Sailing the Sawyer Seas: A DIY whimsical sailboat mobile

Yesterday one of my very best friends, LJ, and her husband Dan welcomed their second beautiful baby boy to the world.  That was enough to kick my butt into gear for writing this post, seeing as how this project was for Sweet Baby Sawyer!  Okay, well, maybe his mama a little bit, because I doubt that he really cares too awful much about how his room is decorated.  Although I totally know babies aren’t accessories, but I’m kind of jealous of that nursery she put together!

So I started first with one of those quilting/cross stitch rings.  Unfortunately, I could only find the plastic ones at that point.  No problem!  We want to wrap it in rope for our nautical theme anyway.  I also gathered some wire cutters and metal wire.  The rope and wire both came from Walmart’s hardware section.

After I had the cross in the middle, I went on to making my boats.  Now, I’m going to let you all in on a little secret:  If you’re a novice at sewing as I am, give yourself a large seam allowance for these boats.  I forgot to do that and had a heck of a time sewing the boats so they were not way too small.  I did cut a pattern so I could make all the boats the same and the pattern looked something like this (yes, that’s an old grody pizza box.  Reuse recycle, right!?):

 

As you can see, I made the sails (which I later got frustrated and just sewed them straight across) and boat bases separately so it would have more of a flow.  The sail material is drop cloth and the boats are of different but coordinating materials I picked up.

So after painstakingly sewing them (because of my newbie mistake of the seam allowance), I put some very thin twine you find in the jewelry department and strung it through a needle.  Then I stuck my needle right down through both the sail and then the base of the boat, making knots under each where I wanted them to stay.  As the twine got more towards the top, I wound differing amounts of wooden beads along it for some other texture.  Plus, she’s a natural kind of girl, and I knew she would appreciate the wood.  I just tied the top of the twine around the ring and secured it with a dot of glue.  Now, I wish I had take more photos of this… but I didn’t.  And I’m sorry.  But I hope my explanation for everything is making sense so far.

The next step I took was to cut twine at varying lengths and just string them in different places, including on the metal bar parts, and put a few blue iridescent beads at the bottom.  I also put one down the middle and made a little initial S and an anchor from the same wire that the bars are made of in the center.  Because it needed something a little more in my mind to make it softer like the rest of the mobile, I wrapped it in some grey yarn.  Ahh.. just right!

Finally, we take the rope from earlier and wrap it all around the ring.  I did do this in sections and made sure I used a lot of hot glue so it would stay in tact and match in at the starting and stopping points.

I left the twine hanging down still sort of curly from being on the spool, because I thought it gave this mobile a more whimsical look and more for the little darling to stare up at.  I was happy with it, and, more importantly, LJ seemed happy with it<3

That’s it!  Now I just can’t wait to meet the little babe.  And if he is anything like their first born, Atticus, he will be a little heart melter!

 

Wine, Coffee, and a Tool Box Matchmaker

I am very excited!  This is my first post where I get to share an actual project.  See, the problem is my patience…. I have none.  And so, all the projects I have worked on recently are either completely done with only a before and after or they are the opposite; I’m only halfway through them and they do not look so appealing as of yet.  More like you would want to run for the hills.  Ha.

To put it simply, here is where I started:

When I laid eyes on this $8 handsome fella, I knew he would be mine, and already had an idea in my mind how I was going to dress him up.  I first had to clean it thoroughly.  Okay, kind of well.  Again, patience; none.  And then I whipped up some MMS in Ironstone, but made sure to add extra water to the mixture to get more of a translucent whitewash look than to actually paint it.  I just picked up one of my low grade brushes and kind of hit spots all over where I thought it should be, wiping paint that was too opaque off immediately with a paper towel.  It’s not really an art as much as a bunch of random mistakes gone right.

After that dried, I then went on to picking out images from thegraphicsfairy.com (whom I adore and couldn’t do half of my projects without).  I still wasn’t sure where I was going to put the Mister in our tiny house, but I knew I wanted him to also be “pretty” and displayed, so I also made up my own picture from various clip art I had saved previously for the inside as a little surprise.  I used the wax paper method, which you can find instructions for from a quick Pinterest search.

Here is what I came up with (Now, you will find soon enough that I can’t get enough of bicycle images.  Don’t ask me why.  I don’t even really care for riding bikes.  But anything vintage and bicycle, I am all over it).

I put a coat of wax on (I used Briwax), let it dry, and buffed that baby out.  You can see that the wax definitely darkened the paint, but I was okay with that.  Wax is a beautiful thing in my eyes, and I like to use it on basically every single one of my pieces instead of any other clear coat because of the cohesion it gives between the paint and the piece, like it’s been that way forever:

But wait, we’re not done (no, I am not going to give you second slap chop for free)!  He was all dressed up with nowhere to go, when all of a sudden I remembered we also were in the middle of a wine dilemma in our house from me rearranging furniture, and we no longer had room for the “bar” that was set up in the formal part of the living room.  I had nowhere to put my wine.  Which is a true travesty.  Then I looked at our coffee bar, which is already one of my favorite parts about this house, and thought:  Heck, coffee and wine together; I may never leave.  On a whim, I tried out the tool box there with what I consider the wine essentials (don’t mind the hideous yellow price tag), and voila!  It fit!  Aren’t  they just the perfect pair?  I don’t think I will be rearranging this area for a while now.