Tutorial Tuesday: Woven Pin Board

This week's Tutorial Tuesday features a tutorial created by Emily at Jones Design Company. This is one of my favorite sites and Emily has many wonderful tutorials with great pictures and explanations for how to create the items.

The tutorial for the woven pin board is great, though I ran into some issues and I'll give you my work around.

Cutting the burlap evenly is *really* important. I didn't use my fabric scissors on the burlap because I thought it would be bad for them...silly me. So I got some thin strips and some fat strips and it was tricky to weave them properly. I wound up trimming some of the fat parts of the strips to make weaving easier.

Making sure you have enough staples in your arsenal is also important and I probably wouldn't even mention it except that it took me three trips to the store to finally get the right type of staples so finishing my project took about 3 weeks. Oops.

 I made these fake Scrabble tiles using wood pieces and a Sharpie. Using the proper tile values makes them more realistic.

Just hot glue the wood pieces on to a push pin and voila! you have a custom phrase that is also functional.

This is our engagement party invitation (well the back side) created by my now sister-in-law Denise. That picture is from my favorite place IN THE WORLD, the private beach outside of Gull Cottage on Tybee Island, Georgia.

Those wine corks and seashells are from our honeymoon and the subject of next week's Tutorial Tuesday (be on the lookout!). P.S. they are pushpins too.

And this is the boutonniere I made for my husband for our wedding, secured to the board with a wine cork pushpin.

DIY boutonniere Tutorial Tuesday in 2 weeks! (Now you're seeing why this week is a featured tutorial? :)

The monograms on our board were also made by me and they are super-easy but I'm not doing a tutorial on them. Here's a quick and dirty: get some throw-away foam from a craft store when they are restocking. Print out a large letter in your font of choice (I did 3 different fonts for our letters), trace on the foam. Cut out with an Xacto knife. Use Mod Podge and crumpled up tissue paper to cover the surface. Paint in your desired color. I also used glitter on the H but its optional. (I just love how the H looks like its covered in fluffy frosting...)


I loved how our board turned out and I can't wait to buy our wedding pictures so I can add a few to it.

Another note: Emily's hanging her board by ribbon DID NOT work for me. It could have just been that my ribbon was not great or the board didn't want to accept it. I wound up using a picture hanging kit that supports 50 pounds (wayyy unnecessary but let's just call it a factor of safety since it is hanging over our heads while we sleep) and that worked beautifully.

I like the result so much I made a smaller, less girlified version for my brother's birthday.

Also with the handmade scrabble tiles but a cardboard letter that I painted to look shadowboxy.

So that concludes the first-ever Tutorial Tuesday! Check back next week for DIY wine cork home accents!

Puppies, Pinterest and Pumpkin

It's my first post and I couldn't be more thrilled to share with you all! As you may have guessed my name is Natalie and I'm 28 years old, married to my best friend James, and college student at the University of Georgia. I'm studying Water and Soil Resources and hope to begin work on a Master's Degree in Forestry next year where my focus will be on remote sensing applications. Luckily for you, my blog has nothing to do with any of that technical science stuff!

I'm all about my two monster dogs (they're chihuahua-dachshund mix...so you KNOW they are monsters) Ozzie and Sharon--cute, right?

The one looking right at you is Sharon. (Yes, they are wearing capes...well, doggie winter coats)

I digress. I'd like my blog to feature tutorials on fun projects, some I create, some others have created. And then just fun stuff that I think everyone should know about / be a part of (gasp I ended my sentence in a preposition).

Which brings me to Pinterest. How much do I love that site? A LOT! Check out my Pinterest boards here. Leave a comment with your Pinterest site and I'll follow you, because I'm cool like that.

If you aren't hip to Pinterest yet, it's a site that lets you create virtual pin boards of things you like on the web.

And of course you can share your links with everyone and they can see how awesome your style is!

Speaking of awesomeness I went to Starbucks this morning for the first time in....months...weeks...days--who's counting, anyway, and to my delight they have brought back Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins. I was SO HAPPY. I think I scared the cashier a little with my enthusiasm.

These little babies weigh in at 420 calories so...don't be like me and eat one every morning until fall is over. Seriously. Don't.

I think that will conclude my first post since I should really be studying for my Environmental Law test that is in about 4 hours, but anyway, check back on Tuesday for the very first Tutorial Tuesday and next Thursday for a new update!