by VioletLeBeaux | May 12, 2011 | About Me, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
So a while ago I made a post about my wardrobe and some storage ideas for people living in small apartments with lots of stuff. I said if enough people were interested I would make it into a series of posts and go through room by room showing what I’d done with my space. Well I finally cleaned up enough to take some photos hahaha! As I mentioned in the last post I’m not completely comfortable having my whole house on display so I have blacked out some parts and there won’t be whole room shots, just smaller areas where you can actually see the storage and ideas I’ve used.
This is what the wardrobe looked liked last time…
And after I’ve done a re-organize and tidy up, this is what it looks like now…
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Other than the general moving/tidying/reorganising of things the biggest difference is that I’ve got a little pink set of shelves at the bottom left now to make things tidier. You probably can’t even tell but I’ve removed around half of the clothes that were hanging up as well and put them on some other shelves I bought. I’ll go over all of the shelves in much more detail in the next post and today I’ll focus on the wardrobe part and why I’ve made the changes.The one thing to point out on the clothes side of the wardrobe is that it originally only had the higher of the two rails, I added in the second one because the first is so high that I have trouble reaching it easily… also I horde clothes like crazy and needed more room XD
The above shelves are generally the same as last time but there are some important differences. Here’s a quick run down of what’s in each:
- Top Shelf- Bags I use regularly, travel things (like passport holder and travel make up brushes etc), books I’ve recently read which need to be put away, other things waiting to be put away or things waiting to be used.
- Middle Shelf- Magazines, toys, favorite jewellery, storage.
- Bottom Shelf- Jewellery and lots of it.
Top shelf-
Previously the top shelf was all about bags which at the time seemed smart because I could display all of the pretty ones I never used. Problem with that was I had no where to dump stuff when there was no time to get out a chair to put it away properly. So it all ended up on the floor which resulted in a lot of mess and more than one foot injury from stepping on something pointy!
I realised the I never use any of my handbags other than maybe 2 of them so rather than wasting the space I took a photo of them all and bundled them all up in a space bag. That way if I really need one I can check the photo, see what matches my outfit then get it down. I’m far too lazy to change bags often so this works well for me 😀
Now I have an area that I can stick books/recently used bags/stuff waiting to be crafted into something else/random junk that I don’t have time to put away in until I have time to deal with it properly. I think having a dumping space like this is important for someone messy like me so the rest of the room doesn’t get too overrun XD
Middle shelf-
The things here are pretty much the same as before, lots of magazines, necklace display, toys etc. The biggest difference is that I found a little plastic container to to contain my toys in a display. Before, whenever I wanted to get a magazine I had to carefully reach through so as not to disturb them but now there’s no problem and I also don’t have a fear of losing any of the little tiny pieces. I know you can buy little display cases like this specifically for toys but I didn’t want to spend any money so I used the container that a free hand towel from my favorite bubble tea place came in XD Perfect size and shape!
Bottom Shelf-
This is where the biggest changes have happened. Previously I kept socks, gloves, scarves and a lot of other stuff on this shelf and it worked really well. Now I have other areas for those things so I don’t need to have everything squished in as hard.
So what I did was remove all of the socks etc at the back and move the necklace displays over there so I can see at a glance what they hold. The back ones are propped up on a couple of books so they sit higher and are able to be seen. In front I have a decorative alarm clock James bought for photo shoots and the silver tray. On top of the tray there is a silver basket type of thing that we found in the throw away pile of our apartment building which I covered with a scarf and filled up with bracelets and random pieces of jewellery. It looks pretty cluttered and messy in the photo but I think that’s just the angle, it’s actually just above waist height in real life so when you look down it’s easy to get a quick view of all the pieces and pick out one.
So there you have it! Those are the changes I’ve made so far in my wardrobe area, the next installment of this series will be my dressing table. There are LOTS of sparkly pretty things there to look forward to and my nail polish collection as well ^_^ |
by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 26, 2011 | Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
You might remember when I visited the Melbourne flower show I saw a pretty rose pillow that I wanted to try and replicate? Well it was super easy!
This is the one I saw at the flower show:
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What you need:
- Base fabric to make the pillow cover, I’m using pink cotton
- Soft fabric to make the rose from, I used muslin but you could use silk or something of a similar texture
- Sewing machine/overlocker or a lot of patience to hand stitch it all!
- Button (optional)
So first thing is to decide how big you want to make the cushion cover. Squares work best for these pillows.
Cut out a square in the size you want plus a couple of cm on either side for seam allowance.
Now cut out the back, you will need 2 rectangles that overlap around 10cm in the middle. This is how we will get the pillow in and out of the case! You can see below the square is on the bottom with two rectangles over the top showing how they overlap in the middle.
Now let’s cut out the pieces of the rose!
Cut strips of muslin around 15cm wide. I needed 4 to cover my case but you will need more/less depending on the size you’re making. Cut one of the strips to a point on one end, this will be the middle of the rose. Muslin works really well for this because even when the edges fray they look really delicate and pretty.
Basically to form the rose we’ll put the strips in a big spiral, this is how it looks roughly laid out…
I personally hate pins while I’m sewing but I know that a lot of people are more comfortable using them so I’ll show where to put them in this tutorial. To start the rose, pin the pointy end of first strip of muslin to the middle of the square .
Following a tight spiral keep pinning until you reach the end. Don’t pin the next strip yet because having that many ruffles in one place makes it too hard to sew. The tighter you make the spiral, the more ruffly the petals will be in the end.
Take it to your sewing machine and starting at the centre sew directly down the center of the muslin strip following the spiral. If you want, while you sew you can pleat the muslin a little bit to make the petals more ruffly or stretch the muslin to make them stand straight up. I made mine point up in the middle then ruffly on the outside 😀
This is what mine looked like after the first strip was sewn on. The dotted line below is where you should be stitching, see how it folds in half and forms the petals?
Over lap the next strip a bit with the first and then keep sewing following the spiral.
After the second one’s finished…
When I added the next one I started pleating the muslin as I sewed to make the petals more ruffly.
When you reach the end of the last strip stitch it as close to the last row as you can so the end looks clean.
This is the finished rose:
On the back you should be able to see a clear spiral of stitches…
Yay! Now we just need to turn it into a pillow case!
Overlock one of the long edges on each of the rectangle pieces. The overlocked edges (in the middle below) will form the hole to get the pillow in and out of so they need to be finished well.
Fold them over and pin in place…
So lay the rose square out face up.
Fold all of the petals of the rose in so they don’t accidentally get sewn into the sides. Pin in place.
Put the first rectangle over the top of the rose with the folded edge facing up. Pin in place like this:
Add the other rectangle to the other side and make sure the two rectangles overlap a decent amount in the middle. Pin!
Overlock around the outside of the square! Remove the pins and that’s pretty much it ^_^ Trim loose threads and turn it inside out.
On the back you can see that the ends are all folded under and out of the way. If you feel the need, you can add a button there on the back or velcro to give it an extra closure.
And the front 😀
Then all you need to do is stick a pillow inside! The whole project took me maybe 30min to do. So you could realistically make a whole bunch of matching ones in an afternoon.
I think mine is pretty close to the original so I’m happy! What do you guys think?
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by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 15, 2011 | Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
The lovely Celeste asked that I try to come up with a cuter way to store paper towels in the kitchen. Our kitchen is tiny so previously we just kept the paper towel in our cupboard which was kind of annoying to get out every time we used it. I decided to take care of two birds with one stone and have it displayed as well.
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What you need:
- Old knitting needle
- Suction hook
- Ribbon/yarn/pompom edging/something pretty to tie it up with
- Blue tac
- Pegs
For the string part I used old pom pom edging but you could use a pretty ribbon or anything you like as long as it goes with the colour scheme in your kitchen. |
Tie each end of the string to a peg.
Stick the knitting needle through the paper towel roll.
Clip a peg to either side…
Leaving a gap around 3cm from the edge of the paper towel wrap a piece of blue tack around the needle. This is to prevent the peg from getting to close to the towel and stopping it from spinning on the needle.
Put the suction hook up on the wall and hang in place…
I decided to tie the top up a little higher so it looked more interesting. You could also add a big bow or something pretty to cover up the hook depending on your style. So that’s the basic idea, now it’s all about customisation! If I customise mine any more I will definitely post about it 😀
Do you guys have cute kitchen things? I’m slowly adding to my kitchen collection but nice kitchen things can be quite expensive! Haha that’s just another excuse to craft more things myself though 😉
EDIT: As Sefie pointed out in the comments, you should never hang paper towel above gas burners in case they catch fire! I thought I had mentioned it but apparently I didn’t so completely my bad >_< The back two burners on our stove are actually broken and so are never used. There is also a fairly decent gap between the back of the burners and the splashback behind even though the angle of the photo makes it look like there isn’t much. My bad again and please do be careful where you hang this if you decide to make one!!
by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 8, 2011 | Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
Project Make-My-Bedroom-Nicer is in full swing now and over last weekend I made my biggest project so far:
A chandelier!
I’ve wanted a chandelier since I was a little kid ^_^ The bedroom is taking a kind of romantic silver/gold/black damask theme to it so I figured that this would be the perfect accompaniment.
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What you need:
- Clothes hanger thing
- Crystals (mine were old Christmas decorations on sale at borders)
- Damask wrapping paper or paper and pens to draw your own
- Hot glue
- Paint
- Chain
- Black yarn
- Fishing line or thin light thread
When we first moved in here I bought this clothes airer thing and it’s legs broke almost right away >_< I didn’t keep the receipt though so I was stuck with the damn thing. So I thought long and hard about what I could do with it and the only thing I thought of was chandelier! Let’s get to work ^_^ |
From the top you can see it has 8 arms and is the perfect shape for a project like this.
First thing to do is to remove all the pegs and plastic chains.
Next it’s time to paint it. I decided to aim for silver and black and I wanted the main colour to be silver. I didn’t have any paint spare so I used some nail polish the lovely BGDino sent me 😀
It took 2 coats to get it looking silvery which amounted to around 1/4 of the bottle. Totally worth it 😀
Make sure to let it dry completely between coats no matter what kind of paint you’re using. You might want to undercoat it for a perfect finish but I figure that it’s very high up so it’s not going to have much wear and tear and also no one is going to see it closely XD
Don’t forget the bottom too!
Now lay out the jewels you have. I used large clear ones and smaller pink ones as well as a couple of little star beads.
The large clear ones were old Christmas decorations I got on sale from Borders and already had fishing line threaded through to hang them with.
The pink ones I bought from a closing down bead shop so I threaded them with matching blue/silver cotton to hang them.
Each ring will have the same jewels hanging at the same lengths so make sure to cut the threads evenly.
Each arm has 4 threads of jewels hanging at different lengths. This is the order of jewels I used for each arm:
Hang the jewels from the hooks and you should start to see everything taking shape!
At this point I hung mine up from a clothes rack so I could work on it more easily. To hold it up I just hooked some of the chain through the top and looped it around the rack.
At this point I thought it needed something to make it more impressive.
So time for damask!
Cut out sections of damask which at tall like this, they are going to take the place of candles ^_^
Fold in half…
And cut out the insides!
Glue each of the “candles” to the ends of the arm parts.
To make a center piece I cut out 4 of these little butterfly shapes from the paper and glued them so there was damask on both sides of two pieces.
Then cut half the way down the top middle on one of them and half way up the bottom of the other and slot together!
From the top it should look like a cross like this:
Glue in some chain or matching ribbon in the middle for the whole thing to hang from.
This is how it looks hanging so far:
Now add in the center piece on a thread from the middle with a big jewel from the bottom.
Add drapes of chain to the first hanging points…
And drapes of yarn knotted at each loop around the outside…
Snip off any loose ends of the threads…
Hang that sucker up because you are done!
Now it’s probably not fit to hang in my imaginary multimillion dollar Swiss chalet but it sure cheers up my current bedroom ^_^
Once I can get some more supplies I’m planning to add more jewels and more dangly chains so it looks absolutely awesome. This is still a pretty good start though I think ^_^
Hard to photograph clear jewels and get in the epic sparkle of the silver but so pretty in person!
And so there you have it!
I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoy watching the jewels spin around at night ^_^
by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 4, 2011 | Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
Another one of these crafts that we all do as kids and seem to forget about… Cute egg cosies! Ok personally I think egg cosies are completely pointless other than for decoration in this day and age XD The point is to keep your soft boiled eggs warm until you are ready to eat them but I have never once sat down to eggs and thought “Damn! My egg is so luke warm, if only I had someway to keep it warm… other than eating it straight away”. Of course it could be that if I lived in a colder climate I would think these are the best thing ever invented XD
Either way, they are insanely cute and are actually useful if you plan on taking hardboiled egg in a lunch box as they add some padding to prevent cracks. I’m planning some patterns for knitted versions as well but in the mean time here is the way I’m pretty sure everyone made them as a child: felt!
What you need:
- Felt in various colours, as I’m making a bunny I went with white and pink for the nose
- Needle and thread
- Scissors
- Small piece of elastic.
- Egg (for measuring)
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 First thing is to measure around your egg to see how much felt you will need. Make sure to leave enough room so that it is easy to slide on and off the egg and still has room for the seam down the back. Also measure how tall you want it, It will need to be tall enough to cover the egg completely as leave room for the gathering at the bottom as well as the ears up the top. |
Once you’ve measured and cut the felt into the correct size rectangle, fold the sides inwards to the middle like so:
It’s a bit hard to see in this photo because of the colour of the back ground but the next step is to cut the shape of ears into the top. I started with 2 points and later cut them to be more rounded.
Once you unfold, you should have 4 ears up top.
Now cut a piece of elastic which can stretch easily to fit around the widest point of the egg…
And stitch it to the bottom of the felt, leaving a small gap at the bottom for a frill. Make sure that the elastic is stretched out when you sew it and stitch loosely so you don’t restrict it otherwise you’ll find it hard to get the egg in!
From the front it looks like this….
Now fold it all in half with the seam at one side…
… and stitch up using a blanket stitch.
Once you flatten it out it should look something like the picture below. This was the point that I decided to round out my ears a bit.
The next step is to stitch around the tops of the ears in the same blanket stitch.
After that’s done it’s just a matter of cutting out a little nose…
And stitching on it’s face!
Pop and egg in and he’s finished! Ready to keep your egg toasty warm or safe in your lunch box.
The pattern itself is very easy to change into any shape you like because really it’s just a rectangle of felt XD These kinds of projects also make nice customisable quick presents for people that have everything especially because you can personalise it so much. Try stitching on their name of using their favorite animal ^_^
by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 21, 2011 | Baking, Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial
A lot of you have probably seen the tutorial I did on making an eyelash storage solution in the shape of a yummy cake. Well with the direction my house decorating kick is heading the whole cake thing doesn’t really go with my theme. The limited bench space also doesn’t leave much room for a several layered cake so time to find a solution which was pretty and also space saving.
This is what I came up with:
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It can be hung on the wall, I can see my lashes at a glance and it takes much less effort to put everything away. This is an awesome solution for girls that have a lot of lashesSo tutorial time! |
What you need:
- Cardboard
- Lace
- Sticky tape (the type of tape is important)
- Glue gun
- Clear plastic or plastic wrap
- Pretty wrapping paper or fabric
Cut the cardboard to the shape and size you want the finished product. Make sure there is enough room for all of your lashes, no point going to all this effort and then having no space for future purchases! ^_^
Measure and cut enough wrapping paper to cover the front of the cardboard. From this point the photos have a bit of glare on them unfortunately because the paper I was using is slightly reflective.
Fold the edges over and tape in place…
Fold over the other sides and tape too…
Now it’s time to cover the whole thing in clear plastic or cling wrap. This will protect it from any water that happens to splash there.
Tape the edges of the plastic over and around the back too.
Now you should have something like this:
Lay out your eyelashes and decide how many rows of pairs you have room for. I decided on three.
It’s now time add the part which will hold the lashes in place: wide strips of tape sticky side out. You need to be careful about what kind of tape you use, it needs to be sticky but not so sticky that you can’t get the lashes back off! Gaff and duct tape are too sticky, you want to use something like this clear plastic tape which is not particularly sticky. I suggest testing it out on an eyelash you don’t want anymore. It should hold the lashes securely when you put a corner on but it should not be at all hard to remove them by gently pulling the corner which is not attached.
For each row of lashes I put down 1 strip of tape, sticky side up.
Then fold the edges around the back and tape them im place. So you now you have 3 sticky stripes which are almost invisible.
To decorate it a little more I added a border of lace using the glue gun to hold it in place.
You could also do this same idea in an ornate picture frame just taking the glass out so you could access the sticky strips easily.
Last thing to do is add on the lashes! Lightly press the inside corners of them into the tape, you really don’t need much pressure at all and certainly not enough to disturb the curve of the lashes. Done!
And this is it in action in my bathroom!
It fits the current tone of my bathroom more than the cakes do and takes up so much less space! Do you all like the cakes or the board better?
