Glad & Sincere Hearts

I often have people ask if my home is filled with beautiful signs. Simple answer, no. Detailed answer, I have a few that are my favorites and I have plans for so many I would like to make for our home. But honestly, sometimes at the end of the day it's hard to sit down and make something for your home when you just spent the day making signs for other people's homes.

One of my favorite things to do while paint is drying is to waste hours browse Pinterest for some inspiration. A while back I found this pin from Hymns and Verses.

I wish I could find the actual blog post in her blog about it, the link takes me back to her blog in general, not the post. I do know it is a tea towel sold from Mary & Martha that she framed to display in her home.

Besides the beautiful hand lettering, I also love the message.

In our home, we always eat dinner together. It's nice at the end of the day to sit together and talk about our day. We may not eat the same thing, but we are sitting at the table together. And even if the kids don't like what's for dinner {which rarely happens} we always remind them to be thankful for the food we do have instead of wishing it was something else. Some days it's easy to forget just how blessed you are.

One of my bad habits is finding a quote that I love and then stressing on making a design for my Etsy shop. Once I finally have a design I like, I'm over having it in my house. When I was working on this design, my husband saw it and asked for it to be in our home, only on a bigger scale than what I had in mind.

We had a top from a console table sitting around that I thought would look great as a sign and fit my husband's request for a big sign {it measures 10" x 48"}. We have high ceilings in our living and dining rooms so this sign looks great hanging on our dining room wall above the doorway that leads to the kitchen.

We have history with this table. It was one of the first pieces of furniture we bought after getting married. At that time we had a very country theme going on and it was stained the color shown and hunter green. Soon the green was gone, replaced with black. And it had been repaired...several times.

A little someone also practiced her writing skills on this table top...

Since I don't have an endless supply of table tops sitting around I also made a smaller version on a 1x8.

Even though it's a smaller version, the message is still as powerful. This size is listed here in my Etsy shop.

So, what statement is speaking to you right now?

Sharing and Linking up here!!
http://www.chaosandlove.com/link-party-21/

Make a Clipboard!

In my last post I shared a clipboard I made and promised a tutorial was coming. Well, I'm not sure how much of a tutorial it is since I forgot to take pictures along the way, but here it is!

I am loving the trend of using clipboards to display just about anything that will lay flat but most of the time I want to display something that would be lost on a normal size clipboard. Plus, a run of the mill clipboard can't stand on it's own.

I had ordered some prints from Katy Girl Designs {click here to visit her Etsy shop} and had planned on displaying this one on my chicken wire frame above my work table. Once it came I realized it was too cute to be clothes pinned up to chicken wire.

I used a piece of 2x8 wood I had cut 10 inches long and stained it. The beauty of this is that you can cut one to any size, plus you can use a thinner board if you want to hang it on the wall. And you can paint it to match your décor. I chose to stain this one since I am a huge lover of the beauty of wood grain, especially when it's a little knotty. ;)

I did give it a good sanding the next day once the stain had dried, just to give it a rustic, well loved look. For protection and to give the wood a little sheen I added a coat of furniture wax. It helps deepen the color and keep the wood from looking like it's dried out.

This whole project started because I had found these clipboard clips at Hobby Lobby.

They come in a two pack and have a wonderful vintage feel. Although, I seriously think that Tim Holtz only knows vintage. The only downfall with these clips is that they do not come with screws for mounting. I dug through our boxes of mismatched screws and found the ones that would work best.

Old and a little rusty. I would be lying if I even tried to tell you what they came off of.

Now comes the fun part, displaying whatever your heart desires and having a fun photo shoot!

 

 

 

And as always, nothing gets photographed in the backyard without these two butting in while trying to look like they're not!

 

 



How to Fix Leaning Shelves

Name one thing that frustrates you. Is shelves that lean at the top of your list? Then you're at the right place my friend! Today I'm showing you how I fixed my leaning shelves.

One of my goals this year {actually every year!} is to get some more organization in my life, especially my workspace. I was so excited when I got some floating shelves up so that I could get some items off of my work table...only to realize that the shelves had one major downfall, the hardware provided to hang them was causing them to slowly pull away from the wall. Great for a blog post but frustrating when your stuff keeps falling off!

I was so happy for the extra workspace I was going to gain on my worktable once I got the shelves up. I even made a cute clipboard to hold a  print I had ordered {tutorial coming soon for the clipboard!} for my work room.

 

 

 

Then I walked in the next day to realize that the clipboard AND giant glass jar of glass glitter were lying on the floor! The culprit? The hardware provided with the shelves was not enough to keep the shelves tight against the wall once you put something on it.

 

 

 

 



You can see the slight lean of the shelves. You wouldn't think such a slight angle would affect a shelf but it does!

The one problem I faced with these shelves is that they are not very wide so a simple shelf bracket would not work. I was also trying to avoid using a plain L bracket to keep them level. While browsing through Lowe's one day {some women browse the mall, I'm a big fan of home improvement stores} I came across these.

These are chair braces, technically made for repairing chairs but would work great for this project.

I attached them to the bottom of each shelf and put the shelves back on the wall. I held the shelf level and then screwed the brace to the wall.

No more leaning shelves!! And it is much more attractive than a basic L bracket screwed to the wall.

Stay tune for the tutorial for the clipboard. The gorgeous printable came from Katy Girl Designs and she has them listed here in her Etsy shop.