Safety pins and thrifty crafts

Safety pins... you might ask? I have found many great uses for this often forgotten and taken for granted household tool! One is that I now need one to hold up my pants- Yahoo! The running is finally paying off and I am starting to tell a difference in my clothes. What a relief! I was getting very discouraged and wondering what I was going to do to actually lose some inches. I am always amazed at how I can run 8 miles (yes, I did it on Saturday! Woohoo!) and burn that many calories and still build muscle so that my weight is exactly the same. However I am not one of those people who focuses on the "perfect weight". I just want to be in a certain size in my clothes and feel "good". Ok enough of that, the other reason I have found a new respect for the safety pin is because I finally have made curtains in my bathroom and dining room with those awesome little things! Thanks to Missy Davis, I have recently found one of my new favorite blogs the Nesting Place. When I saw on Missy's blog that she had made some very cute valances for her windows, I decided that it was high time I got that piece of remnant fabric that I bought for my bathroom a year ago and do SOMETHING with it! I found the Nesting Place blog and looked at all of her great ideas and inspiration to make what she calls a "window mistreatment's". It is a window treatment where you dont do a lick of sewing! Nothing against sewing but I dont know how and dont have time to learn SO I was so excited to see all of the great things that you can do with some fabric glue, safety pins, straight pins, and a little work. 45 minutes later I made a "mistreatment" for my bathroom and it only cost me $8! I purchased some remnant fabric at Joann's for like $3, the trim was half off and ended up costing $4, and the lining was $1 for this treatment. Everything else I ,and it was "sew" easy!

Safety pins to make the pleat...

The final product...

I also made this to go in there also and all it cost me was $1 for the mat! I used an old frame, used the extra fabric from the windows, some ribbon, and printed our monogram on some cream card stock paper. Cant take credit for this idea either... also came from a blog that I came across on Nesters.



Next I tackled the dining room. Now my Mom actually sewed these for me, but we weren't sure exactly how we were going to hang them or how they would look after she finished. I didnt want to use rods and planned on using hooks of some kind to hang them. I played with them for a while, trying to drape and fold and nothing looked right. I decided to make them out to be soft cornice's for the windows and simply "pinned" them with safety pins to fold how you see it. It is still missing something. I hadnt planned on using trim on these since Mom put a contrasting fabric on the top and bottom, however I still may do so. BUT it will be glued as "Liquid Stitch" is my new best friend! I also plan on doing some sheer fabric panels on the side windows to add another texture. I want lots of light coming in and dont want to cover up the windows too much. Thank you to Mom for making these for me so I didnt have to get out my glue and pins! *NOTE- something else I did was hang all of the treatments way above where the window actually is to make them appear larger. This is an old design trick that I always used for my clients but saw that the Nesting Place highly recommended it as well.Last but not least, I made this with a small left over piece of fabric that came from my guest room to hang in my kitchen. I had a small area of wall space that desperately needed something. Again...old frame, ribbon I already had, and printed this from my computer on some card stock. It is amazing what you can do with old stuff just sitting around the house. I cant wait to see what else I can create! I wanted to share this with each of you because if it wasnt for Missy's post I would still be looking at bare windows! I hope this can provide some inspiration for you all to make your home a happy place this spring! And once again a THANK YOU to Missy!!