Year’s so I came up with this idea.

I wanted something pretty and blingy for this.  I had this rhinestone looking craft ribbon and decided to just hot glue it all around an old empty wine bottle that I had in the garage.  I left the pink foil around the top of one of my bottles.

Add some pretty bottle stoppers and you have a lovely bottle to fill with whatever you would like, or to give as a nice gift.

Happy New Year
2015
Here’s wishing all of us a fairy tale year of hope and happiness. 

You know, we can create our own happiness and luck without waiting around for some magical being to do it for us. 

Julie
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Happy Birthday Snow Globes
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Vintage Snow Globes
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
For this project I used vintage Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs birthday cake toppers. 
Making Vintage Snow Globes
Here are my teenagers talking on the telephone.
I keep my snow globes all over my house.  Here they are in my kitchen.
These are two of my favorites from the 60’s.  Teenagers talking on the telephone.  I’ve got the girl in the snow globe and the boy sitting on top. 
My Ballerinas
I love these!  They are simple birthday cake toppers that I glued onto lids of jars and added the water and the glitter.  Reminds me of Christmas. 
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The Start of the Project
The Craft Table
This is where all creativity starts.  The craft table.  Always lay all your materials out in front of you then just let the magic begin. 
All that you need to make the snow globes are plenty of jars, a good waterproof glue, some figurines to glue into the jar lids, some colorful glitter and lots of water.  Easy!
I’m always in my element when I am working with my hands.
Here are a few that I have assembled. 
I Adore these vintage Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs figurines.
This one is MINE!  Isn’t she pretty?  I glued her to a vintage English bone china butter pat plate so that it looked as though she were standing on a pedestal of sorts.  I added a paper flower to the top and pink glitter inside.  I placed her on a candle stand.
I think the jars I selected were perfect for Snow White and the Evil Queen.  Red glitter surrounds the evil queen.  When you shake her up all the red glitter swirls around her and it looks as though she is angry and conjuring up a spell. 
My vintage Snow White dwarfs are inside the jars and my more modern day dwarfs are either on top or beside the jars.
In Addition to the glitter and the paper flowers I also bought some fabric accessories for the snow globes.  Some beading and some fabric rick-rack to place around the snow globes. 
Gordon helping me.  He is the best husband, always getting involved with all my fun projects. 
Happy Crafting,
Julie
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Making Pedestal Plates
This was such a fun project to work on.  It started out of a need to find cake platters for the holidays and for my birthday.  I couldn’t find anything that I liked.  I don’t like all the modern looking ones so I was scouring thrift stores and Goodwill for vintage looking ones.  But to no avail, so I decided to just make my own. 
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Here’s How
All My Supplies
All you need for this project are some pretty plates and/or platters, candlestick holders, and some glue.  Here I am using a hot glue gun.  There are many types of glue that you can use as well. 
The “Pedestals”
Every one of these I found at either Goodwill or thrift stores.  I only paid about a dollar or two a piece.  Lovely, aren’t they? 
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This beautiful nut or candy dish belonged to my grandmother.  It’s cut glass so I paired it with this cut glass candle holder.  I used it for my birthday.  It was lovely.
Nice, huh?
It looks like it belongs together. 
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I found this plate at Goodwill.  It is the same pattern that my grandmother had in her kitchen.  When I saw it I just had to have it.  Now it sits in my kitchen holding some bananas.
Every time I look at this pedestal I think of my grandmother. 
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When I saw this plate it just reminded me of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  When I turned it over it says, “Royal Song, Fine China, Elizabeth’.  Queen Elizabeth?  Regardless, I love it!
Here is the plate. 
It looked lovely for my vintage Show White birthday.
I also made the pedestal plate above, it holds Snow White’s apple.
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Here are more that I made.
A souvenir plate from my home state of Georgia.
The plates and platters that I made for my birthday ended up looking so pretty and elegant. 
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Here is one of my favorite pedestal platters that I made from a large glass platter and what looks like to be a mini punch bowl bottom.  Whatever it is, it looks wonderful together and is very sturdy for holding something pretty big and heavy. 
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Mine and Gordon’s Souvenir Birthday Plates
I found both of these plates at Goodwill.  Georgia and Pennsylvania.  I was born in Georgia, and Gordon was born in Pennsylvania.  I had to buy these.  So I did.  I then picked out two very special candle sticks for me to glue on our special birthday plates.  Gordon gets a pewter one that looks like it could have come out of Colonial Williamsburg and  I got a pink cut glass one. 
I hot glued the candle stick to each plate.  Looks so great!
Gordon’s Birthday Pecan Pie
So nice.
Julie
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Green and Yellow

When we first moved into our house several years ago we had planned on replacing our green wooden front door with something etched in glass. After all this is Florida.

A glass door would have looked wonderful. But as we lived with this front door I decided that I liked it just the way it is. But I did want to expand on the theme of green and I came up with the idea to make my own ‘stained glass window.’ See photo below.

Our house is a peach color but I wanted something very bright and cheerful for our front entryway leading to our front door. The window is not stained glass. It is something that Gordon and I created and painted ourselves. The idea was hatched out of a need for privacy here. I can’t tell you how many times that we would be in our living room and then see someone right outside our window looking in. We get lots of solicitors patrolling our neighborhood and leaving their flyers on our doors. I do have a “No Soliciting” sign on my door but I don’t think your average person even knows what that means. Or else they have absolutely no respect for our wishes. Either way, the idea for this window was born.

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Faux stained glass window that I did with glass paints.

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This is a project that my husband Gordon and I did together.  Gordon designed it and I painted it with glass paints.

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Gordon placed the ‘Gallery Glass Gold Redi Lead’ into place to form our pattern and then I used the glass paints to paint in between the lines. Not hard at all, just a bit time consuming. I can’t even remember how many layers of paint that I used but it was several.

We love the finished results.

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Julie’s Window

The view from inside our home.
All light and bright and cheery.

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I looked for stained glass window photos online to get ideas. This is a project that we want to do again on another window in our house. But don’t hold your breath because it won’t be anytime soon. Our project list is quite long for now. But I did want to introduce you to something beautiful that you can make yourself and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a stained glass window.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Gold Redi Lead Adhesive

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Gallery Glass paints


Here are some of the stick on designs that we used for our window. I do advise that you buy yourself a book on how to get started as it can be very tedious and time consuming. Some designs do come in a kit. We bought all of these supplies at Micheal’s several years ago.

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Always sign your work.

 

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