DIYing Queens

I mentioned here how my cousin Lu had quite a few DIY craft ideas to make during our mountain weekend together. I headed to Blowing Rock on Thursday evening for a long weekend of mountain views, good food, even better company and of course, to be put to work by my cousin!

Lu being introduced at the wedding

 Lu is one of the most fun and positive people in my life! She was a bridesmaid in my wedding last July and I am one of her bridesmaids in her Labor Day weekend wedding! She has just moved into the most amazing condo in Blowing Rock but, with its very neutral palette and the fact that she can't hang anything on the walls, we had our work cut out for us as to how to introduce color into her home!

Lu and my Aunty Jill - such a fun duo!

We woke up Friday morning to this amazing view and then got to planning right away! We had Lu's laptop out and I was writing notes of what we needed. The planning took quite a long time!

Beautiful mountain view before the fog cleared!

Planning stage!

Thumbs up for great Goodwill finds

 We then headed to the Goodwill near the mountain house. We wanted to do these projects on budget and with unique materials and what better place for cheap thrills than a Goodwill?! Lu had seen a really neat project where you take old pie tins and candle sticks and make them into a tiered vanity stand. Of course, we were not able to find old pie tins but we did find some old china that was in great shape! 

Our purchases!

 

After our Goodwill finds, we ran to another thrift store in Boone, where we had great luck with the brass candle sticks and we were out the door and at Mellow Mushroom for lunch in no time!

Plate options for our tiered soap holder!

We then headed to Wal Mart with a mile long list of all the other supplies we needed - super glue, burlap, pins, hammer - you name it, we probably needed it and bought it! 

Our supplies lined up for our tiered bathroom and kitchen 

Once at home, we got started right away - making my poor aunt clean all the plates (some had some serious grime around the ridges of the design - nothing a little elbow grease and scalding hot warm water can't cure!)

Rub a dub dub

After the plates dried, we got to gluing! Thankfully, we had spent the extra dollar to get the super glue that gives you less of a change of 'bonding' your fingers together. It also was less likely to peel off your finger prints. As much as I have dreamed of a second job hijacking cars with the hood rats in Columbia with no chance to be caught due to lack of identification, I thought it best if we stuck with the glue that would not stick to us. To say we were paranoid while gluing is an understatement and thankfully we both have our original fingerprints!

Once the glue had finished drying we had two very ornate bathroom tiers for make up, make up brushes, guest toiletries and we had a great kitchen hand towel and dish soap holder as well!

Now that the tiers had been completed, we had another project to work on- a burlap wreath! We had seen so many examples of how to make them but we knew we wanted something with some texture and height to it. Enter the bubble burlap wreath. 

We realized, after 35 minutes of cutting burlap into 4 inch squares and then pinning those squares to our foam wreath, ours did not look at all like the bubble burlap wreath picture online. Honestly, we liked our design better! We used pins with pearl head so that if they showed through it would look pretty and like we had done it on purpose - not that we refused to cut anymore squares!

Here is the after! Lu will be putting the red P (for her new last name come September!) below on the wreath and hanging it on her front door! In the fall there will be a Roll Tide plaque for football (Lu is a Bama grad!) and at Christmas a Merry Christmas one! Such a versatile project that only cost us $10!

There were other project we completed but none had me as excited as the tiers and the burlap wreath! Lu and I have decided that our next together also needs to involve some crafting since we are the (self proclaimed) DIY queens of our family! What have y'all been crafting lately?