I have to admit… my favorite thing about getting Chinese food is often reading my fortune at the end of the meal. Ninety percent of the time, they’re rubbish – often not really fortunes at all. But occasionally I happen upon one that speaks to me. I’ve been saving the best ones for years, sticking them on mirrors, carrying them in wallets, never knowing quite what to do with them, but not feeling right throwing them away. I don’t know why this project didn’t occur to me sooner!

For this project, you’ll need small frames (I found mine at the $1 store), a sheet of white paper or cardboard, a sheet of black paper, double-sided tape and fortunes.

Step 1:  Open your frame, and using the back piece as a template, measure out and cut your white paper or cardboard (I used some mat board that I had laying around from another project).

Step 2: Based on the size of your frames, decide how big you want the black pieces behind your fortunes to be. My frames are 3 1/2 x 5, so I decided to make my black pieces 2 x 3.

Step 3: Using the double-sided tape attach your fortune to the black piece. I just eyeballed it, but you can measure it out precisely if you’d like.

Step 4: Attach the black piece to the white piece.

Step 5: Pop everything into your frame, and you’re done!

Sadly, after my move, I no longer have a dog living with me. But I do have two dogs who come to visit regularly, and I want them to be comfortable when they come over, so I decided to sew them a dog bed.

For this project, you’ll need a twin sized foam mattress pad ($10 at Target) & 1 yard of heavy-duty fabric.

Step 1: Iron your fabric. Create hems on the shorter ends by folding in 1″, ironing the fold flat and sewing it down.

Step 2: Bringing the two ends together, find the center and mark it with a pin. Next, fold the two ends toward the pin, overlapping it slightly on each side (the right side of your fabric should be on the inside at this point). Sew up each side.

Step 3: Turn your cover right side out, and measure the width.

Step 4: Fold your foam mattress pad in 3. Trim the width of your foam pad to 1″ smaller than your cover.

Step 5: If you want to keep your dog bed nice and simple, you’re done! Just slip the tri-folded pad into your new cover. But I decided to decorate mine bit.

Step 6: Using the freezer paper technique that I talked about in this post, I made a little dog paw stencil.

A word of wisdom from me to you… don’t try to get a dog to pose on the bed before the paint is completely dry. Trust me on this one, folks.