Decorating For The Season ~ Fall Throw Pillows ...

Hello my dear friends,

I am determent to stay focused on my "Decorating for the season" thing I have going. My aim is to buy little and to try and use what I have already available or make things I need. I am sure that I am not going to be able to do this with all of the Fall decor I have in mind for our home but I will do my best. 

Today I am sharing my new throw pillow covers that I have made for our living room.
I used some drop cloth that was leftover from another project and made simple and 'quick to make' envelope pillow cases. Then the neat part of this project was next,  time to embellishing them. I thought back to when I was a child and also when my first daughter was little too and stamping with potatoes came into my mind. This time round and not wanting to waste any potatoes  and not having any large corks to hand, I came up with another idea.

Just outside our dining room window we have a old maple tree.

 The poor thing isn't well and it might be the last year it will be with us, so I thought it would be nice to use leaves from it to print onto my pillow cases. I tested it first and was happy with the result so that was the way I wanted to go with this project.

The day I  had planned to work on these our cat Lexi didn't agree with me.

 She thought that I should wait and let her play first. Needless to say that nothing happened for me that evening when it comes to being creative. Several days later though I finally was able to start to work on this project and complete actually complete my new Fall pillow cases that day.

 I had sewn simple envelope covers and then went on to the fun part and that was to stamp them using the leaves from our tree. Only a few things were needed for this project which was nice and to top it off, it was so easy to do too!

I picked four fall colors. Once I was done using one of them, instead of wiping the paint of my plate and wasting it, I just added a new color to it and continued to print with it then.

Now my pillow covers are done, unfortunately not as good as I had hoped (I messed up on each one of them a little) but I am still quite happy with them.

And this is what they look like!

I really like the subtle colors I chose to work with and also that I didn't go crazy and cover every single inch of the drop cloth with leaves. Can you see where I messed up? If not, good! I see it all of the time and maybe I will try and do something to hide my mistake but I am not sure just yet.

Perfect or not, my new throw pillow covers are now going to give our living room a little Autumn feel to it and I am going to enjoy them.

Oh ... remember that this about buying as little as possible?! ~ I was weak! 

The throw blanket that you see in the photographs is something I picked up at Home Sense a week ago because it just goes so well with the Autumn/Fall theme and my leaf pillow cases.

Not every project requires you to buy a lot stuff. I am not saying that it is always possible but try to use what you have first and make do ... you will like it so much more in the end. My new Fall throw pillows cost me $6 only because I used what I had first and made do.

... Drop cloth, pillows, paint brushes and acrylic paint ~ I had already had.
... Leaves to print with ~ free from our tree in the back yard.
... Fabric paint medium ~ (the only thing I bought) $ 6 with a 50% off coupon at Michaels.

Last but not least ...

...  talking about reusing things and making useful things.
 I try and do so as much as I can. That is what I did with an old blind slat. At times I need a longer ruler to mark fabric when I am making things but I didn't really want to buy one for the few occasions it is needed, so I came up with how to make my own. I had a old blind slat laying around in our basement from our old bedroom blinds and it turned out the be the perfect thing to turn into a long ruler!

 Using a permanent fine marker, I marked the slat with full and half inch marking and that was it ~ done! I used my new ruler to measure my drop cloth in this post and it "worked" perfectly. Ten minutes of work, no money spent and something "useless" recycled and given an new life because that is exactly what I love to do!

Thank you for taking the time to visit me here at Todolwen ~ it is always so nice when you do.

I hope you are well my dear friends and life is treating you kind.

Have a peaceful and creative day.