Like most homes in the west built past 1980, my house is filled with all kinds of random niches. These thing just plague homes I’ve seen through California and Utah, I don’t have too much experience with new homes outside those two states, but within my experience I can’t tell you how many people I know struggling to find something to fill the big random hole cut into their wall.

For the past two years I’ve been looking at a collection of vases and other tchotchkes, but my problem was always scale. At it’s tallest point this niche is four feet high. A vase that big is going to run me $100 easy, and that’s just for one. Since this isn’t the house we plan on staying in forever, the thought of moving in a few years and being stuck with $500 worth of 4 ft tall vases was really unappealing to me. But so was a big fat empty cubby hole in my wall.

I’m always inspired by solving a problem, but I have no idea where the impetus for this project began. I hadn’t seen anything that looked like this, it just seemed to pop into my head randomly one day as a way I could fill a huge space for pennies, and then throw it away in a few years without losing sleep.

Here’s what I did.

You’ll need to get a mold. You could use a balloon, but I was going for big here, so I used beach balls. For my paste I mixed together 1 part acrylic paint, 2 parts glue, and 3 parts water. You can add more paint to get the color you want, but don’t water the mix down too much. You want the whole mix to be about the consistency of acrylic craft paint.

Rip white tissue paper into chunks, and then paint the chunks onto the ball with your paste mixture. The bigger the chunks you use, the more crinkles you’ll end up with, so if you’re going for smooth then use tiny pieces.

To get that aged mottled look, I painted each piece of tissue paper on with a different color of paste mixture. I used all metallic colors, and then a green to add a little of that copper like patina effect. Let each layer dry before applying the next one. You’ll need at least four layers for it to be strong, but you could also do as many as six.

After you’ve applied your last layer, let the ball dry overnight. You could try just letting the air out of your beachball, but I ended up having to cut it out each time. Then trim up your opening so it’s nice and neat.

I have to admit, I took some shortcuts that cost me a ton of grief. Don’t skimp out on those layers, especially the bigger you go. After doing so many of these and having my whole dining room table covered for weeks, I just reached a point where I couldn’t take it anymore and called it done. I think I was able to rig it together enough to satisfy me, and I ended up digging those dents (I think it makes it look more like metal than paper mache, since these things are never seen closer than 15 feet away), but I think I would have been happier if I’d just done it right the first time.

If you don’t happen to have random holes to fill around your house, you could use this technique for making pinatas, lampshades, or for the really really cool project I’ll show you on Monday. It’s a doozy, and perfect for summer.

I’ve been meaning to share this forever, but you know, life and all.

I made a couple additions to Atti’s room in between the time he came home and the time we transitioned him into his own crib.

For starters, I made this cute little door sign. The same friend who cut all the vinyl lettering for his walls made this little vinyl cut out for me as a gift tag. So I just grabbed a little chalkboard from Michaels, painted the outside in a color from his room, slapped the vinyl on and drew the little lightening bolts with a paint pen.

Then I had to make him a mobile. I couldn’t put my little guy to sleep in his own big boy crib without something to look at.

This one came after several failed attempts with wool roving. I finally just got too impatient for wet felting and used the leftover bedding fabric to sew up some balls of different sizes with one of the 800 patterns available on line. I found a pattern I liked (can’t remember where I got it now), brought it into a Word document, and then copy/pasted until I had three different patterns I could enlarge and shrink to the size I wanted.

I strung them together with long lengths of fishing line, tying a knot at the bottom of each ball for it to sit on.

The top of the mobile is made from two wooden square-ish pieces I found in a random little craft shop nearby. I was looking for something I could use besides an embroidery hoop because anal little me just had trouble living with something that wasn’t perfect, and the little screw at the top would have driven me nuts. I found these in an aisle with a bunch of basketweaving stuff.

The only part of this project that was at all tricky was tying the mobile pieces together while keeping it balanced. I started by tying a long piece of fishing line to each corner of the bottom piece, and then letting the bottom bit rest on a table while I tied the top piece on as close to level as I could. It took a couple of tries, but I got there. Then I took all the fishing lines together, and letting the top piece rest on the table this time, I tied them altogether to create a loop, centering the bundle inside the square so it would hang right. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a few tries. Fishing line is cheap.

I’ve been meaning to write up a pattern for this quilt for Atti’s entire life, but it’s OK that I put it off because now I have it to share for a day like today – between project finishes, working on stuff I can’t share, laid up with a bum knee.

I’m sure you’ll recognize this quilt, it’s in nearly every picture I take of Atti.

Finished size is 36″ wide x 46″ high.

Here’s what you’ll need:
1 1/2 yds of light colored fabric for the large squares (if you scrimp and don’t have to worry about the orientation of the fabric, you could probably get by with 1 yard)
1 yd of fabric for the sashing and border
2 yds for backing and binding (more if you do your binding on the bias)
Assorted fat quarters to use for the letters
Fusible Web
Thread in coordinating colors

Cut 12 pieces of light colored fabric 7″ x 10 1/2″. If your fabric has a definite top and bottom to the pattern, then you’ll want to cut 6 pieces 7 x 10 1/2, and 6 pieces 10 1/2 x 7, so that you can turn them how you’ll need to without things looking funny.

Machine applique your letters onto your blocks. I start by printing my letters off on the computer. I chose a basic sans serif font, something like Ariel would work well, and increased the font size until the letters were about 4 1/2″ tall. Two of your blocks (ABC, and XYZ) will have to fit three letters instead of two, so I made those letters 3 1/2″ tall. Iron a piece of fusible web onto the fabric for the applique, and then cut out using your printout as a pattern. Iron the letters onto your block, and applique in place using a zigzag stitch set to a short stitch length. You’ll need to use a stabilizer so things don’t pucker up on you. You can shell out the cash for a fancy one, but I just always use a coffee filter here. You can see this with pictures on this tutorial.

Remember as you arrange your letters to alternate the direction of the blocks. ABC is horizontal, DE is vertical, FG is horizontal, HI is vertical, JK is horizontal, you get the idea.

Cut 24 pieces of sashing 2 1/4″ x 10 1/2″. Sew one sashing strip to the long sides of each alphabet block.

Then sew your alphabet blocks together.

Once all your blocks are together, add a 3″ border around the entire quilt top.

I kept the quilting really simple on this, mainly because it was my first try at machine quilting. I did a simple zig zag pattern on the sashing, and then inside each block I quilted around each letter.

This quilt, along with the matching bumper I made, got me so hooked on machine applique. After this I started making those burp rags, and I’m toying around with doing it on the 12 Days of Christmas tree skirt I have on the agenda. It’s one of those things that seems so much harder than it actually is. You just have to play around with your stitch settings, and then practice going around curves. By the time you’re done with this quilt, you’ll be a pro.

The majority spoke, so I went ahead and hung up my alphabet wall as I planned. I struggled and struggled to get decent photos, but the area is so wide and there’s a pillar in the middle of everything, plus all those weird angles that forced me to get creative in the first place, so here’s the best I could do.

The main focal point starts with this big canvas I painted.

Then I made up some coordinating mini canvases.

And then I mixed those with some loose wooden letters I painted up, and some framed images I made up of different font alphabets. The tiny letters are just stuck straight to the wall with little sticky glue dots.

I think it looks fantastic and I can’t stop looking at it. I think I’m going to keep my eye open for some more letters, and Anonymous had a great idea of hanging something above the door to help bring it all together, so this will probably continue to grow. The paper mockups are perfect for getting the placement right, but they were so much more visually heavy than what I wanted to hang, so the finished project looks way more subtle than I thought it was going to.

I don’t draw (yet), I don’t really paint, instead I’ve become quite proficient at cheater methods. Here’s how I made the canvases.

Start by painting the entire canvas the color you’d like your letters to be. Then print letters off the computer in the sizes and fonts you’d like to combine together. Use those printouts as patterns to cut contact paper into that shape. Peel the backing off the contact paper and stick down onto the canvas. Rub really thoroughly to get a good firm stick.

Right over the top of your contact paper, paint the color you’d like your canvas background to be.

Peel off your contact paper masks, and there you go. Something that looks like a screenprinting, so easy that anyone can do it.

I don’t plan on having any of these in the shop as of now. I’m a little bit nervous about how things are going to sell since my etsy shop has been so neglected for so long. So if this is something that interests you, you’ll have to drop me a line and I’ll whip something up before the 30th.