It Helps If You Can See It

I've been trying to organize my craft supplies lately, and I've learned one very, very important lesson: if you can't see something, such as a great piece of fabric you bought 2 years ago, then it will continue gathering dust while you spend hours a day looking on Pinterest for a Muse.  But I also came to this important lesson through my mom.

It's beginning to be actual Fall here in Northwest GA now, and the leaves are beginning to fall.  My mom was raking leaves in the yard of their new farm, and burning them once the pile was large enough.  She was using a rake, thank God, because when she went back to stir the pile and make sure it was a controlled burn, a black snake jumped out at her!!  It wasn't poisonous, but still, it scared her so badly she said she went from the yard to the porch in 2 steps!  She didn't know she'd raked a snake until it was too late.

So this story, along with this very awesome idea of Ashley Connelly on The Creative Place, I made my own version of a frame and twine inspiration board.  I plan to use it to display fabric swatches, craft ideas and inspirational "crafty" sayings. 

I happened to have a large picture frame where the glass had broken.  I measured the sides and made the decision to create my twine lines every 2 inches all the way around.  Ashley used nails and tied her twine, but this frame is most likely plastic, so I went with the good old hot glue gun and burned fingers route. 

Here's the finished frame, it'll help my explanation make sense.  I've not written "tutorials" before.

I marked where the lines should lay and started gluing all the way up one side (let's call it north, for my sake.)  I then moved onto the adjacent side (east) and glued twine lengths there as well.  To connect the east twine to the opposite side, I pulled the twine as taunt as I could and made sure the glue had a good hold (hence the burned fingers.)  For the last (south) side, I braided the twine in and out of the east/west lines and again made the twine as taunt as I could.

Now, I love my glue gun, I really do.  But there are times when it fails me, and I did not want this to be one of those times.  So as a precaution, to keep the twine from popping off, I glued a long piece of twine all the way around the frame (on the lip where the glass would normally sit) covering the ends of the twine, giving it one more layer of stay-put-it-ness.

The back, nice and smothered in glue

Another view of the back, for perspective

Leaning against some cardboard, waiting for me to decide where to hang it

Wow, I didn't realize those little metal tag thingies were so noticeable, I'm going to break them off, and get to swatch clipping!

Oh, and the other thing I've made today (so far) is a headband with rolled flowers.  I used the tutorial from Craft Snob except I didn't sew any of mine.  Did you know my sewing machine hates me?  It does.  I can hand sew a few stitches, that's about it.  That may be why I'm co-dependent on my glue gun....  Anyway, normal headbands from the store always slip up or off my head, so I took one that almost fit, added a couple more inches and voila!  It really was the easiest thing ever!

It's blurry, sorry, totally not used to taking pictures of my own head

The other night I made a monogram in all my favorite colors.  It's now hanging together with my lace frame here:

Chocolate brown, turquoise, lime green, pastel pink and cream--all against the unfortunate and hideous mustard wall.  Eventually I'll give in and paint this darn room, but in the meantime, I'm killing it with as much stuff I can hang on the walls as possible. :)

So, that's about it for today.  Thanks for hanging out for a bit!