DIY Twine-Wrapped Mason Jars

I feel like I'm a little late in joining the rustic chic party but hey better late than never right? In celebration of my latest project in the works which I shared a bit with you here, I thought I'd give these twine-wrapped mason jars a try. After all I certainly love wrapping and gluing anything I can around vases. This project was so easy peasy that you too can create your own with whatever kind of jar, twine and ribbon you want to use. The supplies are few as all you need is some glue (either crazy glue or you can use a glue gun), ribbon, mason jars, flowers and of course, lots and lots of the good stuff. Also known as twine. Oh sweet sweet twine. I heart you.

The jars I found were from Hobby Lobby as was the twine. I purchased the shorter jars since I was looking to save a bit of cash if you know what I mean, but I think taller jars would have looked really cool as the layers of twine would have crawled up the sides of the jar a little bit higher. Here are a few of the steps I took to wrap the twine around the mason jars. The most important part is obviously fastening the twine to the jar when you start and finish wrapping it around. I also made sure to wrap the twine over and across the exact point where I glued the start of the twine to the glass. This sort of anchored the twine to the glass and allowed me to wrap the twine sooner than it would have taken me if I had waited for the glue to dry. Patience? What's that?

Then you can make the twine sort of wrap around in a diagonal pattern over the first layer of twine. I did this by wrapping the twine in a figure 8 pattern over and over again until I felt like it looked right. And with that you can tie a pretty ribbon bow over both layers of twine to make the little jar flower-ready. Imagine a navy and red ribbon for a nautical them wedding? I think I may have just inspired myself. Love it when that happens.

Et voila! A few carnations, some baby's breath, a spray rose and pink stock complete the look.

Happy crafting!

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DIY Quote Canvas

Our bedroom in our cozy little apartment is rather simple. We have two closets spanning the entire one wall, a bed, a dresser, a window, a floor lamp and a sitting chair; that Andrew loves to use as a clothes hanger of some sort. It's nothing fancy and almost every single item in the room is a flea market find, a quick purchase from IKEA or hand me down. Our dresser is actually a piece my Mom salvaged from a hotel that was renovating and getting rid of all of their furniture. I used it throughout college and we've never really had the time or money to invest in new furniture. While I'm cool with hand me downs, one thing that had drove me crazy since moving in is the huge white space over our bed. We don't have a bed frame and our bedding is white, so everything looks kind of bare, and yuck.

Even our cat matches our room; how convenient right? Since I didn't want to paint another wall in our bedroom, I had an incredibly small budget and I am fairly picky about the kind of art we display I set out to make my own piece. I bought a large thin-width canvas from Hobby Lobby, four little bottles of acrylic paint in a gray shade called "Hippo Gray"some block alphabet stencils and a tube of white acrylic paint. I already had some brushes in my craft box so I had quite the selection to choose from. And I got right to work.

And after lots of careful painting, waiting for the layers to dry, picking out a phrase to stencil on the canvas that would fit (you'd be surprised how hard this was since it took me close to three days to pick something that fit), stencilling and fixing up some areas where the paint got a little messy (our fur baby thought he'd take a walk on the canvas mid paint and when my outburst of a scream scared him I ended up with a cat paw print on the cavas) I think I really like having a bit of love hanging over our heads each night. Ultimately I decided on the line from Train's "Marry Me" since it seemed fitting for our newlywed status and I have to admit I am completely in love with it. Reading this every day makes me want to fall in love with Apb each and every day over and over again.

I think this could be a wonderful way to add a piece of your wedding to your home without using photos or other traditional ways of displaying wedding memories. You could stencil a line form your first dance song or even better imagine creating your own canvas with your wedding date on it for Save the Dates? You could lug it along to your engagement session for some fun photo ops. The spacing on our canvas is a little off with the three lines of letters but I sort of like it that way since our room is a really diverse mixture of things. After all, our marriage isn't perfect either but it was lovingly created just like the canvas. It seems like the most fitting piece of art for the two of us wouldn't you say?

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