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!

Much harder to kill too 😉

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 😀