Spring has Sprung!

I've been busy this past month.  Really busy.  Unfortunately, my busyness had little to do with crafting, hence the hiatus.  Dave and I both celebrated our birthdays, we took his mom to Chicago for a fun little trip, and I traveled a bit for work.  Plus, I kind of got on a book reading binge on some rainy April days, which really cut into crafting time.  Sorry, friends!

I did complete ONE small craft during the month of April, so let's get to it, shall we?  In my quest to be an organizational queen, I was working on my craft closet and found a few gems hidden in the back that were just waiting for me to work some craft magic.

My supplies?  Lots of fake flowers and greens, a plain grapevine wreath, and some flower/craft wire.  

Let's get down to business.  

I laid out all of the flowers and greens that I had, as I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to use.  

Supplies. Check.

Next, I started laying out some of my greens on the wreath.  I stuck the ends in through the grapevines, and the used some floral wire to begin securing the stems around the wreath.  I wanted to make sure that the stems curved with the wreath, but also hung loose a bit so that it didn't look completely structured.

Looks pretty already!  Should we call it a day right here?

 I made my way around the wreath using various greens, as I wanted to create a base layer before adding some flowers.

That's enough.  I wasn't trying to choke the wreath with TOO many weeds.

I've got a really bad habit of getting halfway into a project and forgetting about taking pictures of my next steps.  Sorry.  Here's the finished wreath with some flowers added to it.  I did the same thing as with the greens- stuck the stems in between the grapevines, and secured parts of the stems with green floral wire.

Simple, yet beautiful.

I have a single nail sticking out of my front door, so I needed something to hang the wreath up with...floral wire to the rescue!  One snip of the wire strung through the back of the wreath and twisted securely into a loop, and I was good to go.

Happy Spring, everyone!!

This project took a total of 15 minutes, start to finish.  I've had the supplies for awhile, stashed away after buying during an End of Season Sale, so I don't know how much the project total was, but I guarantee you, it was much cheaper than buying a ready made spring wreath!

Now my front door is springy and inviting!  Except to door to door salesmen.  As far as they're concerned, this wreath is made out of poison ivy and means STAY AWAY.

Have a good week, everyone!! 

Couldn't you just DYE??

Anyone who is in my presence during the summer months knows that I could go many, many weeks without repeating dresses.  I absolutely ABHOR shorts, and besides a few pairs of running shorts, I just don't wear them.  Therefore, summertime means dress time, and I couldn't be happier about it.

While I absolutely love most of the dresses I have either bought or made, there's one that's hung in my closet for the majority of the summer, unworn.  I love the dress itself, but I don't love the color.  It's a mustardy yellow that just doesn't look right unless I am SUPER tan, which rarely, if ever, happens.  I bought it sometime in the past two years at Forever 21, before the store really got into the swing of making dresses that made me question whether or not I was trying on a dress or a loose shirt.  Man, I really must be getting old when my first thought in the dressing room is, "That would be SO CUTE if it had about 6 more inches of fabric in the length."  Once you're out of college, and the first number of your age begins with "3", wearing super short dresses just makes you begin to look a little desperate.  (Unless, of course, you have thighs like Heidi Klum, which means you can parade around in your underwear and everyone will think you're a goddess.)

Since this dress still fits perfectly well, and just needed a color change, I decided to try my hand with some fabric dye (RIT brand) to change it up.  Here is a picture of the dress pre-dye:

It's alright, but it's not great.

I bought the navy blue dye, hoping that the mixture of blue+yellow=green.  I followed the directions for the dye if you're using a bucket, which I decided to do over the washer method.  Having to clean out the washer afterwards and run a few empty cycles seemed like a colossal waste of water and energy to me.  If I was dyeing a large amount of fabric, I might have chosen this method, but as I just had a small summer dress, a bucket seemed like it would work just fine.

Yes, I used a used paint stick to stir this up.  It was better than option 2, which would have been a stick off of the nearest tree...

The one part of the directions I ignored was to CONSTANTLY stir it for 30-60 minutes while the fabric was dyeing.  No chance I was devoting that much arm muscle to it.  I puttered around in the yard for about 25 minutes, pulling weeds and such while intermittently stirring the bucket (which I left sitting in the driveway to prevent spills).  When I was done, I poured the mixture out behind the garage.  There seems to be a vine of poison ivy there, and I'm hoping to kill it.  Maybe this will help?

Keep rinsing til the water runs clear (or clearish, if you're impatient, like me)

After about 10 bucket rinses in the sink, I wrung out the dress and left it outside to dry.  My idea of blue+yellow=green didn't quite pan out, but I did get an intriguing shade of grayish/blackish/green.  I'll take it...it's more interesting than the yellow!  The thread/seam lines didn't dye, but I kind of like the contrast of colors here...it adds a delightful mix.

Slightly scared when it began to look like this....did I just ruin it??

Now I just need the warm weather to continue into September as long as possible so that I can get a few uses out of my "new" dress before Old Man Winter forces me back into jeans and sweaters.  I can always pair the dress with a brightly colored sweater and some calf boots to take me into fall, though.  Happy end of summer, everyone!!

The camera comes out and Margot thinks it's photoshoot time for her.  She already has two calendars to her name, and is apparently ready for a third!