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.
Oh, well.
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.
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.
You know, we can create our own happiness and luck without waiting around for some magical being to do it for us.
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.
Faux stained glass window that I did with glass paints.
This is a project that my husband Gordon and I did together. Gordon designed it and I painted it with glass paints.
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.
And apparently so does this redi-lead company because they posted my window on their website. Check it out.
Julie’s Window
The view from inside our home.
All light and bright and cheery.
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
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.
Always sign your work.
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