Studio 27 - By Jennifer Adams: August 2024

Friday, August 30, 2024

Decorating The Strawberry Patch

As part of our landscaping since moving in we have put in a vegetable garden, mulberry tree and (so far) a strawberry patch. We have beds ready for cherry, raspberry, blackberry and blueberry bushes as well but those starts won't arrive until a couple of weeks from now. Our strawberry starts came this past spring and my daughter had a great idea to decorate the patch with painted rocks. Read on to see how you can make some yourself:

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We started our project by collecting a few strawberry shaped rocks as well as some that were more evenly round.

The strawberry shapes we painted in red and the rounds in green - both using acrylic paints.

For the strawberries we added greenery at the top and black polka-dots for the seeds. I left my dots plain black while my daughter added a bit of yellow on top of hers. The round green rocks we painted white strawberry flowers on and after everything was dry I sprayed both sides of each rock with a clear coat to protect the designs.

Here are how the rocks looked when we placed them.

The tiny round pans in the strawberry bed and hanging from the fence are vintage Jell-O molds. I'll share more about that project at a later time.

And here is how the strawberry patch is looking now - at this point you have to look closely to be able to see our painted rocks among the foliage! When we received the strawberry starts there were just 10 tiny green leaf clumps with roots. I planted them evenly spaced around the circular bed and they have already completely taken over in just a few short months. They did flower and berry in the late spring, but since they were just babies we only got about 5 berries. Next year should be better as now there are over 100 plants and they are about 4 times their original size already!

Here is a link to the strawberry variety that we ordered from Gurneys. This seed & nursery company is a favorite of ours for the quality and prices. I especially love that you can put in your zone to search plants that will work in your climate. They also wait and ship the plants that you order until it's safe to plant them outside in your region.

And that's our decorated strawberry patch.

I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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Do you like the convenience of crafting or organizing with instantly available digital downloads?

Check out this week's features from my Etsy shop:

Strawberry Vanilla Printable Art

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Kitchen SVG Bundle

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This post was featured at:

Craft Schooling Sunday

Friday, August 23, 2024

House Gnomes: Dining Room

Welcome back to the miniature room series, this week the dining room:

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Again starting with a thrifted shadow box, I painted the box in beige with a gray floor.

Using craft sticks I framed out a fireplace...

...and then a shelf. I used hot glue to keep everything in place.

I painted the furniture pieces in white and let dry.

Once dry I accessorized the room with miniature food items (some Barbie, some slime charms) on the shelf and a collection of potted plants. The topiaries are Dollar Tree miniatures that you can find in the spring when they put out their garden gnome collection. The rest of the pots are Barbie containers that I painted gold and glued in small bits of faux greenery.

The mirror above the fireplace is a frame sticker where I kept the paper backing of the middle in place and colored it gray with a marker. The fireplace I first pained black, then layered the red flame detail and the yellow flame detail on top. The tiny logs are just sticks from the yard hot glued into place.

The ceiling light is a button and I stuck another button in with the plants on the floor.

And that's my miniature dining room.

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Want to see more?

House Gnome Door Tour

Miniature Laundry Room

Miniature Breakfast Room

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to miniature post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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Do you like the convenience of crafting or organizing with instantly available digital downloads?

Check out this week's features from my Etsy shop:

Fresh Muffins Printable

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Meal Planning/ Grocery List Printables

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This post was featured at:

Handmade Monday

Friday, August 16, 2024

DIY Cracked TV Repair With Vinyl

Have you ever had a TV go out because of the light strip? Everything else works perfectly; power, sound, etc, but the picture can't show just because there isn't any lighting? That's what happened to this TV that used to belong to my parents. They went ahead and purchased a new TV and this one was sitting to the side waiting for recycling. I decided that it can't be too hard to replace the light strip, right?

Well yes and no. It's not really that hard, though definitely a pain in the butt. Unfortunately during the process I cracked the screen on the upper right corner!!! Not one to give up, especially after I had spent an entire evening getting the damn thing apart (and back together), I decided to come up with a DIY fix. Read on to see how I used my Cicut cutting machine to make a vinyl sticker:

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Here is the TV after I got it back together, with the crack in the upper corner of the screen. These photos show how it looks when the TV is turned off.

Note: The fix I'm sharing here only works if the crack in question is on the edges of the screen. If your screen is cracked in the middle then you are just going to have to replace the screen or the TV altogether. Luckily I didn't break it that badly!

And this picture shows the splotch when turned on. It's not super huge, and maybe some people wouldn't mind at all, but for me it's the kind of thing that would bug me every time I looked at the screen!

After measuring the damaged area, I used Cricut Design Space to play around with a shape that would look nice on the TV and also hide the blemish. It was a little difficult, but eventually I figured a sort of frame shape with a bit of trailing ivy would work.

Note: The crack that is pictured here is smaller than the vinyl shapes that I ended up using. That's because when I first applied the vinyl I ended up with bumps that I couldn't smooth out. When I attempted to remove the bumpy vinyl, I cracked the TV further! It was such a frustrating process! I ended up cutting just the ivy section a little bigger and the crack was covered completely. But in case you make an attempt at a similar project learn from me - be really careful to apply the vinyl smoothly the first time as pulling it up may cause further damage to an already vulnerable surface.

Here are the shapes that I came up with; two corner pieces and then the ivy. I decided to use two corners (even though there was only one crack) to give balance to the design and that ivy trail covers the part of the crack that sticks out towards the middle of the screen.

In this photo the screen is showing a you tube selection - the text isn't covered so much that it causes confusion for the viewer.

Here is how the vinyl looks on a mostly dark screen.

Need a good show to get into? Check out Magnificent Century on you tube (English subtitles). This Turkish production is a historical drama featuring the Ottoman empire and centers around Hurrem's rise from Ruthenian peasant to captured slave to the legal wife of Sultan Suleman. To be fair, the show is actually about Sultan Suleman's life from the time he took the throne until his death, but Hurrem is way more interesting 😄

Here is a link to a you tube page with all 139 Magnificent Century episodes.

Here is a link to the historical background of Hurrem.

And here is a shot of how the vinyl worked out with subtitles in action.

And here is how the TV looks when not in use. I think it was a perfect fix and loved how it turned out. My kids and husband though disagree, they think I should have just left it alone. It's a good thing I'm the only one who watches anything in this part of the house I guess 😆

And that's how I 'repaired' my cracked TV screen with vinyl.

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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Do you like the convenience of crafting or organizing with instantly available digital downloads?

Check out this week's features from my Etsy shop:

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Honey Jar Printable

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Cricut Crafting Organization Linen Closet Laundry Room

Linen Closet Organization Labels SVG Bundle

Friday, August 9, 2024

House Gnomes: Breakfast Room

I'm continuing my tour of the house gnome miniature scenes, this week with the breakfast room:

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This tiny room is going to be installed in my real breakfast room, and I wanted it to have a similar look with the furniture and accessories.

Just like in the miniature laundry room post, I first painted my shadow box in beige with a gray floor. Next I added in a popsicle stick table.

This grouping of photos shows you how I used more popsicle sticks to create the large shelf.

Here is the room with the furniture in white acrylic.

Once the paint was dry I decorated the scene with a collection of miniatures.

The plant pots are repainted Barbie containers with bits of faux greenery glued in, the juice set is from Hobby Lobby's miniature section and the mini breads are from an Amazon listing for 'slime charms' (here is a similar listing). All of the wall shelves are popsicle sticks and the 'mirror' above the gold shelf is a sticker. I have a set of stickers that look like tiny picture frames - this is the middle of one that I colored gray with marker. Just like in the mini laundry room, I used a button for the ceiling light and a couple of accessories. And that's my miniature breakfast room.

Want to see more?

House Gnome Door Tour

Miniature Laundry Room

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to miniature post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

**********

Do you like the convenience of crafting or organizing with instantly available digital downloads?

Check out this week's features from my Etsy shop:

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Sunday Breakfast Printable

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Spice Jar Labels SVG Bundle

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This post was featured at:

Craft Schooling Sunday

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New Upcycle Ideas

Friday, August 2, 2024

DIY Washtub Curtain

My laundry room has a large wash tub with a great space underneath that allows for extra storage. Wanting to make the area look a little nicer I decided to DIY a custom curtain, check it out:

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Here is how the washtub space looked before, with stacks of food stored underneath.

Remember that Dollar Tree hook and loop tape that I used to fasten the door on my miniature laundry room gnome house? Well it came in handy here too. The tape is adhesive backed and one side I ran all along the top of the washtub.

The corresponding side I attached to my curtain fabric. Once a flat, twin sized sheet (thrifted for $1.99), I cut the sheet so that the hemmed side would be the bottom. The cut side I folded over, ironed to stay in place and then stuck on the tape.

The adhesive of the tape was great to keep the tape straight upon my fabric, but not as strong as I wanted it to be. I went ahead and ran a stich down the middle of the tape to make sure that the tape and fabric couldn't come apart. This was not easy to do by hand because the adhesive kept gumming up my needle and making it hard to push through the fabric. I didn't want to risk gumming up my sewing machine though, so I carried on. A solution would be to use non adhesive backed hook and loop tape, but I was determined to finish the project with what I already had on hand.

Once my stitching was done I simply joined the two pieces of hook and loop tape to hang up the curtain. And there you have it, an easy and inexpensive washtub curtain that hides extra storage.

Want to see more of the laundry room?

Here is how the room looked when we moved in, here is the desk that I made over into a laundry room table, here are the thrifted cabinets that went up above, here is the faux pantry wall display and here is the fake bake pantry shelf next to the washtub.

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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