Years ago, when I embarked upon my quest to discover the types of flowers that last the longest in a vase, I also discovered that some fresh cut greens look just as beautiful as flowers and last even longer. A lot longer.
Case in point: The photo below of […]
Ten years ago, I made a bath mat out of wine corks. It took 175 corks, but I still had tons of them left over. No, I didn’t drink a ton of wine. In fact, I don’t drink alcohol at all. I gathered them from
Many years ago, I bought white flannel-backed vinyl by the yard at Walmart with the intention of making a scallop-edged tablecloth for my round pedestal table. Fast forward past two moves and the sale of that table, and this fabric remained rolled up in a closet. I […]
I removed this old, scratched, chipped mirror from an ugly plastic frame (which I turned into a bulletin board). Even though the mirror had seen better days, I couldn’t just throw it out. Despite it’s flaws, I loved the shape and thickness of the mirror. I wanted to […]
This one is for Alyson. She’s been asking me to blog about jewelry storage ideas for, um, years. I’ve had this tiered jewelry tray idea in the back of my mind for a long time. The delay came down to finding the right glue. I think I’ve found it — well, […]
I have a love-hate relationship with cut flowers. I love how beautiful they look and smell the first couple days. Shortly thereafter, love turns to hate. That’s when the wilting and stinking phase kicks in.
Worse, my former roommates never changed the water, and they kept the poor, dying blooms around long […]
Happy New Year, everyone! This is a project I finished more than two years ago. I finally got around to blogging about it. I hope you like it. A Crafty Nest reader, Josie, emailed me quite a while ago asking for uses for leftover tiles. Subway tile […]
This small unfinished pine bookshelf was shuffled from room to room. I planned to paint it, but never did. I was on the verge of kicking it to the curb. (This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a small commission. You can […]
Apologies for my long absence. A month ago I landed a full-time job (gotta pay the bills) along with a 3-hour round-trip commute. Ugh. It’s left little time for crafting. Not to worry, I’m still going to keep blogging, but it might be on a more infrequent basis. For now, it […]
As a teenager, I was jealous of my brothers who got to do leather crafts at Boy Scout camp, while we at girls camp never did. So I was determined to teach these girls a leather project this year. We ended up doing two leather projects. This stitched leather bracelet is […]
This is the first whole-room makeover I have attempted on Crafty Nest. What an undertaking! I had been planning to make over my office/guest/craft room for some time. The makeover involved a ton of DIY — which is definitely why I had procrastinated the job. Then Sylvania […]
I adore this “bird cage” illustration by Emma SanCartier. And I wanted to make this small piece of art stand out. I could have mounted it in an up-sized frame with generous matting. I decided to make a frame-within-a-frame instead, mostly because I already had all the […]
I volunteered as a crafts director at a girls camp last month. So, for the past few months, I’ve been preparing all the crafts and buying supplies for about 90 teenage girls to make cool stuff. I’ve kept the projects secret in case any of the girls read my blog, but […]
I am evidently on a hot-glue kick lately. This bath mat requires just three materials: shelf liner, hot glue, and 175 wine corks. How did I gather 175 wine corks, you ask? Working at Sunset magazine had its perks. With all the wine tastings in that office, […]
I planned to make a flower-covered paper lantern for months. Not until I found a white poinsettia garland at a Michael’s after-Christmas clearance did it become a reality. Normally, I’m not a fan of artificial flowers, but I think this is a great way to use them. […]
Before you pack away your summer clothes for the winter, you might want to set one of your tank tops aside to make one of these easy totes. The best kind of tank tops to use for this project are ones that have front and back necklines that are the same […]
I am not an artist, so please excuse my painting skills. During my undergrad, one of my color class assignments was to copy an impressionistic painting on a wine bottle. It was the perfect assignment for a novice painter such as me. On a wine bottle, you can’t see the entire […]
When I told my brother about this week’s project, the first thing he said was, “You know you can buy those, right?” Halfway into the project, I started to wish I did. My old shower slippers fell apart recently. I examined the shreds and decided that I could make my own—only […]
