Weekend projects

It’s my belief that the first weekend back from a long stay away should be productive. For practical reasons, you have to put away your Christmas decorations, do some laundry and a bit of cleaning – but I also found myself doing small projects and a lot of cooking (recipes to be shared!).

One post holiday project that I wanted to do is sort of silly, but necessary! I remember seeing or reading about making a holder for your credit card that you sewed up, so that if you wanted to use it, you had to literally cut it out of its holder to use it. Which will ensure, of course, that you actually need to use it instead of just splurging on yourself at anthropologie….or, you know, wherever.

I had some left over fabric from my card catalog project and thought that this specific fabric would be great to use:

My original plan was to cut out “EMERGENCY USE ONLY” and sew or glue it to the other side, but after cutting out 3 letters, I decided to not bother.

However, I think the next time I reach for my credit card and I see this face staring back at me, I’ll think again.

Not the best craftsmanship I’ve ever done, but for a 10 minute project and hopefully a bit of debt relief, I think it’ll do.

I also got around to finishing an embroidery that I started over three months ago! I found myself getting frustrated with it almost immediately when I started, then I picked it up last night and finished it within an hour

It’s a companion piece to my other embroidery. I’m creating a small collage on my wall along with a print that my BFF gave me for Christmas (the peacock) and a print from a RISD craft show (artist: Alli Coate).

I think it needs just one more small item. I’ve been eyeing this print from OldSchoolStationers that I may purchase. I also need a frame for the peacock print, but the clip works for now.

Hope you all had equally enjoyable weekends!

Holiday Spirit

Today is December 1st which means it’s finally appropriate to be excited for Christmas!

Moving away from home has made getting together with my family during the holidays that much better. But even though most of family and kickass best friends are 12 hours away, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t enjoy some holiday fun in Providence.

To be honest I decorated my apartment before I left for Thanksgiving break, but since none of my friends have seen it yet, it’s almost like it didn’t count.

I decided I wanted to cut out paper snowflakes because what’s cuter than this darling window curtain:

via ohdeedoh

I mean, I used to make these things as a kid in elementary school all the time. Easiest decor ever. This is what I got:

They’re all square! I don’t know how I got square snowflakes, even after I followed Martha Stewart’s instructions. Ugh.

Not to be downtrodden, I decided to just go with what I bought and leave the DIY to others.

The ornaments are wall decals that I bought after Christmas last year for really cheap.

The deer are also an end-of-season wall decal. It came in a pack of three, so the other two are hiding in my hallway.

Even my moose got in the holiday spirit.

And of course, my Christmas tree. My first real Christmas tree ever.

Thanks Whole Foods! I’ll have to plant it in the woods nearby so that it can live on.

photos using CrossProcess and ShakeItPhoto apps

Oh deer

I have a confession to make, although it’s only October, I am already  getting pretty excited for Christmas. This is very unlike me as I’m normally the person bitching about how Thanksgiving doesn’t get enough love because it’s just completely overshadowed by Christmas.

But for some reason, I cannot wait to decorate for the holidays and, I think this is key, getting to go home and celebrate with my family!

My excitement may have initiated when I found these cute little candle holders at Salvation Army

I couldn’t pass them up! They just screamed Christmas to me. And oddly enough while scanning one of my favorite blogs papernstitch, I found this image in one of her tutorials

Which was actually kind of perfect because I was thinking about what color I wanted to paint these two guys and gold was one of my options.

I was also considering my oh-so-favorite color turquoise or a nice yellow, but since I’m considering buying some candle sticks for these I opted to go with white.

I bought this spray paint a long time ago for another project (that I swear, one day I’ll get around to) but I was always concerned about spray painting indoors. Luckily this weekend was beautiful so I turned on my ceiling fan, opened my windows and went at it.

After a couple of coats and some touch-ups here and there they were all finished

So until I can no longer contain my holiday excitement, they will quietly adorn my bookcase – with the ranks of my favorite photo of my two favorite people, busts of Mozart and Beethoven and my books.

Back to craftin’

Even though I’m up to my neck in graduate school items, I still want, and at this point, need a creative outlet. Sure I should be working on my study guide but fall is here and I want to celebrate it with some apartment decor.

When I first started exploring the arts and crafts of Blogland, I found THIS book wreath tutorial at Living with Lindsay. My favorite DIYs are the ones that find professional crafts that are super pricey and copy it for 2% of the cost, and that’s exactly what this woman did.

The supplies are simple enough:

Styrofoam wreath, hot glue gun, and a trashy, well-aged novel. This book has more life hanging on my door than it would have unread on my shelf.

I started by covering the Styrofoam in a layer of the book. This ensured that if I missed any places that you wouldn’t notice any startling white spots.

I also found that the best technique to apply the pages to the wreath was to fold it up (as you can see above and by fold I don’t mean press it down, let it be fluid) so that the bottom part of the page where you will be applying the glue is visibly layered. I then (actually) folded a small section at the bottom so that the entire bottom page’s layers were showing and applied glue to all of the layers. I found this handy as it made sure the pages stayed in place instead of parts of the pages being unglued.

Two long telephone conversations later (I love to multitask) and I had my finished product

It’s not perfect, but it is fun and great for a book lover in the fall. Also each wreath depending on your fold will come out differently. Honestly, this was so easy and very rewarding. Also the entire thing cost me $3 glue gun + $1 book + $1 wreath =$5!

I can’t wait to do more fun crafts in the future.

Classing up the place

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I was very happy because my parents drove across to come visit me for a few days! We played it pretty cool, staying local except the gigantic antique market in Brimfield, MA. My parents LOVE flea markets and while this place was very cool to walk around in, it was a little too rich for our blood. The funny thing is, none of us purchased anything here although we spent 4 hours walking around the place, but on the way home we saw a roadside junk shop and we all purchased a ton of stuff! I love my family that way.

Now, onto the real reason for the post – and the actual reason for starting this blog in the first place – I did a cool little project for my apartment. I was walking around Kohls when I saw these cute little damask wall decals. Normally, I don’t like Kohls but you really can’t beat the fact that half the store is normally up to 40% off. So for only $10 I did this little project:

I began by cutting out each individual design from the roll

This extra step helps to layout the pattern before you start sticking things everywhere.

So once you’ve found a layout that you like, you can start to cut and stick. I decided to be a little more creative with this design by cutting some of the designs and placing them only from the drawers. This step is pretty easy as the designs are really easy to cut, just make sure to make straight cuts.

I even went so far as to cut a hole in one of the designs and place it around one of the knobs. This also was pretty easy and the designs are very forgiving in that they won’t show any blank spaces if you’re careful.

So now the drawer in my hallway that holds all my towels and misc items looks much more interesting!

I even had enough left over that I put some inside the door of my bar. The frosted glass gave it a cool, understated look.

A super easy project for around $10!

Bad Ass Embroidery

For my latest project, I had two sources of inspiration that I decided to combine into one kickass project. The first one was THIS neat DIY from Design*Sponge. But I decided to expand on it because I don’t have a color printer and the idea of actually stitching something like this sounded fun. Then I saw THESE prints from Paper Jam Press and the ideas just merged.

So for my first embroidery, I give you:

I just love the mix of homemaker and gangster. It's just my style!

I used the downloaded the needlepoint font from HERE, which I realize is a little redundant since I’m actually using needlepoint, but I really liked the style of it. Then I just purchased the fabric (I used a thick, embroidery fabric for this first project. I’ll probably just purchase regular fabric from now on but it did help to guide my stitches), some thread (like the kind you used to make friendship bracelets out of), a wooden hoop and needle and went to town!

Also, I realize I’m using embroidery and needlepoint interchangeably, which is probably incorrect and I apologize to anyone whom this might be bothering.

I’m rather happy with it for my first attempt. It’s a bit off-center and the fabric needs ironed so badly, but I like it. I’m hoping it will become one of a series so that I can hang all of them on my wall.

If anyone has some great rap lyrics, I’d love some suggestions! I’m thinking “Damn it feels good to be a gangster” is next and possibly making one for my brother as a housewarming gift that says, “Bitches ain’t sh*t”.

I love salvaging

I’ve always loved going to Goodwill or Salvation Army, but now that I’m on my own and a salvation army is on the walk to my local grocery store, my love (and wallet) knows no bounds.

Now that I have natural light, I want to start filling my apartment with flowers and plants. This is easier said than done because I do not have a green thumb and I've been timid in buying any yet. I am growing herbs, so maybe this will instill some confidence in me - if they survive. Until I get some courage though, I've been collecting a small number of bottles/vases that I will be, one day soon, hopefully filling with flowers for my bedroom.

Isn’t the blue glass beautiful? I found that on my last trip and couldn’t pass it up.

On my very first trip to the local Sal Vo, when I still maintained some sense of self-control in this store, I’m pretty sure these are the candle sticks that broke all of thatl.

Don’t they just scream Anthropologie? They were a whopping $4 and just needed a little love. They were spotted with a greenish-gunk but with a little bit of soap and scratching, it immediately came off. I have then framing my television, as you can see below.

And now my absolute favorite find ever! This actually came from craigslist where I ended up driving 45 minutes to some guy’s house (I brought someone with me, of course) that had a coffin on the front porch (a leftover halloween decoration, I hoped) and a confederate flag wafting in the breeze. Needless to say, this was worth it.

Isn’t it great! He threw in the marble top and that cute little lantern to sweeten the deal – I have to say this was a steal. More than I’d pay for a regular side table at iKea, but you can’t pass up a piece of library card catalog history.

Here’s a close up on the lantern:

The drawers all slide out. I really want to get some cute fabrics to line each drawer with.

And I just found this great piece of inspiration this morning on a blog that I think would also look great:

I like the look of the white with the maps, so I’ll either do maps or just find some really cute scrapbooking paper.

Oh how I love thrifting!

My green bedroom

Moving into this apartment, I had a lot of ideas for my living room. I knew what I wanted to purchase, knew where the furniture needed to be placed, and re-arranged it rather quickly and much to my satisfaction.

But the bedroom...is a different story. I have little closet space, so a wardrobe and dresser was necessary. Plus, I have a slim dresser that matches my malm bed so I had to keep that. As of right now, I have a black bed and dresser on one wall, a very light maple wood wardrobe on the wall adjacent to that and a cherry dresser in the opposite corner. If I had the motivation, I would stain at least the dresser, but frankly that's a lot of work and in an enclosed space.

So my best bet is decorate! And I need some opinions.

I scored this great piece of wall art at Urban Outfitters yesterday.

As you can see, the left side of it has some water damage (from the Rhode Island Flood of 2010) which made this normally $40-50 print a whole $5!

My plan, as of right now, is to hang it over this awkward space where my bed is. I say awkward because there’s a window over part of my bed (as you can see HERE) so my desire to have something placed centered over my bed is impossible. I think I’m going to hang it over to the side as you can sort of see below:

I just love the look of that bright green and the black. It’s so springy! And I was thinking, why not add some additional tree prints to make a kind of leafy collage of sorts. What do you think?

I have an idea for the other wall which is completely bare that may or may not involve a floral print and a moose head, so the new theme for the bedroom will probably be natureish.

Also, I’ll share my other Urban Outfitter deals because they’re so cute. I got this great pillow which I loved when it was on sale for $20, and they cut it down to $10. Have you looked at the price of pillows lately? I’m dumbfounded, I can’t wait to have a sewing machine because some of these prices are crazy! But $10 I’m willing to pay.

And I got this adorable clock for my living room. I tried to make one which I might share later, but I can’t figure out how to make the hour hand rotate properly…hm. But I do love this one and it looks great with the tree coasters that I also purchased at UO a few weeks ago.

I do love my living room. Let’s hope the bedroom is able to come together just as nicely.