When I did the Home Sweet Home reveals in early January I promised to show how I decoupaged all of the ugly black plastic shelves we had. It’s extremely easy to do though a little time consuming and all you need is some pretty paper, PVA glue and water.
This was the finished result of my shoe shelf:
It started out life looking like this:
I love these shelves, they really saved us storage-wise because they were only $10, fit in the wardrobe and are strong, easily stacked and moved so you can do pretty much anything.
Watch out for stray puppies trying to eat your supplies. These stray craft eating puppies are getting to be a serious problem 😉
Mix up some glue and water in a shallow bowl. I used around half water, half glue but your solution may depend on how thick your glue is. Basically you want it to be very watery but still white.
Tear up pieces of pretty paper. I used wrapping paper that matched the stuff on our bedroom doors but as long as it’s not super thin you can use pretty much anything. Tear up lots of different sizes and shapes now before you get glue everywhere, much harder to tear paper when you’ve got wet gluey fingers!
Dip a piece of paper into the glue so it soaks through.
Then wrap it around the shelf. Repeat over and over again with pieces of paper until you have covered the entire set of shelves. Make sure to overlap the pieces too, this will give it extra strength. Don’t try to match up patterns, just make everything random, the key to it looking good is selecting a paper which has a patter that can blend well that isn’t too busy.
Because the base of this is plastic you may have trouble getting the first couple of pieces to stick, I started on the columns and wrapped the paper around so it stuck to itself. This formed a base which I then worked out from.
I did all of the easier parts first then ripped up some much smaller pieces of paper to go over all of the details
Let the whole thing dry thoroughly then cover it all with another coat of the glue/water mix for extra strength. Easy!
Up close you can see the way the pieces just blend together.
Much cuter than the plain old black anyway and it’s quite cheap to do something like this!
And there you have it! Now I just need to get some more paper to do the couple of shelves that are left over!
Jewellery is something that I tend to reorganise every couple of months. At the moment I’ve found a storage solution that I really like as it doesn’t take up much space, it cost under $10 and it hold all kinds of jewellery not just small of big things.
My finished shelves:
It’s made of 2 pink storage trays and a glitter Christmas tree from Daiso.
I took apart the glitter Christmas tree using a very strong pair of pliers. It was quite difficult to remove the pieces cleanly without getting glitter everywhere.
In the end I gave up trying to be neat and just did a big clean up afterwards.
I tend bent the tree with the pliers to make the bottom totally flat and slid it onto the top of the tray.
Then I used the heart cut outs to hold all of my earrings 😀
Around the bottom of the tree I keep my rings and the lower levels have space for big items like necklaces and bracelets.
And we’re back after weekend with a mini Home Sweet Home post 😀 Other than the crochet items, most of the things I’ve got left to show are on the small side which makes them great for doing one night after work or while watching TV. Of course, last night I went nuts and completely reorganised my craft area again so I’m sure there will be more projects to come soon that are bigger.
This is a very quick easy way to make a doorstop with absolutely no skill required.
The end result:
You need:
A plastic take away box. Mine came stuffed with extremely expensive candy corn
Rice or something heavy to put in it
A large piece of fabric
I’m using some green cherry fabric which was a gift from an extremely lovely friend. Perfectly matches my new apartment colour scheme.
So fill the container with rice and remove the carry handle.
You can use whatever you like to go inside but it needs to be reasonable heavy so it will actually hold the door.
Lay out a large square of fabric which is enough to wrap around the box with lots to spare.
Place the box in the middle diagonally.
Fold two corners over and into the middle like this:
Hold them in place and carefully fold the other two corners up to the middle and tie them into a double knot.
If it looks a bit messy you can just untie and refold until you’re happy. Ideally you want it to be the exact shape of the box just covered with fabric. If you want you can stitch it in place but it’s not really necessary.
We’re back to Home Sweet Home again, well kind of. I promised I would go back through all of the things I hadn’t posted about so today I’ll show you how I did the biggest change to the kitchen: the splashback.
The after:
Again, we rent so I wasn’t allowed to do anything permanent but I really hated the colour of the glass splashback. This make over cost under $10 and all it needed was some pretty wrapping paper and clear book covering contact.
This was the kitchen before:
Before I decided to do this I did several test to make sure it would be waterproof and the heat of the stove top wouldn’t effect it either. Mine was fine because we never use the back burners but I would suggest you test VERY thoroughly as you wouldn’t want it to be a fire hazard. You can also find contact which was made specifically for the kitchen but none of the shops I visited had it. I have since decided I don’t like the pattern of this because there isn’t enough green in it and I found some shops online which sell patterned kitchen contact by the meter so I’m going to buy some and I’ll let you know how that goes!
Anyway back to it!
I removed everything from the benches and cleaned the glass very well.
I chose this wrapping paper because it was full of the colours I was theming the house on, when it was a small area rolled up I really liked it but on the huge area of the wall it was a bit busy.
I cut the wrapping paper so it fit exactly the size of the space. I then cut another 1cm off around it so there was a gap for the edges of the contact to stick to. I attached the wrapping paper to the wall using strips of thin double sided tape all over it.
The contact was much thinner so I used several vertical stripes instead of horizontal ones. I carefully applied strip by strip making sure it stuck to the thin area of glass around the paper, overlapped each previous one slightly and had no air bubbles. This took quite a long time but the results were worth it.
And that was it! Done and dusted. It took quite a while but it was certainly better than the blue. I’m looking forward to seeing the green version once I’ve order it!
So with this post we reach the end of the Home Sweet Home project. But is it really an end?
It’s the beginning of the year, there are still little things to take care of, my tastes change over time and there are always new things to make or buy. I don’t think it’s the end at all. I think rather it will never be the end but the beginning of what will be a life long obsession with surrounding myself with beauty in every way possible. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely content how my apartment is but I can be thrilled with the way it progresses and changes with me. My house is a reflection of myself and my life and as I grow and change as a person so will it.
So the biggest lesson I’ve learned in doing this massive project is that it will never be over. I’m actually happy with my apartment now which is a huge change. It’s a pleasure to live here, I don’t feel weighed down looking out the window any more. It’s inspiring. I’ve learned that I can do projects this big if I set my mind to them!
This isn’t going to be the last Home Sweet Home post, there are still many things that I created for these rooms that I’d like to post. So this isn’t a goodbye to a project, rather a hello to the next stage. I hope you have enjoyed reading along so far!
Thank you all for your support and your kind words along the way, it’s been awesome having so much support and feedback 😀 Especially thank you to James who is the most helpful and understanding boyfriend ever. He came up with so many ideas for this series and he was so supportive! Now I’m actually looking forward to what comes next, I don’t know what it is but I’m sure it will be very fun!
I can now happily say that (at least for the moment) THIS IS MY HOME SWEET HOME!
Lastly if there have been projects you’ve enjoyed along the way in this reveal, I’ve probably done a tutorial on them or I’m going to post one soon. This is also in the tutorial section but below is a list of all of the Home Sweet Home posts and tutorials so far. Let me know if there’s anything I haven’t covered yet, I’ll be posting more of the tutorials soon. I’ve also updated the proper Home Sweet Home page with all of the reveal urls in case you ever nee to find them again.
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Thank you all for coming along on this crazy ride with me, it’s been a lot of fun!
I don’t think I have a before photo of the whole bedroom because I never thought it was nice enough to take photo of. Imagine a lot of black though, all of our bed stuff was black and the carpet is a very dark blue so it was basically a light pit.
Photo spam:
From the doorway it now looks so much bigger.
There are no windows but having a similar theme for everything makes it feel a lot less claustrophobic.
My wardrobe has actual organisation and a system for hanging things. Not only that but it’s colour coded and all of the shelves have been decoupaged in the same paper as the door.
The laundry bin is still a personal favorite in this room.
As much as the big cupboards suck for actual storage, I love having the huge mirrors. It really gives a feeling of space.
Another edition of spot the sleeping puppy XD
My make up area has been compressed and organised. Organisation for the win!
You can also see the ruffle for the bed here that I made from the princess curtains I had in the lounge..
Everything in the house has been themed pink and green as much as possible. Flowers are a big inspiration, I want it to always be Spring here no matter the season!
The new bedspread.
The wallpaper on the doors fits the theme without being too overpowering.
James’ bedside table:
My bedside table.
It’s the little details that tie it in together like that I painted our cord holders with nail polish to match.
Background information:
I have a love hate relationship with our bedroom. I want to love it but the carpet makes me hate it. It’s so dark that the bedroom seems like a total sink hole for light. I can’t do anything much about that other than putting rugs down so for now it’s something I have to live with. So I did my best to brighten the rest of the room using better linen, covering all of the black shelves and painting everything I could white. I covered up all of the glass so there was a bit more privacy and also brighten it even more. I reused the curtains I made as a ruffle to cover the bottom of the mattress, it was a bit sad to cut them up but I feel like it fits better and I still have the second one to do something else with.
The biggest problem I have with this room is the cupboard. The person that designed this cupboard has never used a cupboard in their lives. Out of the 3 doors only 1/2 of them is really useable space because the left side opens to a wall and the right side is too small to fit coat hangers in -_-‘ This is a massive pain as it means clothes really need to be stored out in the bedroom taking up more space. What it did do was make me think outside the box. I installed thin shelves in the cupboards so I could keep things we don’t use often in there and give James’ clothes a separate space so he could get them more easily. The things there now actually have a place and boxes to make the storage easy.
Everything is now bright and airy. Well as airy as a room with no actual windows can be ^_^ It feels like a relaxing place to live and sleep. I love going to bed at night. I find it so nice to lay in bed and read now where as before living in clutter and darkness it didn’t feel relaxing at all. I think that this room really is the epitome of what I was trying to achieve with this project. It IS my home sweet home.
Changes made:
Painted the side tables
New bed linen
Painted the vanity/completely reorganised that area
Decoupaged the shelves
Changed the shelf configuration
Organised and painted the bed side tables
Made a bedhead
Made a ruffle for the bottom of the bed
Covered the walls with new paper
Polished the mirrors
Reorganised the cupboards and added shelving
Moved James’ clothes to their own spot in the cupboard
Still to be done:
Buy more storage boxes from Daiso for the inside of the cupboard
Think of a way to cover the carpet to something brighter
Final thoughts:
This is the last room in our apartment and so it’s the last day you’ll be seeing the reveals. I think this room is the perfect way to end the series as it really embodies the concept of Home Sweet Home. It was hard work and I had to think very creatively to make this room work but I love it. It works for me and more importantly it works for us as a couple. I love our bedroom and I’m so proud of the work we’ve done and the fact that doing it together has brought us closer together.
Bonus progress photos:
Spray painting the end tables was a real challenge as we don’t just have a back yard to do this kind of thing in! I ended up having to create a massive box to house the tables in then open the doors and point the fan up the top to prevent spray back and the fumes from killing us XD Ingenuity! Silly but it worked like a charm. My favorite part of the bedroom was changing the covers. We bought this set from Target after a long discussion over which would look best. The change from black to white was such a big thing! Thank you helper James for putting it all together! I ended up turning the matching pillows into the headboard too so that worked out really well. The old clothing racks were all over the place and really didn’t stand up well XD So I decided to pull it all apart and start from scratch. This gave me a chance to go through things and decide what I really LOVED and what could be packed away or given to charity. If it wasn’t going to be worn a lot it didn’t go back on the racks. I also colour coded all of the clothes which really helped with making it look organised. This was all before I took the shelves apart and re organised them all. Make sure you come back tomorrow for the last instalment: What Have We Learned!
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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