The last edition to my big window make over is a pretty window box full of fake flowers ^_^
I searched EVERYWHERE for a nice window box. We went to so many shops and everywhere either only had horrible ugly ones or had nothing. Even Ikea was sold out ;_; So I decided to just make one. It ended up being quite easy too so read on for more 😀
For the basic box I chose some ugly brown plastic planters from Tokuya which were $2.80 each. To fix the brown-ness I spray painted them white.We live in apartment so spray painting is not the easiest. This time I laid out a lot of paper in the alley way downstairs but it still didn’t catch the overflow, so for the next project I worked out a way to do it inside the apartment using a series of boxes.
Ugly clothes are very much required for painting.
We gave each box two coats.
Then flipped them to do the other sides.
Once dry I took them back inside and fixed them to the railings with wire because they are very light. To pretty it up a bit and hide the wires I added some plastic white picket fencing I also found at Tokuya for $2.80. This was tied on using white ribbon so it didn’t add more wire.
The wire holding the box is behind.
And the ribbons holding the picket is in front.
Getting there but they are still pretty plain looking so it’s tie to add some flowers!
It’s too cold to plant any of the things we actually wanted and I have a bit of reputation for killing plants so we decided to use fake flowers for now so it would be pretty during winter and then consider using some actual flowers or herbs in Summer.
Trust me, it’s better that real plants don’t live in our house, I’ve managed to kill strawberries that James managed to bring back to life 6 months later, it wasn’t pretty >_<
Anyway I used a piece of plastic sheeting for the top and a bunch of left over flowers from other projects.
I cut the plastic sheeting to make sure it was a very snug fit. Once in the box I didn’t want it flying out the first time it got windy!
I settled on a colour scheme for the flowers next and laid them all out.
Starting at the corners and going all the way around the edges I hot glued each flower one by one. Hot glue was the best choice for this as it is reasonably weather proof.
Done!
And here’s the second one ready to go into the other box.
Slotted in place they look pretty good!
Very colourful and pretty 😀
Lastly I added some curtain ties also from Tokuya which fit the garden theme.
Looking pretty good!
And that’s my windows all finished! I’m very happy with them, it really brightens the whole place up and makes it a pleasure to work in the living room now!
Now enjoy some more gratuitous photos of them!
The flowers got their first taste of the rain the next day and held up perfectly. In fact it’s been around 3 weeks since I finished them and they still look as good as the day I put them out so yay for weather proof!
My dirty clothes tend to end up on the floor. It’s a problem, mostly the problem is laziness. Partially the problem was I didn’t have a laundry basket in the bedroom.
Problem solved by making a super cute one!
Here’s the page from the Home Sweet Home Diary!
Dirty Clothes.
How can I store them? I hate those floppy baskets that always end up falling down! This sucks.
Solution?
$12 Bin painted up cutely 😀 I made a liner with an old dress. Looking pretty good now! Goodbye ugly dirty clothes!
Let’s get started!
This is the bin that I picked up from a junk store for $12. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world but not bad!
I painted it with acrylic paint mixed with PVA glue.
It took several coats and needed to have a base coat of the PVA so it stuck properly. Had I been thinking before I started I would have just laid down some masking tape but I didn’t so after finished I cleaned it up by scraping the extra off.
Once it was all dry I needed to make a liner. I used an old Bodyline dress which had a pretty serious stain on it. The best thing about using an old dress is that most of the sewing is already done!
Measuring how far down to make the frill so it overlaps the handles:
And the inside before it’s sewn up.
This is the dress I recycled, I wore it pretty much to death so now I’m going to be recycling it into several different things so the pretty pattern isn’t lost!
First was the frill to hold it in place in the top. I used elastic but you could also use a drawstring.
Inside out with the elastic it looks like a bubble skirt XD
Make sure your elastic has enough stretch that it can easily get on and off the bin otherwise the whole thing is a bit pointless XD
After sewing on the elastic:
Now to fix the bottom so the clothes don’t just fall out the other end! First I removed the straps (I’ll make hair ties with these later)
Then I removed the detailing at the top and cut it off in a nice straight line so it was easy to sew. I’ll remake that pretty detailing into a collar or something else pretty too.
Then it was just a matter of sewing up the bottom!
Easy!!
And it fits quite a lot of clothes in it too which is good because I hate doing laundry XD
And pop the lid back on and you can hide all of James’ gross dirty socks!!
Pretty cute solution, what do you guys think?
My home is starting to come together well! It’s much tidier already 😀
The house make over Home Sweet Home style continues with another really easy yet extremely effective project… wall papering doors with wrapping paper! And it’s a built in photo back drop 😀
Our bedroom has no windows, it only has a big sliding door and matching side glasses. It is very pretty but it does kind of suck for lighting. They look really plain and boring so I always want to jazz them up into some kind of feature.I’ve done this before but last time I didn’t think it through fully so after a few months it turned into this…
This time I measured and thought about the colours I was buying.
You need:
Wrapping paper
Thin double sided tape
Measuring tape
Scissors
So first step, measure the place you want to cover. Seriously. Do it really well. Measure twice, cut once and all those sayings are true. It’s much easier to do this right now then to screw around with it when you’re standing on a stool on one leg leaning across to try to put the last bit of tape in.
Pull off all of the old paper.
Clean the windows very thoroughly.
Lay the paper out flat. I’m using $2 a roll wrapping paper from the junk store, you can use real wall paper but it’s very expensive and hard to find in Aus.
I layered the old paper on there to cut around but you can just measure and rule your shape on.
So cut it all out.
If you don’t have a ruler long enough you can carefully fold it into shape and cut along the line very carefully.
Repeat until all of your rectangles are cut out.
Now bring them back in and grab your double sided tape. I don’t recommend using poster dots unless you have a heap of them because these tend to be quite heavy. Much cheaper to use a roll of double sided tape.
So to stick it on you need to have everything ready at once, stick a long line of tape all the way along the top.
Add several along the middle, bottom and sides too.
Peel the top tape and carefully stick the paper to it starting at once side and going across. Next peel the middle pieces of tape and smooth it down. Do the bottom last. Press all over it firmly. Cut any random pieces which stick out along the sides with a scalpel. My windows were poorly constructed so they weren’t exactly square making it a pain in the butt.
Repeat over and over again until you’re all done and that’s it! Notice the floor full of scraps from the tape XD
I was so happy with how it turned out that I took a photo in my pajamas XD
And in photos it just looks fantastic! So happy with them and they really brighten up the room!
Nice and easy so anyone could do it and it cost very little! One step closer to my Home Sweet Home!
Even though people are moving towards using green bags here there are still many businesses that use plastic bags. We have our groceries delivered and there’s no option to not have plastic bags there so I reuse them at home.
Plastic bag!
Our groceries are delivered so I don’t get to pick how they are packaged. We have A LOT of these bags waiting to be recycled.
These bag holders have been around for ages but this one is slightly different because it’s made from an old shirt.
You need:
Old tshirt
Lace
Ribbon
Needle and thread/sewing machine
So first cut out two rectangles from the shirt. If your shirt isn’t fitted like mine was you can really just cut off the sleeves and neckline and do less sewing.
Cut some eyelet lace which is threaded with ribbon. You need two pieces and they should be twice as wide as the rectangle.
Stitch the eyelet lace in place and then turn it inside out and stitch up the sides.
You should have a big tube.
Pull the ribbon in the eyelet lace tight and you’ve got something like this:
Stitch the ends of the ribbon together if you like.
Fill it with plastic bags through the top then when you need one just grab it from the bottom.
Pretty way to brighten up the place!
Now I just need to clean the rest of the kitchen -_-‘
My house looks a bit like a bomb went off in it at the moment, it’s always half way through these projects that I think maybe I’ve taken on a little bit toooo much… but we press on anyway and today we’re doing so by making some curtains for the big window in our living room!
Because we rent, everything needs to be removable but I wanted some big drapey fancy princess styled curtains really badly.
The Pretty Window.I love my window, it’s what makes my apartment awesome.The problem is that I hate my neighbours . They apparently hate wearing clothes and love smoking. (Yes, directly into our window… they also have very loud domestic disputes and have a baby.)
View from my window is often a big guy smoking and scowling minus his shirt.
At the moment we have plain ugly blinds that are functional but also very boring.
I want somewhere to take nice outfit photos next to!
Solution: removable curtains!!
I used 6m of fabric, 2 ribbons and some florist wire…
My Dad gave me some fabric for my birthday for this project and I was really happy with it because I picked out a really nice floral design.
Pretty but not too over powering.
I used around 6 meters for this project because our window is massive.
Other than fabric the only thing you need is a sewing machine. Trust me, you don’t want to hand sew this much, I’ve done it before and it’s a great way get super sore wrists!
Also note that this is the laziest way possible to make curtains, I would suggest that you all double hem things and unless you want them to be sheer, add in a lining.
Step 1. Making the ruffle at the top.
Hem one end of the fabric. This hem needs to be the wrong way around because it’s the bottom of the frill. So fold the edge over with the bad side facing up and stitch in place.
Next lay it all out flat and fold over around 20cm (again bad side up). This is going to be the frill so make it as long as you want. Pin in place.
Measure how far down the frill should start and place a line of pins.
Stitch along the line of pins but don’t tie it off. Stitch a second line next to it 5mm away and again tie off.
Pull the top thread of the stitching so it gathers into a ruffle.
Taadaa it’s a ruffle top:
Hem all of the raw edges on the sides and bottom.
Then you’ve got one curtain! I attached mine to the blind with some clips to see how it looked so far. Not bad!
Repeat to make a second one and make sure they are wide enough to overlap slightly.
It’s important during all of this to keep hanging them up and seeing if they acually fit the window.
Now to work out how to attach them! Usually I would just suggest clipping hem on to the bottom of the roller blind, ours is broken though so it doesn’t go up all the way. Instead I decided to make some wire hooks and hook the whole thing over the top of the blind.
To make the hooks I make a “U” shape of wire with a loop on the end that I could sew on to the curtain.
I made 5 of them.
And stitched them evenly across the back of the ruffle.
Then I hooked it over the blinds. Done!!
It needs some prettier ribbons to hold them apart but very pretty right?
I’ll have to take some better photos with James’ camera so I can show you all properly how pretty it is!
Cut two long rectangles of felt. The long side should be at least half the circumference of your neck.
Cut them into a collar shape like this. I am using a traditional Peter Pan shape. Basically the inside which touches your neck is a slight curve while the outside is a really exaggerated curve which is more obvious at the front.
When the corners are put together and folded it should sit like this.
For the blue one I had a heap of blue beads I wanted to use up and because there weren’t many of each I decided to make it a more haphazard design.
The main design element was a row of these silver beads though.
So first thing to do is put down glue where the beads will be going. Make sure to use actual fabric glue, not just any glue otherwise it won’t be flexible and have the right hold.
Then stick then down 😀
Then I added a little fancy curve.
After that’s it’s really just a matter of adding more glue and filling in the blanks!
Done!
Let it dry over night.
Once it’s dry, flip it over and add ribb0ns to the back for ties.
You will need something to hold it together at the back too so my suggestion is to use one big long piece of ribbon to go around the whole thing, I didn’t have a dark piece this long so I used a couple and just glued it extra well.
Like this:
Once that’s dry (again overnight) tie it on over your favorite shirt or dress and you’re good to go!
Now for the more elegant version pearls! Again start with roughly the same collar shape. I used some thick polar fleece because I didn’t have any light felt. My stash is so random at the moment XD
My mum bought these glass pearl strings at a market a while ago and didn’t know what to do with them so I… commandeered them 😀
Because the pearls are already strung it makes them much easier to work with. I would suggest stringing any beads you want to put in a straight pattern like this. Start by gluing completely around the edge.
Continue working your way into the middle strand by strand.
Keep going around until you reach the middle. Of course, I ran out towards the end so I filled in a different design with some other whiter pearls I had.
The finished design:
Again, wait for that to dry before flipping and adding ribbon to tie it, join the back and strengthen it.
I used some cheap nylon lace this time.
And that’s done too! If yours looks a little rough around the edges like mine just give it a trim. I didn’t notice until I’d gotten the photos onto the computer XD
Quite an easy craft to do and you could make a whole lot of them to jazz up a plain shirt differently every day of the week 😀 What do you all think?
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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