How To Make A Puppy Mattress – Lottie’s Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 17, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Miss Lottie Pomeranian, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Miss Lottie’s new-ish house isn’t nearly as soft and comfy as her old strawberry was 🙁 So I set about making it a bit more awesome by making a little mattress she could sleep on in the bottom. I’ve tried putting blankets and regular pillows in but she just shoves them to the back >_<

Anyway the end result was really cute!

For this tutorial you will need:

Fabric
Lace
Stuffing
Needle and thread or a sewing machine

Measure out enough fabric for the pillow and cut two pieces.

Now put the fabric with the good sides together and then place a piece of lace between them along where the seam will be

Stitch along that line making sure you’re going through the edge of the lace as well.

When you open it back out the lace should poke out like this:

Continue all the way around the edge leaving a little gap at the end.

Poke your fingers inside the gap…

And turn the whole thing inside out.

Fill the pillow with stuffing.

And then close up the hole.

Now stitch diagonally through the pillow:

And then diagonally the other way so it forms diamonds.

And that’s it, all done!

So cute! And a perfect fit for her new house.

Of course, that doesn’t stop her from sleeping everywhere else… like on my plate -_-‘

Oh Lottie.

Covered External Hard Drive Tutorial – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 1, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Time for another Home Sweet Home tutorial! Today I’m recovering my external hard drive so it matches my desk more!

For this tutorial you will need:

Hard drive
Old magazines or pretty paper
Book covering contact
Glue

Clean the outside of your hard drive to make sure that you have a nice smooth surface.

I used pictures from an old fashion magazine. You can use whatever you like. Cut out some pretty paper in the shape of the hard drive. Mine wasn’t big enough so I had to do it in 2 pieces.

Glue the paper to the hard drive. Don’t use too much glue or the paper will go soggy. Just use enough that it won’t move around.

Now cut out contact which is slightly larger than the paper.

Lay it out over the entire hard drive and smooth to make sure there are no bubbles.

Snip off the edges and fold the contact around the corners so it all has something to stick to. You can use a scalpel or art knife if you’re good with them, but I just used scissors.

Done! Easy! Now to do the 102938029384 other hard drives >_<

Much cleaner and it actually matches the house!

Hope you enjoyed the craft and let me know if you give it a try!

Floral Painted Coat Hanger Tutorial – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 22, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Another Home Sweet Home craft today! Today is how to jazz up plain boring wooden coat hangers. My dream is to one day have a complete matching set of coat hangers. Somehow we always end up with a heap of random unmatched ones. I don’t know how it happens but it always does!

So my end result:

For this tutorial you will need:

A wooden coat hanger
Acrylic paint in various colours
Paint brush
PVA glue/clear sealer to seal it all in
Nail file

To begin with, buff the coat hanger with a nail file to remove any shiny finishes.

Next, paint it completely white. You may need a few coats of paint.

Next, paint pink or lilac spots randomly all over the coat hanger.

Add little green triangle leaves.

Then a while spiral in each as well and a highlight on each leaf.

Allow it to dry completely and then paint the whole thing in a thick coat of PVA glue.

Once it dries it will be nice and shiny!

Now just imagine an entire wardrobe full of these… magical yes? If only I actually had that many of these to paint ;_;

One day, ONE DAY!!

I think maybe I need to dream a little bit bigger than just having matching coat hangers in my life >_>

James’ Office Chair Make Over – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 18, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

After we moved around the lounge room to the new configuration there was one thing left which bothered me: James’ chair.

I have had a love hate relationship with James’ chairs over the years. He always picks the cheapest crappiest chairs which are terrible for back support and also super ugly, but he claims are super comfy. I mean if they were good for his back then I could understand… But honestly bleh.

So I made this…

From this…

So I sold him on a make over by promising to add a bunch more pillows and arm support so it was *actually* comfortable for him to sit there. Double win!

I tied some old pillows from daiso around the arms, added one to the seat area and one to the back support and held them all in place with old yarn.

I toyed with the idea of coating the arms completely in yarn but I didn’t have enough and the finish wasn’t so great so instead I covered it and the rest of the chair in white stretch fabric and hot glued it down.

I chose green knit fabric for the bulk of the chair so it matched the rest of the house.

I didn’t have enough for the whole chair so I ended up chopping up an old scarf and doing the rest in brown knit. I like it because it kind of looks like a tree.

I fixed the final fabric in place with hot glue as well making sure that all of the edges are covered up.

Bam! New area! I feel like it’s much more open and almost magazine-y! So clean and pretty and nice. And a clean work space means a better frame of mind and more productivity… or that’s what I’m going with anyway 😀

Now if I could only convince James to buy a really nice proper ergonomically chair which would actually be good for his back -_-‘

Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

Random Ikea Lamp Hack – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 11, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Random project… We had an Ikea lamp which was broken and an Ikea tea light lantern which was also a bit broken. So I combined them into one monster lantern…

Before:

The second lamp didn’t work and this one wasn’t getting power properly.

I removed the top of the lamp and glued the lantern in place. I also strengthened the inside so it could withstand the extra weight.

I also added some flowers into the stand because… I don’t know, its me. >_>

With no power supply any more I debated between tea lights or LED fairy lights. The LED won out because they required less cleaning of wax.

So there you go, waste nothing! It looks a little like it’s leading the way to Narnia XD

How To Make Your Own Decorative Pom Pom String

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 19, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial, Video-Tutorials, Violet Vision Videos

Last christmas I saw little felt pompom decorations everywhere but they were quite expensive. I think they were overpriced because of the hipster tax. Every time something uncool is picked up by the hipsters here it pretty much quadruples in value, case in point: dear heads. Apparently pompoms are cool who knew?

Anyway, if you have some spare time they are actually extremely easy to make with some needle felting supplies. Of course you could take the even easier route and just buy premade Pom Poms but I find that the repeated stabbing of needle felting is good for getting the stress out ;D