Shabby to Chic... Turning the Ordinary to FABULOUS pt. 1

Ok so today is the first day of my blog hop with Marion Smith from a Piece of Craft. In this FUN blog hop, we are going to share some unconventional ways of making the ordinary fabulous! We have the next two weeks planned out with some fun themes and great ideas! Here is what we have planned out:

APRIL

19^th antique store finds: reusing vintage items in crafting. We will take a trip to the flea market and come back with a variety of options to make you re-think these lost treasures.

22^nd $1 Store: Now we all know that $1 stores do have a small scrapbooking aisle... but what about the rest of the store? We will explore the possibilities beyond the craft section and open up the possibilities to some VERY interesting finds.

26^th Reduce, Recycle, Reuse: on this day we will feature some "unconventional" products that can be easily re-used in a FABULOUS way! Sprinkle in a little "green" mentality and you have an inexpensive and totally resourceful crafting experience.

29^th Rags to Riches: So for this day we are taking some of our "older layouts" and projects and reinventing them to a modern time, not necessarily taking them apart... but offering a "classic" layout the opportunity to be "new" and perhaps take these ideas onto a whole new page. We will also be utilizing some literal "rags" and incorporating them into our projects.

With April being Autism Awareness month, my blog hop for the month kinda took a back seat. But thankfully Marion was on board to do a POWER month crammed into two weeks. I am looking forward to sharing with you all some "resourceful" ways of creating in hopes that we give you some ideas that will platform some of your own "resourceful" thoughts.

So here is my interpretation of our theme for today (Antique/Flea Market Finds):

For this resourceful craft, I used some old wool and cashmere sweaters to create a wearable broach.

Using some old Jewelry from an antique store to embellish the centers.

This flower is doubled up on color using a striped sweater.

And here is a video explaining just how I did this:

I have a few other items that I picked up on my flea market venture, but unfortunately the battery ran out of my camera as I was filming, so I will have to share those this weekend. We will also be doing a giveway for those of you who would like to try out out fun technqiues, give them a try and post them to facebook. Make sure to tag myself and Marion in them so that we can add you to the list of participants. We will randomly pick a winner from those who participate. Now I know this didn't go so well last month, but I am hoping that was just because of easter. This specific craft is super easy and CHEAP, so I hope you all will try it out this month. We will be randomly picking a winner at the end of the month from all who participated.

Next months blog hop will be featuring the Tattered Angels Education Team!!! I am so grateful to be able to participate with the girls for a Tattered Angels National Scrapbook Month Blog Hop. It will be so much fun and feature ALL things Tattered Angels. It will start May 1st with some videos from the Tattered Angels staff.

So as you can see I am going to be BUSY this month, but between work and soccer for the kids, this will be a fun project for me and James to work on. We love doing these videos and hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Thanks!

~Liz Hicks