Sometimes it’s the small details that make all the difference in decorating and having clutter look less like clutter.
Today for Home Sweet Home I’m tackling a mini project which is the start of the wider craft area re-vamp.
This was originally supposed to be my first project XDSo let’s start small!
Project 1.
Organise the pin cushion!
Pick matching colours
Remake pin cushion as it’s old
Theory: cluttered crap looks good if it’s made from similar colours!
Old version of the pin cushion was made a couple of years ago and it’s taken a hell of a beating. The new version will be a little pink hedgehog but that’s part two of the project!
Part 1 of the project is something you can do with your eyes closed… well probably not because, you know, pins are pointy… but you know what I mean!
My pin collection is a mish mash of several types. I don’t think I’ve ever bought pins, I tend to just inherit them when people are getting rid of their sewing collections. So it looks like this:
Which is useful but also not very pretty because they don’t match. Also half of them are bent or broken and stuck somewhere inside the cushion >_<
So step 1, pull all the pins out and throw out the broken ones. Sort everything into colours.
Decide on a colour scheme, I picked shades of pink/white/red/purple and only put those colours back. So as not to be wasteful I donated the other pins to a friend’s sewing collection 😀
Done!
It’s amazing the difference just having similar colours makes. The cushion doesn’t quite match the pins but that’s on the project list too. I really think that little details like this make all the difference to the big picture!
Honestly I feel like with this project I finally made some kind of progress with the apartment. The little details always make a difference but sometimes you need something really big to show the progress properly. I hate working for a long time and not being able to see results, that’s why I can never stick to one craft at a time I just get bored too easily.
So this vanity is both my most loved and least favorite piece of furniture in the house. I loved it enough to drag it down from Brisbane and I hate it because it doesn’t look good with the style of apartment and it really darkens up the room.
Also after a few days of use it looks like this…
Well realistically it looks more like this…Honestly I’m one of those people who can’t keep things neat unless there is an exact system to do so >_<
How can I keep stuff clean?
Wipe off bench top
Everything needs a home
DIY Ideas!
Paint table white
Cover guitar case
Make box for camera
Better lighting set up
Storage for back drop
Bin for rubbish.
LET’S DO IT!
So problem number 1 is that it’s dark wood. I love dark wood but it’s just not good for this house where everything is light and white. I previously covered the stool with pink leopard print so it seemed fitting to paint all of the wooden parts white.
I chose to do this with acrylic paint because:
I can paint indoors without killing myself with fumes
I can easily remove it when we move and I want the dark wood again
It’s cheap as hell, you can get huge bottles for $2 at craft stores or junk stores
Diary entry:
Le Fancy Stool!
We started with this… I removed the seat and covered it with awesome.
Fancy level 20%
That left us with this. Not bad but so dark!
Fancy level 50%
So I painted it with acrylic and gave a top coat of watery PVA.
And we have this…
Fancy level 90%
Winner!!
I tested it out on the stool first in case it ended up sucking 😀
It took a couple of coats to get a nice finish. I began painting without bothering to remove the seat part so I wouldn’t get paint on the floor but after doing most of the top I removed it to get closer to the edges.
Eventually it started look good 😀 I used a sponge for an even finish.
When I had the finish that I wanted I mixed some PVA glue with water to create a wash. I painted over the whole thing with it. The reason for this is to protect the paint and make it more durable. It also gives a slightly shiny finish to it.
Taadaaaaa 😀
So with the test run complete I moved on to the actual vanity 😀
Beauty!
The current beauty set up is messy and awkward
I was extremely dirty from all of the make up and dust floating around so step one was to clean it up.
Next was removing all of the pieces I could without damaging it.
A couple of coats of paint later and I was well on the way to a nice vanity! I added a pink doily to see if I liked it at this point too.
I painted the other parts too including the mirror. I masked it off with tape first to make sure the mirror wasn’t damaged.
The round parts were the most irritating to get smooth.
Ok so I wanted to make this nice and durable and to be able to clean it easily and not stress about spilling make up on it. The solution? Book covering contact!
I decided that I liked the pink doily so I glued it down.
I cut out the length I needed.
The little grids made it nice and easy to line things up.
I cut out tabs so it could go around the top part.
Then I slowly pulled out the paper and smoothed it all down.
When it got to the heart I made sure to smooth out all of the little bubbles as I went. It was very irritating to get right!
Looking good!
Aaaad all put together!
Getting there but not quiiiite what I wanted..
So I covered James’ guitar case with some nice fabric XD
Sorry James… well not really sorry XD
Putting things back in I was more careful with organisation and making sure that I had things I used often at hand and packing up other things I used less often. Win! I still haven’t organised the stuff on the far left pink shelves because they are going to be folded and stored away soon but everything is coming along 😀
James’ guitar case becomes a nice shelf for hair products. I don’t know how I managed to buy only pink hair products, clearly it’s ingrained deeply in my subconscious haha!
This is my set up for filming videos, lots and lots of lighting but it also means I can’t see the big mirror so I had to add a second smaller mirror angled so I can see.
I have a silicone pot mat to keep my straightener on and everything has a space to stay in, there’s even a heart container to dump old eyelashes in.
Things I use every day go up here and my little white picket fence container sits next to it.
So much happier with it all clean and neat. It’s easy to keep clean and makes the whole room look so much brighter.
I am really happy with my first big project for the Home Sweet Home 😀 What do you guys think??
When I started the Home Sweet Home Project I wanted to make a physical diary that I could keep of the progress. Like a scrapbook but full of drawings and pretty things. Of course it needed to be as pretty as the projects I was planning to do so it turned into a mini project in itself.
I went through all of my stickers trying to find something suitable then realised that I had far to many stickers for someone who really never uses them for anything.I used a pre-made set for the base.
And extended it out to cover the whole area. Finished 😀
As a front page I added in a watercolour chart as I was planning to do a lot of painting with it.
Now I can be assured that I’ll have something pretty to remember this whole experience with ^_^ Now back to the real projects!
So one of the problems I have with our apartment is that we have a lot of clutter that looks cheap. I don’t think because things are inexpensive they need to *look* cheap. To prove this point here’s my next project: decorating the top of the microwave with expensive looking things that really aren’t.
The main piece in the photo above is the floral bowl/vase/whatever. You may recognise it from when James filled it with Slurpee, then proceeded to drink the whole thing within a few hours.
Project 2. The Glass BowlWe found this bowl in the Black Hole (the place people leave stuff for hard rubbish pick up downstairs)
I found some mirror strips in my craft stash.
Very simple project but it looks so expensive.
Wrap the mirror as a band around the top. Add some netting to the inside. Stick in a bunch of fake flowers!
Cost Breakdown:
Vase $0 (I’ve seen the vases for $5 at the junk store though)
Flowers $0 (you can get bunches at junk stores for $2 though)
Mirror $2
Netting $0.20
Total cost $2.20
I’ve seen ones just like the finished project in fancy home stores for like $60+.
So this is my base:
It’s basically a big tall glass bowl.
These little mirror pieces come on adhesive backing and were $2 at a junk store.
I cut them into strips of 3.
Peeled off the back and stuck them to the top of the bowl.
No seriously that’s it.
I added some random netting material I had to the inside so it had another texture then dumped a bunch of fake flowers in too.
Pretty neat huh?
To top off that area I put down an lace matt which I think my grandmother made (you can buy lace doilies at thrift stores for next to nothing) then added a couple of candles on top. Clutter like this looks so much better if you keep the colours similar so I used creams and pinks throughout.
I’m very happy with the results and that’s another area down in the house!
I’m giving my make up area a complete make over. The hilarity of that sentence isn’t lost on me XD
Anyway part of the Home Sweet Home make over includes my vanity table, more of that in the actual post but today I’m showing you one of the little organisational containers I made to put on there.
My theme was white picket fencing and I made it from stuff I already had at home:
So let’s jump in!
What you need:
Popsicle sticks
Hot glue gun
White paint
Decorations
Sharp scissors
Start by deciding how big you want the box to be, my base was 8 sticks. Lay out the correct number of popsicle sticks like this:
Now you need to make cross beams to stick it all together so cut the appropriate length sticks.
Glue three of them down onto the base so it’s completely secure.
Now to start making the sides. Cut the sticks to the correct length so you have one for each side of the base.
Then cut enough picket pieces for each side. Mine were half the length of each original stick so that make it nice and easy to measure. Glue them to the first side piece.
Then add two more sticks on top of that to make it look more fence-ish ^_^
Repeat for the other sides and you have this:
One by one glue each side upright onto the base.
And you now have a box!
For extra strength I glued in some cross pieces to the corners.
Now you just need to make it look prettier!
Paint the whole thing white.
Mine needed a couple of coats before it looked right.
Now it’s time to decorate, this is the most fun bit! I wanted mine to be very spring-ish so I used fake flowers to make it look like a window box.
I glued a sculpey flower between each picket.
Then floral lace around the inside so it was peaking out of the gaps between the pickets.
Pretty cute yes?
The last step was adding a nice bow to the front 😀
Done! The most time consuming part of this was waiting for the paint to dry because, well, it was like watching paint dry 😉 Other than that it was quick and easy but it looks adorable and is the perfect size to hold eyelashes still on their trays.
You’ll get to see how it all matches into my vanity when finish the diary entries on that 😀
So my first few projects for the Home Sweet Home theme are taking longer to write than I expected so I’m skipping them for now and moving on to the third… because I’m the god of my notebook and I say I can… so there ^_^
The result is that today I’m playing with flower arranging!
From my diary:
Project 3. That Stupid Corner!
There is a corner in our lounge that I hate. It has a box platform plastered in and because it’s next to the TV and the heater it’s terrible for decorating. I want to sove this puzzle by putting our black hole vase there and filling it with flowers and other trinkets.
I have a random collection of flowers and bits and pieces to use.
This is my vase, we found it in the throw away pile downstairs. I call that place The Black Hole because it magically makes cool stuff appear but more on that in another post! I like this vase because it’s tall and has a pretty floral pattern with a classic shape.
These are the flowers I had to fill it with. Some of them are from my junk store stash, some were given to me by Celeste when she moved and some are keep sakes. There’s the peacock feather James found me at the zoo and my flower from the Langham as well as some little jewel trinkets.
The reason I chose these flowers in particular was because they all had complimentary colours and interesting textures. Some of them are soft, some pointy, some little, some big and some tall, some short.
Most of them had wire stems so to get different heights I just bent them to the length I wanted or snipped off the bottom. I preferred to bend them though so the vase looked fuller.
To fill the vase I started with the biggest tallest pieces in the back.
I added pieces in odd numbers, so 3 long pointy pieces with small flowers.
Then the rest of the tall pieces around the back. There was no point adding them to the front as they would be covered by smaller flowers.
I didn’t stick to just flowers either, feathers, jewels and anything with a nice texture is good to fill in gaps.
Next I added a layer of medium flowers to fill the entire front of the vase so you couldn’t see in through the gaps anymore. The big roses were really good for this and because they also had some netting sections it was even better to give variety.
I put some large diamantes and crystals throughout the whole thing.
And lastly added some little tiny flowers to cover any annoying gaps.
To dress the corner up a bit I first put an old cake stand on the box. This gives the arrangement extra height and it’s a good place to store the cake stand which never actually gets used XD
Taadaa!
After playing around with the placement added a pretty green bow and moved some of the taller flowers so it looked like a one sided sweep and pointed towards the window. I really like the way it brightens up the room!
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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