Back with a vengeance

It has been one heck of a long time since I have posted a project. Over the summer, as I was in my temporary residence, I was itching to do something creative. I couldn't wait to get in to my new, permanent house and go crazy making it lovely. Seriously, there were moments I was giddy with anticipation. Embarrassing picture? Yes. But I am not above embarrassing myself, and now you know what I sometimes do in my free time. Yeehaw.

My roommates and I have been in the new house for a month. Things are getting pretty and pretty settled as of a few days ago. For the first few weeks, I had spurts of organizing, hanging pictures, and general new-house activity. This weekend, we hosted a house blessing-housewarming party. It was an excellent excuse to put the medal-to-the-metal, as it were, and finish up my To Do list. While I am still editing House Tour pictures, I wanted to share two projects I tackled in the last few days.

These two projects are ones I've been wanted to do, and simultaneously putting off, for two years.  Perhaps because I am a procrastilaxer extraordinaire, I suddenly felt very motivated to complete each last week instead of doing other things that might have been more worth my while. Something tells me this is a skill I should leave off my resume....

Moving on. There was an informal "Thirsty Thursday" organized for people in my program. It was optional, so I took them up on that. Instead of getting my drink on, I locked myself in my basement with some paint fumes and gave this set of boring black mirrors a face lift.

  

Before aaaaaand After

I went into the project intending to paint two mirrors solid gold and two solid silver. Though I didn't snap a picture of it, I found the scheme too boring so I went on to add the check/stripe effect on the two gold mirrors. I was, and still am, very pleased with this second result.

Can you say, "Fabulous"?

The quartet now takes up wall residence next to our front door. Prime location for last minute beauty checks as we dash out the door.

I know you love it.

Up next is this baby:

After returning home from dinner and drinks with friends for one's birthday, I whipped this pillow up. No sewing machine. No pattern. Just an uglya$$ pillow, new fabric, and needle'n'thread. Oh, and can't forget Grooveshark.

closest thing to a before-after...I.e. I still have another one to cover=the fun ain't over yet(!)

As I said, I had no pattern to follow while sewing. I have a little experience making pillows, but I did not want to replicate that pattern since this pillow would be in the same room as the first. Still, with no sewing machine, my options were pretty limited since there is no way I can hand stitch as well as a machine. So--simple it had to be. Thanks to my mom, I know how to make a ruffle, which came in handy in making the design less boring that it otherwise might have been.

I have to admit, I am pretty surprised and impressed with the outcome. Call me a design geek, but each time I catch a glance of this baby I'm like, "Did I seriously made that?!"

Talking to oneself = Super-cool.

As they say: Pride cometh before the fall; I expect to face-plant sometime soon. So I should probably stop while I am ahead and you are still awake. As always, thank'ya muchly for reading. Up next: Re-cap of the move-in and a house tour. Get excited!

Lampshadapalooza

I have been a bit ADD with my bedroom corner remake. I have a rough plan/idea of the direction I want to take the room area. Yet, I can't seem to do (read: "finish") one thing at a time. Case in point: The multi-headed lamp I started a few weeks ago. Here is a refresher of what I started with:

Mmm, hot and dangerous!

From here, I took the lamp to something like this:

I am still working on figuring out how to better connect/unite/unify/transform the individual stems of the lamp heads. Any ideas out there??

In the meantime, I gave you a preview last week that I have finished fancying up the lampshade. So, I am here today to show you the how-to of that accomplishment.

I started out with a curtain valence that I bought on sale at Wal-Mart. It is a champagne-gold sateen fabric which is layered in tiers.

I had to do a little maneuvering/trial-and-error testing before figuring out how I was going to attach the curtain to my lampshade. Here is a picture of of the curtain simply clipped to the shade. Notice [1] it wraps about one-and-one-fourth ways around the circumference, and [2] it is twice as long as the shade's height. 

To remedy the circumference issue, I took some spare fabric and laced it through the space where a curtain rod normally would be inserted.

Then I used my hot glue gun to pucker the upper ruffle of the curtain. If had not done this, the upper ruffle would have laid limply. That would have been gross.

Sorry, this apparently is the only picture I took during the hot gluing process!

After letting the glue set, I set to address the problem with the length. What first drew me to the curtain was the tier design. With the idea of a wedding dress bustle in my mind, I decided I would try to "bustle" the tiers using needle and thread. Here is a panned out picture of my work station, aka my desk.

At first I was simply sewing the fabric to itself:

 but that quickly proved itself not to work as the weight of the fabric resulted in a sagging effect, where I was going more for a light-weight look. 

 

In, out, and repeat!

To fix this, I changed my method to sewing the curtain layers right into the lampshade. By tethering the fabric right into the shade, the fabric no longer weighed itself down. Since the curtain had four tiers of fabric, the lampshade has four layers of bustle. I attached the fabric with two to three stitches per point--just enough to securely attach the fabric without leaving a bulk of thread to conceal later. If I had really planned out my attack, I probably would have measured out and marked the lines and points of attachment. Maybe I will do that next time. This time I just eye-balled it.

After a little primping and fluffing, I officially declared the lampshade a successful finish!

What do you think? Any ideas on how I can best finish off the lamp's base? I could use your helpful suggestions!

Dream House, Round Deux

Do you remember when I told you about my dream house? Well, good thing dreams are malleable concepts because I need to make some changes/additions to my dream house.

I don't care about bad puns: This facade is dreamy. 

Blue is not my favorite color, and I doubt I'd ever paint a whole room blue (ceilings included). However, I love the little window nook of this room. The ornamental work work is fantastic. Please, mother may I?

Besides this room being absolutely darling, cozy and chic, I find myself increasingly drawn to rooms with visible ceiling beams. There is something so charming about this architectural element in a room.

Okay, this is all for now with my dream house!

UPDATE: For those interested in how it is coming with the lamp project: It is coming along! I had hoped to be finished by now, however I have run into a bit of a snag with the lamp stand. More details to come on that. I have, however, finished the lampshade! Here is how that is looking:

Keep your fingers crossed for the bottom half!

A Long Time in Coming

Do you remember how I told you that I am a garbage person?

Well, I might have some fairy magic in me too. Because lookie how that hot-mess-of-a-chair looks now.

But wait, it gets even better...

               

Ah! I am so glad that I am finished with this project. For those of who have been paying attention to this blog, you'll know that, from start to finish, this was a six-month project for me. Now, in my defense, I was NOT working on this project during the entire six month spread. I didn't touch it for a full and a half months (Thanksgiving through mid-February) because.....well, time just happens.

For those of you new around this blog, here is a quick run through of the past posts on the subject of this chair.

Choosing Fabric

Trying to Prep for Paint

More Decision-making

Sanding, sanding, more sanding

Sneak Peak

After telling you so much about the chair, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking for a while. Anyways, my fingers are a bit tired after pulling out so many staples...

In Progress:

Finish product (and in its new home: The Living Room)



A few imperfections here and there...oh well!



Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures while making the pillow. It is a very simple design, however. I saw a pillow at Walmart. I liked the way it looked and just kind of "winged it" at the sewing machine. Didn't turn out all that bad, eh? The fabric and the *shiny* pin are from Hobby Lobby. Gotta love that store.



So shiny!



Up-close deets

Though it was a lot of work and demanded a lot of patience and perseverance on my part, I am really happy with the outcome! It is really exciting to have accomplished this (it was my first attempt at reupholstering). I wonder what the garbage dump will give me next!

Linking to:

The Girl Creative Today's Creative Blog Tip Junkie Sew Chatty Pinkapotamus Petite Hermine Cherished Bliss Funky Polkadot Giraffe Lady Bug Blessings Bowl Full of Lemons My Girlish Whims Sew Much Ado  Polkadots on Parade Handy Man, Crafty Woman  Someday Crafts Lil'Luna Sugar and Dots Fabric, Bows and More Trendy Treehouse Not Just a Housewife Like Mother, Like Daughter

Pearls are a Girl's Second-Best Friend



With the camera flash, these pearls might give diamonds a run for their shine

(Second only because Diamonds are shinier, of course.)

Last summer I completed this project, yet it almost-eternally slipped my mind to share it with you.



This could be due in part to the fact that it done while I was still in my dang-it-I-forgot-to-take-a-before-picture phase.

So, yeah, that means I can only show you the finished project, because I also failed to take any in-action shots too. But, work with me here for a second: Imagine a plain old spherical flower vase and you will have a pretty good idea what this thing looked like before I went glue-gun-ninja on the vase and covered it with faux pearls (courtesy of Hobby Lobby, naturally).

Good times.

When I first started gluing the pearls on the vase, I simply squirted a big glob'o'hot-glue on the vase and tried to get as many pearls on that glob as I could. I quickly realized that was a poor strategy because it looked messy--not messy in the aesthetically pleasing way, but in the "she has absolutely no idea what she is doing so you should feel sorry for her" way.

Ahh, see ye the Orb of Pearlyness





Since I don't usually do projects with the goal of racking up consoling reassurances that I am special (however much I do love attention, even I have standards), I took my pearl-and-glue strategy in a different direction. I attempted to attach the pearls to the vase in lines, or rings, around the vase. Because pearls don't have straight edges, my lines began to take on some wavy effect as I tried to minimize the gaps between pearls, which were created by the nature of their sphere-shape.

Although the asymmetry of the lines boast the DIY-ness of the vase, I find that I don't mind that fact at all. If I hadn't attempted to minimize the "holes" in the pearl coverage, I bet that would be driving me crazy by now because it would seem so "unfinished." Instead, I can enjoy the DIY glamour and fancy-pantsness that my Pearly Orb adds to pens that other wise would be piled atop the desk in my bedroom.





So, here'ya'go, folks. A little DIY G-rated drama to bring to your bedroom or office.  In case you're wondering, here is a picture of how the pearls jive with the other beauties on my desk. (This pic is proof that I did this project last summer...there is no way it is that light outside at 7:43 P.M. these days!)


"Actually, it will be 'Mr. Pen' to you"

 
 

Beautiful AND Useful!

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful

or believe to be beautiful." -William Morris

In my family, after the kitchen, the laundry room is the room in the house that gets the most traffic. While this might be due to the fact that there is a door leading out of the house into the garage in this room, the fact still remains that the laundry is never lonely for too long.

For a room that is as used and useful as the laundry room, why not make it beautiful as well! While most of us won't ever have a space like this to do our laundry:



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Here are a few ideas from Pinterest to help you get thinking about how you might start to make your laundry room a room that you could *enjoy* being in!
How about some color?

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Or some fancy lighting?

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A fun throw rug might make you want to dance while folding those drawers of yours.

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Do you have a personality? Let it show with some wall hangings.

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Funk or glam, anyone?

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Whatever you choose, make it totally you. That way, you won't have to feel like this girl next time you are doing laundry.

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Have a great day!