Paint Stick Projects

Hey everyone...It's been awhile...I've been trying to reorganize my house. It's been so chaotic and I'm trying to figure out the best way for our house to function. Half the time I decide where things will go and be organized and change my mind and have to start all over again. So, maybe someday I'll be done, and then I'll change my mind or have another baby HA! Anyways, I always have about a bajillion projects going on at once and here is one of the many I've had half done for months. I finally took the 15 minutes last night to finish it. Why is it that it takes 3 months to finish a project that will only take 15 minutes??? I have a love affair with Paint stick stirrers...They are free and they have so many possibilities! What's not to love?? Here is my favorite project I've used them for so far. AND the best part?? It only cost me 99 cents :) You know that's my kind of project... Here it goes:

1. Go to your local Home Depot or Lowes and beg for some {5 Gallon} Paint stirrers. They may look at you like your crazy or they may be super helpful like guy at our Home Depot down the street. Most the time they're happy to give you however many you need. For this project I used 7, with an 8 1/2 x 11 metal sheet. (OR if you're embarassed to ask you can buy some at wal-mart I believe) Go home and cut them to whatever size you want and give them a fresh coat of paint. I chose Glidden's antique white (I love that they will give out samples periodically, and they last forever!) *of course you can change the dimensions all you want to make it larger or smaller. I just love that you can buy pre-cut magnet board for $1!

2. After I let my paint dry, I sanded and glazed each stick like so...


3. Next, I hot glued in between each paint stick and then put hot glue allll over the back of the magnet sheet and stuck that on. I figure between all that glue it should hold right?? If you're nervous maybe use some gorilla glue instead?


4. Then I felt like it needed some jazzing up (haha sometimes I use words that sound like an 80 yr old woman. Not that that's a bad thing...) So, I decided to add some fabric around it. This is great because it uses all those scraps I save! I LOVE when I actually find uses for them. So, I started out with one long strip of the blue and white striped fabric. I hand stitched and pulled until I got the rosette look I was going for. Then glued the flower down with the end of the fabric running along the edge. At the corner I just folded and hot glued until I got the look I wanted.


5. Keep gluing your fabric down until you run out. Which in my case was too early. OOPS! I probably should have measured, but if you know me at all you know I don't measure anything. So instead of worrying about the huge space of missing fabric, I added some more flowers for fun :)


6. My husband came home and I proudly showed him my magnet board. He kindly asked why I stopped the fabric so early? haha I told him I had a plan...I did it on purpose?? Of course the answer is always a ruffle in my house so I added a ruffle and I actually like it better! Adds character right?


7. Here's the finished product! Even if I didn't have all of the stuff on hand I think this would only cost about $3. I love adding things to my home for next to nothing that serve a purpose.