My sister is a minister in a small rural community in Oklahoma. Last week I recieved a call from her asking if I would do her a favor. She needed a few signs that would give a few people a gentle reminder, It doesn’t flush itself!

After I stopped laughing, I asked her why she needed those signs?

There are a few groups of people using the outreach building during the week.

Without fail, almost every week, the cleaning committee would come in on Saturday to clean before church on Sunday and they would find that the toilets hadn’t been flushed.

In days.

You get what I’m saying.

Ain’t nobody want to deal with that!

The outreach center’s decor theme is Cowboy Chic.

Keeping that in mind, I wanted to keep the sign’s design rustic with a little bit of glam.

Also, I was on a tight budget!

A quick trip to Hobby Lobby yielded a large 12 x 12 wooden frame for $9.99.

Using my 40% off coupon brought the frame’s total to just under $6.00.

So much cheaper than a pre-finished frame!

I also found ribbon and some wrapping paper to match.

The first thing I did on this project was to paint my frame black.

Once the paint was dry, I took the wrapping paper and cut out a square the exact size of my black frame.

I painted the frame with a generous coat of Mod Podge and then applied the wrapping paper.

Tip: When using Mod Podge make sure you have a nice even coat applied to your surface.

Once you have your paper laid on top of the glue, take a clean brush and gently remove any air pockets or wrinkles.

Once that is done, apply another even coat of Mod Podge to seal the paper.

While the Mod Podge was drying, using my Silhouette cutting machine, I cut out the vinyl lettering for my sign.

After cutting my black card stock to fit inside the frame, I applied the vinyl lettering to the card stock.

And just like that, my sister’s gentle reminder, “It doesn’t flush itself” was finished.

My sister is picking up the signs this weekend.

I sincerely hope that the signs work, as the cleaning committee is all in an uproar about the lack of hygiene!

Every time I see these signs I can’t help but laugh.

Of course, I’m not the one that has to clean the toilets either or I just might be tempted to give a not so gentle reminder, IT DOESN’T FLUSH ITSELF!

Until next time….

If you like it, be sure to PIN it!

I was at my sweet friend’s house Darlene’s house for PoKeeno. Darlene has a quirky, lovable sense of humor that is reflected in her design style. On a bathroom break, I found the best piece of art ever! Three  vintage bathing beauties (I think they are sisters) in ancient bathing suits standing in water. I fell in love with this small framed print. I call it Sister Love. I had to have one! After questioning Darlene on where she found this awesome piece, I found out that it was old and finding another would be next to impossible. However, Darlene suggested that I take a picture of the art piece and maybe I would be able to reproduce it.

The photo I took could have been much better. I mean it was in a small bathroom, at night, with an iPhone..but I was optimistic that I could save it. I put it into PicMonkey. If y’all haven’t tried editing your photos with the monkey, I suggest you get yourself on over there – it’s the bomb. Anyway, the original photo wasn’t pristine. It was faded and had creases in it, but putting it into PicMonkey allowed me to add color where there wasn’t any and fix the creases. I could have restored it to darn near perfect, but I loved the old worn feel. This was my finished edit. Don’t those three girls look mischievous?

I have been meaning to frame a couple of prints and give them to my sweet seesters but kept forgetting to do so. I was at Hobby Lobby and these frames were 66% off. Wrong colors, but great shapes. My seester T2 , I am T1, loves all things modern. Seester D is all girl, all the time! We all have a thousand frames so I wanted these to reflect their personalities – just like the bathing beauties in the photo.

Both of my seesters love black accents in their homes, so I spray painted the frames black. They were a little stark and looked unfinished, maybe a little too shiny to go with the print. So a little embellishment was called for.

On T2’s modern frame I added some round glass stones in pale yellow, blue and green. I glued these on around the frame opening. Perfect!

On D’s I distressed the edges and laid out these rhinestones that are the color of her bedroom. The rhinestones were definitely her but again too “new” looking for the frame.

To get the blue color I used a permanent dye stamp pad on the edges.

I did go ahead and add a few rhinestones here and there. Let’s face it Miss D loves her some girly rhinestones!  Once I added an antique pin with rhinestones to the bow, I felt like it all came together!

I think the glass pieces on T2’s frame, while subtle, brought out the colors of the print and tied it all together.

It would have been easier to just buy the frames already decorated and to be honest these frames might not be to your taste, but in this case, I felt like the frames needed to reflect the seesters I was giving them to. I wanted to make it a little more personal – give them some serious Sister Love!

Until next time….

                     Tammy