Pinterest Inspired: Menu Board

I've been cruising Pinterest for a while now checking out all of the menu boards and making plans for my own.  This is about my own creation that I ended up with, but I would just like to disclaim that most of what I did here I saw on various other menu boards around Pinterest.  I didn't save any of them or I would link them for credit, but most of these ideas were not my own originally.

On to the menu board...

Here is my finished project, I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  It is bigger than I originally planned on having it be.  I went to Hobby Lobby with the intention of getting an 11x14 frame.  However, when I was strolling around I saw this open back frame and fell in love.

I would normally never pay for a frame like this from Hobby Lobby because they are overpriced in my opinion.  However, I had a 40% off coupon that I was able to combine with my Hubby's 15% off Employee Discount.  On top of that I had a gift card my Hubby got for 10 years of service, so I ended up getting the frame for free.  I then bought a piece of cork board and cut it down to fit in the frame.

I then stapled the fabric (that I apparently did not take a picture of) to the cork board.  After that I gathered up my supplies and painted them black with acrylic paint.

Days of the week letters.

Chalk boxes to hold my recipe cards.

Mini clips for holding the recipes.

The Menu to go across the top.

I painted them all with black acrylic paint, which worked great for the letters.  It didn't work so great for the chalk boxes or the pins though.  So, those ended up being spray painted black for better coverage.  After that, I hit them all with black glitter spray as well, just to add a little pizazz.  Then, I made up my recipe cards and put it all together.  I got a little lazy about taking pictures, but here it is finished up.  I love it and it looks great hanging up in the dining room!

Slacking Again

                    What can I say?  Things got crazy, I got lazy.   We did welcome a baby boy in October, I will do a blog post featuring his nursery.  It was a labor of love and I am absolutely thrilled with how it turned out.  I also have a lot of fun new knitting projects to catch you guys up on.  My current project is a Pinterest inspired Menu Board that I am almost finished with!  Be on the lookout for some updates soon!

Exciting Things to Come

Pretty soon I will have a ton of new D.I.Y. projects to show off here! We found out we are expecting our first child and we are thrilled. (The first trimester exhaustion is partially responsible for my crafty slacking lately.) We find out the sex of the baby in about 6 weeks, and then we will be hard at work making an awesome nursery, so stay tuned!

Slacker

I have been so tired this week, I still haven't gotten any crafting finished up. I am only a few steps away from finishing my chalkboard. I also really need to get back on board with my knitting. I think that part of the problem is that since work is so hectic, I am brain dead by the time I get home. I just want to veg and not think at all, unfortunately this is not very conducive to crafting!

Blanket

I am still working on Anastacia's baby blanket. Someday, I will finish it. It looks fantastic so far. I will confess, part of the delay is because I picked up some Madeline Tosh yarn and cast on the Honeycomb Cowl. I couldn't resist. I need to buckle down and focus on finishing up the op art blanket!

Melted Crayon Art

This weekend I decided to go ahead and try the Melted Crayon Art that I keep seeing on www.pinterest.com. The above picture was my inspiration.

I thought the project was relatively simple. I took the crayon wrappers off complete

ly and hot-glued each crayon to the top of the canvas. That was the most tedious part. I started using my crafting heat gun to melt them and it was taking forever for them to melt. Deven let me borrow his garage heat gun and that made things go MUCH quicker. This was definitely an outdoor project, as there was a lot of dripping. Overall, I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Here is the finished product. Deven was nice enough to draw the silhouettes for me. I love how it turned out!

Here it is hanging on the wall. I have to get another canvas and some more blue crayons, and I will be making it a companion.

Crafting Hiatus

I have not done much with crafting lately. Between school and work, I have just been really busy. I was on vacation from work this past week, but we were in Austin for most of it so I didn't get a whole lot done. I am still chugging away on my Op-art blanket though. Anastacia was born last Thursday, so I really need to finish it up!