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 😀

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 -_-‘

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!

This is the second part of the previous organising of the pin cushion project. Lovely reader Erin sent me a really cute pattern for a stitched felt hedgehog which I am going to make as well but I am SUPER obsessed with needle felting at the moment, it’s such an easy craft and really quick too once you get the hang of it! I bought a needle from Morris and Sons and some roving from Lincraft to start myself off ad see if I actually enjoyed it before I went crazy. For the base of the hedgehog I used some white pillow stuffing so I didn’t waste my yarn XD Stab it into a little ball the size of the body you want and flatten the bottom. I might do a more detailed tutorial/video on this later if anyone wants to see ^_^ Cut a small piece of wool to use as a nose. Spin it into a point at one end. Felt it into shape and then felt it into one end of the ball. Add random colours all over the body. I made mine quite fluffy and used synthetic fluff because it looked more cotton candy-ish. Add some little back eyes. And little round feet for it to stand on. Then once it’s the density you want (fairly thick) you just need to pop in all of your pins! My old pin cushion looks a little sad next to the super cute hedgehog! The other project I made with my kit that night was a little fox! I love foxes, they look so cuddly… they’re not in real life but they look like they should be! I also tried to make a Bergamot before I had any black roving so she didn’t turn out so well XD Now that I have more colours I want to remake her! Have any of you guys tried needle felting? I think I’m completely addicted now!

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

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!

Next step, hedgehog 😀