Etched Glass Vinyl Coffee Mugs

Did you have time to check out the cute chalkboard label mason jars?  We cannot wait to use them on our upcoming beach trip!  Here's another project we did using Expressions Vinyl.  This time we used the Etched Glass Vinyl to personalize coffee mugs.
 

Chalkboard Vinyl Mason Jars

If you've been following Southern Color then you know our favorite craft machine is our Silhouette!  Honestly, it's one of the best purchases we have ever made.   The Silhouette allows you to personalize ordinary items and make them into something special.  Today we are sharing with you a tutorial to create chalkboard labels that can be added to almost anything, like these cute mason jar tumblers!

 

Valentine's Day Dishtowel | Pottery Barn Inspired

We "love" a good knock off project, so today we are sharing with you a Valentine's Day dishtowel.  This project was inspired by Pottery Barn's "LOVE" dish towel.   I tweaked the colors and did red wording instead of black to make it more specific to Valentine's Day.

 

Year in Review

Another awesome year has flown by!! Thank you to all of our readers who continue to support us and our blog! When we started Southern Color our goal was to inspire others and to give them the confidence to DIY.  We hope you find our tutorials easy to follow and eventually try them out. 

 

We were pretty busy in 2013 so we want to take some time to revisit all of the projects we completed.

 

Checkerboard Side Table from a Dumpster Find

Monogrammed Door Hanger {Last Minute Christmas Gift}

Only two more days until Christmas!! Are you ready?  Have you finished all of your shopping?  Today, we want to share with you a quick and easy last minute Christmas gift idea.
 

Holiday Painted Wood Signs & Gifts

A few weeks ago we posted this picture on Pinterest of our wood signs being sold at a local Christmas gift mart.  We had no clue it would be pinned over 400 times ~ thanks for the love!  So we figured it was finally time to share with y'all how we made all of these signs :)
 

 

Christmas Cookie Exchange

Julia and I hosted our first cookie exchange party this weekend!  And we'd like to think it was a huge success ;)  We had 15 friends over with tons of yummy cookies and holiday cocktails. 

 

Our decorating theme for the party was turquoise and red.

We created a cookie banner using our trusty Silhouette.

 

Holiday Inspiration - Wood Signs & Burlap Pillows

The Christmas season has officially begun! We hope y'all had a terrific Thanksgiving with family and friends, but since it's already December we've got to start talking about Holiday projects...there are only 23 days until Christmas!

 

Some of our best holiday inspiration comes from catalogues.  We love flipping through the pages of Pottery Barn for holiday décor ideas.  Unfortunately, our budgets aren't limitless, so some of the more expensive items must be DIY'ed!

 

Joy to the World Serving Tray

When I think of Christmas I think of hanging out with friends and family watching Christmas movies and playing games.  I love entertaining during the holiday season.  So, to help me serve my guests delicious food and drinks I created a Christmas Serving Tray. 

Fall Roundup

It's Fall Y'all!

Atlanta finally feels like fall.  The mornings & nights are cool and the leaves are starting to change.  This time of year makes us think of football games, apple picking, pumpkin carving, racking leaves, and enjoying a cocktail by the fire. 

Today we are sharing with you a Fall Roundup of our fall crafts & recipes!

Simple DIY Halloween Candy Jar

When I think of Halloween I think of zombies, monsters, witches and CANDY.  It's the one time of year when it is acceptable to eat candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  So why not proudly display your vice in a cute candy jar...instead of stashing it away in a hidden cupboard in the kitchen.  Oops, did I just tell you my hiding place - please don't repeat that.  Personally, I'm a sucker for anything with chocolate, caramel, nuts and peanut butter so when I saw Snickers with Peanut Butter in the grocery store I had to get some.  I really wanted to get 10 bags but I resisted the urge and only got one - y'all should be proud of me...it was really hard.

Halloween Craft: Trick or Treat Door Hanger

You know we love a good burlap craft!  So today I'm going to share with you a Halloween Trick or Treat door hanger.  I'm not exactly sure how our love for burlap started but it's one of those great materials that is inexpensive, easy to work with and always looks good.  We hope you share our love ;)

Collegiate Burlap Football Door Hanger

Football season is almost here - woot woot!!  That means it is time to decorate the front door and wave your alma mater in your neighbor's face...just kidding.  I usually put a cute red and black deco mesh wreath on the front door but this year I'm switching it up.  We're decorating our homes with burlap football door hangers!

{Download Printable Instructions Here}

Silhouette Cameo: Trace Function Tutorial

Today I am going to share with you how to trace a Google Image using your Silhouette Cameo. 

Step 1:  Search for your image on Google or whatever search engine you use.   Save the image to your computer as a JPG or PNG.

Stock the Bar Shower Gift & GA Peach Cocktail Recipe

Themed showers are such a fun idea!  It helps me narrow down the gift idea & personalize to the couple's style.  A friend of the BF's had a "Stock the Bar" shower this past weekend.  Unfortunately the shower was held in Nashville a week after we had just been there for a wedding, so we were unable to make it.  But the happy couple was nice enough to let us stay with them for the wedding, so we dropped off their Stock the Bar gift a week early. 

Chalkboard labels are all the rage right now!  They're great when hosting a party because they allow you to label everything.  For the Stock the Bar shower, I thought it would be cute to give the couple a personalized beverage dispenser with a chalkboard label. 

Silhouette to the rescue!  I used three types of vinyl: chalkboard vinyl, dark turquoise vinyl and lime green vinyl, plus the adhesive transfer paper.  First I printed out the large dark turquoise shape.  Then I over-layed the couple's last name and a small square of the chalkboard vinyl.

I layed out everything on top of each before sticking the vinyl to the beverage dispenser.  I highly recommend using transfer paper when sticking on individual letters for a name or large pieces of vinyl that are difficult to manage.  There was no exact science used in getting the label level, I just eye-balled it.  Use a plastic card to smoothe out any air bubbles, then slowly peel off the transfer paper.

Once you are happy with your label, it's time to fill the beverage dispenser!

I filled the container with ingredients to make a GA Peach Cocktail, a plush toy for the couple's dog, and raffia to fill in the gaps.

The cocktail includes: bourbon, champagne/prosecco, peach schnapps, limes, & peaches. You can download the drink recipe here.

Style the container to your liking.  I hung a cocktail recipe card from the taller bottle, plus a piece of chalk so they can use the chalkboard label.

And there you have it!  A Stock the Bar shower gift personalized for the couple.

We chose to do the GA Peach cocktail because we're from GA and the couple lives in Nashville.  You could easily change this to the couple's favorite cocktail or a cocktail that represents where you live.

Cinco de Mayo | Stache Dash

Good morning! How was your weekend?  If you're in Atlanta then you know it rained non-stop all weekend, except for a few hours of blue skies yesterday.  This was a huge bummber considering my plans took place outside  :(

Saturday morning we did the One Love Stache Dash hosted by one of my fave mexican restaurants in Atlanta, Tin Lizzy's!  It was a 5k race around  Buckhead, then a Cinco de Mayo block party.  But man was it wet! 

We made cute mustache & sunglass shirts using Silhouette's HTV (tutorial here).  Aren't they cute?  Unfortunately they hid under our raincoats during the race.

We had a fun group of girls running the race together.  There were six of us and we all paired up well with someone else.  Lauren's husband was even our personal paparazzi!  You can check out all his pics here.

The race was a lot of fun!  But we were ready to dry off and get warm after.  The rest of our day was pretty lazy and consisted of movie watching, vacation planning and pedicures :)

Sunday I met up with Lauren (@PrettySouthern) for a mexican lunch at Tacos & Tequila.  I think I've eaten mexican the last 4 days in a row, ugh!  Then we headed over to her house for frozen margaritas, card games and relaxation in the hot tub.  It was a pretty nice Cinco de Mayo weekend!

Do you have any 5k races planned?

Silhouette Cameo Tutorial: Heat Transfer Vinyl

Today is Lilly's 4th birthday! 

She wanted something fun to wear on her birthday, so I made her another bandanna.  But this time I used the Silhouette Cameo to add on Heat Transfer Vinyl!

Julia and I bought our Silhouette back in December, we have loved crafting with it.  Overall it's a pretty simple product to use.  Like anything new, the first time you do something is a learning experience.

To start, open up your Silhouette program on your computer, the first thing you do should be to adjust the page size to your vinyl.  The HTV came in 9 x 36 inches.  So adjust the width to 9 inches wide.

Now go into your library and add any shapes or fonts you want to use.

Now create your design. 
Keep in mind the size of what you are ironing the HTV on.

Tips: you can ungroup shapes and letters by right-clicking the image and selecting ungroup.

Wording for HTV always needs to be flipped horizontally.

I always like to crowd my words and shapes together - this saves you vinyl.  Once the words/shapes are printed, you can cut them apart to space them out.

Now it's time to cut.  Always check your cut settings and even do a "test" cut first.  For the HTV I selected "Heat Transfer Vinyl" with a blade of 9. 

I recommend placing your HTV on your sticky cutting board (clear backing on the bottom). 
Then feeding it into the Silhouette. Now cut!

Peel back the extra vinyl, leaving just your words & shapes in place.

This is when I realized I messed up the first time!!  Remember, you have to flip your wording horizontally for HTV!

I went back and flipped all the wording and printed again.  If you are new to Silhouette, I recommend always purchasing more vinyl than you think you'll need.  I mess up and waste vinyl or cardstock on almost every other project - like I said, it's a learning experience ;)

Once you have peeled back the extra vinyl and have layed out your vinyl it's time to iron it on the fabric.  ** Keep the colored vinyl attached to the clear backing **

Lay the vinyl on top of your fabric (clear backing on top), lay of dishtowel on top of the HTV, and iron.   Your iron should be on it's hottest setting with no steam (always read the HTV instructions first). 

Apply pressure to the iron.  The instructions say it takes about 1 minute of heat.  However, I probably spent at least 6 minutes applying heat.  It might have to do with my iron and how hot it gets, I'm not sure.  Just apply heat for a minute of two, then check the HTV.  Lightly pull back the clear backing, if the HTV is not sticking to the fabric then you need to iron longer. 

**Make sure you have a dishtowel on top of the HTV, otherwise you will melt it!**

Peel back all the clear backing and you have a cute Birthday bandanna for your furry friend!

** We have a winner for the Taste Factor giveaway!  Chelsee at Southern Beauty Guide has won 1 month free membership to Taste Factor, valued at $60!  Chelsee, please email us to claim your prize.  Thanks to all our great followers!  And please start following us on Bloglovin.  **