"Affair of the Heart" Craft Fair Weekend!!

I finally had the opportunity to check out the "Affair of the Heart" craft fair in OKC. It was so much fun! I was invited to go by the ladies in my craft group who happen to have an extra ticket. We got lots of great ideas for upcoming projects and had a really good time. We did lots of walking as we visited most of the six buildings.

These are pictures of some of the things I purchased at the craft fair. I mostly purchased from the antiques dealers. I bought these things from a vendor who said this would be her last year at the fair so she had great deals! She used to make stained glass lampshades so this cherub lamp base was one of many she collected over the years for the lampshades. I love it! The rose candle holder was only $1! Finally, I bought the box with the globes because I liked that it was masculine looking which is nice since most of the things I purchase have pretty feminine shapes. I thought it would be great to keep my cell phone and keys in. Overall, we had a great weekend!

First Crafting Group Meeting!

This Sunday was the first day our crafting group was able to meet. I led the first meeting and taught Donna Dewberry's one-stroke painting method. It was a bit of a challenge to get out of my head and try as best I could to explain what I was doing as I was painting. I recently taught myself how to paint using the one-stroke method by checking out books from my public library and by watching videos of Donna on You Tube. I hope everyone had fun and hopefully learned something new. Everyone has promised to send me pictures of their finished projects so that I can post them on this blog. The pictures above are some of the projects I finished this weekend. I have the most trouble with the leaves. I guess I will have to keep practicing. Thanks to everyone for coming and I am looking forward to the next time we meet! Next time someone else will lead the group and I will get to learn something new!

I love Painted Vintage Tole Trays!

Painted Vintage Tole Trays have been a favorite of mine for a long time! Aren't these gorgeous? Since I cannot afford to buy them right now, I have taught myself to paint using Donna Dewberry's One-Stroke Method. Here is a sample of a flower I painted on a trash can a few months ago.
I'm excited to try my hand at painting my own beautiful tole trays. I plan to paint a few to sprinkle around my house. I have a small craft group meeting at my house this weekend and this will be our first project. I think it will be fun! By the way, these trays are on sale right now on E-bay. My favorite is the one with the robin's egg blue background!

DIY Fall Topiaries

Ta da!! Here is my most recent project. I made these fall topiaries a few weeks ago, I just hadn't had time to take pictures. These artifical floral topiaries are almost 4 feet tall. Each topiary only cost around $10 in materials! Not bad cost for the size.

I permanently attached the green roses but made the sunflowers and fall leaves removable. I will probably switch these with red roses, pine cones and berries for the Holidays. The bows can also easily be switched out according to the seasons.

I purchased most of the materials at the Dollar Tree except for the sunflowers and fall leaves which I purchased at Michael's. Making the base for a topiary is the most challenging part. It's especially challenging if you are trying to save some money and are trying to recycle materials like I did. Here are the instructions for the bases I made.

First, I applied a stain to the basket by mixing dark brown acrylic paint with a little bit of red and diluting with water. After it dried, I used a small empty coffee can (11 oz) and placed it in the center of the basket. Then I stuffed grocery paper bags around it to wedge it in place. After that, I hot glued the empty cardboard ribbon spool to the bottom of the can. Then I grabbed the dowel (also painted brown) and applied hot glue to the end and glued it into the spool's pre-existing hole. I wedged more strips of grocery paper bags into the coffee can to stabilize the dowel. The rest was easy. I filled the basket with more crumpled strips of paper sacks until I got about 1/10 from the top. Then I simply hot glued spanish moss on top of that.

That was the hardest part of making these topiaries.

The actual floral ball is easy and fun to make. Simply hot glue moss to a round floral foam and apply the chosen flowers with hot glue or cut the stem to size using wire cutters and stick them into the foam so that they are removable. Here is a simple way to make the cheapest round floral foam out of a $1 square foam. This was a fun project but a bit time consuming. I love that I can change these according to season! I am pretty happy with the results! What do you think?

Romantic Movie Weekend

When I was in hight school I started reading Jane Eyre and never finished it. I really thought I could relate in some way to plain Jane since I was plain, painfully shy and akward in high school. It has been on my must read classics list ever since. I figured that now as an adult I have a better attention span and can get through the novel so I gave it another try. I will admit, it has taken me a while to get through mostly because of a lot of distractions--like my many craft projects. But I finally finished it this week. I loved the novel! It is now one of my all time favorites. Next, I checked out several versions of it from my public library. I decided on the latest BBC version with Toby Stephens and newcomer Ruth Wilson. It was soooooo good! I cried a couple of times. I highly recommend this version of Jane Eyre. I liked it so much that it is now also one of my favorite movies. The script does deviate a little from the novel, but I think that you almost have to do that when you are making a movie from a novel. The best thing about this movie is the performances from the two lead actors. So good! You can feel Jane and Mr. Rochester's passion brought to life in their performances. By the way Toby Stephens--what a hottie!

On the other hand, I did not like the Timothy Dalton 1983 version. I must admit I didn't watch it entirely I just skipped to the key parts of the story to see if the passion expressed in the book would be conveyed well by the actors. In my opinion, it was not--it was way too much like a melodramatic soap opera--and also had the look of one. Still, I figure I will watch this entire movie as well some day because many Jane Eyre fans claim it is their favorite, but not this weekend. Anyway, that is what I did this weekend. Now I am trying to get Brian (my fiancee) to watch Jane Eyre with me. He said he would, although he is not a fan of period movies. I think he may like this one because it is not cheerful and bubbly like Jane Austen novels, which I love, but he does not.