Anther post!  I love Christmas break!  Alright, so my my first installment of novice sewing tutorials was pretty popular so I thought I would do a part II with some more projects that I have taken on recently.
I have found that pretty much every fabric looks cute as a burp cloth!

The first tutorial that I tried was a king crown.  I teach music at a Christian school and a Nativity pageant is a part of my big Christmas program every year.  A few years ago, one of my students stepped on the plastic crowns for the wise men and broke them.  I decided to replace them with felt crowns.
I used this tutorial from the blog Small Things.

The tutorial tells how to insert elastic into the crowns but I wanted to make them really adjustable since I will have different kids playing the wise men each year.  I decided to put velcro on the backs.
Basically, I measured the tops of my xylophones with the bars on, added about 2 inches on each side to the dimensions and then made a casing for elastic.  Super simple and super cute.  Oh and I suppose I should share some pics of my classroom while I am on this subject.

The color scheme in my classroom is orange, blue, and brown.  Also, I am obsessed with owls so you can find them throughout my classroom.  The only thing you can't see from these pictures is the front of the room where I have my two white boards (one lined and one not) and my piano.

The third sewing project that I want to share is a tutorial for napkins.  This is my kind of project because it involves straight lines which I am good at sewing most of the time.  The only tricky part was the mitered corners but I found a couple of tutorials that made it super simple.  The first method that I tried was from the blog No Big Dil found here.  The second one that I tried and the one that was easier for me was from a blog that has an expired domain name but it involved pressing and then trimming the corners and pressing the corners and then the edges to create the mitered corner.  I included the first tutorial because you might find that one easier.
I made two sets of napkins from some fabric that I found.  So easy and so classy.

Well it is officially Christmas break.  I am so excited to have 2 weeks off after 2 busy weeks filled with two big Christmas concerts, a piano recital, and a tour with my 4th and 5th grade choir.  I am so proud of how all my students performed but I am definitely in need of this break.

The break means that I have some time to complete some projects as well as share some that have already been completed.  Last weekend I made a simple Christmas card display out of a frame, some spray paint, and some ribbon that I had lying around the house.  In the past, I have taped Christmas cards to the inside of our front door but after seeing a few different ideas for displaying Christmas cards on Pinterest, I thought I would create something cute of my own.

I started with an open frame that I bought at 50% off at Michael's.  I was originally going to paint it gold with the Vintage Gold Martha Stewart paint that I had leftover from my armoire project.  But I thought about my lovely aqua walls in the living room and knew that I had to paint it bright red.  I love the combo of red and aqua!  So I picked up a $5 can of red Valspar spray paint at Lowes.
I then applied 3 thin coats of the spray paint to the frame and stuck it on our porch to off gas.
Then I gathered some ribbon that I had laying around (most of the time I buy ribbon on clearance when I am at craft stores so I always have a nice supply on hand).  I used a glue gun to attach the ribbon pieces to the back of the frame.

The following post is certainly not what I intended it to be.  I had very detailed pics of the process that I used to makeover my armoire but unfortunately my MacBook had other plans when it crashed.  So some of the process will have to be left to your imagination.

Here is what my armoire looked like before (this is not my actual armoire but one very similar to it):
It was a very generic piece of furniture that I bought as a cheap solution to my lack of clothing storage in our rental.  Here is what it looks like now (although it is hard to really capture it in photos, it looks so much more awesome in person):


Basic steps of this process were similar my nightstand makeover from awhile ago.  I was a little more careful with the sanding step on this piece though because it is laminate.

Other supplies that I used for this project were:
1. moulding frames bought on clearance at Lowes
2. paintable textured wall paper from Amazon
3. Liquid Nails adhesive for small indoor projects
4. Martha Stewart Living Metallic Paint in Vintage Gold from Home Depot.
5. Spray adhesive from Hobby Lobby
6. Paintable clear caulk

After I had painted the whole piece I cut the wallpaper to the dimensions of the inside back of the part with the doors.  I put it on using spray adhesive.  I then painted it with 2 coats of the Martha Stewart Vintage Gold Paint.

For the panels on the doors and drawers, I did some calculation to make sure they were centered, cut the wallpaper pieces to the size of the frames and glued them on using the spray adhesive.  I then painted them with two coats of the Vintage Gold paint.  I painted the moulding frames and once they were dry I put a line of Liquid Nails all around the frames and attached them to the doors and drawers.  After the Liquid Nails was dry, I caulked around the frames to fill in any gaps.  After the caulk was dry I touched up the paint.  The last step was applying the layers of polyacrylic just like the nightstands.

This project took forever.  I think I worked on it for a month off and on.  I forgot to take a pic of the inside but it looks pretty neat with the wallpaper.  I am super excited by how it turned out.  It is now such a unique piece of furniture that ties in perfectly with the other pieces in the room.

The second piece of furniture that I made over was my husband's dresser. You can see it in this terrible photo from our rental house.

Next up on the bedroom list is redoing my armoire and painting the wall and trim next to my closet.