Sunday, Sand and Scissors...

Hello! Welcome to Small Town Sundays. Sunday is often a day that I relax, and the whole town shuts down.  I take this time to spend with family and do the occasional craft:) I have been a little busy lately though. Oh how I have missed writing here and being a part of the blogging community. It has been too long. Between moving, and then going on a much needed vacation to Oregon for two weeks, we are finally back and all settled into our new home. We got to go to the beach though, which I have missed. Here is Khloe eating touching sand for the first time:) She loved it:


Here is another fun picture of the Newport bridge in Oregon when the fog was rolling in... mmmmmm the beach...

We were only in the house for two days, and then we left for vacation. So it was killing me to come home to a dirty house, stacked to the ceiling with boxes. I turned 26 yesterday, and we wanted to have some friends over. I decided to make it the deadline for us to be unpacked. (It is so hard to do with a little one.) So I spent a good part of my birthday day trying to get the house all cleaned up for guests, and it payed off. I now feel like I can live in the house and not just be stressed out by it :)

We have been busy too. We have painted three rooms and did a little board and batten makeover ( pictures of both to come VERY soon.) I am excited to start a new fun little series called ' Mantle Monday's' Every Monday I am going to try and show my (new lovely) mantle with different decor, or showcase other inspiring mantles around my town and blogosphere.Stay tuned for tomorrows' very first Mantle Monday!

For today I thought that I would share a little craft project that I did one Sunday a while ago. It is a knock- off of something that I saw in a craft store somewhere. I like it and wanted to make my own.  I saw it for sale in the store for $58.00 !!! I made mine for $12.50!!


Please excuse the horrible pictures, these are the only ones that I had and I didn't have a nice camera back in the day when I made this ;)

 Wanna DIY??? (It is a little bit of work but super cheap!!)

Materials:

 6 Picture frames- of different thickness/ design to spell 'family'
1 longer picture frame- for family name if you want it..
Spray Paint- in color of choosing
hot glue/ glue sticks
sawtooth hangers for each frame

* if you have a cricut. Simply cut out your letters. I don't so the next materials are what I used instead.
exacto knife
contact paper- in color of frame
silver sharpie or gel pen


1.) Buy the picture frames. I got some in different thickness and colors. I tried to make it as inexpensive as possible. I bought all of the frames at goodwill, and re- painted them with black spray paint. I laid down cardboard to paint on...

2.)I then took the backing to the frames, and got rid of them. I cleaned the glass.

3.)  This is the step where we make the letters.If you have a cricut that is great. Use that. and skip to step 6.

I do not, and wanted the look of vinyl. so I got creative. Here is what I did:

I went online to 1001 free fonts.com. You can find it HERE. I chose a font that I liked. This site allows you to preview what the font would look like on any word you would like (up to a certain length.) I clicked  custom preview:

I typed in one letter at a time...

I copy and pasted the letter into  paint, and re- selected it and pasted it into word, and made it really big. If you don't do the paint thing first, the white area around the letter is huge, and you can not re-size it to be very big.

then copy paste into word....

Then re-size, big... it is ok if it is a little blurry.

this will be your "stencil". Print it out and cut it...I printed mine in green so your could see it against the black contact paper in the next step...

each letter takes up one sheet of computer paper

I also did full words for " the conley" and made sure it fit in my frame after being  printed...



4.) After you have cut around each letter, including the voids, in the middle of "a" (and anything in your last name if you decide to do it), get out your contact paper. Mine is black, I found it at Michaels for 5 bucks.

Lay your letter on top of the contact paper and trace it with your silver pen, or really any pen that is visible on the paper...

*******IMPORTANT*******
LAY THE LETTER ON TOP OF THE CONTACT PAPER BACKWARDS. THIS IS IMPORTANT. DO NOT LAY IT DOWN NORMAL LIKE WE WOULD READ IT MAKE SURE IT IS UPSIDE DOWN!!!

5.) Then cut this out. I used scissors and an exacto- knife.

6.) They peel it off of the paper backing on the contact paper, and stick the sticky side of the letter to the back side of the glass. This will put your tracing on the back side, and it gives the front of the glass a nice smooth appearance. make sure to smooth it out with a credit card to get out any air bubbles, and make it really smooth.

7.) I then glued the glass into each frame using hot glue, making the frames backless. I nailed a saw tooth hanger on the back of each frame, and hung them up!!!

here is what is looked like all done. ' The Conley' family part took the longest because it was all connected. It turned out ok though,not perfect, but I like it. I think another fun idea to hang it would be to put some ribbon behind each saw tooth and hang the ribbon onto the nails in the wall. Dunno, could be really cute...

 I love that it only cost me $12.00, and I have lots of paper left over. Well thanks for stopping by see ya tomorrow!!

-Amanda
 linking up :

Tatertots and Jello