M is for: Motivation (Project Elephant #4—Easy Fabric Art + Clean Closets)

Hi there, lovely people!

I mentioned on Friday (seriously? slow.down.time) that I hadn’t given up on my Project Elephant goals and would update you today. But I’d be lying if I said that they have been my primary focus for that last two weeks or so.  In fact, between the twins’ birthday, a blog redesign (+31 straight days of blogging), and a trip to New York (not to mention regular life poking its nose in every now and then), I haven’t given them much thought at all.

Still, I did manage to polish off the tasks that I had only half-completed by our last check-in.

Let’s get the ugly stuff out of the way first, shall we?

Here’s what my kids’ closets looked like before I tackled them:

Eeep!

And here’s what they looked like mid-tackle (they were fighting back).

Aaaack!

And here’s what I ended up with:

Full disclosure: there was a fair bit of leftover that I’ve still got to categorize/chunk/put back, but it’s all contained and neatly stacked. Plus, it feels so good to have everything cleaned out, and all of the clothes organized that I’m calling the closet part done!

Oh, and I thought I’d show you the other half of the fabric art project that I did.

I started out with this:

That would be a Goodwill frame, a hot glue gun, and some fun fabric—AKA the world’s easiest “art.”

I like to glue the selvage edges of my fabric to the frame first since they’re nice and straight and help me to get my pattern straight and then trim the other sides as I go.

{Obviously, I don’t worry about the frame being perfectly clean first; the glue will still adhere…promise}

After I had my fabric base, I wanted to do a simple little embellishment with sequins.

So I took the following:

{Craft felt, a heart outline—I just free-handed mine, hot glue, and a roll of gold glitter ribbon}

…and made a glitter heart to add to my framed coral chevron fabric, like so:

::STEP 1::

Use the paper outline to cut out a felt heart.

::STEP 2::

Cut the glitter ribbon into strips long enough to cover each section of the heart that it corresponds to, then glue each strip in place lining them up so that no felt is visible.

::STEP 3::

At this point, you should have this. Now all you need to do is trim around the heart to get rid of the excess ribbon/sequins. (I just used craft scissors; they cut right through the sequins).

::STEP 4::

Glue the glitter heart to your fabric background and hang your crazy easy, done-in-20-minutes art.

You might even let one of your twins help out with pillow selection (Evy knocked this one off, so we tried the bow pillow instead).

{Pardon the not-so-great pics; this is the guest bathroom, and it gets almost zero natural light}.

Oh, and remember my other easy piece of fabric art?

It’s even simpler to create! You start with the same glue-gun + fabric  + frame method from the beginning of the post, and then you take this:

 

{Burlap bunting—I just free-handed mine, letter stencils—I got mine at Walmart, and a Sharpie pen}

::STEP 1::

 

Position the letter stencil on top of a piece of burlap bunting, and then fill it in with your Sharpie pen.

::STEP 2::

Pin the stenciled bunting pieces in a row to spell out your words.

And…Voila!

I’m can already see whipping out a “Give Thanks” banner for Thanksgiving and, of course, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

So, there’s my Project Elephant update for the week. I’ll be back next Monday with the next installment (and a completely checked off list! Wooot!).

Did you manage take any chomps out of your elephant last week?

REMEMBER: It’s not about perfection (as I have ably proven with this post alone). It’s about progress!

Don’t hesitate to give me a shout-out on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #projectelephant so I can give you a cyber high-five!

And now I’m off to take a chomp out of lunch! No actual elephants on the menu this week.