This may be the best thing I've ever created. The rest of the bathroom is ok too, I guess, but I smile every time I see this bad boy.
I made it (old frame, chalkboard spray paint, chalk) initially with the intention to write something more inspiring, like "grateful", or "simplicity". The more I thought about it being in the bathroom, the more I started coming up with stuff like, "push harder" and other equally crass and silly things. This was the winner. I think the flower garlands really make it special.
My bathroom used to be beige with blank walls. I spend enough time in there (thank you IBS!) that I thought it worthwhile to spruce the place up.
I painted the mirror pink. Pink? Who does that? I second guess that choice every time I'm in there. At least it's thought provoking. This mirror is a hand-me-down from my mom and is a replacement for the builder-grade mirror that I very gracefully removed by myself late late one night. Word to the wise: when there's a 2 man project, that does not mean 1 woman. It means that if you do it alone, you will shatter the mirror and most definitely break your pedestal sink. Classy, I know.
I bought that awesome howling dog at a DI like a year ago. I painted it this awesome color with some of Oli's leftover wall paint. Now would be a good time to insert some sort of moon joke. If you're into that sort of thing.
Small bathrooms are really hard to photograph. Boo. but you don't need to see the plunger and the toilet brush and the baby-potty seat all stacked next to the toilet anyway.
Any suggestions for what else I could write on my chalkboard?
Disclaimer: As I am about to post this, I realize I'm posting about a collage. A collage. Really? Apparently I've got nothing else going on. Don't hate me. I promise all future posts will be just as pointless, if not more so!
Our living room used to look like it belonged in
a model home. I say this, because frequently I would find our artwork hanging
in model homes. Our earth-toned decor started getting sleepy. It felt
oppressive. I was bored. So I tried to sell our couch and buy a new,
interesting, lighter couch, and it didn't sell. Which is probably a good thing,
because our kids are gross, and thank goodness for dark brown microfiber that
washes easily and hides what doesn't come out!
So I had to get creative. And go against my comfort zone. After a lot of work, I feel like we're getting somewhere. I scoured pinterest
for the rooms that I loved the most and the elements these rooms had in common.
Most of them had collages. Really interesting collages. I loved this one, this one, and this one. I'm sure there are some people that can
just naturally throw together a perfect collage, but I needed a formula to make it awesome. Lucky
for you, I'm sharing it!
Awesome Collage
You'll need:
-a watercolor (I made ours),
-an interesting non-framed piece or two (but not
too many! You want the square frames to be the dominant element.
-unique art pieces that don't really tie together
(I'm a collector/hoarder of just such art)
-and the most key element: an awkward portrait.
See our awkward portrait? That is me, done by a dear sister Ali many years
ago. It has been hiding in a closet ever since. Finally, the time called for an
awkward portrait. What luck!! I think it deserves a close up.
Truly fantastic. She makes other great art and you could even commission her to make an awkward portrait for you. Check out her funky awesome art here. (The mustache was an add-on that we found in our Christmas stockings).
The hardest part about building a collage is knowing when to stop. Remember to treat your white space like a vacation. Too much white space makes you bored, but the occasional break makes the decorated bits so much better!
Anyway. I’m done pretending to be an expert. But
I think that formula turned out pretty well for us. As long as you keep the
frames close enough together to make everything feel like family, you are set.
Isn’t that clock awesome? Ikea. No joke. And you
can build it in anyway you want. Garrett may have wet himself. He didn’t, but
it was a possibility for a moment. I've seen people recover these clocks with interesting fabrics or paper, and they look awesome. Lots of potential folks!
Don't care about the clocks and think my chairs look awesome? Yep, made those too. Check it out here.
P.S. If anyone can guess the embroidery hoop reference for "her?", I'll be super impressed, and probably your friend for life.
I know. You've been just dying to get the low-down on my rad chairs.
Well friend, your persistence has paid off!
Bam. Awesome. First, let me tell you. We found these awesome chairs (which I'm pretty sure are lawn chairs) on our neighbors curb at 10 pm one night. My husband about had a heart attack when I told him I wanted to rescue/steal them. Now you know I have shady ethics about stealing from
this post but even so I still thought it was a no brainer. And it was. We now have our neighbors' blessing.
After a bit of cleaning up, these chairs sat in our garage for 4 months. We're super efficient here. When I finally got around to this project it only took a day to finish it. First a stop at Ikea for the pillow cushions on the back, to Fabric Depot to pick out some awesome fabric (my husband's super rad and super retro choice), and then finding a small camping mattress that I could cut into perfect cushion sized squares for the bottom! Actually that sounded like a lot.
I sewed the slip covers using a method similar to
this. I highly recommend it. The chair on the left is sewn like a basic pillowcase with a hole for a zipper. Turns out you have to buy those. So there are big holes at the bottom ends of both cushions where those zippers should be. The chair on the right required no fancy zippers, so it is obviously my favorite.
And it's closest to the TV, so it's Charlie's favorite too. He likes to set the throw pillows up as head rests for us to watch movies. I've obviously been banished to the left chair. The sacrifices you make for your children.
I have to say as a disclaimer that I don't love love those throw pillows on them, but we already had them, and I was tired of sewing. Free and easy always wins out in the end.
So we bought a house last year. And had a child. Who then stayed in the hospital for two months. And had two procedures after that. And had an ER visit for our other child.
What I'm trying to express to you is that we are poor. Like, the only money we spend all month on non-essentials is at the grocery store. For more essentials. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Conveniently, we are natural cheapskates, so it's not too painful.
However, new houses come with large spaces and empty walls that are just crying to be filled. So, for all of my fellow cheapskates, I thought I'd share some of my cheapo crafty-crafts over the next few weeks.
I'll start today with my favorite project. Mostly because it is FREE, super easy, and makes a statement.
Pow! I love the punch of color it adds to our oppressively beige walls.
Supplies needed: a large flat piece of cardboard (we had some leftover from the move), a lot of paint swatches (I recommend Glidden for all of their bright and fun colors, though scrapbook paper would work also), and tape. Awesome, right?
Pretty straightforward procedure. Start on one side, work a row at a time. I'm sure you could just start at a corner and fan outward too. Either way. Make sure you extend the swatches over the edges of the cardboard at least a 1/8 inch, just to make sure the cardboard is concealed. One day I might frame it, but today is not that day. The cardboard in the photo below is visible when you're looking from the side, like this. If I cared more, I'd fix it, tack it all down or something. But I don't, so I won't.
After some trial and error, I thought it looked better to randomly assign colors, rather than following a specific pattern. I also made sure I had some neutral colors in there as well, to ground it (Martha Stewart and Behr have great neutrals and softer colors). I cut cut the paint swatches to different lengths (instead of having major overlap) and taped them on, making sure to cover the other pieces of tape.
I hung the final piece by nailing half-inch nails into the wall wherever the cardboard was bowing out. In the photo above you can see a tiny nail above the brown paint swatch.
I cannot stress how easy this project is.
Or how cute my kid is.
In the 6 months since I completed this project, I realized that I don't feel totally square about taking so many paint samples from Home Depot. I have done penance buying multiple gallons of paint using my awesome home paint chip display. There is a great post on the ethics of paint chip crafts here that offers responsible ways of acquiring samples. Next time I decide to paint-chip craft, I will do so in a more legitimate manner. Today though, I would like to thank Glidden, Martha Stewart and Behr, along with my good friends at The Home Depot, and would recommend their products.
Whew! Is my conscience clean yet?
On a different note, I love it. I hope it gives someone else some awesome ideas, and I hope the feds don't show up at my door next week.
Thank you, I'll be here all week!
So I love my sisters. That's a given. I am so happy that I moved to Vancouver to live closer to them. It has been such a HUGE blessing. Babysitters on call, work-out buddies, moral support... you know, friends. I love it. And I LOVE that my kids will grow up knowing their aunties so well. Which is why I am SO excited to have our missing sister come into town tomorrow for a several-day layover on her way to Hawaii (with her sweet boy Wyatt!). So excited to have all the sisters together again. Even just for a few days. Hmmm... where was I?
the family, taken at our last gathering, minus mom, plus a few Swanger kids
Oh yes, I love being around sisters. I have especially grown to appreciate this the past couple of weeks while Gretch and Al were in Florida at an Avatar (enlightenment) course. And because I love my darling sisters so much, I find myself up at 1:10 am, killing time with Garrett until I go to pick them up at the airport when their 1:30 am flight comes in. Yeah, I am just that loving. That, and it's nice to have an excuse to stay up late and be irresponsible.
(As I'm typing this I realize how lame I must sound... yes, I'm getting a little older and a little more boring and may consider 1:30 am on a Saturday way too late. You caught me.)
So what does someone do to fill so many extra hours? Awesome crafts!!
Our only picture of Charlie with the car is of his first car wreck.
Hopefully not a sign of things to come
A few weeks ago, Ali and Vince found this awesome Flinstone-style car at Goodwill, still new in the box! Char has been loving it up! So we decided to accessorize it.
I'm sorry that all photos taken in our apartment are of a ghastly yellow hue.
Some call it bad lighting, I call it a "vintage" look.
Yeah, we made a gas pump. Yeah, the pump is an old cell phone car-charger. And yeah, we do feel pretty awesome! What do you think?
So I'm a closet crafter. and i say "closet" because most everything has to do with something i wear. it's a small passion of mine and perhaps my favorite hobby. i've been working on a few things and thought it was time to share!
Project numero uno: jewelry storage!
I found this idea on Pinterest (one of many versions) and decided to run with it. Note: I'm a super cheap crafter. Only on the rarest occasions will i go out and buy a part for a project-- usually i can find something so much more interesting at home! and this was definitely the case with this project! I had an old frame laying around, but no screen material, so i got tricky. I went digging through my fabric extras, and found this shirt that had a pretty sturdy lace-like layer. I love the funky color of this (chartreuse? puce? does anyone even know what those colors are?) but i can't pull it off without a tan. which is what, 2 months of the year in Washington? so for this project, it was perfect.
Add a little hot-glue and some brown spray paint, and voila!
Once i had it put together, i realized there was no good way to hang my necklaces. So i dug a few cedar shakes out of our kindling pile, spray painted them brown, added some hot glue and fabric scraps and tadaaa! Now for this I did go and buy pushpins.
I found some neat hammered-looking ones for $1.49 at Jo-Anns.
And that was without a 40 percent off coupon :)
How to hang it? I found a little hanger-thingy on the back of an unused frame. It pushed in easily!
Now my jewelry is hanging up on my wall, encouraging me to wear it! And it is SO nice not to have all my necklaces tangled up in a vanity bag! So easy and So quick.
Ok. So that was craft number one that i put together about 2 months ago (and has been sitting on my dining room floor until we hung it up last week!). Today i took advantage of Charlie's nap time and altered this cute plaid dress i found at Goodwill. I didn't take any before pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination on this one!
I didn't have to do too much to it; it was only the top half that i was swimming in. So i cut off the sleeves, trimmed away the pieces you see in the photo, and then sewed the sleeves back on and the sides together again. I was SO proud to have finished this one so quickly (one nap-time!) and to have it look so good!
I went so quickly, in fact, that i made a boo-boo. Can you spot it?
Yes, that's right. i put the sleeves in the wrong arm-holes. oh gosh. nailed it! It looks fine if i roll the sleeves up though. And it adds a little quirky flair to it as well :)
Perhaps next time i'll go a little slower and pay a bit more attention to the details!
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