Category Archives: Guest Blogger

Halloween Crafts from Lilacs & Longhorns

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Hi everyone, my name is Julie and I write a little ol’ blog called, ”

I am so excited to be guest posting here for Roeshel at the DIY Showoff!

Thanks to my kiddos, I’ve got Halloween on the brain, so today I’m going to show you how to decorate for Halloween the DIY and thrifty way.

Here are my super simple projects:

Quick Craft #1 – Spooky Skulls

We love crafting at our house so I like to get my kids involved whenever I can.  We made the cute little paper mache skulls you see on the cake plate above.  They were so easy and inexpensive!

I bought little brown paper mache skulls from Michaels for about 99 cents each.

Then we used white, grey and black craft paint here and there all over the skull — we painted rather sloppily to create an old and aged look.  I don’t have pictures of the actual technique, but trust me, there isn’t much of one — my kids did this!!
If we were to do it over again I would probably add a little brown or yellow to make it look even more aged and not so white, but they still look good, I think.
When we were done, they looked like this.  This only took us less than 20 minutes and it was easy and fun for my kids.

When they dried, I put them on this glass cake stand surrounded by spooky rats, crows, plastic spiders and spider webs all purchased at the Dollar Tree.

My kids love it!

Quick Craft #2 – Poison Bottle

This craft is even easier and it only takes a few minutes.

I found this cute little  for free (I am in love with free printables!)

I feel almost silly telling you how to do this it’s so easy!  I printed the label from The Graphics Fairy, cut it out and used Mod Podge to glue it to an old wine bottle I saved.  The end.

I think it looks so great and fun!

Quick Craft #3:

Finally, my other easy peasy project is another printable.  If you’ve been browsing blogs for awhile, you’ll know there are a lot of great freebies out there.  I found this one last year at The Diary of Dave’s Wife.

Halloween spider printable

I printed the sign out in high resolution and then put it into a frame I already had. Easy and free!

(Probably can’t call this last one a “craft”…”project” maybe?!)

By the way, she’s got another cute printable available this year…isn’t it fun?!

broom parking free printable

 

Really, there are so many great resources on the web that you can find just about anything that suits
your tastes.  I personally love free printables and am currently compiling a big list of them to be
posted on my blog soon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my quick and fun little Halloween projects today.  It’s been fun being a guest DIY Show Off and I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read my post!

Please stop by and see me sometime at Lilacs
and Longhorns — I love new visitors!

Thanks so much to Julie for sharing her fun Halloween DIY! Super cute! Head over to Lilacs & Longhorns to see more awesome projects from Julie and check out her Fall Favorites Friday feature (so inspiring!). 

DIY from The Space Between

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I’d like to introduce you to Karah from

the space between

today. Karah lives in a dream location and invites us each into her home. Well, via her blog. Not literally. Because if it was a literal invite, we’d all be on the next plane and I don’t think she has room for everyone. Darn! 😉 Her blog posts make me smile and her creativity is an inspiration. Meet Karah:

Hello, hello DIY Showoff readers! I am really, totally kind of pinching myself right now.

OK, to let you know how much of a dork I am, I just typed ‘pinning’ instead of ‘pinching’. You know when you finally get the chance to meet someone you’ve been stalking admiring for a long time and you say “it’s nice to meet me” instead ”it’s nice to meet you”? Yeah, I just did that, in the privacy of my own home, but just can’t seem to keep it to myself. I’m a bit of an over-sharing, too honest for my own good, trip over my own words ALL THE TIME type o’ gal.

My name is Karah and I blog over at the space between. You know the space, that one between where you’ve been and where you’re going. It’s nice to meet me, er …. you. 😉

After being a homeowner and avid DIYer in the US for many years I found myself transplanted to a Caribbean island over 2 years ago. I know, I know … try not to hate pity me.

We absolutely LOVE it here. My biggest personal challenge was definitely shifting from homeowner back to renter. It took me a few years to find my DIY, home improvement groove in a home that is not my own.

But I turned my habit of collecting random beachness into a habit of decorating with said random beachness. Like these two extra large pieces of driftwood I hung in my kitchen and now call open shelving. It sounds very trendy really, open shelving does.

My little blog actually started with a post about a driftwood Christmas tree. I am quite infatuated with the stuff.

And, on this little island, there tends to be a constant supply of homes in some state of construction, providing an endless supply of pallets. I first made the pallet word art hung in the kitchen (seen in the picture above) and my new favorite project, the free, little storage crate I just made to house our canned goods.
I even stenciled the word CURACAO on the front. It’s kind of like a crate of goods headed to our island.

You might be thinking, ‘seriously, all of your canned goods fit in there?’. Yep, they do. I affectionately refer to our rental as a breadbox, and as that nickname insinuates, it’s itty bitty and I need to be pretty creative with storage ideas.

And … in addition to the endless pallet supply, I elicit many a strange look as I peruse through their roadside dumpsters. Not too long ago I came home with this guy.
And turned her into a handy message board to support my listing habit. You can read about all of the lists I’m dreaming of writing on my cork/chalk/dry erase/pin board here.

I even managed to make my own chalkboard paint because I knew I didn’t want it to be black. So many fun options now that I know I can make chalkboards in any color. Check out the how-tos here!

It has been so fun to have the opportunity to share just a few of my favorite projects using quirky things to try to make a home out of our breadbox of a house with you. A HUGE Thank You! to Roeshel for giving me the opportunity. And, an equally HUGE Thank you! to you, the readers, who have lasted to the end. 🙂

I appreciate you taking the time to learn a little bit about the small space I keep in the world wide web. You will also find homemade canvas silhouettes, number art and easy decor ideas if you have an opportunity to come by the space between. I hope to see you there soon.!

-Karah

Involving Color

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I’ve “known” Jena from Involving Color for quite awhile and I not only love her creativity and beautiful home, I love her site.  She has some new features and really helpful tools so I asked her to share a little about it today. It’s a site you’re going to want to pin or bookmark for when you’re trying to choose a paint color. See paint colors in “real” rooms. Here’s Jena:

Hi, I’m Jena from Involving Color, and I’m so excited to be guest posting here on The DIY Show Off! I’ve been a long time reader of Roeshel’s blog, so when she asked me to come share a little about my site with you guys, I was beyond excited.

Involving Color is a blog all about paint color. I have hundreds (and growing!) reader submitted rooms organized in galleries by paint color and room type. I even have a section just for painted furniture. I recently added a lot of functionality with an improved search and image tags, which I’ll talk about below.

InvolvingColor