Category Archives: DIY Home Decor

Sep24

The First Boo-Tiful Halloween Craft of 2012

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Oh my gosh, I am so excited to show off my friend Melissa’s handiwork today!  She’s been bitten by the Pinterest bug, and my Facebook newsfeed has been full of all sorts of treats and crafts that she’s created for herself and her sweetie up north in PA.  As soon as I saw her awesome Halloween Topiary, I begged her to let me feature it here, and she was kind enough to let me.  Thanks, Melissa!

She drew her (p)inspiration  from Courtney at A Diamond in the Stuff, which is a fantastic blog that is loaded with amazing DIY-able home decor creations.  Seriously, what this woman can do with Mod Podge and some thrifted furniture is unreal, you’ve got to check it out.

Pumpkin Topiary; Source: A Diamond in the Stuff

(Courtney also has an Etsy Store, just in case you’re running out of time to create your own awesomeness from time to time.)

Using faux pumpkins, Krylon Glitter Blast spray paint, a hot glue, a basket, wooden skewers, and craft letters, Melissa made her own version in under 3 hours (including time spent waiting on the paint to dry between coats:

To this:

Don’t you just love it?  What a great way to jazz up an entryway, or a porch, especially if you don’t want to decorate with anything that might be too scary for your little Trick or Treaters.  Melissa says: “From start to finish this was an easy craft and I recommend it for beginners! I used simple pumpkins from Walmart, glitter blast spray paint, and all of the accessories were from Michael’s! Simple, easy, fun & makes a great decoration!!”  The cost for her materials rang in at about $45, the bulk of which was in the cost of the Krylon Glitter Blast spray paint (which has an awesome color selection and just flat out rocks, but is a bit steeply priced if you are going to use more than one color for a project.  I wonder if there is a cheaper alternative out there that could still achieve the glittery finish?).

Great job, Melissa, and thanks for sharing your work!

You can see more of Melissa’s favorite (p)inspirations and follow her in all of her greatness to see what else she finds and creates here.

I can’t believe it’s time to actually start making some of the fantastic Halloween creations that I’ve been pinning all year! I’d better get it in gear!! Thanks for the push, Melissa!

I’d love to feature your creations, too, so if you make something you saw on Pinterest, take pictures, and let me know that you’d like some of the spotlight!  Email me at verypinteresting(AT)GMAIL(DOT)com, I’d love to see your masterpieces.

Jul16

Window Dressing

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When I first saw this pin, from Janette at Style with Cents, I envisioned it in my house.

I wanted it right under this window, which faces out onto our screened porch/backyard, and I wanted it with seating for two.

The window is in the “eat in” portion of the kitchen, which we have open right now to allow for His Majesty to hoop it up with his Little Tykes basketball hoop.  He’s energetic.  Rather than fight it, we make it work.  We eat at the island, or in the formal dining room, and give him the run of the family room and all of the kitchen on one side of the island. Our kitchen table currently lives in the garage.  We’ll bring it in someday.  I’m not in a hurry.

Anyway, I thought the little shelf desk concept would work out great under this window, and my sweet husband agreed.  He went to Home Depot with the intention of getting a 48 x 12 shelf board and some shelf brackets.  He came home with shelf brackets, but no shelf board.  Because he’d found something better while he was there.

A stair tread.

A stair tread is thicker than a shelf board (1 inch thick vs. 3/4 inch thick) and the edge was already rounded, eliminating sharp corners and taking away the need to router the edges.  And it looked like a shelf board to me, so I had no complaints.

He painted the tread and brackets with three coats of the same white paint as our trim, and then got to work hanging it up.

Because he positioned the brackets underneath the windows, he was able to secure them into wall studs, increasing the sturdiness of the desk.

And then we got to work finding kiddie chairs.  We looked online at Ikea.  We looked online at Target.  We looked online on Amazon.

And then we found these plans from the amazing Ana White. She’s pretty much my hero, and her plans have enabled my husband to build me all sorts of stuff.

The next day, he built these two chairs in about 2.5 hours, at a total cost of around $20. 

Now the biggest decision we have to make is what color to paint or stain them.

I am debating whether to keep them white like the shelf, to stain them to match the cabinets, or to do them in a bold accent color.  But for now, they’re just bare wood, while I make up my mind.

His Majesty now has a place to color, eat a snack, sit with a friend, etc, that doesn’t require him to be confined to his high chair, a fact that he definitely appreciates.   If we decide to homeschool him, he will have a place to do his lessons that keeps him near me while I go about doing my work in the kitchen, and keeps Christopher from being distracted while he works up in the office.

But for now, it’s just fun, and functional.  But I need to decide on a finish for the chairs.  What do you think?  Bold accent color?  Simple white?  Matching stain?  I am going to need some help deciding.

Mar26

Easter Egg Door Decor

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As much as I loved my Valentine’s Day wreath, I had to take it down, being that it was about a month after Valentine’s Day.  But no worries.  I replaced it with something just as pretty.

My (p)inspiration to make an Easter Wreath came from this ”Easter Egg and TuTu Wreath” from My Creative Way and this ”Yarn Egg Wreath” from The Sweet Survival.  Both sources offer really easy to follow tutorials.  Ultimately, it came down to which was going to take more time, and I decided that an Easter Egg and Tutu wreath was going to be faster and easier to pull off, and, I’m happy to tell you that I completed mine in about an hour while watching Netflix while Christopher played outside with his friends and His Majesty took a nice, and much appreciated, nap.  But, I also put my own spin on the design of the finished product, partly because I wanted to in the first place, and partly because I ran into a problem with my original plan.

I originally planned to cover the entire wreath in strips of tulle, like the tutorial at Creative Way had done but using a foam wreath form, but then my goal was to cover the entire front of the wreath with Easter Eggs, using a hot glue gun.  Then I was going to fill in any gaps with eyelash yarn, hoping that it would look a little like plastic Easter “grass”.

I was worried that I didn’t have enough eggs.  Turns out the eggs weren’t the problem.  I’ll come back to that in a second.

So, I started by cutting the tulle into strips about as long as the diameter of the wreath form.

I folded the strips of tulle along the length, to make them less sheer, and to give them more fluff, and then tied them in a knot.

You see that glitter in the tulle? That shiny, pretty glitter?  It wasn’t so pretty when it was all over my floor.  What a mess.  Anyway, I tied the strips of tulle all along the wreath… Until I ran out, which was about halfway around.

*Sigh*

At that point, I decided to finish as much as I could by glueing the eggs along the tulle wrapped portion of the wreath, and then go back to the craft store at some point to pick up more tulle, allowing me to finish the wreath.  I applied a little hot glue along the opening of the eggs, to keep them intact, and then I applied a big glob of glue on the egg itself and pressed it to the tulle to stick them together. I alternated the colors, simply because I’m cool like that.

Once I’d covered the front of the tulle covered portion in eggs(I would have been dead on accurate with 50 eggs if I’d covered the entire thing, by the way), I held it up and examined it, and just as I was ready to clean up my mess and put it aside until I was able to get to the store for more tulle, and the idea struck me to cover the top portion of the wreath form in the eyelash yarn, which I thought might make the wreath slightly reminiscent of an actual Easter basket.  Plus, I reasoned, there really wasn’t enough space between the eggs to easily use the eyelash yarn otherwise, so why not.  I didn’t have any other options at the moment, so I gave it a try.

I was so unsure about the idea that I didn’t even glue the yarn, I just wrapped it around itself and tucked it in where it met the tulle.  It’s held up fine on the front door thus far, but if it looks decent when I take it down, I’ll glue a few pieces to secure it before I store it.  (But, that probably won’t be an issue, since the pollen in the air is almost certainly going to do a number on it and prevent me from using it again next year anyway). After I’d finished wrapping it, I took a leftover piece of tulle that had been just a touch too short to use earlier, and tied it at the top of the wreath, so that I could hang it.

I am really happy with how it turned out, and I’m extra glad that I was able to finish it in one sitting, and avoid another trip to the store (which I’m sure my husband is happy about).  I love seeing the colors when I pull in the driveway, all bright and cheery and spring-like.  It’s enough to bring a smile to my face every time.

So, what’s decorating your door these days?  Do you decorate for Easter?

Mar22

Barnyard Birthday Banner

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Sitting on the couch watching Netflix the other night, I realized that I had forgotten to post about making the birthday banner for His Majesty’s birthday party.  The cow print and gingham theme of the Barnyard Bash was originally inspired by this pin from Shindig Diva.  Can any patterns convey a barnyard bash better than cow print and gingham?  I don’t think so.  But, I knew I wanted to do gingham tablecloth and gingham trimmed mason jars on the tables, so I decided to focus on cow print for a Happy Birthday Banner.   Enter this cow print fabric scored with a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby.  I bought 2 yards, which was about double what I needed, and that was on purpose, given that almost every sewing project I undertake involves at least one error.  Thankfully, though, this one did not involve any major errors, and I have quite a bit of cow fabric leftover for something else that comes along.

I started by checking out this awesome tutorial at Martin Family Living, which also includes a template, which you can find here.  I didn’t want to take the time to do a two sided banner though, which saved me several steps.  I printed out the template on regular old printer paper (because my husband wasn’t home, and I didn’t know how to print on card stock), and traced my triangle pennants on the back side of the fabric in pencil.  I did a pennant for every letter, and I even cut out a few extra, just in case.

Then I sewed a 1 inch gingham ribbon along the back of each triangle, leaving about a foot on either end.  I did a separate banner with Happy, one with Birthday, and one with His Majesty’s name, which allowed me the flexibility of hanging them vertically or horizontally, since I didn’t know exactly how it was going to look when I started out on this project.

Then I went to work on the letters.  I made templates and traced them, backwards, in washable marker on the back of a sheet of white felt. (That way, if anything funky were to show from the markers, it wouldn’t be on the “good” side of the letters.) 

Then, I cut the letters out, and traced around the white letters, this time tracing them onto red felt.

I did this because I wanted a little bit of red to show around the white letters, to play on the gingham ribbon.  I just freehanded the tracing.  See how I went all the way up to the edge on the felt here?  It saved a little bit of space. Low stress.

Then I cut those out, too. See how the letters look together? I stuck them in the sink with some dish soap and rinsed the marker out of them and then let them dry on my counter overnight.

Then I sewed the letters on to the triangle pennants, in red thread.  I just did the best I could to follow the curves of the letters.

After that, I used hot glue to adhere these cute little wooden animals to the end of the banners.  They are 67 cents at Hobby Lobby, and they come in all different themes: farm animals, rocket ships, dinosaurs, sports, all sorts of possibilities.  I used a chicken, a rooster, a cow, and a sheep.  They didn’t have a pig, which bummed me out, but I made do.  A pig would have really gone with the theme, though.

I had my husband hang it across the windows along the back wall of our family room, so it could be seen from the front door, when guests entered for the party.

 

I was pretty proud of this thing, and if I’m being honest, I left it up for 2 weeks after the party. It jazzed the place up a bit, made me smile every time I walked in the door.

It was simple enough to make, and good thing, because Christopher’s birthday is in a few weeks, and he has mentioned that I never made *HIM* a birthday banner (in a very dramatic, jealous, almost-twelve-year-old kind of tone), so now I’m on the hook to make one for him, too.  The sewing took about an hour, and the real time was tracing and cutting out the pennants and the letters.  I could reuse it if I wanted to throw another Barnyard Party, but I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to do that, so I’ll try to find someone to give it to, you know, to share the love.

Here’s what I used for this project:

1 yard of fabric for the pennants

fabric banner template from Martin Family Living

5 yards of 1 inch ribbon

2- 12×12 felt sheets for your letters  (my letters are 3.5 inches tall, and I put them end to end, fitting 9 letters to a sheet)

4- 12×12 felt sheets for the accent color behind your letters (you have to space these out more, which is why you need more felt)

Thread in coordinating color

washable marker or pencil

scissors

sewing machine (optional, but it sure will save you some time)

wooden accent animals or figures to go with your theme (optional)

hot glue gun (optional, for use if you want to use the wooden accent figures)

Using my 40% off coupon, and getting the ribbon on sale for 50% off, I spent about $12 on this project.  Some fabric birthday banners go for $35 on Etsy, and they don’t look much different from this one that I made myself in a few hours in the evening– especially not from a few feet away!

Have you made anything great lately?  Tell me about it!

Jan30

Felt Rosette Wreath

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This might be my favorite Pinspiration yet!

I scored some cheesy Valentine’s Day window decorations last year on clearance, and by some collection of miracles, I not only remembered that I had them this year, but I also remembered where to find them.  I’m the queen of buying things on super clearance, only to remember that I have them after the opportunity to use them has passed and/or never being able to remember where I put them. And this is after I have specifically put said items “where I won’t forget about them”.  Seriously, that’s what I say *every time* I can’t find something that I’m looking for.  My husband teases me about that pretty often.  But, as I said, I DID remember about the Valentine’s Day decorations, and I DID remember where they were, AND I remembered that I’d pinned this perfect Valentine’s Day Felt Rosette wreath– IN TIME TO ACTUALLY MAKE IT!! The stars must have truly aligned, I tell you.

It came from a great blog, Our Best Bites, which has tutorials, crafts, recipes, give-a-ways, and dozens of kitchen and household tips.  The writers have had so much success with their blog that they’ve written a book, Our Best Bites: Mormon Moms in the Kitchen.  You should check out the reviews on this book: Five stars all around!  If their recipes are anywhere near as easy to follow as their tutorial on this Felt Rosette Wreath, well, then, I simply must add this book to my next trip to the bookstore!

I basically followed the tutorial, and as I mentioned, it was very simple and well laid out.  Even so, this project was time consuming.  Some of that was likely due to my inexperience, but I definitely think you should plan for at least 4 hours to complete this thing.  It took me about 6 hours, spread out an hour or so at a time over a few days worth of nap times and evenings after both kid were in bed. But, like I mentioned, I’m a novice, and, I also added an hour or so to the project by wrapping my 14 inch wreath form with white yarn (that I scored for 50 cents at a yard sale).  That part was unnecessary, and, in the tutorial, they just painted their wreath form, which, judging by their finished product turned out just fine.

You basically need only the following:  Felt squares (mine were 12×12, and I purchased 36 of them, 9 in each of my 4 color choices), ribbon or tulle to hang your wreath (I used 5/8 inch ribbon, and I actually chose my colors based on the colors in the ribbon), and a wreath form (I used a 14 inch foam form, like they did in the tutorial, but if you decide you want to wrap yours in yarn, you can get a a straw wreath, leave it in the plastic, and yarn wrap right over it).   Then you’ll need a glue gun, and a big ol’ pile of glue sticks.  A lot of glue sticks.  I used a half a bag of the mini glue sticks. I spent just under $17 on this project, including a bag of mini glue sticks.  The felt was 4/$1, the ribbon was 50% off, and I used a 40% off coupon on the wreath form. Not too bad.  I did not use all of  the felt squares, either, (I ended up using 7-8 sheets of each color) so it would be a dollar or two cheaper if I were to do another one.

Because my felt sheets were perfect squares, I was able to just cut them into even quarters. That’s a no brainer. Fold it, cut on the line, fold it again, cut on the line, done.

Then, I started cutting the squares into round-ish spirals, like the tutorial showed.  I say round-ish, and you can see what I mean.  This felt stuff is pretty forgiving, which made me happy.  I like when things are easy, and don’t have to be exact.  After a career in health care, I like things that have some wiggle room (Side note: I used to always joke with the students and residents on their first days with me, telling them: “Relax. It’s pretty hard to kill a human.”  It did wonders to ease their tension, and I’m happy to report that none of them ever made any nutty mistakes, probably because Mama took the pressure off.  And yes, I did refer to myself in the third person as “Mama”, as in “Here, let Mama show you how it’s done.”  For reals.).  See how this felt spiral has a little corner on it?  It really made no difference after the rosette was rolled.  Looked find of like a rose petal.  Totally ok to not be perfectly round.

My husband helped me cut the spirals while we watched “The Tourist” starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.  (It was an ok movie.  Maybe I would have liked it better if I had been paying full attention to it, instead of half listening while I cut up felt squares.)   Since I had my husband’s help, things moved a little quicker for me.  He probably saved me about an hour.  What an awesome husband.  Did I mention that he’s a wiz with the power tools, too?

This was the first time that I’ve used felt for anything, and I think I’m in love.  Have you guys seen any of the ideas for felt food?!  Or  how about this adorable felt Christmas tree?  Or the many different felt flowers you can make? There are some really great ideas, and it seems to be easy to work with.  Starting at the center of your spirals, roll inward, until you have a little jelly roll style rosette.  Rolling them up was the quickest part of this project.  I had this many done in about 30 minutes.

And then my helper stepped in and rolled a bunch for me.

The next day, during the little slice of heaven otherwise known as nap time, I wrapped the wreath form in yarn. 

Glue your first piece to the wreath,

And then begin wrapping around and around and around until you get the entire wreath covered, overlapping the yarn as needed to cover all of the foam.  I didn’t have to worry too much about this part, since I used the same color yarn as the wreath form, but if you were to use a dark color yarn, you’d have to be more diligent to be sure you covered all of the foam.

After that, I was able to start glueing the felt rosettes onto the wreath…One at a time…

Alternating the colors however you think they look best. The felt held its shape pretty well, but I did go ahead and apply glue at the tail piece, and then to the entire bottom of each flower.  That may be why I used so much glue, but I wanted to be sure that everything stayed where I wanted it. Pack them in there pretty tightly to make sure you cover the wreath (which isn’t such a big deal if your wreath is a coordinating color, but I did glue them as close together as I could get them).   See how each rose is a little different from the one next to it?  I think that makes it truly unique.

Before the rosettes completely covered the wreath, I glued the ribbon down, and then covered it in roses, leaving only the portion that the wreath would hang from visible, but you could also add the ribbon to your finished product, like in the tutorial.  Like I said, this project would be hard to mess up. Fast forward another nap time + and evening, and in the end, I had this.

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

You could do a lot with this project, and believe me, I intend to.  My friend Emily said that she would have stopped when about half of the wreath was covered and hung it up just like that, and I agree, it would have looked really cute that way.  I’ve already bought extra felt and another wreath form to do another yarn wrapped wreath in a different color scheme, with a few larger felt roses, or maybe a few flowers that I’ve pinned from elsewhere on the web.  Big plans for my front door, baby.  Big plans.

Are you doing anything to decorate your door for Valentine’s Day?  If you don’t have the time to do this felt rosette wreath, maybe you can knock out this argyle wreath with felt hearts?  Or a tissue paper wreath, like this hot pink one? How will you decide which one to make?

Jan23

DIY Box Shelves

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I didn’t make anything this week.

But my husband did!

Our relationship works out really well because I have a good imagination, and he has good problem solving skills.  Plus, he knows how to use power tools.  So, I like to say that I think up the ideas, and he makes them a reality.  It’s a pretty awesome deal, folks.

So, when I saw these shelves, from Young House Love (which, btw, is one of my absolute favorite blogs, since I think Sherry and John are as goofy and dorky as my husband and I are, so I can totally imagine them being our friends), I immediately showed them to my husband, and told him that I thought they would look great in His Majesty’s room, as well as give me extra places to display his books, stuffed animals, photos, whatever.

His Majesty’s room has a safari theme. He’s got some wall art that I purchased with his bedding, and I also decorated letters to spell his name, which we hung over his crib.

But he had this one blank wall without anything on it.  And I thought that these shelves would look really nice right there on that wall. My husband looked at the photos of the shelves, read through YHL’s tutorial, and then made some kind of saracastic comment about how I work him like a Hebrew slave.

But then, because he’s such an awesome husband, the next day he asked me to show him specifically where I wanted the shelves to go. I didn’t have a clue, and it’s hard to visualize shelves.  But, have no fear, YHL to the rescue!  Taking a tip from their tutorial, I used painter tape to mark off some ideas and determine the number of shelves I wanted and where they would go.  Isn’t that a good idea for helping with shelf placement?!  They are so smart!

We used a stud finder during this process to help dictate the length and placement.  We wanted to be sure that they were extra secure into a wall stud, especially since his future “big boy” bed may end up going underneath them.

I also wanted a shelf  under the window, so that we can keep his bedtime books off of the dresser, and still have them within reach of the glider.  A low shelf will make it possible for His Majesty to “pick book”, as he says it, all on his own, without having to dig through his entire bookshelf and make a huge mess.

After we’d determined placement and shelf size, my sweet husband went out and bought some lumber, and then spent the day in the garage, sawing, nailing, and sanding away.  And just like that, I  had the shelves I wanted.  He didn’t take photos, but he says that the tutorial was great, and very easy to follow (He did use different sized boards than the tutorial, though, simply because I wanted different sized shelves than what John and Sherry made.).

Then he asked me what color paint I wanted on them.  I didn’t want to stain them, because the wood wasn’t the prettiest, but I also didn’t want to go white.  I thought about it for a day or two, before my husband suggested that we paint them to match the colors in his bedroom.

Great idea!

I took the acrylic craft paint that I’d used to make the wall letters and had it color matched at Lowe’s.  They did it in about 5 minutes.  I was skeptical that they’d be able to match it so perfectly, but their program was dead on.  I got a satin finish in their Valspar latex paint.  On the advice of the paint guy, I also picked up  a quart of Zissner 1-2-3 water based primer.  My husband hadn’t used this primer before, and he was really impressed with it.  After a coat of primer and a few coats of paint applied with a foam roller, the shelves were ready to hang. He pulled the tape off of the wall and hung the shelves in its place.  Leaving us with this:

I’m really happy with how they turned out.  My husband is quite the craftsman! I love how the colorful books and frame look like pieces of wall art by themselves, and the green shelves give his “sugared almond” colored walls a little extra splash. I’m not worried about the color of the shelves when we change his room decor, since I’m planning to do a dinosaur theme  when he moves from the crib to a bed, so the green shelves will still work.

The lumber for this project cost about $15 (we used pine boards), and the quart of paint and primer (of which we have plenty to spare for future projects), plus the foam rollers cost another $25.  Not a bad way to spend $40 and a few hours of work, plus drying time.

So that’s my husband’s Pinspiration for the week.  What do you think?  And what have you been up to?  Have you made anything fun lately?