Before I get into today’s post I just want to let you all know that I’ve started a second Twitter account called Violet’s Cuties which will basically be me posting cute things that I’ve found along my internet travels. I’ll be posting pretty much anything I think is adorable from clothes to puppies to Hello Kitty shaped sushi makers. Click here to follow me if you’re interested

I’ve had a lot of questions about the mechanics of blogging lately so I’ve decided to make a series of posts with tips on setting up a productive blogging space ^_^

Part 1- Tutorial on making an inspiration board

Part 2- Tutorial on decorating a mirror and lamp

Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

So today is

Part 2- Decorating a Mirror and Lamp

Ok so now you’ve got an inspiration board to look at, you are going to need a few other things to reach optimum blogging potential I’ll show you the rest in the next post but today we’ll focus on 2 very important parts: 1. A cute mirror and 2. a really good, cute light source.

Let’s start with the mirror. You’re probably wondering why you need a mirror, well you want to look good for all the photos you’re going to be posting right? Well having one next in your blogging space is very handy when you’re doing a last minute post or twittering photos. Now you won’t have the problem of taking 109281 photos trying to get your hair right etc. Also useful for taking self portrait photos  so you can see if you are in frame and watching tv in the reflection if your desk doesn’t face it!

Materials:

• Glue gun
• Cheap mirror (mine was $3 from a discount store)
• 2 kinds of lace
• Ribbon is optional

My mirror has a thin plastic frame around it so I’m going to glue to that but if yours doesn’t then just glue straight to the glass. Ok starting with one end of your lace (the rufflier the better in my opinion) put a spot of glue in the middle of the bottom edge of the mirror frame. Don’t start at the corners otherwise you will have one corner that is slightly different from the others… and that would bother me.

Slowly continue gluing the lace until you reach a corner, glue right up to the edge like the picture below.

Now put a little dot of glue on top of the lace right on the corner.

While it’s still wet fold the lace over so it forms a right angle, it should look like below. Please be very careful when you do this, the glue is very hot and if you touch it it will burn you!

Keep going until you’ve done every side!

Now if you want you could leave it like this but I like over the top things so I want more lace! Flat lace works best for the next step. With this part it’s best to start at the corner because the pattern in the lace makes it easy to hide corners. Before deciding to start in the middle/corner check your own lace and see how it looks as some work better than others. You can use ribbon for this step if you prefer or put a strip of ribbon at the bottom etc. What are you waiting for? Be creative and get gluing!

Aaaaaand you’re done!

Time to test it out

Now part 2 of this! Decorating a lamp!

This is what I ended up with:

Lighting is super important plain and simple. If you don’t have good lighting you can ruin your eyes trying to squint and read tiny fonts online. When you look for a lamp (as well as being cute) you should look for something with an easily replaceable bulb, variable brightnesses and the ability to adjust which way it’s facing. Being so adjustable means you can not only use it for reading online but also for different lighting effects in photos. A while ago I was sent this lamp from Buyster which was exactly what I was looking for (being very adjustable etc) but it was quite plain. So It was time to start decorating!

Materials:

• Lace
• Ribbon bows
• Diamantes in various sizes
• Fake flowers
• Epoxy glue (make sure you check the packet for what temperature the glue is stable until as lamps can get very hot when left on for a long period of time)

Before you start test how hot your lamp gets when left on for a long time, if it get very hot in some places it’s best not to decorate there.

I decided to stick to a flowery theme and not go too over the top because James wanted to use the lamp too First roughly lay out what you want to do with your lamp, using epoxy glue means you only get one shot at the final product because once it’s stuck it’s not going anywhere. I decided to put lace around the bottom of the lamp.

After gluing my lace I added some large pink diamantes and pre-made ribbon bows.

Using a match stick with some old blue tack I dipped the back of each in glue and placed them. Be careful to hold them in place for a few minutes otherwise the glue will just run off and you’ll have a bunch of diamantes all over your lace.

I decided to cover where the neck and base meet with flowers. Because this part bends it’s not a good idea to use glue in this area so instead it’s better to thread a needle and sew the flowers in a circle around it.

Taadaa flowers…

As a bit of an after thought I added some diamantes to the top part. This part gets *very* hot if you leave it on for a while so my original idea of turning it into a gigantic hungry face of diamantes went out the window.

And there you have it, finished lamp! If you want to make one exactly like mine you can get this kind of lamp here.

Hope this was kind of helpful and stay tuned next time for Part 3- Putting it all together and what else do you need?

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