Pinned It, Made It #4

Over the weekend my friend Michelle and I had our monthly craft night. We’ve been doing them for over a year now and I still look forward to it every month. If you’ve missed any of our past projects, I’ve created a list at the bottom of the post (we also share our top three projects to date). Anyway, this round of projects includes one of my favorite projects and our biggest #pinterestfail yet.

For our August craft night we decided to make fall pillows. We bought the pillow covers at Hobby Lobby (they’re super cheap) and used felt to decorate them. This ended up being one of my favorite projects, but it seriously took for-ev-er. We cut everything by hand (using this leaf template) and then hand stitched the details. I wish I would have had the time (and patience) to stitch details on all of the leaves, but I still love how it turned out. Thanks Handmade in the Heartland for the inspiration!

Michelle had to take her pillow home and finish sewing the next day, so this isn’t her finished pillow in the picture. You can see her finished pillow here (or in the 'favorites' section below). She took the time to hand stitch all of the felt leaves and pumpkins to the pillow cover, so hers should last forever. I used fabric glue to adhere the leaves on mine, so I hope it holds up. The pillow doesn’t get used, so I think it should be fine.

We also baked a batch of mint chocolate chip cookies using a recipe that Michelle had pinned. They were seriously so good. Adam and I ate all of ours by the end of the weekend.

September’s craft ended up being our biggest fail yet. Our project for the month was to paint mason jars for the fall (tutorial here and here). Um yeah, it’s harder than it sounds. We tried acrylic paint, chalk paint and spray paint. The one that I spray painted was the only jar that turned out decent. The other paints just looked too streaky and required way to many coats of paint. Luckily, the acrylic paint and chalk paint washed off easily so we can reuse the jars for another project.

Michelle also tried to decoupage faux leaves onto the jars like this pin, but as you can see, it didn’t work out. They just wouldn’t lay flat on the jar. So we gave up and decided to just meet the guys at a local brewery for a couple drinks. Our craft project didn’t turn out as planned, but it was still a fun day.

For October we stuck with the fall theme and made wood slice pumpkins using the tutorial from A Night Owl. This ended up being one of our easiest and most straight-forward crafts. Honestly, it was nice to just paint, glue, and be done on time for once.

Plus they turned out so cute! Mine are on the right and Michelle's are on the left. I like how she did her leaves on opposite sides of the two pumpkins. I think I'm going pull the leave off of my smaller one and glue it to the other side...one of these days. Anyway, if you're looking for a quick, cute fall craft I'd totally recommend this one!

As I mentioned above, it’s been a year since we started out monthly craft nights. I thought it would be fun if we both picked our favorite projects from the last year based on outcome. We both agree that our $15 Dollar Tree Craft Challenge was our favorite to actually do. Anyway, in no particular order, these are our top three projects we’ve created so far:

You can see all of our past projects here:
Pinned It, Made It #1: Burlap Wreaths, Reversible Scarecrow/Snowman and String Art
Pinned It, Made It #2: Christmas Ornaments, Wood Door Tags, and Painted Signs
Pinned It, Made It #3: Patriotic Rag Wreaths, Wood Sign Post + Welcome Signs, and $15 Dollar Tree Craft Challenge

If you’re looking for more craft ideas, check out our shared Monthly Craft Night Pinterest board!