Recycled PIllow Stuffing

Back in college my sister tried this crazy idea that she had heard somewhere to stuff a pillow sham with plastic bags instead of buying a pillow for it.  I remember laying on her bed and hearing the crinkly plastic bags shift in the under-stuffed sham.  (Of course it improved with time, or more specifically--additional shopping trips.)

I remembered that idea when I came home from the thrift store with this strange tube/sack thing.  I also remembered the tip I learned watching all those episodes of Trading Spaces (back in the day when I was nursing Owen non-stop) which is to line the pillow case with flat batting before stuffing to make a smoother pillow.  So I used some batting leftover from recovering the baby's carseat, stuffed the pillow very full of plastic shopping sacks, and stitched up the end. 
     

I like the nice long rectangle shape of it to add to the mix of pillows on the bed.

Stuffed full and with the extra layer of batting it's not too crinkly, and I love the rough, speckled fabric it's made out of--though I'm still banking on a burlap pillow as well.

Steampunk Tea Tray

 I picked up this tray a long time ago at the thrift store.  This woman was dropping off a few boxes of stuff and saw me eying it and told me I could just take it.  It wasn't the cheesy stenciled leaves and apples that caught my eye.  I was interested in it because it was wooden, and had those pretty metal handles. 

I recently decided that what it needed was a good steampunk makeover.  I started by painting the bottom of it black.

 I found a Steampunk wallpaper image from a now-defunct wallpaper website.  It was just about perfect ratios to fit in the bottom of the tray.  It looks like an old piece of folded paper with some astronomy-type diagrams and sketches on it. 

I printed the image on cardstock and Mod Podged it into the bottom of the tray.

I followed the example of Sara at The Steampunk Home and concocted a story to go with my home decor. 

It seems our heroine was studying some diagrams when she heard the bell at the front door.  Looking at the clock she realized that whomever was calling on her would be right to expect an afternoon tea.  So she distractedly gathered some jars of preserves, not realizing she left her notes at the bottom of the pile. 

Baby Food Jar Pumpkin Lanterns

 It's beginning to look a lot like. . . Halloween!

 Owen and I worked on this project over the course of a few days.  We left the materials out at the table, and would sit down and work a while every so often. 

 It's a basic painted Mod Podge craft with recycled babyfood jars and scraps of tissue paper.  We used two colors of orange and one color of green.  We did the orange first, let it dry then turned it over and pasted on the green, and then the black faces.  You get the most translucent glass-like look by applying a layer of Mod Podge over the top of it all as well. 

 

We clipped them onto a string of white lights, and the give a brilliant orange glow.