Author: sweetharper

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Embroidery Hoop Wreath

sweetharperLeave a comment

Happy Tuesday!

I needed to spice up my front door with a new summer wreath because the one I still had up was from Memorial Day/Fourth of July. I wanted something fun and bright!

 

Supplies I used:

1- 8 inch embroidery hoop

1- 12 inch embroidery hoop

fabric

rolling cork

hot glue/glue gun

Fiskars shears

felt for florals

 

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I found this fabric at Michaels and I think it just screams summah!

 

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I first traced out the size of fabric and rolled cork I would need for this project. The size you need is the space that will be between your embroidery hoops.

 

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Once you have cork and fabric cut out, it’s time to glue the fabric to the cork.  I just used Mod Podge, but hot glued on the very outer edges.

 

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The next step is to hot glue your hoops onto your fabric/cork. Trim the excess cork and fabric from around the edges.

 

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Add any embellishments you want to your wreath. For mine I created two felt florals and also used a wool felt ball to finish the look.

 

 

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Ta-da! I love my new wreath so much! Definitely the summer piece I was wanting for the front door!

 

 

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Let me know if you try this diy project. I’d love to see it!

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Tie-dye shirts with kids

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My kids have been wanting to tie-dye shirts for a long time, so when we sat down as a family to make our Summer Bucket List we put this down as a must do for this summer. I was always really nervous about tie-dying with small kids (messy!), but we picked up this Tulip brand tie-dye kit from Michaels Stores and it was beyond helpful!

 

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In the kit you get gloves, rubber bands, tons of different colored dyes and a guide to show you all the different ways you can twist your shirts (with the provided rubber bands) to create different patterns on your shirt. Since we were doing this with a large group of  younger kids ,we all did a simple twist with our shirts. We started with a pinch in the middle and twisted the shirt from the middle going out.

 

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The directions stated to fill water to the shown line and shake it well with the powder.

 

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We had 10 kiddos making shirts! The adults twisted the shirts for them, but the kids went to town putting the dye all over the shirts. It did get a little messy, so I recommend doing this outside. But they had so much fun!

 

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My youngest having a blast. 🙂

 

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These are my kids’ final products! I love how they are all three so different! They are so proud of their shirts and beg to wear them all the time!

 

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Have you tie-dyed anything other than shirts? I’d love to know!

xo, Nicole

 

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Easy DIY Felt Flower

sweetharperLeave a comment

Hello friends!

I love making all different types of felt florals so on today’s blog post I wanted to show an easy DIY tutorial on how to make a super simple, yet adorable felt flower.

I want to first mention, not all felts are created equal! The three nonwoven felts are 100% wool, wool blend felt and craft felt.  I could write a whole post on these felts! But the main ideas are:

  • 100% wool felt is durable, but expensive
  • Craft felt is what you would find at most craft stores. It’s cheap, thin, doesn’t come in a lot of colors and it’s made from recycled or synthetic materials like acrylic.
  • Wool blend felt is affordable and durable, like 100% wool felt. It’s made up of wool and rayon fibers and this is the felt I love to use!

 

For this project I used my Fiskars sheers, hot glue gun, Big Shot, dies and of course felt!

 

I like to use my Fiskars scissors or these Fiskars sheers when cutting my wool blend felt. I talked about it in my Favorite Products blog post why I think these sheers are amazing.

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This is my current favorite hot glue gun. I can not say enough good things about this one!

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For this project I used my Big Shot to cut out perfect circles for the flower. If you don’t have a Big Shot you can certainly use scissors to cut out your circles.

 

 

I used these framelit dies by Sizzix and chose which size circle I wanted to use.

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I knew I needed seven circles to create this flower, so I measured how big my die would be then cut my felt into the seven separate pieces my circle would fit on.

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My stack of felt.

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I then took out my Big Shot sandwiches. You can tell they’ve been well loved!

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After going through the Big Shot.

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I did one extra just in case!

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Look at that gorgeous felt! This felt feels as great as is looks!

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Here we go! Time to assemble the flower! First, fold your circle in half and lightly put hot glue near the center of the fold.

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Second, fold it again and put the hot glue long the bottom only of your felt making the sides connect.

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Squeeze glue and hold. Do this to 6 circles total. (Put two off to the side until the end.)

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Next, lay down your left over circle flat and start to lay your four folded glued pieces on top. The open parts must be facing out and the glued sides facing each other in the center as shown below.

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Glue your four pieces down.

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Grab the two glued pieces that you put aside eariler. Make one glued side face you and the other glued side face the opposite way (as shown below).

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You will glue these to the top of the flower.

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Finally start to pull your petals up to glue then all together!

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As in true mom brain fashion, I forgot to take a picture of my final flower! But here is a beautiful aqua one that is complete.

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Hope you found this tutorial helpful!

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xo, Nicole

 

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DIY Pom Pom Rug

sweetharperLeave a comment

Hey friends!

I’ve been wanting to make a diy pom pom rug for the longest time and I finally had the time to create it recently. My daughter really wanted one for her room so we made hers first. My two sons now each want one so I’ll be making a couple more I guess! 😉

What’s step one? First choose your yarn colors! You can choose as many or as few as you please. My daughter chose these colors and she didn’t do a bad job if I say so myself! You don’t have to use this particular yarn, but the one I used is Craft Smart yard from Michaels.

 

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Next step is to make the pom poms. I’ve seen people use paper towel holders to spin their yarn around, but I just used my hand. Just take the yarn and go around as many times as you wish. The more times you go around, the more fluffy the pom will turn out.

 

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Cut a piece of string and lay it on the table. Once you have your desired amount of string that you wish around your hand, cut it off and place it on your single string.

 

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Next cut open the loops. Trim your poms until they are even and the length you want. Fluff them all up!

 

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So. Many. Pom. Poms! Love it!

 

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Now it’s time to tie your pom poms to your nonslip rug underlay. I got mine at the Dollar Tree and this thing is huge! I had to cut it up to the size I needed.

 

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You can make your colors go in a random order, do a pattern or use the colors to spell out a name. This is the fun part!

 

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Make your rug any shape! My daughter and I chose to make hers a rectangle, but you can cut your underlay into any shape you want.

 

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We love it and she loves stepping out on her rug when she wakes up in the morning she says 🙂

 

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Let me know if you have made one of these before and how it turned out!

 

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Happy Fourth of July! A personal post

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Wishing you, all my readers, a very happy (and safe!) Fourth of July!

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My family – minus yours truly who is taking the photo. #momlife, right? 😉

My husband and I started dating July 4, 2002 so obviously it’s our favorite holiday. We travel to northern Iowa every July with our family to the lake house. We boat, swim, eat good food and do all the amazing things the quaint lake town has to offer. Of course, watching incredible fireworks from all around the lake tops off our 4th of July every year.

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Getting festive!

We typically vacation for a week at the lake house. Our wedding anniversary is July 7th (11 years this year!) and our ‘engagement anniversary’ is July 1st. So, we have a few good reasons to celebrate the first week of July! 🙂 I’m so happy we can share this lake tradition and celebrate it all with our kids.

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The 11th year anniversary gift is steel. Steel is known for its durability and strength. If you follow me on Instagram at Sweet Harper Designs, stop by to see what we decided for our 11th year gift. Hint: It has nothing to do with steel 😉

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HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! xo, Nicole

 

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DIY Reclaimed Wood Shelves

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We have this little corner in our kitchen and for the longest time it was bare.  Even though there wasn’t a single thing on the wall or a piece of furniture there, the space stuck out like a bare, sore thumb. I was trying to think how I could make the space practical, yet pretty as well.

My husband and I went to a local furniture store (Homemakers) and purchased a cute, little drink cart. We mainly use it as our coffee bar and it’s nice how we can keep our coffee makers (we have more than one) on it and off our counter tops.

 

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I also needed to fill the dead space above the coffee bar so I decided shelves were the best way to go. We found these two reclaimed pieces of wood that were from an old church. They are gorgeous and I love the history behind them. We cleaned them up and decided to use them.

 

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The hardware we used for this project were iron pipes, floor flanges and cap fittings (these are all for water applications, but make for an awesome shelf!).

 

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First we found the studs in the wall and measured. My husband then drilled where the  flanges would be placed.

 

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We next put the iron pipes in the flanges and then screwed on the cap fittings. Easy peasy! We put our cleaned up wood pieces on top and viola! We had instant shelves!

 

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I love these shelves so much for two reasons: First, they are high enough up my kids can not reach them! They can’t touch, move or play with mommy’s “pretties” and that is amazing of itself. Also, I love how I can switch up my decor depending on what season or holiday it is. It’s only for two shelves so it’s not overwhelming to decorate at all.

 

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Have you ever done a DIY shelving project? Let me know!

 

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My Favorite Products!

sweetharperLeave a comment

I use a lot of craft tools and supplies on the daily to create handmade signs (and just craft in general). Here are just a few of my favs!

This post contains affiliate links which will not cost you any more money but I will make a very tiny commission. This in turn helps me put money back into my business and blog.

 

 

Fiskars Razor Edge, Micro Tip, 5 inches

 

I love these scissors so much! The handles fit perfectly in my hand and it has a cushion grip. It’s very springy which makes the blades open nicely and for my hand to strain all! It gets in tight spaces and makes detailed cuts nicely. I love using these shears on my fabric and felt.

 

Surebonder Mini Detailed Glue Gun (old version)

 

 

Surebonder Mini Detailed Glue Gun (new version)

 

I have the newer version of this particular glue gun and it is incredible!  I haven’t had any issues with it dripping and the tip is tiny enough to do detailed work. It does have a stand that it comes with, even though I am guilty of just throwing my guns down because I’m usually working too fast. 😉

 

 

 

Surebonder Mini Glue Sticks

 

 

 

Oracal Oramask 813 Stencil Film

Using this particular vinyl is new for me, but it’s working out so well. I used to use Oracal 631 for my stencils with my signs, but I didn’t like the way it was pulling up paint from my signs! So frustrating! I also like the way the 813 is translucent, which helps with placing your stencil in the correct spot. Lastly, wedding with this particular vinyl is a dream! So easy.

 

 

 

Foam Paint Brush

 

 

Cricut Explore Air 2

 

I own this exact Cricut and I mainly use it for stencil cutting, even though the possibilities are endless with a Cricut! Don’t believe me, go check out Pinterest- you’ll be floored!

 

 

Cricut Mats

 

 

Cricut Tools Set

 

 

Let me know if there are any crafting tools you can’t live without!