Crafts – marginalia and such

Another weekend crafting project complete! Crafting helps me relax and refresh my brain for writing, so I’ve been incorporating more of it into my weekend routine. This Saturday, I made a run to Michael’s for some poster supplies, but ended up finding a nice wood wall plaque instead. This is a quick project, but the results are lovely. All you need is a wooden plaque of your choice (cost: $1.99)–they come in various shapes and sizes–and some craft paint. If you want to get fancy (ooh la la!) you can varnish to make it shine and protect the finish. I used Martha Stewart high gloss and glitter craft paints, Painters’ markers (for the gold and silver outlines), a regular black Sharpie, and a coat of Dermacoat satin varnish.

I painted on two coats of the base color, wrote out my quote, outlined it in silver and gold (smearing it while wet to create the gilded effect), then traced it in black. I had the stencils lying around from an old project, so I used those for the design on the side (tracing and filling it in with the paint markers and sharpie). The border was painted in a light lavender before applying a coat of glitter paint and outlining it all with a gold paint marker. Varnish and done!

A quick and easy weekend project. For inspiration, look to the Romantics. They’re full of inspiring words.

Finally completed the pin it, do it challenge for October 🙂 . My last project was a crate seat cover. I had to make plenty of adjustments to this one, mostly because the instructions were to make 8 matching crates, whereas I only needed to cover 1 crate. I also had some mishaps with wood and staples… Had to beg my dad for a scrap piece of wood because I learned that lumber is darn expensive unless you have a major project that you want to complete. Also, my dad’s staple gun didn’t work, so I had to make do with a glue gun. It works. Nothing fancy, but now my tbr pile is nicely covered.