DIY Mason Jar Vases

Hello friends! Today I'm here to share with you another really easy DIY project that can be put together in less than 10 minutes. And the best part... it's really inexpensive and potentially even free if you have a Mason Jar and some fabric or ribbon scraps on hand! :) 

So here we go with a super easy, extremely simple tutorial for how to make Mason Jar Vases. Seriously, you're going to wonder why you never did anything like this before now ;)

So, basically like I said before, you're going to need a Mason Jar, some fabric or ribbon scraps, and a hot glue gun to make these. That's literally all you need. Awesome huh?

Now, on to the directions. To make mine, I used leftover scraps of burlap ribbon that I had used on other projects to act as the base ribbon that gets wrapped around the Mason Jar. I measured with the ribbon around the jar, allowing a little extra for overlap, and just trimmed a piece that would fit around the middle of the jar. 

To attach it to the Mason Jar, I used hot glue to first glue down one end of the ribbon directly to the jar. Then I wrapped the ribbon around the front of the jar and hot glued the free end of the ribbon on top of the end that was already glued down. I made sure to line up the ends of the ribbon as perfectly as I could so that it seems like one seamless piece of ribbon around the jar. 

Then it's time to embellish! I had all of the scraps that I used for the embellishments on hand. In my opinion, the more scraps you have, the more fun this is! I really had fun mixing and matching decorations and this has seriously made me want to go out and buy every color of burlap ribbon out there. Are any of you surprised? ;)

This first one is actually probably my favorite. I used grey bakers twine wrapped around the grey burlap and then made a rosette out of some lace scraps that I had. I used hot glue to attach the rosette to the front of the vase.

This second was the easiest but still really cute and natural looking. I wrapped twine around the vase 3 times and tied a bow in the front, hot gluing the loops and the ends of the bow down onto the burlap so that it doesn't come undone.

For this next one, I wrapped red and white bakers twine 5 times around the jar and spaced them out evenly so that it gave it a striped look. Then I made a flower out of red burlap and glued it to the front. A button glued to the middle of the flower gave it the perfect finishing touch.

I actually think this one would be really cute for Christmas too! :)

For this last one, I just made small loops with twine and hot glued 6 of them to a little piece of burlap as a base to form a flower. Then to finish it off, I added a small circle of burlap as the center of the flower. 

I like how fun and summery this one turned out! 

And that's how simple it is, my friends! I love how they turned out and like I said before, I love how many options there are! I have so many more ideas floating around in my head for how I'm going to decorate my next Mason Jar Vases. I think I'll try making some wrapped with lace ribbon as the base rather than the burlap ribbon. You can really do anything with these!

The options for how to use these in your home are endless as well! You could use them as a vase for flowers, a toothbrush holder, a pencil holder, or even to store small craft items like beads or ribbon.

I used quart sized Mason Jars for the ones shown in these photos, but these could also be made with the smaller Mason Jars to give you even more options! And if you choose to leave the lids on, you could use them to store food items as well.

I think I might make a few extras so that I can give them as gifts also. Wouldn't you love to receive one of these as a gift with some candy or baked goods inside? I know I would! :)

So on to the second part of this blog post (you didn't know there was a second part, did you?)... some of you may have noticed the little bench that my Mason Jar Vases are sitting on and are wondering where it might have come from. Well, my friends, I am proud to tell you that my hubby made it! Isn't it awesome?

Yeah, I'm a pretty proud wife :)

He made it almost entirely out of pallet wood, using some building plans that he found online. I believe it was an Ana White plan, but I'm not 100% positive at the moment and the hubby's not around to ask. However, when I finish the bench and post about it, I will link to the plan online in case any of you are interested in making one for yourself :)

So now that you've seen the bench, I need some feedback from you all! How should I finish this little guy? Should I stain it, paint it, or both?! There are so many choices and I really want your help deciding! Please please please leave me a comment and give me your opinion!

And to those of you who already gave me some feedback on Instagram when I posted the pic and posed this question last night, thank you! I really appreciate hearing what you all are interested in seeing and I can't wait to hear what the rest of you think!

Have a good night, all!

Linking up at:
Seven thirty three
Sweet C's Designs
The 36th Avenue
Ella Claire
A Diamond in the Stuff
Love Grows Wild
Kammy's Korner
Craft-O-Maniac
twelve O eight
Flamingo Toes

Our 1st Anniversary!

I mentioned it in my last post, but for those of you who missed it, it was our 1st anniversary yesterday! :) I honestly cannot believe how quickly this year went by and it's really been a wonderful year. Eric and I have lived on our own, lived with the 'rents, gone on two beautiful vacations, and started building a home that we hope to spend the rest of our lives in - along with many other things, of course.  I'm feeling so incredibly blessed and I can't wait to spend many more years with the love of my life :)

Yesterday we spent the day together celebrating and we couldn't stop thinking and talking about what we were doing a year ago on our wedding day. While we were walking around downtown Holland, we kept saying, "Yesterday at this time, we would have been taking our wedding pictures." And when we were eating dinner at a nice restaurant on the waterfront, we ate while talking about how we would have been riding around with our wedding party in the limo at that time a year ago. And when we went home and ate the top of our wedding cake together, we reminisced about the reception and how much fun we had celebrating with our friends and family. There are so many incredible memories from that day that I'm so glad we had the time to remember them together.

Here's a couple of pictures of us yesterday :)

Ignore the fact that I have no makeup on in this one - this is after we showered already and were getting ready for bed. I was actually surprised by how good our cake was yet after being frozen in my parents' freezer for a whole year! 

It really was a beautiful anniversary and I'm so glad that we just got to spend the day enjoying time with each other. I never thought I could feel more in love with Eric than I did on our wedding day, but after an absolutely amazing year together I can definitely say I do! 

So, in the spirit of being reminiscent, I thought I would share just a few photos of our wedding day with you also. As I share these photos with you, I'm literally smiling from ear to ear and wishing I could relive this day again. 

Isn't that willow tree gorgeous? I absolutely love willow trees, hence my blog name, and this was by far the most gorgeous willow tree I have ever seen. It had always been my dream to have my wedding photos taken under a willow tree and I was so ecstatic when Leah, my photographer, told me that she had the perfect place. I still can't believe how perfect it was!

Aren't my bridesmaids gorgeous? I love them all to death!

We couldn't help but celebrate a little when we were officially announced as "Mr. and Mrs. Gladding" :)

We did a balloon send-off and it was so awesome. All those balloons floating away above us made it truly magical.

And this photo makes me smile every time I see it :) Our friends are the best dancers ever and the dance floor was packed almost all night - we had so much fun! This was during a little lull when we had a little time to reconnect between spending the night breaking it down!

I would love to share even more photos with you, but I don't want to bore you ;) I hope you can see how amazing our wedding day was though, and can understand how special it was for us. We are incredibly blessed!

I want to thank my photographer, Leah Mullett again also. She took the most beautiful photos of the day and will help us to remember how incredible it all was for years to come. If you want to check out her other work, click here. She is AWESOME!

I hope to be back this week with a couple more posts so keep checking back! Have a good week all!

Free Honey Bee Printable!

Hello all you lovely people - happy Saturday!

I'm so glad it's the weekend and that I have the day off from work so I can share my first free printable with you all! I've been learning how to use Gimp (kinda like Photoshop, but free) and I'm loving all the fun images I've been able to create with it. I've been selling a couple of painted frames in my booth filled with some of the images I've created, but today I wanted to share one with you - for free! :)

As most of you know, I'm a big country music fan. This summer I've absolutely fallen in love with the song "Honey Bee" by Blake Shelton. While I was shopping around at Michaels the other day, I came across some scrapbook paper that looked like yellow honeycombs and I instantly knew that I wanted to make a printable with the lyrics from that song on it.

And here's how it turned out!

Pretty cute huh? 

I'm gonna go ahead and say that these photos really don't do it justice. I couldn't really find a good place to make the yellow pop and I'm just really not that good at photography. So there. I said it ;)

And a crooked photo... yup. Just some more of my own critiques - ha.

I do really love how it turned out though. And I think it looks great paired with the grey frame.

It's kinda hard to see in this photo, but isn't the little honey bee flying in a heart shape adorable? My hubby was the mastermind behind figuring out how to make that one! He's much more Gimp savvy than I am - I had the idea, but he made it happen!

Speaking of my husband, it's our 1-year wedding anniversary tomorrow and we're so excited to celebrate this awesome milestone! I can't believe it's been a year already! But anyways... you'll probably hear more about that later :)

So back to the printable :) If you'd like to download this printable for yourself, you can find it here:

Honey Bee Printable

This is a 8.5 x 11 file so it can be printed on standard sized printer paper. Like I said before, the honeycomb paper is from Michaels and started as a 12 x 12 piece of scrapbook paper which I cut down to the 8.5 x 11 size. Then I just ran it right through my printer and it turned out perfect! If you just want a white background, regular printer paper will work instead.

The frame that I have it displayed in is an 8.5 x 11 document frame from Hobby Lobby, painted and distressed just a tad bit. This is a pretty standard frame size so it shouldn't be difficult to find the perfect frame to display your printable in! :)

Enjoy! And if you use it, I'd love to hear about it and would love even more to see some photos! 

Have a great weekend all!

Linking up at:

Tatertots and Jello

Liz Marie Blog

A Diamond in the Stuff

Flamingo Toes

Dakota Creek Chic

Quick & Easy DIY Frame Ideas

Hello friends! How have you all been? Hot and sweaty with frizzy hair like I have been in this crazy humid weather?! And I have a cold... in the middle of July. What is wrong with this picture? I'm going on day 7 of being sick here people! I thought that being a nurse was supposed to guarantee me some sort of super immune system or something. I was very wrong. Apparently I have to earn that. However, I think I might be well on my way to earning it after being sick 3 times within the past 6 months. At least I can hope, right? ;)

Well, despite being sick I have been up to a few things that I wanted to share with you all! First, because I just can't help but share, here's a picture of the progress on our house :)

We have roof! And it actually looks like a real house now that the sides are up! We got to walk through it yesterday after the builders had gone home for the day, and it's so awesome to finally be able to walk through each of the rooms and visualize what everything will be like when it's all finished. It was really difficult sometimes to imagine what size certain things were going to end up being when everything was just an idea on paper. Now I can actually stand in my walk-in-closet and know that it's going to be big enough to fit all my clothes in... at least most of them ;)

I can't wait until we finally get to start moving in and making it our own. I can guarantee that the blog will be a little more exciting when I can actually share our home with you all. That's the reason why I started this blog, after all :)

One more thing before I get to the main reason for this blog post - I just want to quick share with you my most recent pallet sign. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw my picture of this beauty yesterday already, but for those of you who haven't seen it yet, here ya go!

I really love how it turned out, especially with the bird detail. For those of you who know me, I'm a little bird obsessed so it's not surprising that this is probably my favorite sign so far ;)

Alright now, onward and forward with the "Quick & Easy DIY Frame Ideas" as promised in the title of this post :) I actually have 2 really great DIY frame projects to share with you tonight. This first one requires a little more work than the other, but is still really easy and very inexpensive as well!

Materials you will need:
-unfinished wood frame from Michaels
-1 sheet scrapbook paper
-acrylic paint in coordinating color
-Mod Podge
-paint brush/foam brush
-scissors/razor blade/Exacto knife
-embellishments (optional)

I purchased this frame from Michaels in the unfinished wood section - it was only $1! I believe there are similar ones at Hobby Lobby as well, but I liked the look of this one with the rounded edges and the price was definitely right so I didn't search any further!

And here is what I turned it into! :)

Here are the simple steps to create a frame like this:

1. Paint the wood frame with acrylic paint of your choice. I used grey for mine. Make sure to get all the sides, as well as the back.

2. Trace the outline of the outside AND the inside of the frame onto a piece of scrapbook paper. Then, using either a scissors, razor blade, or Exacto knife cut the shape out until it fits as perfectly as possible onto the front of the frame.

3. Apply a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the front of the frame. This will act as an adhesive to attach the paper.

4. Lay the cut-out scrapbook paper onto the Mod Podge and use a flat object such as a credit card to smooth out any wrinkles or bubbles under the paper.

5. Once dried, apply another thin coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper as a sealer.

6. Apply embellishments if desired.

And that's it! Really easy, really quick, and really inexpensive. I have a feeling I will be making a lot more of these... I have a problem with buying cute scrapbook paper even when I don't have a plan for it so this is the perfect solution!

And there are so many options for embellishments! I glued grey striped bakers twine around the inside edge of my frame and added a little bow in the corner to give it a little extra character but you could also add flowers, ribbon, buttons etc. The possibilities are endless :)

Pretty cute huh?

Now, for the 2nd DIY frame project of the night, I want to share with you how to make this super simple pair of frames featuring a line from one of my favorite hymns. You're really going to love how easy this one is :)

Materials you will need:

-two 4x6 wood wall frames (mine are from Hobby Lobby)

-scrapbook paper

-paper trimmer/scissors

-acrylic paint

-paintbrush

-sandpaper

-letter stickers

And here again are the simple steps needed to make this set of frames:

1. Paint your wooden frames with acrylic paint and allow to dry. With this project, it doesn't matter if you paint the back of the frame because it's going to hang on the wall anyways. It's up to you.

2. Once the frames are dry, use sandpaper to rough up the paint in the corners and on the ridges to give it that shabby chic look that we all know I love ;) You can obviously skip this part if you don't like that look and would rather have a cleanly painted frame.

3. Cut your scrapbook paper into two 4x6 rectangles with either a scissors or a paper trimmer. You can measure for this part, or just trace the backing that comes with the frame. I traced the backings onto the scrapbook paper and then used a paper trimmer so that my cuts would be straight.

Depending on the design on your scrapbook paper, you may or may not need to worry about this, but as you can see my scrapbook paper looks like wooden slats. It was really important that I kept the lines of the wooden slats in mind when cutting out my 4x6 pieces because I didn't want them to end up looking crooked once they were in the frame. With some designs this will matter and with others it won't. Just something to keep in mind :)

4. Using your alphabet stickers, spell out the words of the song, splitting the lyrics between the two frames. For the song I used, I spelled out "IT IS WELL" in one frame and "WITH MY SOUL" in another. You could adapt this project by using other song lyrics as well, depending on your taste.

You can also vary the placement of the words to give it a different look. For mine, I lined my words up with the inner sides of the frames and worked from the top down in one frame and from the bottom up in the other. I think this really makes the frames look like they are meant to go together and gives them that cohesive feel I was going for.

These will be going up for sale in my booth for now, but I think I will make another set to put in our home when I actually have a place in mind to put them. I really love how they turned out and I think the paint and scrapbook paper I chose is just perfect with the words. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think it all just looks very calm, quiet, and authentic - just like the words of the hymn. "It is well with my soul." Don't you just love those words and the meaning behind them? I know I do.

So what do you think of my two quick and easy DIY frame ideas? Which one do you like best? And have I sparked any inspiration for your next DIY project? Leave a comment and let me know!

Linking up at:

City Farmhouse
Jennifer Rizzo
Craftberry Bush
twelveOeight
Tatertots and Jello
Liz Marie Blog
A Diamond in the Stuff
Flamingo Toes
Dakota Creek Chic

Long Time, No See!

Hello friends! I bet you've all been wondering where I've been... I'm still alive! But, I know that I have been MIA for a little too long. However, I'm back with some exciting news which will explain why I haven't been around for a while. I have been busy crafting stuff to sell in my booth! Yes, that's right! I officially have a booth!

Some of you may have seen my Facebook update last week about putting my name down on the waiting lists for a few stores that offer vender spaces for crafters like me. I got a call from one of them about a week ago and I now have a space to sell my stuff!

If you want to check it out, the store is called "Teri's Treasures" and is located at 970 Chicago Drive (between 8th and 12th) in Jenison. It's a blue building on the south side of Chicago Drive and it sells both thrift items and crafted items like mine. It wasn't my first choice for location, but it's definitely a great place to start!

And because I'm just starting out, I barely have anything in my booth. So if you go check it out within the next week or so, you won't find too much. You've been warned ;) I've been busy trying to get a bunch of stuff made, but with the holiday and my family gone camping, Eric and I have been relaxing for a few days with family too :)

Because I know you're curious, I did take a few photos of some of the stuff I threw together today. These items aren't in the store yet, but I'll probably drop them off on Wednesday. No tutorials today either, but if you're interested in learning how to make one of the items in the photos, just let me know and I'll try to do a blog post with a tutorial about it sometime soon :)

Alright so this first one you see is actually no longer for sale... my mother-in-law got home from work today and disappeared with this wreath to try it out on her front door. Let's just say it never returned and has found a new home :)

I've been wanting to try making one of these bubble wreaths for a while, and it's actually really fun! I love how it turned out too :)

I love the little key detail...

And the lace and chevron bow :)

I actually did make another one of these last week that should still be available in my booth if you're interested. It's a little different, but still has the bubble burlap shape. That one turned out great too, but I didn't remember to take a picture before I brought it away. I'll definitely be making a few more of these in the near future too so watch for those as well!

Next, I made this fun chevron burlap wrapped wreath with jute flowers. 

It features 3 sizes of the loopy jute flowers with burlap centers and 3 jute swirl rosettes.

I think this one is great for the summer season! Isn't it cute? :)

This next little piece is something I just randomly threw together with some scraps I had lying around. The frame I had painted and intended to do something else with, but I actually stepped on the glass and broke it (I didn't hurt myself, thank goodness) so it wasn't going to work with my original idea anymore. So, after looking at my scraps and brainstorming for a few minutes, this is what I ended up with!

I'm kind of obsessed with these cute vintage looking keys that I found in the dollar section at Michaels. I'm definitely going back to get more this week!

This is just a little 5x7 wall frame so it would fit almost anywhere! It would be a great addition to a gallery wall also. I would love to add something like this to my gallery wall when we move into our new home :)

And finally, something I've been wanting to make for quite a while, Mason Jar wall vases! Eric helped me out with this one since it took some power tools to put together, but I think they turned out really great. We made 4 of them and painted each one a different color. The one shown is blue, but we also made white, grey, and green.

I've seen these used to hold flowers, kitchen utensils, or even toothbrushes in a bathroom. There are so many options with these little guys :)

Nothing like a good Mason Jar project ;)

Didn't they turn out great? I love them!

Well, I hope that you've all enjoyed getting a little peek at what I've been up to and I hope that you will take the time to check out my booth sometime soon! I'd love to hear what you think about these projects and like I said before, please let me know if you'd like a tutorial on any of them. I'd be more than happy to share! :)