How to Make Embellished Fabric Beads

Making beads can be really addictive!  Here is a way to make a rolled bead that uses fabric instead of paper and is embellished with strings of beads.

Start by rolling a short length of paper onto a bead roller.  Learn how to make your own bead roller from this tutorial.

Remember When We Got That Energy Audit?

Last year we had an energy audit done at the beach house. Best. Idea. Ever! Around that same time we were buying another property and renovating it and dealing with the sudden loss of my husband's mother, so I didn't share too much about the improvements we made afterward. While I shared a little about the audit here...

Vintage Style Spun Cotton Ornaments

About fifteen or so years ago I stopped making cookies to give away at Christmas. Instead, I began making Christmas ornaments to give as gifts. What I discovered was that people were actually grateful not to get yet another plate of sugar laden baked goods.

For a couple of years I made little vintage style spun cotton ornaments. I scoured Ebay, studying vintage spun cotton ornaments. Originally, spun cotton ornaments were made by wrapping an armature with cotton roving, but roving wasn't available where I lived, so I used pulled strips of cotton batting to create my ornaments.

How to Convert Your Antique Double Bed to a Queen Bed

I recently posted about our antique bed makeover, but I forgot to share something really important -- how we convert our antique beds from double, or full-size, to queen size.

It can be very easy and affordable to convert most beds to queen, depending on the type of rails you have and how they are attached to your head board and foot board.

Make a Pretty Art Journal Guest Book

We've been saying we need guest book for the beach house. So many wonderful people have visited and it would be nice to have a record of their visits. Another reason we decided we needed a guest book is kind of embarrassing -- it's hard to remember everyone's name sometimes!

Often our guests are friends of family or friends of friends, or spouses and children of co-workers, so we are meeting them for the first time during a house party weekend. Try as I might, sometimes a name slips my mind. It's embarrassing. All our guests are important to us, and we would never want someone to think we didn't care enough to remember their name, so hopefully having a guestbook will act as a memory aid!

An Antique Bed Makeover

Months ago I shared that I was preparing to paint our old antique bed..... and then never shared another thing about it!

We had this lovely old waterfall style bed that we loved, but it was looking kind of tired, and had some veneer damage.  In the condition it was in, it's value was largely sentimental, so refinishing didn't make sense. Besides, the bed lives in our beach cottage, and we were ready to lighten things up a bit with pretty paint!

Make Pretty Tube Beads With Vintage Paper!

Paper bead making is addictive! It's also an easy, inexpensive, and portable craft. It's a great way to use up scraps of pretty paper, and to divert magazines and books from the landfill, too!  Paper beads don't all have to look like the ones we made in Girls Scouts -- although I think those are pretty cool.

You can make pretty tube beads, too!  Here is how I make perfect tube beads using vintage book pages and re-purposed receipt tape.