Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo - Page 70 of 661 - Living a simple, creative life in small town USA. Bryson City. A Lifestyle Blog.

Faux Cross Stitch Hoop Ornaments

November 3, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

Here’s another reveal of one of the ornaments I made for this year’s dream tree: Faux Cross Stitch Hoop Ornaments!

I do love to embroider but it would have taken ten times as long to make these ornaments if I’d actually cross stitched them! Don’t these look embroidered?

They are so easy and can be made by any age:

Here are the supplies you’ll need to make your own:

Irish Linen. You can find it in the embroidery section at Michaels and it has an instant vintage feel.

3″ Embroidery Hoops.

Red Ultra Fine Point Sharpie Marker.

The first step is to stretch the linen onto the embroidery hoop. I didn’t get a photo of that but it’s so easy! You just lay the fabric on the bottom hoop and then slip the top hoop into place. Tug at the sides of the fabric until it’s nice and tight.

The next step is to start “stitching” away! I just did these designs freehand so they would look a little more primitive but basically you just draw a little “X” for each stitch. You can look up cross stitch designs to get some ideas but you can also just go for it:

Note: There’s a cross stitch font called Home Sweet Home that you can download and use as a guide if you need some “x” help!

Here’s I’ve written the word “HOME” using little x’s and it looks just like cross stitch:

My letters aren’t even straight and it still looks lovely! It looks like it was hand sewn because of the imperfections:

When you are done with your design make sure your hoop is tight so the fabric won’t slip off when the back is trimmed. I usually add a little bit of craft glue around the back edges of the hoop and let it dry before cutting off the excess fabric:

I used a hot glue gun to attach a small bow to the front and just hung the ornament by a string to the tree:

I love how they all turned out:

I can’t wait for you to see them all on the finished tree!

These would be great for gift tags too:

I love to make all my ornaments every year! It’s such a fun challenge to start from scratch, it’s my favorite part of the creative process. You can find everything I’ve made so far here at this link and the big reveal will be on the 14th!

The Chicken Kiddie Table

November 2, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

There has been so much drama in the chicken coop recently. For a few weeks the baby chicks have been sleeping in the coops nesting boxes, which was fine for a while but they leave a mess behind and as a result the laying chickens don’t want to lay their eggs in there anymore.

To fix all of this, and to gently nudge the baby chicks to the adult roosting bars, I decided last week that I was going to block the nesting boxes at bedtime. At dusk that first night, the baby chicks marched into coop to put themselves to bed and you would have thought they’d walked through a portal into another world. They peeped and paced and panicked….until one finally decided to try and walk up the ramp to the adult roosting bars. I watched on as Popcorn, one of our Mottled Cochins, made her way up to the bar. Then another chick followed her lead and everything seemed to be going okay until the adult chickens started to come in for bedtime. The big chickens one by one began chasing the baby chicks off the roost and out the coop door.

To quiet everyone down I finally decided to just build another roosting bar on the other side of the coop for the babies. I grabbed a 2×4 and attached it to the wall across from the old roosts. I put the baby chicks on the new roost but they eventually fell off one by one and then they couldn’t figure how to get back up again. And so again they peeped and paced and panicked. I borrowed the big chickens ladder and after guiding them up the ladder a dozen times after they fell they finally they figured it out. Phew. Here are the babies finally nestled on their bar and figuring it all out. Their sweet little trill is the sound they make as young chicks when they are saying goodnight. It means they are settling down so that’s a good sign. I was able to leave them for the night and not worry so much.

A video posted by Ashley Hackshaw (@lilblueboo) on Oct 25, 2016 at 4:13pm PDT

When I went to check on them the next night they had all remembered how to climb the ramp but one of the adult chickens had decided to join them: FoShizzle. I don’t think Foshizzle joined them on purpose though. With her huge feathery plume she can’t see the bars above her and so each night Fo just finds the ramp and follows it up to her perch. Eventually she must have realized that she’d climbed up to a different perch, the kiddie table. She seemed kind of annoyed that she ended up with all the babies:

Fo did hunker down right away and was trying to fall asleep while the babies crawled all over her trying to find a spot they liked on the bar. She’s a very patient chicken! I’m convinced that Foshizzle is just a kid at heart. Boo put Foshizzle on her handlebars this weekend and rode her around the yard a few times. Fo loved it:

I need my own Charlotte to spin a web with the words “SOME CHICKEN” because Fo is just that special.

The baby chicks (Popcorn, Palmer, Dolly and Twinkle) are getting so big. The Mottle Cochins look like they are wearing layers and layers of petticoats:

I love that not one of their feathers are the same:

And the Silkies look like they are part unicorn! (Not only do they have gray-blue feet and an extra toe, they also have cute little powder blue ears too that they won’t let me get a picture of.)

The Silkies are so fluffy. I never knew why until I started examining their feathers. In the photo below a regular chicken feather is on the left. The regular feather has little barbs on the strands that interlock and keep the strands connected together in kind of an orderly fashion. A Silkie feather is on the right. It lacks barbs and the strands just fly everywhere!

P.S. I would love to get a streaming live cam set up in the coop, especially at night….that can be shared on the blog. If anyone knows an efficient, inexpensive way to set something like that up I’d love some help! I’m just not much of a techie in that area and it seems like it might blow right through my chicken budget.

How to Age Galvanized Metal Bins

November 1, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

Every November as a Michaels Maker I have the opportunity to reveal a new Christmas tree theme and this November is no exception. This year’s dream tree, my fifth tree for Michaels, is my favorite one yet. This year to mix it up a little I’m revealing my process first, all the DIY ornaments and details first and then the big tree reveal will be in two weeks at the end of all the tutorials. So here’s one of the first steps to this years tree: How to age galvanized metal bins and buckets!

I love the rustic, aged, vintage look of old tin and most galvanized bins and buckets come way too shiny for my taste. For the details of this year’s Christmas tree I needed to age some tin first:

Some aging processes use bleach and muriatic acid but I try and steer clear of chemicals. There are a few ways to age the tin using just heat! I started with these shiny little galvanized mini-buckets from Michaels:

And used my Bernzomatic torch to apply enough heat to burn off the shiny exterior finish.

A few crucial SAFETY tips first:

Wear gloves and use rubber gripped pliers to handle the metal.

Wear a mask and do this outside where there is adequate ventilation! You don’t want to breathe in any fumes.

Keep a bucket of water or a hose close by to quickly cool the bucket when finished.

A Bernzomatic torch is easy to use. Just click the igniter and it’s off and running. I just applied heat around the small bin until I could see the finish start to turn matte:

It took about two minutes to change the finish of this small bucket:

I carefully put down my torch and dropped the bucket into the cool water. It sizzles!

All the finished buckets!

Now the shiny little buckets look like they’ve been around forever:

Michaels Stores also has these larger bins and even a antique style milk tin:

There’s a much easier way to instantly age these buckets and it just involves a small campfire! I built a small fire outside our fire pit. If you don’t have a fire pit just ask a neighbor if you can borrow their’s for an hour or so. I wouldn’t burn these inside because of potential fumes from the tin’s finish. Also, the milk tin has a plastic liner inside that will quickly melt and burn off and you don’t want any plastic fumes in your house! When the fire was nice and hot I laid the milk tin onto the flames and left it there until the finish changed on one side and then I flipped it over to the other side. It only took a few minutes:

Here’s one of the larger bins. Putting it upside down on the fire traps the heat inside and the aging will be much more even all the way around:

Here’s what it will look like as it heats up:

Carefully, CAREFULLY, pull each metal bin out using fireplace tongs and rinse with a hose to cool it off quickly. Once it’s cool you can use a scrub brush to knock off any stubborn ash:

All of this shiny galvanized tin now looks old, antique and vintage! Perfect to go with any old, antique and vintage theme. To add some rust you can try spraying vinegar or bleach on the bins as well but mine rusted on their own!