No Soliciting Sign Dollar Store DIY

Tired of strangers coming to my door while I'm home alone, I decided to make a no soliciting sign to hang near my front door. I started with an actual chalkboard sign, but it started to wear off and became difficult to read, so I decided to make a printable version that can be mod podged to a surface and hung next to the door. I designed this one to go on these $1 trays that they sell at Dollar Tree. Here are the instructions on how to make one yourself.

Materials
Tray
No Soliciting Image
Mod Podge
Cheap Brush
Scissors or Paper Slicer/Round Corner Punch
Ruler
Drill Chain or Wire

Step 1

Print the No Soliciting file (Available for purchase on Etsy or ShameronStudios.com).

I find that having it printed professional keeps it from fading as quickly as a home printer would fade.

Step 2

Cut the photo to fit your surfaces. This Dollar Tree tray was about 6" by 9" in the center. I trimmed the corners to fit the curves of the tray with a rounded corner punch, but you can also use scissors.

 Step 3

Cover the center area of the tray with Mod Podge.

Step 4

Cover the back of the photo with Mod Podge.

Step 5

Place the photo on the tray while the Mod Podge is wet on both surfaces and make sure it's centered. 

Cover the front of the photo with Mod Podge. Be sure to cover the edges, but try to keep a neat edge line.

Let Dry! Beautiful!

Step 6 

Drill holes in the top edges of the tray. Double check that you are drilling on the top. I made the mistake of not checking and drilling on the bottom edge. Make sure you are working on a surface that won't damage your drill or matter if you drill into it. I used some scrap wood in the yard.

Step 7

Once you drill the hole open a link of chain with pliers and hook it to the holes. You can use wire or even string, but the chain keeps it from blowing around in the wind so much.

Hang and enjoy the sound of unwelcome people not coming to your door!

You can buy my file on Etsy or ShameronStudios.com

I'd love to see how your sign turned out! Post a photo on my Facebook page!

Comment below with your thoughts and ideas for more signs!

DIY String Art Heart Tutorial

This is a super easy project. My brother and I decided we would each make one of these. He wanted to give it to his girlfriend and I'm sharing mine with my husband, hence the M ;-)

Materials
Wood Board
Finishing nails (18 gauge, 1" long is what we used)
String
Hammer
Pencil

Pick your design and draw it lightly on your board. You can also print out a design and just nail through it.

Hammer in nails about 1/2" apart on the outline of your design. Only hammer them in about 1/4". Just enough to be secure, but not go through the board.

After all the nails are in place, Tie the string on a central nail and trim off the excess tail. Remove the paper or erase any obvious lines at this point.

Start wrapping the string from nail to nail in any order. This adds to the randomness of it. Try to wrap it around each nail at least once. 2 or 3 time will make it look fuller. Keep the tension strong so the string doesn't slip off a nail. Every once in a while, tie a knot around a nail just in case it pops off at one point, it won't ruin the whole thing.

Keep filling in the design evenly so you don't end up with bare spots.

If you're adding a design in the center of your heart, be sure that you don't cross that inner area at all! It will ruin the clean look of it. 

Done!

To hang this on a wall, use a picture frame or canvas wall hanging kit.

Picture Frame Turned Earring Rack

While redecorating my bedroom, I lost the surface on top of which I stored my jewelry. I was also really tired of fighting with my old earring holder and so I decided to make a new one. The new one had to be wall mounted to fit in my new bedroom layout. My problem is that I have a lot of jewelry, so my new earring needed a lot of space. My other frustration with my old earring rack was that I had to take the backs off the earring and put them on again behind the rack. This took so much time and I so frequently dropped the earring back that I wasn't wearing them because it was too much of a hassle. I had seen a couple things online that I liked, but most didn't have as much storage as I needed. So, I came up with this picture frame turned earring rack! My favorite part of this rack is that you can just lift the earrings off and set the on it!!!

Materials
11"x14" picture frame (or however large you want yours to be)
3 strips of wood 1/4"x1/8"x36" (available at Joann or other hobby stores)
Wood Glue
Spray Paint
Dremel & Cutting Wheel attachment

1. Remove the glass and other innards from your picture frame.
2. Cut the strips of wood to the size of your frame. 11" in my case.
3. Make a mark every 1/4" across the strips of wood starting and ending 1/2" from the edge
4. With the dremel, make an 1/8" deep cut from the top of the wood at each mark.
5. Glue the strips of wood to the inside of the frame with the wood glue.
6. After the glue it completely dry, spray paint the whole rack, if desired.
7. Done!

DIY Upholstered Headboard

Last month I decided to redecorate my bedroom. One of the items I need most was a new bed frame and headboard. I started by making the headboard below. I hesitated for a while before starting this project because I thought it would be really difficult, but it ended up being much easier than I thought. I had a few setbacks, but with a little trial and error, I eventually got it right. If you decide to take on this project yourself, you have the advantage of learning from my mistakes :-)

Materials
Sturdy 6'x4' Plywood Board (for Cal King, wider for King)
6'x4' (for Cal King, wider for King) - 1" thick Foam
Twin Size Batting - High-loft
Upholstery Fabric - 5'x7' minimum
150-250 Upholstery Nails
Staple Gun and Staples
Adhesive Spray

I started by picking the design I wanted for my headboard and drawing it onto the plywood. First, I cut the plywood down to the correct width. Then I used my pin-string-pencil compass method of making arcs, since I couldn't find anything to trace that was the right size. (This method involves tying a string between a pencil and a pin, holding the pin at the center of the circle, and then rotating the pencil around the pin in an arc, keeping the the string tight as you draw)

After the design was drawn onto the board, I used my jigsaw to cut out the shapes. This was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I started at one side, cut out the arcs, making my way to the center, then starting again from the other side.

I then laid the 1" foam on the board and cut it 2 inches from the edge of the board with sharp fabric scissors, but a large rotary cutter might have been easier.

I sprayed the front of the wood and the back of the foam with spray adhesive by lifting half of it off the board, spraying it, and laying it back in place. Then I repeated it from the other side. Next, I laid the batting over it all and soothed it out.

After I smoothed it around all the edges, I used the same spray adhesive method on the batting too to keep it from shifting over the years.

Once the adhesive dried, I laid the fabric over it. I prewashed, dried and ironed my fabric to get all the wrinkles out. Be sure to use a gentle or hand wash setting if you wash you fabric. It will fray a bit, but it shouldn't fall apart (if it does, it's not suitable for this project). At first, I tried just hammering in the upholstery nails straight along the edge of the foam, but this proved incredibly difficult and made a really crooked edge. 

So, after a little trial and error, I folded the fabric back over itself and 

stapled 1 3/4" of an inch from the edge of the board. 

The made a much cleaner line and made it way easier to get the upholstery nails into it. 

After I had all the straight edges down, I folded the fabric around the back and added a couple staples to hold the fabric back. I didn't staple it down completely because I hadn't yet finished the curved areas.

Next, I marked every 1/2 inch in a line about 1 1/2" from the edge of the board. 

I found it to be much easier to add the upholstery nails if a held the nail in place with needle nose pliers while hammering.

When I got to the curves, I folded the fabric back as shown below, but I didn't stapled the curved areas.

After all the nails were in, I finished stapling the fabric behind it and mounted it on my bed frame.

Wedding Shadowbox

I saw something like this somewhere and it inspired me to make this. It's a shadowbox filled with stuff from my wedding that I wanted to display, but keep safe. This was pretty easy and fun to make and I love looking at it hanging in our hallway.

 Materials:
12"x12" Shadowbox (about 1" thick)
Scrapbook paper for the background
Tape
Pins
Accessories you want to display





My shadow box included my veil, garter, hair comb, my husband's sheriff badge (we got married on a ranch), our program and one of the bookmarks that we gave as favors. The hardest part of making this was figuring out how to lay it all out so that everything could be seen, but look nice all together. As a rule thumb, the larger objects should go in the background and the smaller objects on top. Layering the items adds interest, just don't block anything important. And you should definitely try to use a contrasting background color paper. If all your items are light, use a dark background and if they're all dark, use a light background.


After playing around with it for about 20 minutes, I settled on this.

First, I laid the program down in the background and taped it to the background paper. Then, I taped down the comb of my veil so that the comb was under the fabric. I knew the book mark would cover this so I wasn't worried about about the tape showing. Then I attached my garter and the comb. These were trickier because I didn't want any tape or anything showing. I used sewing pins and poked them through the garter and comb and into the cardboard backing. If you get a shadowbox with a fabric background, it would be easier to attach. My shadowbox was pretty cheap, so it only had cardboard in the back. It was a little more difficult to get the pins to go through, but not impossible. I put the pins through the inside of the garter and folded it down so they won't show.

 The sheriff badge already had a pin on the back, so I just stuck that through. For the bookmark, I knew it would be pressed against the glass by my veil, but just to keep it from shifting after I close it up, I added folded over tape to the back of it.

Lastly, I decided that the top of the box looked a little bare, so I cut out a little calendar from a piece of scrapbook paper and circled our wedding date.

Then all I had to do was carefully put the frame around it and hang it without letting anything move. It took a couple tries to close it without letting anything move, but I think it's worth it! Just don't hang it in direct sunlight wear it will fade your precious items.

The Nikon D7000 is the camera I use for all my blog photos.

How to Reupholster an Antique Wingback Armchair

After my husband I got engaged, our family and friends started giving us a bunch of furniture. Among this furniture was an antique sofa and wingback armchair. While they were free, they were really dirty... The dog of my husband's aunt and uncle who owned the chair like to sleep on these antiques and the fabric was beyond repair. But the sofa and chair belonged to my husband's great grandmother and I thought it would be great to keep them in the family. To make them usable though, required reupholstering. I researched how to reupholster a wingback chair for weeks. I looked at blogs, youtube videos, and books. Finally, I thought I had enough information to go for it. So, here is my compilation of knowledge in a more or less easy to follow, step by step tutorial.

I can't lie, this is one of the hardest projects I'd ever done. It took a weekend just to strip all the fabric off and couple days to put the fabric on again. My hands were so sore from ripping out staples, I had a blister on every finger of my right hand. Using the hand stapler was no picnic either. But I'm very happy with the results. I've resolved to wait until we have a house with a yard before I try to reupholster the sofa.

If the fabric on the chair you're reupholstering isn't dirty, you could probably just put the new fabric over it. This tutorial assumes that your chair's  fabric is beyond repair, but that the foam underneath can be salvaged.

Materials
The Chair
New Fabric - yardage is determined below
Fabric for underside of chair - about 1 1/2 yards square
Muslin or Canvas for the seat of the chair - about 2 yards square
Pliers
Heavy Duty Staple Gun - An electric or air powered one would be easier, but not always an option.
Staples - I think I went through a little over one 1000 staple package.
Hammer
Fabric Scissors
Two Strips of Cardboard or Upholstery Tack Strip- the length of the arms x 3/4".
Fabric Glue
Trim - about 4-5 yards
Upholstery Tacks (optional)



Started by measuring each piece of fabric on the chair before taking anything off, adding about 2"-3" on each side to be safe. I wrote each measurement down and then used excel to make a graph of all the pieces to figure out how much fabric I would need and how best to cut it.

I knew the fabric I wanted was 54" wide so I made the pattern stay within 51" to be safe. I could have used graph paper, but it would have required a lot of sheets and it would have been a lot harder to manipulate. In excel, I selected one cell for each inch in each piece and colored the background to block it out. After I had them all in there, I could move them around until they fit best without wasting too much fabric. From this I figured out that I needed 4 yards so to be safe, I bought 5 yards.

Be sure to get upholstery fabric. The thicker, the better.

If you have the money, you can buy an approximate amount of fabric using this guide and then layout the fabric you strip off the old chair to figure out where to cut it out.

The next step is the strip off the old fabric.
The most helpful part is to take pictures before and as you take off each piece fabric so you remember how to put it back on. Take close up and detail shots where things look a little tricky.

First take a sharpie and write the names of each piece of the fabric before you remove it. Be specific enough so you don't get them mixed up. You should also mark which direction is up on the fabric with an arrow. There's no going back after this.

Start by stripping off the back of the chair. Save all the fabric and try to keep it in one piece. You will use it as a pattern when cutting your new fabric.

It had these really scary strips of spiked metal in the back that hold it on so you don't see any staples. You should save these unless you want to try to buy more of them.

Be sure to save the stuffing and try to keep it in one piece so it's easy to put back.

Next, remove the bottom.

From here you can see which pieces are on top of the others and  take off those next. For me it was the outer side pieces.

Remove any trim first.

Note the cardboard strips here that keep the fabric straight once stapled down.

Use pliers to remove any staples that won't come out by ripping alone.

Next was the outer wing pieces. Save the metal strips here too.

Then the inner wings.



And the arms.

Then the front of the chair. You'll probably need to remove the staples on the back of the chair to get the fabric off the frame.

And the seat last. It's stapled on the front back and side of the frame.

Clean out the frame or any dirt that may be left it there. Mine was so dirty, I took the vacuum hose to it.

I got a little to preoccupied to remember to take pictures here, but hopefully I can explain it well enough.

After everything has been removed, layout the old fabric on the new fabric and make sure you configure it so that you have enough fabric for all the pieces. Once it's all laid out, start cutting the new pieces leaving an extra inch or 2 on each edge. This will make it easier to hold as you staple. You can start with the pieces on the front of the chair because that will be what you put back on first.

You'll also need to cut you muslin or canvas for the seat and sew it to the bottom front of the seat.

Start with the front of seat of the chair. Line it up evenly and then staple along the edge about 1 staple every inch. If your fabric isn't really thick,  you may want to fold it under about 1/2" so it doesn't rip when you're stretching it. The picture below shows the area I'm talking about, but you should be stapling it one, not taking it off. Try to keep the staples 1/4" away from the edge of the fabric. You're staples will be showing for now, but you'll cover them with the trim.

After you've stapled it in the front, pull it through to the back and staple it to while pulling it tight. Then staple it to one side of the chair while holding it semi tight. Then staple it to the other side while pulling it tight.

Staple it to the top of the wood so your staples wont show under the fabric when it's done.

Next, attach the front of the back of the chair. To attach the front of the back, line it up, staple it along the to, just below the line where it goes from carved, finished wood to raw wood. Then push it through to the  back on the sides and bottom. Staple it to the sides and bottom in the same areas you pulled it off. (See the pictures above if you can remember where it came off from.

Here's my chair with the seat, front, and one arm on.

To staple the arm on,  line it up and first staple the fabric to the underside of the arm. Then, staple it to the front of the arm. I chose to leave off the piping here, but you could add that it you like it. When you come to the roll of the arm, as you staple, gather it, putting in a staple with each pleat.

After you finish the front of the arm, stretch it and staple it to the bottom and them back of the frame.

 You may need to gather the fabric around the back of the arm.

After this point, you should trim off any excess fabric that might be hanging off.

Next is the inside of the wing.

Lay it out and staple it to the outside of the wing first. Use the same technique of gathering and stapling as you did with the arm.

Then pull it through, hold it tight and staple it in the back.

Fold the fabric under itself so no raw edges are exposed.

Next you'll need to put on the outside of the wing. This is a little tricky. Make sure the metal strip of sharp toothy stuff (sorry, I don't know the real name) is in good shape. The teeth need to face in toward the fabric. I used a flat head screwdriver to push the teeth into place. Once the metal strip is back in place, staple the metal strips along the outer edge of the wing as show in the pictures below. Then line the up the fabric in the the teeth and push them closed. Once it's all lined up and pushed closed, lightly hammer it closed.

 As before, at this point you should staple the fabric on rather than pulling it off. It was a little tricky to staple it right in the holes, but after some practice it got easier.

 Lastly, staple the fabric down on the bottom and on the back of the frame.

The next step is to put on the outside of the arms. This is where you use the cardboard. It's best to do this with the chair on it's side. You'll need to cut two strips of cardboard the length of the bottom of the arm. Line the fabric up on the underside of the arm and staple the fabric with the cardboard to the frame. Then staple it along the front side and along the bottom of the chair. Lastly, onto the back of the frame.

All the other pieces except the bottom of the chair should be on by now. The last step is the put the back on.  To accomplish this, layout the back piece of fabric right side side down. Measure the width of your chair on the top and bottom. Lay the really sharp metal strips on top of the fabric so that they are the width of the chair apart from each other. For example, if your chair is 30" at the bottom and 32" at the top, lay the metal strips 32" apart at the top and 30" apart at the bottom. Try to angle them evenly so they look straight once on the chair. Then punch the teeth through the fabric. This works well on carpet that you don't love. 

Once you have the two pieces pushed through, have someone help you hold it up to the back of the chair. Even it out and then hammer it into the frame. If there's still metal showing like this, hammer it more.

Next, staple along the top of the back. Then fold it under and staple the bottom.

After this, you can staple the bottom fabric on the chair. Just make sure you fold it under as you go.

And very last, add the trim. You'll need to add trim anywhere you can see your staples.

When adding the trim, start at one side where it should start, on the back and bottom of the chair for instance. Add a little fabric glue and pin it down at the starting place. Slowly add glue to the trim and hold it in place for a few second and then pin it about every 5". The glue will take a while to dry, so the pins will hold it together until then.

After this, you should be all done! Congratulations :-)