Pinspiration Sunday: Upcycled Book into Pumpkin

Since my best friend, Angela, and I raided a yard sale scooping up a ton of old Reader’s Digest books, I’ve been looking for projects I could do with them. Making a pumpkin seemed like a really great idea…at the time….I only say that because it’s a long tedious project. Just like my recycled book into keepsake box, this involves a lot of time cutting pages with an xacto knife.

Well anyways…let’s get started, shall we? First things first gather your supplies

I used:

Old Reader’s Digest book

Pattern from BHG—cut out

Valspar's La Fonda Copper Spray Paint

Acrylic Spray Sealant

Cinnamon stick

Burlap

Tattered Angel’s Glimmer mist

Lace/ribbon

Hot glue and gun

First I removed the cover and binding from my book (and put it away for safe keeping so I could do something with it later on). 

Next put my pattern on the book, traced it and started cutting away…this takes FOREVER…and with my RA, it didn’t feel so good on my wrist…but after awhile (for me I did it in stages over many days) you cut through all the pages and you have something that looks like this:

Now it’s time to start hot gluing pages. First, you want to glue the first and last pages together to make the pumpkin fully round. Next, you take a strip of hot glue along the binding, top to bottom, throughout the book. This helps separate the pages a little to make the pumpkin fuller. 

Space between the first and last page--glue these together

Start gluing between pages at the binding--make it full all the way around---fill in gaps

After, I did this, I sprayed the entire thing with my orange spray paint. I tried to separate pages so that the color would get on the inside as well…I was covered in paint by the end but the pumpkin looked good. I let that dry overnight. Then I carefully separated any pages that got stuck together from the paint and I added more hot glue along the binding to help separate pages as needed. Then I sprayed the pumpkin with my acrylic sealer. After that dried it was time to add the finishing touches. 

I took a cinnamon stick and broke it in half, and stuck one half in the center opening of the pumpkin top. I had some burlap leaves on hand that I made up a while ago using mod podged burlap and Tim Holt’s tattered leaves sizzix die. My leaves were in neutral colors so I decided to glimmer mist it using Tattered Angels leapfrog glimmer mist.

 Once that dried (I hurried it along with my heating tool), I hot glued it into place. I finished it off with a piece of lace ribbon that I tied around the pumpkin’s stem.

And there you have it…a pumpkin upcycled from a book! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Thanks for stopping by!

Nothing Gold Can Stay Printable Mini Album Kit Winner

The winner of my Autumn Printable Mini is...

Arplytag

Congrats! I will be in touch so we can arrange receiving your album kit. Thanks everyone. Keeping checking back for my next printable mini album release and giveaway!

Don't Forget! Fall Mini Album Giveaway This Saturday

I just wanted to remind everyone of the FREE FALL MINI ALBUM GIVEAWAY! You can see this album on this post. For this giveaway, you get the printable (already printed out for you...unless you want the download for FREE!), plus the chipboard, some glue and maybe a few other things I can throw in ;) To enter all you have to do is FOLLOW THIS BLOG. I will pick the winner this weekend. If you are interested in purchasing this album, please visit my Etsy shop where you can purchase the download for $10. Good Luck, everyone!Thanks for stopping by!

FREE Printable: Spooky Halloween Banner

Hello everyone! I wanted to share with you this Halloween banner I made...and I'm giving it to you for FREE (my favorite "F" word)!!!! Here's the banner...I'm not too sure where I'm going to officially hang it yet, but I have about a week until I will start decorating for Halloween so hopefully by then I'll figure it out.

I printed mine out on brown/cardboard looking card stock that I had on hand. I bought a 50 sheet pack from Michael's awhile back. I used my crop-a-dile to punch holes on each side of the banner pieces and strung them up with black ribbon. And you know me, I inked my edges even more...I love the grungy look...especially for HALLOWEEN! This banner can be printed on any color paper you want or you could also print it on white and you could glimmer mist it, which would look pretty cool. 

Now you can download your copy of the printable PDF by clicking HERE. Have fun with it! And as always, thanks for stopping by!

Pinspiration Sunday: Plastic Drawer Re-do

I found this pin to re-do a plastic drawer stand. I've had this pink plastic drawer since I was in college. It in no way goes with anything in our house. So this was the perfect opportunity to make it fit. Here's what I started with. 

The fronts are actually covered by card envelopes with my name on them. As you can see...the top one had something in the drawer that leaked at one time...did I swap it out? Nope! But that's okay, I'm making it up for it now.

Here's how I started mine. First I took out the drawers. Then I wiped the entire pink section down (it was pretty gross with caked on dust :^/). Next, I sanded over a few areas that were scratched and wiped the dust away. Then I sprayed the entire thing down with Valspar's Plastic Primer which I purchased from Lowe's for about $5. And I allowed that to dry completely.

Next I took my pretty in pink drawer stand out to our concrete slab, put some plastic under it and sprayed it with that beautiful La Fonda Copper by Valspar spray paint I used on my thrift store finds seen here. I gave it 2 coats and allowed it to completely dry in between. 

Next, it was time for the drawers. They had to be emptied and wiped down as well. Then I taped off the front with paper and masking tape. 

Then I sprayed it with the plastic primer and after it dried I sprayed all the outside of the drawers with white spray paint. I allowed that to dry over night. The next day I sprayed them with a sealant and again allowed it to dry completely. Then I removed the tape and paper.

Now it was time for the paper. I bought some digital paper awhile back and I used one from that to make these drawer covers. I printed out 3 sheets. Next I applied Mod Podge to the inside front of the drawers like this:

Then I pressed and smoothed the paper to the drawer front

I allowed them to dry completely. Then I cut the excess paper off the top. I finished off by applying another coat of mod podge to the back of the paper. Here's the finished project again.

 I would recommend using a lighter colored paper to decorate the drawers. As you can see in mine there are a few areas that appear lighter because the mod podge wasn't as thick there so it pulled a little bit away from the drawer. After mine turned out like this, I took a closer look at the original pin (seen below) and realized the same thing happened on that one. But I still like the way it turned out. A much greater improvement from the beginning.

Here's the original drawer re-do from Simply Living that I saw on Pinterest:

Hope you enjoyed this makeover. If you try this project out, let me know how yours turned out! Thank you so much for stopping by.

DIY Fall Printable Art to Canvas

I'm still in the process of collecting more Fall decorations. So I thought I would search for a Fall printable. A quick and easy project. I found this really cute and FREE printable that you can download from over at Make It Create.

I decided to make this like I did my transfer an image to canvas that I did awhile back. The only thing I had to different for this project was flip the image so that the words would be facing correctly on the finished project. I did that by using the FREE photo editing software, GIMP. 

It was so easy...all I had to do was download the image, flip it, print it and follow the steps from my previous post. This was my finished project:

Thanks for stopping by!

Nothing Gold Can Stay Release and GIVEAWAY!

My Fall themed printable mini album is ready for purchase! I'm so super excited about this mini. It's great for fall...and pretty much anything else. You can purchase this printable album at my Etsy shop called Ellie's Albums & More for only $10! I'm also doing another GIVEAWAY!!!! WHOO HOO!!! I'm going to giveaway a kit to making this album. I will include all the printouts, the chipboard and probably even some glue and string! You just put it together however you want! To enter to win just follow this blog and I will choose a winner on September 28th. Good Luck!!!!  Below is the video of the album and how to bind it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Thanks for stopping by!!!!

Winner of the Budding Romance Mini

Hello, everyone. I'm so sorry I missed posting the winner yesterday. I have been sick for a few days and had several visits to the ER. I'm still recovering but I don't want to leave anyone hanging, wondering who the winner is to my first ever giveaway. The winner is...

The Girl Who Went to Texas!

Congrats!

To see what The Girl Who Went to Texas won, check out the YouTube Video which shows you the album and the printable which you can buy from my Etsy shop for only $7.

 I'm almost finished with a Fall inspired printable mini album so keep checking back for that. Once I've completed it, I will have another giveaway for that too. Thank you everyone, for stopping by!