Homemade gifts: Flower mirror

I find myself home this week after badly spraining my ankle...again. This is the third bad sprain in 15 years. It hurst like crazy and I can't do much so I might as well blog!
Wanna see??

Ugh! Gross huh? Sorry!! I'm waiting for x-rays, although I'm pretty positive it's not broken. I've been down this road before. Now on to prettier things!

For Mother's day this year I made my Mom this handmade gift. I didn't make the mirror but I did paint it, stencil it with Glass Bead Gel and make each of those tiny numerous flowers. I found this lovely tutorial and used the techniques shown to create said flowers. I used regular printer paper, Distress Ink in Broken China, Tattered Angles Chalkboard spray in Sprout (applied with a Q-tip to the centre) and adhesive pearls.
My Mom loved it so much she's planning on painting the bedroom to match it.

Trash to Treasure

One of my guilty pleasures is plundering the local Goodwill store. My neighbourhood has a pretty diverse population but it also sits on the edge of a very affluent neighbourhood. It seems that many residents with good taste send there cast offs to our Goodwill. I've found many, many treasures in the last 17+ years. (Geez has it been that long?!)
The other day Sid and I were hunting and came across an rather ugly picture holder. It was anitqued brass and really dirty. The wires were bent out of shape. I passed right by. Sid said "Mom, look at that thing? What is it?" I told her what it was and she replied "You could make it look pretty!". Being half off it came to a whopping $2.00, so we bought it. Here's a peek of it's original ugliness. (I forgot to take a before shot).
I bent the wires back, spray painted it white and die cut some frames, added photos and crafted the heck out of it! I used Crate Paper's Portrait Collection and some green embossed stamped images. Right now it's holding a black and white selection of Christmas pictures. I will rotate the pictures from time to time but right now I like the colour scheme to brighten the winter dreariness. Click on the pictures to make them bigger!