I Don't Dread Mondays When Work is CLOSED

Hurricane Sandy is creeping in and I've got our house fully stocked with food, water, and plenty of DIY projects to work on, hoping we don't lose power. I will have lots of fun things to share coming up this week and next. 

I'm also excited to share with you all my first custom order painting. I finished and shipped out this past week. Having this done just gets me even more excited to get my own little shop up and running. Just hope others like my paintings as much as I do. 

Here are a few shots of the finished painting. 

And a glimpse at a few other finished pieces.

I'm really hoping to be able to announce the opening my of shop soon, I just want to make sure I have a good variety to show. Of course you all will be the first to know.

For those of you in Sandy's path, stay safe! 

Use it as an excuse to tackle all those projects you've Pinned. :)

DIY Floral Arrangement

I don't have a green thumb. I will probably never be able to maintain a successful garden. I don't even know the names of most flowers. What I do know is what looks pretty. I also know how to take something done professionally and learn to DIY it for less. 

My grandmother's birthday was last month. Buying gifts for my grandparents is hard. Really hard. What do you get for an 82 year old woman who has everything she needs, needs nothing, and even has everything she doesn't need? A pretty flower arrangement. And why spend a fortune on one when you can do it yourself? 

This DIY was super easy and super inexpensive. Anytime I get flowers from Jordan I always keep the vase. I have tons of vases that I've collected over the years. I never had a plan for them but knew I would figure something out down the line. All I needed to buy was some tape and the actual flowers. 

First step is the most important and pretty much what makes or breaks the arrangement. I took clear duct tape and cut it into quarters making skinny strips. I'm sure there's fancy professional florist tape that actually is this size, but I settled for the duct tape purchased for cheap from Walgreen and the tedious task of cutting it into pieces. Ah, well..

Once I had my strips cut I ran them across the top of the vase, criss-crossing them like the top of a pie leaving small square openings between the strips. 

Now you could do this project using just one regular sized mixed bouquet found at the store. I bought two because I wanted to add sunflowers to be a statement flower and of course they were in a separate bouquet than the one I wanted to use. I spent $15 in total on the flowers for two bouquets, but you don't even need to spend this much. I had some leftover flowers that I stuck in a vase for myself. Side note: Whole Foods has some of the best flowers. I highly recommend. 

I trimmed all the flowers to the necessary length. To start, I picked the largest, statement flowers and put them into the vase through the holes between the tape, spacing them out as I saw fit. The criss-cross tape holds the flowers upright so you don't have a bunch of droopy flowers bumping into each other and moving around.

After the large flowers were in, I started to fill in with the next size and worked my way smaller: in this case it was roses, followed by daises, carnations, etc. 

Lastly, I added in all the accent pieces, or fillers: spider mums and whatever those green stemmed things are below. Like I said, I don't know the names of most flowers. I just had to 'google' spider mum. You want to just move pieces around and mess with it a bit until it looks pretty and finished. One thing I would add to the arragement that I did not originally do is find a piece of ribbon that matches the arrangement and tie it around the neck of the vase, covering the ends of the tape so they don't peek through the flowers.

That's it. Honestly. The hardest part was cutting the strips of tape, and to even call that task hard is stretching the truth a bit. If you come across actual florist tape, the time it took me for this project could be cut in half. My grandmother absolutely loved the flowers. She was so pleased with the arrangement and the fact that they lasted almost three weeks that she requested I make her more! 

Here are a few quick shots of the arrangement I made for her last week.

 

Guest Bathroom Redo: Rope Framed Canvas

 

My grandfather was an artist, and a great one at that. He's done a few portraits, but most of his work was of gorgeous scenery - houses, building, lakes, cars, etc. Whenever we visited, he was always in the middle of painting a number of canvases and the walls in his home in Kensington were covered in his finished pieces. He passed away when I was in college and I made it a point to get a number of his art pieces (that hadn't already been split between his two daughters and nine grandchildren). I adore the paintings my grandfather made. While I have tons of memories of him, I love having these physical paintings to help me still feel close to him. I even have a few personal ones in my collection - one is a painting of my fifth grade school photo (the actual photo of me is unfortunate, but I love the painting) and the other was a bouquet of flowers I specifically asked him to paint. I haven't really hung Pop's paintings in our home. I have no reason for this and that's something I want to change. I want to proudly display them because I am proud of them and they mean a lot to me.

 

When planning the wall in the bathroom I remembered one particular painting of my grandfather's that I knew would be perfect in the space.  

 

One of my favorite details of Pop's paintings is that sometimes he would sneak our names somewhere into the picture. In this particular one, he named the ships after my brothers and me (they read 'Nicki', 'Dave W' and 'Jessica').  

 

 

I wanted the painting to look a little more finished before I hung it since the staples along the edge of the canvas were visible.

 

 

With a spool of jute rope, my glue gun and just ten minutes, I had a new rope frame around my canvas.

 

Not only did is make the painting look more complete and ready to hang, but the rope ties nicely into the theme of the guest bathroom.

 

Pop's painting now hangs proudly on the wall for all our guests to see. Just another tiny peek at the almost finished wall in the guest bathroom.

 

 

Guest Bathroom Redo: Refinished Oar

The guest room is moving along very nicely. The room is painted, my shower curtain finally arrived, textiles have been swapped and I've already started hanging some decor on the walls. Looks like it's going to be finished sooner than expected. One of the changes I'm making in the bathroom is to create a gallery wall on the far wall behind the toilet. My idea was to hang some nice wooden and metal frames along with some fun decorative pieces.

Several years ago I bought these two wooden oars from Ross on sale for $6.99 each. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with them. It was in the beginning of my blogging kick where I started avidly reading DIY blogs like The Lettered Cottage and immediately decided that I needed to have my own little farmhouse cottage with vintage rustic decor (Hence the herb crate purchase, which by the way will be coming down from the wall in favor of a recent animal art piece. More on that later.)

When planning the gallery wall in the guest bathroom I remembered I had these oars stuffed in our basement somewhere. Since my navy and white guest bathroom had taken a somewhat unexpected nautical themed twist, I decided that hanging one of these on the wall with a few of the other things I have been collecting would fit nicely into my theme. As you can see they came with these handpainted scenic designs. Nice and all, but not quite the look I'm going for.

It took maybe 2 hours to completely sand down the oar and remove all the paint. Of course I did all this by hand because we don't have an electric sander. If we did, it probably would have taken half the time. I lucked out that Lucy decided to take a marathon nap that day so I was able to tackle it all in one sitting (with time to spare for a shower afterward, too!).

Once finished, I was pleased with how great the condition was on the bare wood oar. It was so smooth and there was little to no residue from the paint.

Staining needed to wait for another day and another naptime for Lucy. Luckily I treated myself to a three day weekend so the next day was perfect. I grabbed some stain I already owned (I have a few different colors from prior projects and opted for the 'middle' shade) along with my other supplies and got to work. After the mess of staining the wine crate, I learned that a mask and rubber gloves are a must when staining. That stuff does not come off your hands easily.

After a coat of the first color I liked how it looked, but wanted more. I decided to take a darker color that I also had from another project and do a few random streaky spots around the oar. Much better!

Once finished, I let the oar dry overnight and used a few coats of my acrylic sealer (Seen here. I love this stuff.) to set the stain. Another day and another nap (I swear now that she's walking this girl naps like a champ) gave me time to hang my newly stained oar on the wall along with some other items, which I will share more about later.

Because the oar is actually pretty light, I attached a simple picture hanger attachment thing(technical word) to the back of it, near the top.  I decided that I wanted to hang it vertically with the heaver side towards the bottom. Heavy isn't even the right word because the wood is pretty lightweight.

Here is a sneak peek at the corner of bathroom where I hung the oar. Just a sneak peek, though, because I'm not quite finished. While all the frames and accessories are up on the wall, I'm still working to fill those frames and don't want to share it all until the room is complete.

 

Tomorrow I'll share with you how I took a sentimental piece of art and added a little something for $0 to dress it up for the bathroom gallery wall.

Pinned It, Did It: Miniature Animal Menagerie

I love Pinterest. Who doesn't? It provides you with all the ideas that you wish you thought up on your own, and allows you to 'steal' those ideas for yourself. Ok, maybe steal is a harsh word, but I think you all know what I mean. I have no shame in my Pinterest game and this project is proof of that. Plus I'm always willing to give credit where credit is due.

I pinned this Miniature Mounted Menagerie just over a week ago and I immediately knew I had to do it.. and soon. Last weekend I gathered my supplies and got to work. The great thing about this project is it cost me next to nothing and took just one day to complete. The only things I needed to purchase were the plastic toy animals (a bag of 12 animals found in the Target party favor section for $3.00) and a can of metallic gold spray paint (maybe $5?). I already had the white spray paint and the frame was from an old wooden 'paint by number' piece that my mom was going to donate to Goodwill. I snagged it knowing I could chuck the print and use the frame. Good thing I did. 

Similar to the author of the original post, I found the hardest part of this project to be cutting the animals in half. I used a sharp knife as we don't have any sort of tool that could be used. It wasn't until my last two animals that I finally found a good method for cutting them in half easier. Oh well.

A few quick coats of white spray paint on both the frame and cardboard it came with and some gold on my freshly halved zoo friends and all I needed to do was glue the animals to the framed cardboard.

I love it! It looks pretty similar to the original, although since I had a larger frame I opted to use all 12 of the animals. I have yet to hang the animals although I already know where they are going to go. I just need to take a few things down and patch up the wall space before I reveal the home for this little art piece.

Do you have a Pinterest project you just had to do as soon as you pinned?

Vintage Sewing Stool Reupholster

I have bad habit of getting a little distracted with my projects and starting too many at once resulting in a few of them getting pushed to the back burner. That was the case with this stool I was reupholstering for a friend of mine.

I bought this old stool forever ago from Goodeals. So long I don't even remember, but it was around late winter/early spring. I had no use for the stool in our house, but it had so much potential that I was dying to take it home and give it a little love. My coworker and good friend Amy had been in the process of updating and decorating her apartment that she moved into several months back. I saw this stool as the perfect housewarming gift. 

Here are a few shots of the stool how it looked when I purchased it and as I started to take it apart for a makeover.

The rusted, cracking gold at the bottom of the legs was screaming for a coverup. While I opted not to repaint the legs themselves, I couldn't leave these in their original condition.

I grabbed a can of gold spray paint that I already owned along with some painter's tape and got to work. They bottom of the legs looked so much better once they had a fresh coat of clean gold.

I decided to use this great retro floral fabric I scored from a vintage garage sale. They color combo of black, gray and white perfectly complimented the frame of the stool. I snapped a quick picture on my phone to send to Amy for her approval. She LOVED it.

Here is where the stool project took a mini vacation. I struggled a bit with the reupholster. I really wanted to reupholster the entire chair, including the bottom half, but since the current fabric was vinyl and my sewing skills are limited, I didn't want to get in over my head and not be able to finish. I also wanted the inside of the lid to have the same pocket it did originally, but I just couldn't get the fabric to lie flat enough that it wasn't too bulky under the sleeve. Plus the more I messed with it the more flimsy and tacky the sleeve started to look. I got a little frustrated and that's when I took a hiatus.

I started to feel like a bad friend giving Amy empty promises and I'm pretty sure she was starting to wonder if I was really going to finish her stool. Finally, I got my butt to work and decided to forget the pocket (she isn't going to use it as an actual sewing stool), and just focus.

Just the other day I finally had it complete!

A side by side comparison of the before and after stools.

There was a seam in the vinyl that was beginning to split lengthwise so I took some nail head tacks and hammered them in along the length of the split. It isn't perfect, but it was definitely a good quick fix. I've read on many blogs that the nail head trim is easier than doing individual nails and after doing this strip and seeing my crooked line, I wish I had opted for the trim.

Considering this is only my second reupholstering project I think I did a pretty decent job. I'm very critical of my work and have a laundry list of aspects of this stool that I wish I could have done better, but I know this will come in time with more projects. In the end, Amy loves it and that's all that matters. 

I'll share some pictures of the stool in her apartment once she sends some my way. 

DIY Paint Chip Art

paint chip photo source

I've jumped on the paint chip art bandwagon. I loved doing this project. It was super easy and next to free to make. I say free because I already owned the frame, but technically it cost the price of the Ribba frame ($19.99). The paint chips really were free. (One of these days Home Depot and Lowes will catch onto this trend and start charging for paint chip samples.) I opted to go with shades of yellow to bring in the yellow from our master bathroom. To make this art I simply cut strips along the width of the paint chips and alternated the colors behind the frame. A little glue stick helped keep the pieces from moving around when I was putting them together.

I'm slowly but surely updating our master bedroom a little at a time. I recently added this mirror, which I love and built this Anthro inspired rack. I'm now on the hunt for the perfect rug to add a little more color to our grey and white master bedroom. Where are your favorite places to find a good rug?