Kitchen Step Stool Redo

I was so excited when I found this vintage kitchen step stool in mint condition, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it!It turned out exactly like I wanted and it was easy too. If you would like to redo a stool like this there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Make sure the stool is in good working shape, I’ve seen a lot of these stools covered in rust.
• Look to see how the pieces are attached, if they are riveted on you won’t be able to take them off to recover them.
• Get a good quality vinyl to recover the piece. I used glitter vinyl with a stretchy backing, it makes the vinyl easier to stretch and there is no fear of tearing it.

My stool was easy to recover, the back rest was attached with screws and was easy to remove, cover, and put back on. The seat was a little more complicated, there were metal tabs that were bent over holes in the bottom, the most challenging part was getting the seat back on, the vinyl I used was a bit thicker than the original.
I used spray adhesive to attach the vinyl on the back rest and tacky glue for the seat.There were a lot of curves that I needed to stretch around, using a ton of clips helped me work out all of the wrinkles. I let it dry overnight with the clips, did a final trim down and put it back onto the stool.
The chevron skirt is hot glued onto the bottom edge. Originally I had tried to install it under the seat, but there was too much bulk to get the seat reattached.
My kitchen is finally coming together, I really need to finish that giant silverware :D
Have a super crafty weekend!!!

The Crafty Closet

I hung my giant buttons today and was excited to learn that my Mother had found me another cheese dome, because I NEED more of these giant buttons! I’m having a hard time deciding how the holes should be positioned, I may be over thinking this.
As I took this picture to share with everyone I realized that I had never mentioned my crafty closet. Not only am I lucky enough to have a craft room, but my crafty room has a closet! And, let me tell you, it is packed to the gills with all sorts of goodies!
Notice that everything is sorted into clear totes and most of them are labeled. I am always amused when people are amazed that my mess is really organized, it’s more of a volume issue. I have so much stuff that looks cluttered.
The center is all totes (shoe boxed sized), to the left is wire shelving for fabric storage (it’s still all neatly folded), and on the right is a sweater organizer that is holding an interesting selection of supplies that aren’t in totes. There are also boxes stacked to the ceiling on the top shelf and Boobzilla (my duct tape dress form) now lives up there too.
I am hoping to eventually have all of my supplies in the craft room (and out of the basement), but it seems to be more of a life goal than an overnight project.
What color should I paint my next button? I’m thinking orange or brown.

Less Pinning, More Doing

I love pinterest, but honestly it is a time sucker. I could waste the day away and while I am getting a lot of ideas and inspiration I’m not making anything.
This weekend I tried to do a little more making. Ribbon bookmarks.
A lotion bottle cell phone charging caddy.
And, my most favorite, giant buttons from domed cheese boards!
If you look closely, you’ll see that the paint isn’t even dry. Believe me, this picture does NOT do them justice and they’ll look even better once I add the string and get them hung up! I am on the hunt for more domed cheese boards, I NEED a large collection of these for the craft room walls.
You may have seen this one on the Facebook page: I also started cutting out and sorting letters, eyes, lips, and textures for visual journaling, I’m calling it a ransom note kit.
I have a huge board of journaling ideas pinned, now to start doing. It will be nice to have this ready to go.
I will be marking the pins I have done with a * at the beginning of the text. I want to make sure that I am really doing and not just wishing the hours away.
Have you been making things from your pinterest boards? I'd love to hear about it, share some links in the comments :)

Sugar Skull Lights Tutorial

Every year it seems like the selection at Halloween gets a little more cutesy and cheap looking.  This years motto seems to be cover it with glitter and call it good, well that’s not good enough for me! I should note that sugar skulls are a Day of the Dead decoration, but here at my house the Halloween and Day of the Dead decorations over lap.You will need:

• Inexpensive skull lights – I found mine in the “Dollar Spot” in Target, although they cost $2.50
• Puffy paint in a selection of colors, I used regular, pearl, and glitter
• 1 yd. of fabric, mine is black with multicolored dots

Helpful extras – Q-tips, paper towels, and an empty egg carton. Start by taking the skull covers off of the lights, the ones I had just pulled off.Using puffy paint, decorate each skull. I kept it pretty simple, outlining the lips, adding eye shadow/eye lashes, rouge, and hair. If you make a mistake use a Q-tip to clean up the line or wipe the paint off with a paper towel and start over. I only decorated the fronts, the back side will be hidden by the fabric fringe. I set them in an egg carton and allowed them to dry a few hours.While the paint was drying I cut my fabric. My fabric was 44” wide, I folded it into quarters and cut one inch wide strips with my ruler and rotary cutter from selvage to selvage. I cut each 1” wide strip into forth's, making each strip about 11” long (so I left the strips folded and cut the folds).
Next I used a larks head knot to attach the strips to the cord of lights. I used 12 strips between each light, for a nice full garland.Once the skulls are dry put them back on the lights and your ready to hang up your new lights! There are a lot of different ways to vary this project, for example:

• make the fabric strips shorter and tie them on for a fluffier garland
• make all the skulls the same
• use food coloring tinted Mod Podge to color the skulls before adding the designs
• use a variety of scrap fabrics for a shabby chic look
• use ribbon or yarn to decorate the garland instead of fabric

If you make one of these garlands share a link with us, I’d love to see what you come up with!

More Cleaning, Less Crafting

Now I know how I was able to get so much crafting done with the mess, cleaning takes a looooooooonnnnnnnngggg time.  Keeping everything done eats up a lot of what used to be crafting time.  It is the cleanest it’s been in here…well, ever! It is not spotless, but if you called to say you were coming over in 30 minutes I could have it pretty tidy by the time you got here :)
I finally got all the furniture moved and have hung up some of our art.  Before I hung everything up I gave it all a good cleaning, wow, the frames and glass were filthy!!!  Now everything looks all shiny and new.This is my favorite corner so far.  On the left is a very large, limited edition print that we call Bird Girl(sorry, I can’t decipher the artists name) that belonged to my husbands mother and on the right are life sized, wearable wings that belonged to my Father in law, he got them when he worked at Macy’s in New York, they were part of a Christmas window display.
Anyway, no crafty time means I don’t have anything super fabulous to share.  All I have had time for was crocheting these little cork knights.  I need to add their shields and faces, but I wanting till I’ve finished making an army of them.  I have also made cork ninjas, I don’t think I’m in danger of running out of corks any time soon.
I think I might need to work on my time management skills, maybe it will get easier once I get everything the way I want in and am just maintaining instead of the major overhauls I’ve been doing.  Any advise you may have would be very welcome.

Granny Triangle Crochet Bunting

I am sooooooo addicted to Pinterest, I could spend hours and hours just looking at everything.  I happened across this granny triangle bunting and fell in love, how great would that be on my porch?!?  I found these instructions for making the granny triangle and started crocheting on Wednesday.  I didn’t do the final row of picot stitches.

I used acrylic yarn because it’s going to be outside in the elements and acrylic yarn is almost indestructible.  My triangles needed to be blocked, acrylic yarn is blocked with steam, um the steam doesn’t work on my iron.  I know I’ll just spray a press cloth and put it on top of the yarn and iron, sending steam through the triangles.  FYI, to get steam your iron is going to be hot enough to melt the yarn.Good news, they only melted a little and they look a lot better.  Really the only way to tell they’re melted is to look closely.  I chained all my triangles together and was kind of meh about the bunting.  I’ve been working on tassels this afternoon.  They really aren’t as time consuming as they sound, I was doing other things too, like entertaining a fussy baby. Sewing the tassels on really made a big difference for me.  I am really loving how this bunting came out, I might have to make some more.  It looks nice over the window, really dresses up the blinds and adds some fun color to a blah room (no, we still haven’t painted).  I want to make rainbow ones next.

Have a super crafty weekend!

Andy Warhol Inspired Art for $3.88

I have had this idea floating around in my head for a while, but buying canvases was a little out of my budget.  When I saw the toilet boxes I knew they would be perfect.  I started by cutting the cardboard into 16” squares, my boxes were double layered so 2 squares equaled four layers of cardboard.After all of my squares were cut I glued each set of two together and weighted them down overnight. The next day I used paper mache paste to add strips of newspaper onto the cardboard squares,  horizontally on one side and after that dried, vertically on the other side.  Once they were mostly dry I layered them between plastic wrap, so they wouldn’t stick and weighted them to get them nice and flat. I painted gesso on the fronts and sides and then it was time to do some sketching.I used a photo of a trooper helmet (Star Wars) and was inspired by the style of Andy Warhol.  I used two shades of turquoise and two shades of orange acrylic craft paint to fill in my design.Picture hangers will be hot glued to the backs for hanging, they are really light weight.  The only supply I bought was the paint, for $.97 each, the grand total for this project was $3.88, plus my time.  I have been working on this project exclusively since Saturday.  These will be perfect Little Sir’s wall, I wanted something fun and colorful that would last for a few years.  I have to get his room painted next, we’ll be using a light aqua with one orange accent wall.  He wanted all orange, but I thought it might be a bit much.
Not too bad for a toilet box, I have one more project to try with the remaining box, cardboard may be my new favorite medium!

Giant Spoon and Fork Progress

My Craftfail giant spoon and fork project has been on hold for quite a while.  I decided to give Bondo a try.  I bought a gallon can of it, but after reading the warnings and instructions on the can I was a little nervous about using it (and that is what was holding up this project).  I hate it when my “craft supplies” are made of chemicals that are known to cause cancer and that I get a contact high from the smell.  This was definitely an outside project. My Mother had also had some giant wooden silverware luck and found me three more pairs of spoons and forks.  It now looks like I will have a collection of giant spoons and fork ~ awesome!!! I mixed a small batch of Bondo with the hardener and started filling in the monkeys.  I have to say this stuff is great and it sets up really fast.  If you use plastic for the mixing bowl and spatula the Bondo pops right off, but it adheres great to the wood.  I built up several layers of Bondo to completely hid the monkeys.

I have a major amount of sanding to do and I need a palm sized sander, my Dremel is taking forever on these large pieces.  Once the sanding is finished I will need to prime and paint them all.  It doesn’t look like the great weather we’ve been having is going to last much longer (and really, it is November, we’ve been really lucky with the mild weather) and this whole project is dependant on good weather, I may have to put this back on hold until next spring.

I am excited to finish this project, but I want the results to be fabulous and that means no rushing!

Mushroom Canisters In Progress

In July I scored this awesome vintage mushroom canister set for $10.  The set was a little beat up, but still really cute.  We had a set of mushroom canisters when I was a kid and they really bring back happy memories. I love orange, but I really wanted to use these in my kitchen and they just had to be painted red. I carefully masked them with tape, I just wanted to paint the orange caps red.  They have been sitting around waiting to be painted for months.  I guess I was a little nervous that I would ruin them, but yesterday was the day! I used Krylon high gloss paint and did two coats.  Orange to red is a pretty easy transition and the few spots where the coverage could have been better still blend with the red. The paint did leach under the tape, but I think a sharp razor blade can scrape it right off.

I’m going to use acrylic paint to touch up the white areas where the original glaze is completely gone and maybe add some touches of turquoise.  Then I’ll finish it all with a coat of sealer. Luckily the original glaze is multi-colored and I think the touch up should blend well.  BTW, I’m not using these for flour and sugar, they are for decoration and kitchen clutter storage.  I wouldn’t use them for unwrapped food storage after all that painting and sealing.

I think they’re going to turn out really fun, now I just need to get back to that giant spoon and fork!  Have a super crafty weekend!!!

Super Girlie, Extra Frilly, Deluxe Tea Party Table

As you know I have been working on Little Miss’s room, the walls have been painted, crates have been covered and the curtains have been made, but we needed a table. A special table for having tea parties and playing with all our little toys.

I have had this table for several years, it was rescued from the curb during city wide clean up. Sadly I forgot to take a before picture, but basically it was a stained wood table that was all banged up with several scuffs and stains. I started by cleaning it and scraping the gum, yes chewing gum, off the bottom. I set the nails back in, patched a few small holes with wood filler and lightly sanded the whole thing. Then I painted it brown using a latex “paint pod” (a little jar of paint used to sample colors from Ace Hardware). I thought it was kind of funny that I painted a brown table brown, but it is a special shade of brown.

I took some of the fabric leftover from the curtains to Office Max and had them make color copies of it for me. (BTW, the copies are awesome, you can see the grain of the fabric.) I knew I wanted to decoupage the individual flower motifs onto the table top and I didn’t want to deal with little strings from fraying fabric edges. I cut out a generous amount of flowers. I cut fairly close to the edges, but what made this turn out so well was that my base paint so closely matched the fabric background color. Using Mod Podge I applied all the flowers to the top of the table randomly. It looked great, but why stop there? it needed more. I thought about adding rhinestones around the edge or some puff paint “pearls” to the top, but decided that I wanted it to be smooth for drawing and writing. I decided it needed a tutu, a pink sparkly one! I bought a roll of sparkle tulle (25 yards) and, using my super special cording foot, zigzagged over yarn onto the tulle. If you make a lot of gathers a foot like this is the way to go, I won’t ever make gathers with two rows of basting again!!! Plus the yarn feeds through a hole in the foot and straight under the needle. I only have to worry about keeping the fabric straight. It took a while to gather it all up, but it came out perfectly puffy. I have it pinned into place because I want to finish the table with super glossy top coat and I have to have a non-humid day to apply that correctly. Yeah, a non-humid day in August, ha!

Now we’re going to need some chairs.

Welcome to Week 41 and My Messy Kitchen

I really expected to be holding a baby by now, but I guess he’s not quite ready.  I am officially to the point of making no plans for anything, I can’t even plan dinner.  I have a very long list of things that I want to be doing, but I just can’t/don’t want to do them.  I have worked on a few things, knitting and crochet are still do-able, but pretty much everything else is out.  I miss bending.

Okay, enough whining, I still haven’t finished the Mod Podge screen printing of the fabric for my kitchen curtains, but I have been doing a little work in there.  Prepare to see a mess…don’t judge me, I know I have a hoarding/clutter problem and I am working on it.This is my kitchen on a bad day, before the pre dinner clean up.  Yes, I have a huge clutter problem.  One of the main problems of this kitchen is lack of storage, I need more cabinets.  This in the only upper cabinet in the kitchen.  There is a small pantry area in the hall and it is very full. The right side of the kitchen is a lost cause, there are no cabinets or counter space and I am using a bakers rack in an odd position to hold some necessary kitchen stuff and I keep a cutting board on half of my stove to use as a prep area.  Someday we will redo the kitchen, but that is something that isn’t going to happen for a while (think years).So, um yeah, I was a little embarrassed by the clutter so I tidied up a bit and this is what it usually looks like.  Still not great, but less cluttered.  I really need to take those plastic bags to be recycled or make some plarn with them.I decided that I needed some shelves above the sink.  I wanted floating shelves for a nice clean look.  Right now I am ignoring the fact that the walls and ceiling really need to be painted.  I picked these out at the Home Depot and while they look nice they are not sturdy.  I had read the reviews and knew this was an issue, but I thought it was a hardware/installation issue.  I bought special hangers for plaster walls and expected these shelves to be awesome.  Sadly they are not, I’m not sure they are going to stay up (as in they may fall down by themselves in the middle of the night).  I bought three (notice, I even predrilled the holes for the third shelf) and have only put up two, the third may go back, I’m trying to decide if there is a way to make them work.I found some great accessories at Target that are perfect for the kitchen, modern and slightly retro, lots of red with pops of turquoise.  I also have been slowly collecting these nice canisters from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I get them one at a time with a 20% off coupon, they are sooooo nice, but a little pricey.  I wanted to store them on these shelves, but I’m not sure the shelves can hold them.

I think that once I get everything arranged and the new curtains and hand knitted towels out and the pot rack hung (once I find it, it’s in the basement of doom) that it will look nicer.  If anyone has suggestions for the shelves, let me know, I would really like to make them work.  I am also trying to decide how to store my spices without taking up a lot of room, but keeping them handy for use.  I’ll keep updating everyone on baby watch 2010, at this rate I might just wait until May!

Kitschy Kitchen

I have finished adding more Mod Podge to my silverware silk screen and the revised prints look a lot better.  Now I need to get the fabric printed.  I’m thinking that I will cut the fabric to size for the curtain panels, then print it, and then sew it.  This will make the fabric more manageable.  I have also decided that the curtains need rick rack and ball fringe.

In the meantime I have been dreaming about all the other things I want to have in my kitchen.  I need some super accessories, lots of red with pops of turquoise.  I need towels.  I have several red towels, they hang on the handle to my stove, but it seems like they spend more time on the floor and once they hit the floor, ewww, I need a fresh one.  So, I made a towel that won’t fall off. I also made a towel ring to hang by my sink to hold a flour sack towel.  I just made a ring and crocheted around it until it was full, went around it with red and added a hanging loop.  My Mom embroiders towels and I know she used to have a pattern with dishes and silverware (because I have the ones she made in the 70’s) and there is a good chance she still has it (see this hoarding thing is inherited), I may have to request a new set. 

I used the Leftover Dishtowel pattern and added a turquoise stockinette stitched stripe and made the top hanging part of the towel in stockinette stitch also, I even remembered to reverse it so that it looked the same when folded over, yay me!  I want to make one with a zigzag next.  I’m really excited about decorating my kitchen, now I need to get some floating shelves and dig out my hanging pot rack, oh and finish those curtains!

More Curtains

The curtains for Little Miss made her room look so much nicer that I thought it was time to fix the curtains in Little Sir’s room.

I made these curtains a few houses ago and while they are holding up fabulously they are a tad bit short for the windows in our new house.  It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but they let in a lot of light and at night they allow our neighbors to see right into my son’s room.

I added some more denim to the bottom, lined them with muslin, mounted them on boards, and added ties like Little Miss’s curtains, so we could open them up during the day.

I know that stripes are a little wonky, but in my defense, when I originally made these curtains they were for windows on different walls, so I didn’t worry about matching up the stripes.  I need to add a dowel to the bottoms for weight and roll them slightly to make them look better.  Letting them hang for a few days will help too!

These curtains were so easy and inexpensive to make.  I used jeans that I had been given (my whole family saves their old jeans for making bone crusher quilts) and just tore the legs into stripes, I also had the muslin for the lining on hand (thanks Christy Nelson), but an old sheet would have worked just as well.  (The only reason I backed them was so that from the outside the windows look white.)  The back of the legs were wider that the fronts so the stripe width vary.  I arranged them into a graduated color pattern, I’m sure they would have also been great in a random pattern too.  I stitched them all together leaving the seams on the outside and then snipped the seams about every quarter inch and ran them through the washing machine to fray them.  Make sure that when you dry the curtains that you empty your dryers lint trap often!  The only stuff I had to purchase for these curtains were boards to mount them on and the orange fabric for the ties, which I have also used to make a swaddling blanket and still have plenty left over for some other projects, so I spent about $10 total and most of that was because I wanted fancy batik cotton fabric (and I didn’t want to seam the ties).

I’m really enjoying the difference custom curtains make I may have to get started on the ones for my craft room.  We’ll see what next Monday brings!

We Have Curtains

I finished up Little Miss’s curtains last night, finally.  It’s not that they were difficult, it’s just that everything took longer than I thought it would.  I think they turned out great and I can’t wait to make some more of these. This is what they look like unrolled, I am planning on pinning up the hanging tail from the tie.  I loooooovvve that giant pink rick rack!

They are really easy to roll up and they tie on the back side.  Sorry for the glare, the sun is actually out today and the snow covered ground really reflects the light.  

I used McCalls 5858 to make these “eco” shades.  They are lined and insulated with flannel.   I like making curtains, they are usually pretty easy and they can really make a room.  These were actually a little expensive to make, but I used high quality quilting fabric because I want them to last.  I would guess that I spent about $40.00 a shade, which includes the hardware to hang them.  I do expect them to be used for 5 – 10 years and I’m hoping that since they are insulated that they will help with energy conservation.  Little Miss’s room is on the Northwest corner of our house, so she gets cold winter winds and glaring summer sun, these should help keep her room more temperate.

I learned a lot making these that will come in handy for the next batch I’ll be making.  I need to make sure that I get the fabric in the right order so that the insulating layer ends up on the inside, make the shades extend past the window ledge so that they can be rolled and tied without exposing the window, and sew and measure as straight as possible. 

I have to lengthen the curtains I made for Little Sir and add a lining and ties.  I won’t be insulating his since they are made from denim.  I also want to make a set for the craft room, so I can take down the brown paper.

An Update: Not Nearly as Exciting as it Sounds

So, I’ve had a minor setback on the curtains, I sewed one of the panels together wrong.  It is not the end of the world and it can (and will) get fixed, however the curtains did not get finished today!  I lost a bit of my momentum when I screwed that panel up.

I did get the paint touched up and the mounting boards bought and cut to size.

Before with the patches from having our home insulated:

After, I sanded (lightly, they had already done that when they patched the holes), primed and painted the spots and I think the spots are now invisible:

I also cleaned up and organized her toys and returned all her brothers toys to his room, she takes them and hides them away while he’s at school.

I will be finishing up her new curtains this weekend, as you can see the paper shades that we currently have are a little worse for wear and one window is completely bare since an incident earlier this week.

Have a super crafty weekend! 

Girly Storage

I know I haven’t posted on the great clean up recently, I have kind of slacked off, maintaining has been going well, but I need to start working on new projects again.  This week I have been working on several things to finish my daughters room.  Her room is the only room that has actually been painted, although I have to go back and touch up all the holes from when we had the house insulated last fall.

Today I made two crate covers, I have used this pattern before with cheap fabric, this fabric is much nicer and the results are wonderful!  I have started with two and once we start putting toys away I will decide if I need to make a few more.  Once again I have to say that this pattern is very easy and I used the directions to make these custom to the crates I had on hand.  If you need pretty storage this pattern is definitely the one, I imagine that I will have a house full of these by the time I am finished putting everything away.

This is the Undercover Crate Pattern from Laura Gunn at Paint in my Hair.

My goal is to get all the toys put away and then I should be able to touch up the paint.  Once the painting is done I can hang the new curtains (more on that later) and then I can start looking for some furniture, I need a big girl bed and an armoire since there is no closet in this room, but there is really no rush on the furniture for now. 

Once I’m finished with Little Miss’s room I can start working on Little Sir’s room, he’s been asking when I’ll paint his room, he’s hoping for orange, I’m thinking tan to coordinate with his bedding.

Bone Crusher Quilts

I grew up in a drafty farm house and every winter the quilts would come out and be stacked on the beds.  The heaviest of the quilts were called bone crushers because of how heavy they were.  The best bone crushers were made from denim, old, soft, worn denim from our old jeans and overalls.  I still love denim quilts, although now I prefer the lighter “rag” quilts as opposed to the traditional quilt top with batting, binding, and backing.

My Mother made an awesome denim quilt for my son with stars and even the pockets from the jeans.  I love it, he has been using it for a couple of years and it just get softer and softer and it is super warm.

I also made some matching curtains, they are a little short for the windows in our new house, but I’ll just add another strip at the bottom.  I’m also going to add a lining to make it a little more insulating, his room is on the North side of our house.

These curtains were so easy to make, I just tore the legs of jeans to get a straight edge and sewed them together the wider strips are from the back of the pants and the narrow ones are the front.  I put the seams on the right side and snipped them about ever 1/4” and put them into to washing machine to fray them.

I love denim, it is such a versatile, long wearing fabric.  I just wanted to share some of the great projects I have made with it.  I have started a shag style rug, the strips are cut and I just need to decide what kind of backing to use and how big to make it.  I’m lucky, I seem to have a never ending supply of denim, everyone in our family saves it, and if I do need more I can always pick up a few pairs of jeans at the Goodwill on dollar days!  What kind of great projects have you made using denim?

Trying Not to Traumatize the New Neighbors

Since moving in to our new house I have been slowly adding window treatments to every room based on privacy.  These are not all permanent solutions, but they do keep people from seeing straight through our house.  The curtains upstairs are stapled up!   The only bare windows still left are in the kitchen.

Our kitchen is at the back of our house and really the only people who could see in would be our neighbors or the random peeping tom.  However, occasionally I find myself naked in the kitchen and wondering if maybe my neighbors may have noticed.  They just moved in a couple of weeks ago and I really don’t want to traumatize them before we get the chance to properly meet them, so we definitely need some sort of curtains!

Yesterday while folding more fabric (I finished off another tote, yay!)  I found my stash of vintage aprons and thought that they would look really cute as kitchen curtains. 

I made a special trip to Hobby Lobby and bought some mini cloths pins and strung them onto twine.  I used clear push pins to tie the twine up.  I starched and ironed the aprons and hung them up.  I think I can almost hear the neighbors sigh of relief, “Look honey, we don’t have to see our neighbors naked anymore, they got curtains!” 

I can easily switch out the aprons if I get tired of these or get new ones for my collection.  I could also add another line to the top of the windows, but I like the sun shining in.  BTW I have a lot more aprons, these were just the most brightly colored ones and the ones with the most details, I love the cross stitched gingham ones!  Does anyone else have a good idea on how to display aprons, I have a lot of full aprons that I would love to have out.