Book Page Art!

Adventure: It Will Not Just Fall Into Your Lap

We had this large space above our new headboard! And I had bought a rather large canvas for it, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. 

We had been in the midst of planning a cross country road trip, something we have always wanted to do. The big bucket list adventure! The inspiring juices were flowing, and all I could think about was the fun adventure ahead. 

This was the result of my creativity that weekend. And I will show you how to do this DIY project as well!

 So whatdid I do? It's pretty simple. I found some old books, things I wasn't ever going to read again, and I cut out the pages. Using an X-acto knife. Then just glued them down with some regular craft glue. I would go with an overlapping pattern, and a few different types of paper colors/sizes.

 I waited for that to dry, and then I got out my Mod Podge! Mod Podge, or even some clear drying glue would do the trick, and you will also need a a paint brush. I just put the Mod Podge straight onto the paper, and using the brush, stuck down the edges. Make sure that you wrap the pages over the edges of the canvas, so that it looks seamless throughout the whole piece. This was where the strength of Mod Podge was really tested, but mixed with the glue, it should work out fine!

Once that is dry, you can paint directly onto the paper! I went for a quote, by your's truely! :) And a hot air balloon.

If you would like to know how I did that, keep on reading! 

I used a simple craft paint. You want a water based one, as oil based may not react well with the paper.  Paint your base layer first. In my case it was the black and gold panels of the balloon, and the basket. You will want to wait for that to dry so that nothing gets smudged, and you make sure you have your desired opacity. The lines were made using 3D puffy paint, in a matte white. This took some patience, and a steady hand, which I usually don't have much of. 

I then could paint over the remaining little bits I wanted to work on. Again, always make sure you allow for drying time between each step so that you don't smudge anything. 

You can steal my quote...it's okay, maybe give me a nod though if you do, you know a little cred ;) 

(You can see my teeny, tiny little signature underneath haha)
But choose something meaningful to you!  I picked out a good font online, and copied it by eye. But you will definitely want to draw some pencil marks beforehand. It's paper! You can always erase it. And then go back to your 3D puffy paint (I used black this time) and draw right over the pencil lines. If you mess up a little, that's okay! Just increase the thickness of your lettering to cover up your mistake.

And Viola! I have an awesome piece of art for our bedroom!

Easiest DIY Tufted Headboard!

You Can Have a DIY Headboard Too!

For UNDER $30!!

Headboards are SO EXPENSIVE! So if you can make one for cheap, you definitely should!

What you need:

Plywood (measure your desired height and width) 

           -You can get it for under $10 at Home Depot and

          they will cut it for you. The hard part was getting

          it back to our apartment!

Fabric of Choice

          -You will want this to be slightly larger than your wood.

          -Joann's always has buy one get one 50% off or

          something similar, so it doesn't have to be a big 

          splurge! I chose velvet :)

A Mattress Pad Topper

          -Again, this is something you can get for $10 at Walmart!

Long Nails and Hammer

Staple Gun & Staples

A Little Ingenuity!

  

So what do you need to do....?

It simple!

Lay down your plywood on the floor. Be careful not to do what I did and drag the edge along your carpet if they cut using dye! (A color along the edge). It stains. But you are going to lay down your foam topper where you want it and leave a little room to wrap it over to the back. What I did was draw a line for where the top of my mattress would touch the headboard and had the topper placed there. 

Cover with your fabric so that it drapes over the back, but covers the rest of the wood on the front end. You can glue this down if you want. Tuck the fabric under the foam and staple it to the wood. Do not go through the foam.

Pull everything taught, and flip over the wood. Begin with the sides and staple the foam down; cutting off the excess.  

Leave the top untouched for a moment, and flip the wood back over. Measure the distance of your tufts. I only did 3 since my headboard was small. Mark the tufts with the point of the nail head. Take your long nails and hammer them in through both the foam and into the wood!

I covered them with a little tiny pom pom, but chances are you wouldn't really be able to tell they were there anyway.  

Then go ahead and pull the rest of the top fabric and foam over to the back, and staple. Make sure the corners look ok from the front. Cut off the excess fabric and foam. 

And voila! It took me about 2 hours total to figure out how to execute it. And I am so happy with the results! 

New Bathroom Shelves!

So You Want to Decorate Your Bathroom!
Well here is how I did it!

We have the tiniest! I mean TINIEST bathroom! So I didn't have much to work with. 

But to liven it up I added a bright shower curtain, accent wall, and bold shelving!

The shower curtain is from Target, and it is what we based our whole color scheme on.

Next I hung the faux brick wall.
Wondering what that is?
We are renters so we can't paint or put up wall paper but there are ways to get around that. It's contact paper I ordered from Amazon for around $12! I left the backing on, and just nailed the paper right to the wall!

You have to push the bubbles out from the backing and try to line up the bricks perfectly, but with the help of an x-acto blade and some elbow grease I got it up!

Next came the shelves, we just had some 1x4s cut into 3 from home depot and I stained them. All-together it cost about $12, including the brackets.

We used the same brackets as the ones used in our coffee rack! You screw one end into the underside of the shelf, and one end to the wall! Just right over the contact paper.


Then....time to decorate! Don't be scared to put in things "ordinary" people wouldn't think to see in a bathroom. You aren't ordinary are you? No you're EXTRA-ordinary ;) But you obviously know that the air freshener is necessary to any bathroom...

The painting I hung on a nearby wall was also an original creation. It was rather simple :)

New Apartment!

The Gallery Wall is Getting There!

(More updates to come)

We have been slowly decorating our new apartment!  And we realized a lot of our combined wall hangings had an unexpected color scheme of beige, red, and black. So why not put them all together?!?

Now you might be thinking, is that Parcheesi? Um yes, I took an on game board, glued on the pieces and the die, and just hung it on the wall. Why? Because why not??

We are fun people and our apartment will always emulate that!

There are still some blank spaces we need to fill with some smaller stuff, but it is coming together! 

            

A New Keurig Set Up

A Brand New Mug Rack!

 I found this shelving unit from a storefront that was going out of business. But it could be easily built!

I just sanded it down and added some simple touches so that we could display all of our mugs!

What I used:
3 Sheets of Black Felt 
A Little Paint
6 Brackets

I had the thought of gluing down some felt on the shelves so that 1. the wood did not get wet from some sneaky water droplets, and 2. that we could put mugs upside-down without fear!

But instead of gluing it, I just placed them there. BECAUSE the raw wood gripped onto the felt pretty well, so I had the foresight to leave it removable in case you wanted to wash it!

I just chose a font to paint my little handmade sign on top with a very small paint brush. 

The brackets were the best way to hang this up because it was going to be a little heavier! (You can see them in this photo.) You just place 2 brackets on each shelf screwing them into both the bottom of the shelf, and the wall! It holds more weight that way and puts less pressure on the wall. 

But yeah...that's it. It really was super simple. We set up our Keurig outside of the kitchen so we had more room on a little corner stand for it. 

We love the idea of having mismatched dinnerware including mugs! That way you can display all those fun patterned mugs you find that don't match the rest of your plates :)

ENJOY!

Xmas DIY Gift (DIY Lanterns with Edison Bulbs)

I wanted to share some DIY gifts I made this year. And I can do that now that they have been gifted. So first I made a little idea for decor.

Lanterns with Edison Bulbs

What you will need: 

-Edison style light bulb I got mine from Amazon from -Upgradelights as a set of 3 for about $18
-Electric candle lantern with space underneath for a cord to fit through and a removable electric candle - basically need the hole in the bottom (these came from TJMaxx for about $15 each)
-Lighting cord the only place that had what I wanted was IKEA and they were $5 you could get them in white or black, I chose black
-Screwdriver
-Thin cardboard I used an old gift box, also worked as a painting station
-A tube of cardboard I used an empty wrapping paper roll, but an empty paper towel or toilet paper roll would work as well
-Black paint and brush
-Hot glue gun and sticks
-Scissors and/or X-Acto knife

First and foremost, make sure that your lanterns have a removable candle, and/or a hole in the bottom so you can feed the light cord through it AND a door that opens from the front so that you can change the light bulb without taking the whole thing apart. You will want to remove the candle with the screwdriver and you can get rid of the screws. Make sure that your light cord fits through the resulting hole in the lantern. But don't leave it fed through there just yet.

It will probably be the case that the hole is too large for your lighting cord and will need something to rest on, and even more probable that the base of the cord needs to be pushed up into the lantern, so that it doesn't ride too low underneath. This is where the cardboard comes in.

You will want to cut out two donut shapes. One with a hole the size of the base of the cord, and one that is just smaller than the width of the cardboard roll. Cut the roll to a piece that is large enough to to raise the base of the cord, but leave enough room for the bulb.

Once all your cardboard parts are cut out you can paint them black, or whatever color, just so it looks a little nicer. Then glue the parts all together, when the cord is fed through it all.

Glue the pieces to the base of the lantern and to the lighting cord itself. Then wait for it to dry.

Place your light bulb in the lantern and voila! Enjoy it yourself on a cold winter night, or gift it to someone special. They better be special because it takes some effort ;)

Pumpkin Decorating Contest - Movable Cinderella Carriage

We had a pumpkin decorating contest at work and I decided to make the carriage from Cinderella.

We had to use little pumpkins for the contest so I started out with a typical little orange guy. I would be better if you used a white pumpkin because you could skip the step of painting.
 

 What you need:
A pumpkin
Newspaper 

Paints (I used white, gold, yellow, and blue)

Paint brushes

Fine tip puffy paint (Black)
4 Bottle caps
Clay (not required)
Glue (I used a combo of tacky craft glue and hot glue)
A Hot Wheels toy (one with a flat top, I used a van)
A My Little Pony toy (or any small horse toy)
and Thin twine

Lay down your news paper before you start anything. I painted the pumpkin white overall and added the designs in the grooves of the pumpkin, for the window, and some filigree with just acrylic paints and the fine tip squeezable puffy paint in black for outlining.

 

While the paint was drying I molded some clay to go around the bottle caps, this step is not necessary but I thought it looked a little better than just a naked bottle cap. Wrap strips of not too thinly rolled clay around the cap, and secure with some glue. I painted the clay and bottle caps in white as well as painted on some spokes and use a little glittery gold paint between what would be the wheel and the tire haha.

Then take your Hot Wheels, and it is very important that it has a somewhat flat top so that the pumpkin doesn't wobble off and is stable, and you want to paint this as well. I painted it a pale blue for contrast against the white pumpkin and wheels, but you can do white if you don't want to reveal too much that there's a car under there.

I wasn't too worried about the looks of the car, because I didn't figure that would be scrutinized too much.

The next step after everything has had some time to dry is to start gluing. Attach the pumpkin to the painted Hot Wheels and wait for that to dry before continuing.

Then glue the wheels to the pumpkin at its base and to the Hot Wheels car if you can. The clay on the wheels should be only very slightly touching the "ground" or table surface. When that is completely dry make sure that everything is secure and add some hot glue where needed.

I then molded the clay a little so that it wasn't touching the "ground" anymore so that there was no friction and the Hot Wheels could roll freely.

If you are happy with your result take out your My Little Pony, or horse toy.

Then take a piece of the thin twine and wrap it around the neck of the horse, and tie a bow with the ends around the stem of your pumpkin.

And Viola! You have an adorable pumpkin carriage inspired by Cinderella!

I will update with winners of the competition and whether I place or not!
(I WON! - I mean of course...duh!)

This is always a big deal in our office for the Halloween party.