Dollar Store Crafts April Stash Project: Project #2

For my next project for the DSC Stashbusting Challenge, I made some functional items to fulfill a need within my house.  You see, I needed to something to hang in my living room by the front door that would provide me with the items I need just before I head out the door.  I wanted it to be in the right colours for my living room and to be pretty as well as practical.

These two items will hang side by side (I’m considering making two more for a set of 4).   The one on the left:  The open space in the middle where the tulips are was actually left open to accommodate a mirror (I left it out for the pictures because the glare makes it difficult to photograph).  The one on the right:  There’s a hook for my keys (so I never have to go hunting for them again) and there are magnets to hold shopping lists and memos about errands I need to run.

The base for these are metal burner covers (for your stove) that I had on hand.  I had purchased them a while back at our local dollar store for $1 each because I had a tiny seed of an idea of this project in mind.  I hot glued the pieces of sea glass that were in my stashbusting package around the space where the mirror will go.  The mirror is a magnetic one leftover from my daughter’s high school locker.  One of the things I like about this is that I can remove the mirror and there’s still a pretty image underneath or I can put something else in its place if I want to.

For this one, there happened to be a cloth napkin in the my stash package that was the perfect colour to go with the sea glass.  I have taupe leather furniture in my living room with some blue and brown accents.  The colours that I’m leaning towards suddenly started taking on an image of sea and sand for me as I looked at this fabric and sea glass, so I decided to go with it.  I also collect seashells and love the water so this seemed a natural route to take.  I stretched the fabric over the burner cover, securing it on the back with hot glue.  I took some of my seashells and some of the sea glass and hot glued them to magnets that I had saved from items that were being discarded.  I had a hook in my toolbox that I used for my keys but I wanted to accentuate it a little more.  So, I saw that in my stash package there was some lace seam binding.  It was wound around a blue piece of cardboard – once again, the perfect colour!  I glued that to the covered burner cover and then glued the hook on top of it.