DIY Valentine Decor Week - Day 2: Fun With Ombre and a Banner

I'm loving the ombre craze much like everyone else. Whether it's hair, fabric, makeup, etc, ombre is everywhere these days. I decided to implement this popular trend with a little DIY Valentine art.

I picked up these Martha Stewart paints from Michael's for $1.99 each.

I also picked up two 8x10 canvases.

With the first canvas I did a simple brush stroke design.

I kind of love this canvas considering how simple the design. I also may create more art like this with different colors for different rooms in the house (I'm thinking master bathroom art, but in a larger scale)


For the second canvas I used the same ombre color effect, but did free-hand hearts instead.

Now the banner is super easy to make. I purchased a sheet of gray scrap book craft paper that was on clearance for something like $.20 per sheet. I also used the white Martha Stewart craft paint that I purchased with the other paints above. To hang, I picked up soem jute rope at AC Moore a few weeks back along with some clothespin clips from Michael's.

Using the craft paper, I cut out triangles. I used a template that I made using scrap paper so that the triangles would all be the same shape and size. I made as many as I had letters to make, which was 6 for me since I was doing the phrase "BE MINE."

Once the triangles were cut out, I used my craft paint and a super thin brush to paint a letter on each triangle, spelling out my Valentine message.     

I don't have a before picture of these clips, but I purchased a pack of 6, each adorned with a varying, busy pattern on the heart. I wasn't crazy about the patterns, so instead I decided to carry my ombre theme and paint over the designs and have clean, solid colored hearts. I lucked out that the pack of clips came with 6 and the was the exact number of letters I had for my banner.

Next I measured my twine against the length of the shelf where I decided to hang my banner and added a few inches so the twine would hand around the edge of the shelf on each end. The last step was clipping each letter to the twine using my mini ombre clothespins.

I also have this simple mason jar decoration on the dining room shelf with the LOVE letters I made using my faux zinc letter tutorial. To put this decor together I just used an old mason jar I already owned and these glitter hearts-on-a-stick that I purchased last year from Christmas Tree Shop at $1.99 for a pack of 6. How's that for a quick and cheap decoration? I'm all about using what you have.

Coming up tomorrow: Valentine heart garland.

DIY Valentine Decor Week - Day 1: Yarn Wreath

I've decided to devote this entire week to showing you made some DIY Valentine Decor I made for our house.

I mentioned to you all before that I don't decorate for holidays. Ever. I didn't even have a Christmas tree put up the past two years. I've vowed that this is the year I'm going to change. Now, I'm not going to go crazy and decorate for every single, minor holiday. Baby steps. I did decide to start off my 2012 resolution of holiday decorating with Valentine's Day.

February 14th holds a special place in my heart and it's not because of Valentine's Day. It just so happens to be my sweet hubby's birthday. We have this ongoing battle every year because I refuse to acknowledge Valentine's Day and Jordan refuses to acknowledge his birthday. (Well he chooses to celebrate it on a different day so he can do Valentine's the way he feels it should be done.) In the end he usually wins.

Anyway, I decided to channel my inner romantic, acknowledge Valentine's Day this year, and dive into some homemade DIY decor. I did try to keep my decor a little mellow and more my taste as I'm not crazy about covering my house in every shade of pink and having a ton of mis-matched decor. I started with neutral palettes, then added pops of dark red and just a few pinks. I relied on some vintage accents like lace and old book pages as well as some natural elements like jute rope. I wanted my decor to flow and sort of have a theme, rather than be bright and sporadic and have no real connection to each other. All of my decorations in one way or another tie to each other.

Part of easing myself into the decorating groove, I decided to decorate one room in our house. Above is just a shot of our dining room where you can see some of the decor I created over the past few weeks. I'll give you all a closer look as the week progresses as well as a few other crafts you can't see in this shot.

My first DIY project is a yarn wreath I made for our front door.

I've seen lots of yarn wreaths all over the internet and decided to give it a try and make one myself. It seemed simple enough to create and easily customizable when it comes to colors and decorative accents.

Supplies Needed:

- yarn (colors and number of yarns your choice)

- foam ring from craft store

- decorative embellishments (I chose felt)

- glue gun

- lace (or some other material) for hanging

I found these two yarns at Michaels. A dark red and silvery-gray. The yarns actually look a lot brighter in the below pictures. The picture above of the finished wreath on our front door is a more accurate shot of the yarn colors. I also purchased a 15" foam ring. These too can found at your local craft store. There are also pre-made wreaths made of straw and wrapped in plastic, but I felt that the foam would be smoother and easier to work with.

I started the wreath by tying a simple knot with the yarn on what I decided would be the back side of the wreath, and began wrapping,

and wrapping,

and wrapping.

When the red was about 3/4 of the way done, I tied off and started wrapping the gray yarn from the opposite side of the ring. I did a large chunk of gray yarn, then went back to the red and continued to the end where the red meets the gray.

As I finished wrapping the red, I left the last few inches a little loose so I could move them easily and wrap the grey yarn between chunks of the red. I did this pattern kind of randomly and just wrapped where I thought it looked best, no real rhyme or reason. I wanted the gray spots to be varying widths and only in a small section of the wreath.

TIP: I wrapped my yarn pretty tightly around the foam ring. I also made sure to keep each piece of yarn right next to the previous one and not let them overlap at all. That was just a personal preference and you can overlap if you want. I've seen it done both ways and both look great.

Once finished the front (left) and back (right) looked like this:

Now comes the fun part where you get to decorate the wreath. While I chose to use felt and lace, you can use whatever you like i.e., pre-made flowers, create your own heart shaped accent piece, or use other materials such as fabric, book pages and even crepe paper to decorate with.

I decided to use felt to create small ruffles. When making these ruffles I used the same method I used when making my pom poms for Lucy's nursery.

I cut several circles out of white felt, about two inches in diameter. 

I repeated this process several times until I had about 10 or so premade ruffles.

Using the glue gun I attached the ruffles to the wreath, keeping them close together.

Once the ruffles were all attached, the last step was to use some lace and wrap it around the top of the wreath to use when hanging. I bought two spools of two different laces for $1.00 each at AC Moore a few weeks ago.

There you have it. Your own yarn wreath.

This project was so simple to do and so easy to create several different versions for different holidays. 

Because I only used red, gray and whtie, I could actually even reuse this wreath come Christmas time.

Tomorrow I'll show you how I had some ombre fun using craft paint. 

What Valentine crafts are you working on?

Dining Room Art Complete (Finally..)

I'm so glad to say that I have finally finished the wall art for our dining room. 

If you remember, this screenshot from The Rachel Zoe Project was my inspiration. 

I purchased a 3'x4' canvas and a tube of silver acrylic paint to complete this project.

(These were my paint options. I used the tube of silver on the right)

I pretty much did this the same way I did the anniversary gift I made for Jordan, 

but on canvas instead of stained wood.

I thought I was going to be able to do this in a weekend, but it turned into a bigger process than anticipated. Because I chose a silver color for the words it took me two coats for each letter, and of course I was writing each word by hand. As soon as my hand would tire or I felt like like my handwriting was being compromised, I stopped for the night.  

At the rate of 1 or 2 lines per night, it took me two weeks from start to finish, 

but it's finally complete and hung on the dining room wall.

The song we chose for the canvas is "Hallelujah" - originally written by Leonard Cohen, but we chose the Jeff Buckley version, in which the wording is just slightly different. 

We both love this song and Jordan ultimately chose it for the canvas. It was one of the songs put on the 'Baby Song' playlist Jordan created for the Lullabelly I wore when I was pregnant.

I really like how the silver paint looks in the sunlight and from certain angles.

The 3'x4' canvas is the perfect size for the space on our wall.

Next for the dining room is finding something to fill the empty space in that corner of the room. I'd love to build or restore some sort of wine storage system now that we no longer have the hutch to store our booze. We already found a place for our liquor when I scored my vintage bar cart back in September. But we need some place to keep the healthy supply of wine that we always have on hand (thanks to my job).

A New-Old Dining Room

Well, we did it! Like I mentioned last week, we did the big dining room furniture swap over the weekend. The set that we've had for the past 3 years is an old antique set that belongs to Jordan's parents. It came with a table, four chairs, a bench and a hutch.

In case you don't remember, here was our messy, junky dining room just last week with the old set of furniture (and a bunch of other crap we've  accumulated, like the white armoire from our guest room).

Apparently Jackson feels the need to sneak into every picture.

In case you were wondering, I reupholstered the chairs myself a few months back. 

See the tutorial here.

About two weeks ago Jordan's parents asked us if we'd be interested in taking the table and chair set that belonged to Jordan when he was living in the apartment at their house. I had actually completely forgotten about that table and chair set until they mentioned it the other day. We thought about it for a few days and agreed that we both would like to take the set and use it in the dining room in place of the old set we planned to replace anyway.

We scheduled the big swap for Sunday. We went to brunch with my family at my grandparents' house (a Sunday tradition we've been doing as long as I can remember) and left the little bug with my dad so we could run the errands. After three trips back and forth between our house, Jordan's parent's house and Goodwill, we finally have the 'new' furniture set.

How gorgeous does it look in the room? The room looks like a completely different dining room. Jordan and I can't decide if we love it because it looks great or just because it's something fresh in the room. Probably both. Either way we are so happy with the swap.

Note that one of the chairs is missing on the right. When Jordan's dad was getting the set ready to bring to our house he noticed that one of the chair legs was broken. He is going to try to get a replacement chair. Although I'm actually considering purchasing two chairs to put on the ends of the table. Maybe something like this Harry upholstered chair from Ikea:

I'm not too crazy about the finish of the legs. They would need to be stained darker to match the rest of the furniture.

Which, by the way, looks great with our floors. The original furniture set clashed slightly because of the contrast in wood finishes.

Here are a few other views of the dining room how it looks today.

Hi Lyla.

Except for the corner with the highchair, swing, car seat and dog food, we de-junked this room and completely cleared out anything that didn't need to be in the room. It looks so much bigger, cleaner and more formal. 

I'm in love.

Since we removed the hutch I now use the Ikea Lack shelf on the wall to hold our glassware that isn't being stored on the bar cart.

I made these LOVE letters using my faux zinc letter technique.

I found these great vintage glasses in my grandparents' basement a few years ago.

I picked up these treasures on the table during a trip to Anthropologie last week.

They will serve as my inspiration for the rest of the room. The glass candlesticks were a gift from my aunt last Christmas. And boy are they heavy! The white plates were $3.99 Marshalls gems that were temporarily being used outside as planter bases.

Large latte bowls

Mini latte bowls

Fleur-De-Lys Juice Glasses

Next up for the dining room is finding a rug for under the table. I also need to find a piece of furniture to use as a side table under the shelf. I'm thinking an old refinished dresser would make the perfect height while providing enough storage to hold our china, etc. For the rug, I'm thinking of getting a bright color like a purple or green, but knowing my indecisiveness and how often I change my mind, I might just settle on something neutral. Finally, I need to figure out what to do in the corner where the hutch was. There is a ton of wall space just begging me to add some DIY wall art.

For now I'm just going to enjoy our 'new' old set. 

I may eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in there now!