For the Home

For the Home, Other, Tutorials

DIY Faux Plant Desk Decor

This week I'll be showing you how to make some cute faux plant desk decorations. I decided to make these because my sister got her first internship and she needs decorations for desk at work! First I'll start off with the grass. I thought it could make a pretty neat looking pen/pencil holder. I wanted it to be long, so I'm going to cut the grass chunk in half.

-fake plants -scissors -sand -styrofoam -hot glue gun -pots -balsa wood -xacto knife -saw -paints/finish -ModPodge

First I'll start off with the grass. I thought it could make a pretty neat looking pen/pencil holder. I wanted it to be long, so I'm going to cut the grass chunk in half.

Now onto the succulent plants. I decided to make a little trio.

And now they're done!

 

For the Home, Tutorials

DIY: Paper Mache Deer Head

A while ago I made a post about how to dress up a paper mache deer head to make it look like two tone faux mounted deer head. Unfortunately a lot of people were having trouble finding these elusive paper mache deer heads, so I started working on a tutorial on how to make your own from scratch. Finally I've finished it so I can share it with you all! Like with my turkey candles, I made a rough 3d model of a deer head and put it through a program to make it printable onto flat paper. Then all you have to do is cut it out, fold it up and glue or tape it together!

To get the template for this project, click here!

Here's what you need to make a paper mache deer head!

Print out the pattern onto cardstock, cut out and assemble according to the instructions.

My printer was running out of ink so the lines and numbers barely show up on camera, but it should print better for everyone else. Assuming you have printer ink!

I filled the head and neck with crumpled newspaper to help it keep it's shape.

Here it is all put together. If you like how the deer head looks at this point (low poly/faceted) then you can skip right to the paper mache steps, but if you want it to be more realistic, you can go on and sculpt some more details into the head.

To rough out the details, crumple up aluminum foil and use masking tape to hold it in place. I looked up a photo of the anatomy of a deer head to help me figure out where I needed to add the foil.

Here you can see the face almost done with the rough sculpt.

If you want even finer details you can use some air drying clay to sculpt that in.

When the air drying clay is completely dried, sand it smooth.

Paper mache time! Rip the paper into strips (instead of newspaper I used brown packing paper) and mix up some paper mache paste.

Dip the paper strips into the paste and run them between your fingers to remove the excess paste. Apply it to the head, overlapping the paper about a fourth of the way. Since you're not going to hollow it out like you would a pinata you only have to do 1 or 2 layers.

And here it is, done! Technically this is the end of the tutorial, since that's how you'd make a paper mache deer head, but I will show you how I decorated this one!

To finish this one off, I hot glued it to the wooden plaque that I stained a dark color.

Push the head down firmly to make sure it's glued down well.

And here it is, done!

 

For the Home

DIY Felt Cat Cave

27.jpg

A little while ago I was browsing the internet and I happened upon these neat, sculptural felt cat "caves" and I thought they were really interesting and I immediately wanted to make one myself. I've never done this technique before - wet felting with loose wool roving - I've only ever done knit things and then felting them in the washing machine... so this was an interesting experience. This video is sort of a tutorial, but more of a "watch me make this and I talk you through what I did." Because of this, there are probably mistakes in there so if you see anything that I'm doing wrong, please let me know so I can correct anything! Also, check out these two older projects where I spoil my cat some more: Cat Shelves Cat Tree

suppliesSupplies! The cardboard is cut to 25 inches in diameter. It can be anywhere between 20 to 25, but my cat is a big guy so I went with the larger one. Please note that the amount of wool shown is only half of what I used.

01I put down a piece of bubble wrap, bubbles up, put down the cardboard and attempted to take thin chunks of wool and placed them around the edge of the cardboard, hanging over halfway, and then I placed the inner pieces horizontally.

02I covered everything with tulle...

03...sprinkled all over with the hot soapy water...

04gently rubbed over the tulle with the olive oil soap...

05And in a circular motion, I rubbed all over the wool until it began to felt together.

06I removed the tulle and then I covered with another bubble wrap layer, bubble side down. Then in one swift movement I flipped everything over.

08With soapy  wet hands I flipped the wool that was sticking out from the edge over back onto the cardboard.

09Then I repeated step 1-6. So now there's one layer on each side of the cardboard.

10Now I placed wool around the edges like before, but instead of placing the chunks down horizontally, I went vertically. I then repeated the steps 2-6 again. And then repeated this again on the other side! So now there are two layers on each side.

11I placed the wool around the edges like before, but for the inside I went back like the beginning and placing the chunks horizontally. Then steps 2-6 were repeated yet again. Flipped the piece over and repeated everything again. Now there are three layers on each side!

12This layer looks a bit crazy, but it's because I ran out of enough solid colored wool so I attempted to do an abstract rock sort of design. Don't worry, I ended up flipping it inside out so the black layer would be the outer layer. Anyway, I did these chunks of wool over the edges again and vertically aligned. For the most part. And then repeated this on the other side. HOWEVER, for that last side I did not put the wool chunks lining the edge; I only did the vertical pieces in the middle.

13I placed the sheet of bubble wrap onto the wool and squirted some of the soapy water on top. Then I proceeded to rub in a circular motion all over for about 5 minutes. The soapy water helps your hand to just glide around on the plastic without getting caught. I flipped over and repeated. And then I did that two more times.

14Then I rolled everything up on my PVC pipe and secured it tightly. Then I got to rolling. I rolled this thing for about a minute or two, then I unrolled it, rotated the piece a quarter, rolled back up and rolled for another 1 to 2 minutes. Then I repeated this process two more times. So I ended up turning the piece a total of four times. I flipped the felt over, rolled it up and repeated all of this on the other side. When the cardboard  started to buckle, it was time for me to cut the hole.

15I cut the hole. I meant to cut it more on the edge but I got excited to move onto the next step that I just cut a circle without thinking about it. Since I cut the hole small, however, I was able to salvage it. I soaped up my hands and used the hot soapy water to rub around the cut edge to help felt it better.

16Then I reached inside and carefully pulled the cardboard, which was now sopping wet, out.

17I rolled everything back up onto the PVC pipe and got rolling. I just repeated the rolling process I described earlier.

18However, before I flipped it over to roll the other side, I made the executive decision to flip it inside out right then.

19Then I resumed rolling.20Now it was time to shape this thing and get it to shrink a bit. I used a small metal bowl on the inside to help shape the edges. I just rubbed on it through the outside with a handful of wet, soapy bubble wrap. When it was  the right shape (or really, when I was  over it and wanted to go to the next step)  I brought it to the sink and rinsed the water out, alternating between hot and cold water.

21I made a water/vinegar bath with two gallons of water  and 1/2 cup of white vinegar and I soaked the cave for 15 minutes. After that time, I rinsed it out again and squeezed out some of the water in the sink22Then I brought it back to the table and rolled it up with a towel and the PVC pipe to squeeze out even more water.

23I put it on some cooling racks to help dry it out and stuffed it with towels to help keep its shape while drying.

24Once dry I cut the hole to a bigger size. I think the cut edge looks pretty cool because you can see all the layers. Also, I didn't need to felt it like I did earlier because the felt is much tighter and interlocked now, so it holds itself together.

25Here's the finished piece, sitting on top of a piece of cardboard that has a circle drawn on it to show how big the cardboard circle I started with was. Pretty crazy! It shrunk about 8 inches.

26Like with the shelves, I had to use a little bit of cat nip to show him that this new weird blob thing is actually pretty cool and he should check it out.

27It seemed to work.

I hope you all liked this little walk through tutorial thing! I'm okay with how it came out. I don't think I'd try making another one really soon, but I can see myself wanting to try again in a few months or so. It serves its purpose, though, and doesn't look hideous or anything, so I'm happy!

Art, For the Home, Tutorials

DIY Paper-cut Light Box

I recently saw some awesome artwork by these artists Hari and Deepti and I was very inspired to create some of my own. I threw together three tutorials; one is advanced, one is intermediate and one is easy. Check out the video below, or continue on after the "read more" tag, to figure out how to make your own!

A quick note about the lights I used in these light boxes. These things are great; you can cut them to size and they're self adhesive. Perfect for any project requiring a little bit of lighting. If you want to buy some for your own projects here are some affiliate links for the lights, extra connector things and power cords. If you don't feel like buying these things you can probably just use some Christmas lights, but the downside to those is that you'd only have a tiny bit of the lights inside the box, and then you'd have a long tail of lights hanging out of it. Unless you build a big box to accommodate a whole string of lights. Which would be awesome.

Advanced:

Advanced!

 

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

Intermediate:

Intermediate!

 

Click here to download the template for this one.

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

Easy:

Easy

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

Finished!

So there we go! Three different light boxes, three different levels of difficulty. I hope you all enjoyed these things, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and I'm already planning a few more to make!

For the Home, Tutorials

DIY Noren Curtains

14.jpg

I live in a shotgun style home, where we have no hallways and it's  basically just series of rooms, back to back. Some shotgun homes have doors to separate the rooms, but some, like mine, only have doorways. No doors. I've grown accustomed to the openness of being able to see basically all of the rooms if you look through a doorway, but I did also somewhat miss having a bit of separation between each room. My solution to this was to whip up a few sheer noren curtains. So of course, I'm going to be sharing with you this easy sewing project!

suppliesSupplies

01First, you'll need to measure the width of your door and then how long you want the curtains to fall.

002Divide the width by half. Add 1/2 of an inch to each side. Add 4 inches on top and 2 inches on bottom. Cut out these two measurements from your fabric.

03Put the fabric together, right sides together, mark down 8 inches, 1/2 of an inch in. (Note: My measurements are twice as big because after cutting the fabric, I realized I didn't have to finish the outer edges of the curtains because they were the selvage edges. So instead of trimming 1 inch off every piece of fabric (I made 3 all together) I just made the seams twice as large on the inside.

Sew along the line and then fold open.

04Fold 1/4 of an inch and iron that down. Then fold another 1/4 of an inch, iron again and pin. I skipped all of the ironing parts on the first one I  made, which was a huge mistake. For the other two I ironed after each fold and it made the job so much easier. So do as I say, not as I do.

05Sew the seam down along the edge. This will encase the raw edge of the fabric in the seam, making them look nice and neat! Repeat this process on the outer edges of the curtain. Fold 1/4 inch, iron, fold 1/4 inch, iron, pin, sew.

06For the top, fold down 1/4 inch, iron, fold down 2 inches, iron, pin, sew.

07For the bottom, fold down 1/4 inch, iron, fold down 1 inch, iron, pin, sew. Repeat on the other flap.

And you're done!

08Now from here you can either leave them plain or you can decorate! I was already thinking about decorating them, but after I put up this plain one to see how it looked, I decided I was definitely going to decorate them. They just didn't do it for me in their plain state. It probably didn't help that this particular curtain looks horrible because the tension of my sewing machine was off so it puckered the seams really bad.

But anyway, to decoration!

09For this one I drew an ensō circle. It's supposed to "express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create." I thought it would be perfect to put up in one of the doorways to our office/studio/wood shop. 10For this one I just painted some pretty standard bamboo.

11

And for this one I painted the whole curtain, sans a circle in the middle, with a dark greyish blue. After that dried I painted the circle with liquid gold leaf.

And here they are all hung up! 12 13 14

I hope you all enjoyed this project! I'm glad I didn't give up after I hung that first plain one. I almost did. But I think they look so much better after painting on them.

What do you all think?

For the Home, Other, Tutorials

DIY Faux Deer Head

091.jpg

First off I gotta say... Happy New Years! Welcome to 2015! Alright, back to this weeks project. I've always wanted to put up a faux mounted animal head in our house, but I could never find something that would work/was in the price range I wanted. I ended up giving up on finding the faux animal head and I made the flower curtain to go in that spot in my living room.

Well, of course not soon after I ended up finding the perfect head. Or almost perfect. Workable. I found a paper mache deer bust and it was on sale, yes! One of the antlers was broken off, but it was a super easy fix and they gave me an additional discount because it was the last one that they had. Double yes! I came home and got to work, and now I'm going to show you how to make your own!

suppliesSupplies.

01This step is completely optional. I wanted the head to have a bit more detailed, so I used some two part epoxy clay to sculpt in more detail. I also fixed the antler by popping it back in and then hot gluing it in place.

02Here it is all done being sculpted on! Looks pretty crazy right now, but it will make sense after painting.

03While I waited for the clay to cure, I added the hanging hardware. Just find the center of the wooden plaque and attach it there.

04Paint time! Paint the plaque and the animal head. I used white gesso because it has a matte finish which is what I wanted for this guy. I'm also going to use liquid gold leaf for an accent color.

05Once dry, mark out where you want the accent color to go. I did mine about halfway down the antlers.

06Paint time again! After I painted this part, I went back and added a few drip details.

07Use hot glue to attach it to the wooden plaque.

08Since the deer head was paper mache, it wasn't perfectly flat on the bottom, so when I attached it to the plaque there was a huge gap in some parts. If you have this problem, you can simply squeeze in some hot glue and then paint over it with your main color and that will hide the gap!

And then you're ready to hang!

09

Here it is in all it's glory. I took the flower curtain down and put this guy up in its place. I like it so much better than the curtain! What do you guys think? Let me know down below!

Alright, so now it's time for the giveaway winner! Congratulations blog reader Nicole!

Screenshot 2014-12-31 12.42.45

I will be sending you an email today! Make sure you reply as soon as you can because if you don't get back to me within 48 hours I'll unfortunately have to redraw a different winner.

For the Home, Other

Cat Shelves

It's no secret I like to spoil my cat. A while ago I made him a cat tree to give him a space to get away from our (at the time) new puppy. Well now that puppy is a decently big dog and he can reach Gremlin's little cat tree sanctuary, and while Grem normally doesn't mind too much(Hobbes is like a annoying little brother) I still wanted to give him his own space to get away when he wants to. I also wanted to put Grem's food and water bowl up a little higher because Hobbes love that stuff and can still get to it when it's on my dresser. So I made one shelf with recessed food and water bowls and two more simple carpeted shelves. A quick video summary will be below!

01Supplies. And how to cut your wood.

03I did miter joints, so I cut the wood at an angle for the corners.

04Figure out the placement for your food and water bowls on one of the shelves. Measure the size of the lip of the bowl (mine was 1/4 inch) and use that measurement to draw out another, smaller circle in the middle. You want to cut the wood out on that circle so the body of the bowl fits, but the lip doesn't, so the bowl rests nicely inside.

05Cut the circle out.

06Time to assemble! Use wood glue to stick the wood together and use the stapler to tack the wood in place with brads or finishing nails. You're going to attach the 32inch long piece to the 32inch side of the large piece of wood and then a 10inch length of wood on each side. Leave one side bare since it will be resting against the wall.

07Finish the wood according to instructions. I used a dark stain.

08Cut a piece of carpet out that's 32in by 10in. This is leftover remnant carpet I got for the cat tree. I still have so much left over...

09Attach the carpet. I put down some wood glue first before laying the carpet down. I honestly don't know if that even did anything because I followed up with about a million staples, but it made me feel better so I did it. So after you lay the carpet down use your stapler to staple the carpet down. I made sure to use a lot because I figured Gremlin was going to use these things as horizontal scratching posts and I didn't want him to be able to rip the carpet off.

10Here are the finished shelves! You can see the recessed bowls. I'm so happy with how they turned out!

11Now hang up on your designated wall! I really wish we had splurged on nicer looking brackets, but oh well. They're up already so I just gotta deal with it. I can always change them later!

12And here he is enjoying his new cat shelves!

I'm so happy these turned out pretty much exactly like how I pictured them in my head (beside the ugly brackets).

I hope you all enjoy, and I hope my instructions were clear enough! I didn't realize how hard it would be to explain wood working stuff.,. hah!

 

 

For the Home, Other, Tutorials

Flower Curtain Wall Decor

It's finally getting a bit chilly here and finally feeling like fall, so it's put me in the mood for all the autumn things. First things first, some decoration. My original intention was to make a wreath, but after getting my supplies home I changed my mind and decided to make some hanging wall decor instead. Here's how I did it!

Keep reading for a quick video recap below!

 

Supplies:01

02Cut all of the flowers apart.

03With the flowers I bought, the leaves were loose so had I superglue them in place.

05Find the center of a flower, squirt some hot glue in the middle and stick the end of a stem into it. Hold until the glue is hardened.

06Repeat until the strand of flowers is as long as you want. I made mine four flowers long. Repeat to make as many segments as you need for your branch size. I made nine.

07Tie a length of string onto the stick and then to the head of the top flower of one of the segments.

08Repeat until you've attached all of your segments. I tied mine about three to four inches apart.

09Here it is over my tv!

10My branch was pretty lightweight and adding the flowers didn't add much weight to it so I was able to just hammer two nails in the wall and rest the branch on those.

11If your branch is too heavy for that method, you could tie a piece of twine or yarn on each end of the branch and hang from a single nail like in the image above.

Hope you all enjoyed this project! I love it. I have a feeling like this piece is going to stay up on the wall for a while!

For the Home, Other

First Real Reupholster Project

I've always kind of toyed with faux-upholstery because I've been too intimidated to try a real project.

I was always scared that I would end up taking the fabric off of the chair or couch and then immediately become overwhelmed and then push the torn apart furniture to the corner of the room and avoid it for weeks or months while I try to regain enough courage to attempt it again.

I ended up finding this awesome tufted wing back recliner chair at my local thrift store, and before I even had figured out a way to get it home (no way it would fit in my little sedan) I had already bought it. I mean, I couldn't pass it up. A recliner chair that didn't look like and ugly lump? Of course I wasn't going to let it go! If I had to carry it back home I would have. Thankfully I was able to have a friend to come with a truck. Which is great because I also nabbed a great credenza that was half off... but I digress. When I bought it I knew I was going to have to reupholster it. It was covered in a blue pleather/vinyl type fabric that had a strange/gross thin film of... something over all of the chair. It was pretty bad. Since I wasn't going to be able to re-cover it right away, I ended up just scrubbing at it with a bunch of cleaners to get as much of the film off as I could.

399299_10103433185306000_1860770004_nI tried to find a picture of it before I started the project, but this is the only one I could find. This is it in my living room.

SAMSUNG CSC

Here I'm about to start disassembling the chair. Nerve racking!

SAMSUNG CSCHere I was thinking, "Ok, this isn't too bad..."

SAMSUNG CSCSome of the scrap from the chair. I should mention that this process was disgusting. the film that covered the whole chair had accumulated in each fold and crevice of this thing. My husband and I came to the conclusion that perhaps this chair was in a smokers home or something.

SAMSUNG CSCI carefully took each piece off. I wanted to make sure I could lay them out onto the new fabric to use them as patterns. At this point, even though it as pretty gross dealing with the nasty existing fabric, it was extremely satisfying to take the chair apart. I was having a lot more fun than I thought I would.

SAMSUNG CSCAnd then suddenly there was no more fabric for me to rip off anymore. And the reality that I was going to have to cut new pieces and stretch, tuft, sew, etc. them onto this naked chair started to sink in. And then the urge to slowly push it into the corner to let "future Rachel" deal with it started to bubble up. Thankfully, I was able to push that feeling back down and soldier on.

SAMSUNG CSCThere we go! Looking better already! Almost done! Not. At this point I was really panicking--was I really going to be able to do this? Sure I tufted that headboard before, but this felt very different for some reason.

SAMSUNG CSCOk, first tuft... not that bad. For the buttons I bought some button making kits and made a few with the new fabric.

SAMSUNG CSCOkay, okay, this is looking so much better. I was feeling better at this point.

SAMSUNG CSCAnd here I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. I'm really doing it! And it's actually looking decent! This is actually pretty fun!" And then I remembered I had to sew up some arms lined with piping.

SAMSUNG CSCWith the previous pattern pieces I knew that I had some leeway as long as I cut more fabric than the previous pieces. Since most of this project involved stretching a bit of fabric on the chair and stapling it down, as long as I had enough fabric to staple I was fine. I could then just trim off any excess. I didn't have that luxury with the arms. Since I had to sew them to match the wing back shape I had to be very precise when transferring the pattern. It took a few fittings and adjustments, but I finally ended up getting them to work!

SAMSUNG CSCOh man, and here it is, all finished(well almost)! This fabric is so much nicer than that crappy sticky gross vinyl that was on it originally. It's so soft and it makes the chair so comfortable.

SAMSUNG CSC

Here it is reclined.

SAMSUNG CSC

And here's some fancy close up shots.

SAMSUNG CSCThe arm. Technically this chair is unfinished because I haven't put in the upholstery tacks yet. I have them and they're ready to be hammered in place, but I'm just being lazy about it.

1467401_10103862891261820_1812994132_n

And here it is in the room after re-covering it. As of right now, it's my favorite chair. It's so comfortable even in its normal state, it's a huge plus that it also reclines as well.

 

I hope you all enjoyed seeing me struggle through my first real reupholstery project. I didn't really know what I was doing, I was winging it a lot and probably did a lot of stuff wrong, but it looks good so that's all I can ask for!

 

 

For the Home, Kitchen, Tutorials

Hanging Plate Wall Decor

On my last trip to the thrift store, I found a great set of plates with botanical drawings of spices and herbs on them and I instantly knew I had to hang them up in my house. I love cooking and food  and, even though I'm not great at it, I love gardening and plants, so these plates are kind of  a nice mixture of the two. Like last week, I decided to make a video of this tutorial as well. Photo recap of the video will follow!

Supplies:01Note: paperclips and safety pins are listed as items you can use as the hanger for the plate, however I made my own out of wire, so that's why there are also pliers, wire cutters and wire pictured in the photo.

02 Shape the wire into the hanger. Basically making it into a curly, pretty upside-down letter V. That's all. Nothing more.

03Since my plates had a design that required them to be situated a certain way, I eyeballed it and marked on the back where I wanted to put the hangers.

04 Mix epoxy into disposable container. I used an old medicine measuring cup. If you're doing more than a few plates, like me,  you'll have to make a few small batches of the epoxy because it sets very fast.

05 Place hangers where you marked earlier and apply epoxy to the curled ends. Let cure for 24 hours(or per instructions).

plates Hang them up and enjoy!

For the Home, Other

Homemade Cat Tree

feature21.jpg

Oh hey, it's been a while. I made this a while ago, but surprise surprise, I'm just now getting around to posting it. :) I've been wanting to make a cat tree for a while but I had been very wishy washy about actually getting off my butt and doing it. However, after I saw a picture of one made with tree branches that looked super cool, I finally got the fire under my butt to go and make one(and to force the fiance to help!)

SAMSUNG CSC

Gremlin is spoiled.

CTH0007 Deluxe Seedling small

This one is the tree that inspired me. I loved that it was made to look like an actual tree. However, it cost like $700. So of course immediately i thought, "Psh, I can make that." And you get to see just how I did.

IMG_20130717_125119

I was lucky enough to get inspired right after they cleared the empty lot next to my house, so there were plenty of decent sized tree branches for me to sort through. Here are the winners.

IMG_20130719_132305

Then I had to trim the branches to size. I love my pull saw!

IMG_20130720_154727

Here are all the pieces ready to be put together. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of me making the carpeted components. Basically I made a base and a platform out of plywood and covered it with carpet. (Remnant carpet, ftw!) For the half cylinder platform I took a concrete tube mold, cut it to size and then in half. I hot glued the halves together to help make it stronger and then glued the carpet on.

IMG_20130720_155714

Here's where my fiance had to step in to help. After eyeballing where I wanted the main branch to be, I carefully tipped the branch and base over so he could drill through the base and into the branch from the bottom. We ended up screwing in a pretty decently sized screw to hold it in place and then reinforced it with smaller (but still pretty substantial) screws. My cat is a big boy.IMG_20130720_165030

And just a few screws later!

But really, we didn't get any pictures of us assembling the rest of it sadly. This part was all pretty much just trial and error. We'd place something and see how the other components would fit in and we adjusted the pieces until it was to our liking. Basically we just attached the shorter stumpy branch onto the base just like the first one and then screwed the platform onto it and into the tall branch. The carpet hides the copious amounts of screws we used to keep that thing in place.

I positioned the thin branch on the platform so that it helped support the top platform and we screwed all those in too. I then took the drill and drilled a few random holes into the branches and stuck some fake leaf branches in them. Initially I was going to hot glue them in place, but the drill bit I used made a hole that they fit so snugly into that I didn't feel the need for the glue. If Gremlin ends up pulling any of them out then I can just glue them back in later.

IMG_20130720_165431

I wrapped the short stubby branch with sisal for a nice scratching area. Which he has yet to touch even still. IMG_20130720_170656

So since my cat is a big burly man-cat, I decided to make his tree pretty with flowers. I hot glued those suckers on and prayed he wouldn't see them as toys and rip them off. (Which is totally what happened. Oh cats.)

IMG_20130720_171531And here it is finished! Complete with the I'm-too-excited-about-how-this-turned-out-and-I'm-going-to-take-a-picture-before-I-even-clean-up mess everywhere.

IMG_20130720_172750

The tree fit perfectly nestled into the corner of our bedroom. Later, I ended up fluffing out the leaves so they didn't look so... flat. IMG_20130720_173425

Gremlin is unimpressed.

IMG_20130720_180128

And then a short while later I passed by and saw this! I think he likes it!IMG_20130720_210914He enjoys the top too :)

It took about 2 to 3 days of working on it off and on, it's about 5 feet tall and it cost under $100 to make. I love it!

 

Bedroom, For the Home

Tufted Headboard from an Ugly Couch

So you probably remember my post about painting my loveseat and I mentioned how my plan was to reupholster the bigger couch. Well, I sort of halfway did that. While I was trying to decide what kind of fabric to cover it with, we were storing it in the bedroom because we didn't have any other space for it. I started to think about how even after I did that project, where would I put the finished piece? The apartment could really only comfortably have one six foot couch in it and I didn't feel like getting rid of the couch I so painstakingly recovered a few months ago. That's when this new idea popped in my head. This whole time we've been in this apartment I knew I wanted to make myself a tufted headboard and after having the couch in our bedroom lined up perfectly with our bed for a while it finally clicked in my head to covert the couch into a headboard. Here's a photo of the couches I found at Goodwill. The one on the right is the one I used for this project. I hated that fabric, so it had to go.

I slowly started taking the fabric off the couch, with help from my cat Gremlin.

I only really bothered to remove the fabric on the backrest and arms of the couch. Why bother removing the fabric from the bottom when it was just going to end up in the dumpster?  I also saved the buttons to reuse them for this project.

After exposing the wood, I roughly marked where I wanted to cut the couch.

Action shot with my new favorite tool, a Japanese style pull saw.

Here's the couch, now officially in two pieces. I ended up salvaging the three front legs, some of the foam and some straight pieces of wood from the bottom part of the couch. You never know when you'll need random scrap pieces of wood.

Here are the buttons I salvaged. I just painted them with two coats of acrylic gold paint.

I used some of the extra foam from the other side of the couch to fill in some of the spaces and to cover the exposed wood.

The fabric I used ended up being some fabric I got at a thrift store market thing down the road from me. I forget the exact price I paid for it, but it was obscenely cheap. Like about $5 for a bolt that had a little more than 8 yards of upholstery fabric on it kind of cheap.

My first tufting project. It started off kind of difficult, but I got the hang of it after a while.

Done with the tufting and the fabric is all stapled down. Now it's time for the side pieces.

I used the old fabric side pieces to create a pattern, but since halfway down the sides there would normally be arms of the couch, there was no more of the old fabric to make a pattern from so I had to do some drapery work to figure out how exactly to cover the rest of the sides. I also recovered the old piping from the side pieces with the fabric I was using. Conveniently for me, whoever made the couch used way more piping than they needed originally for the side pieces and it actually ended up being the perfect amount of piping for the new size of the sides.

And here it is finished in my messy living room!

Here it is in the room! Now I definitely need to buy some new sheets. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out and even though this isn't technically a tutorial post, I hope it was educational for you guys! :)

 

For the Home, Other

Painted Couch

Well, it happened. I joined the ranks of the crazy people who looked at their couch and thought, "I should paint that." I had seen a few examples of people painting their couches online, and after reading all of them, I decided I would just forgo the textile medium and just use latex paint. My reasoning was that latex paint was already very flexible, so I wouldn't need the medium for that. Also people use the medium to heat set the fabric, but from what I know about that stuff, it's to set the paint so it doesn't wash out in the washing machine. And I'm not throwing my couch into the washing machine any time soon. This whole thing happened when I went to Goodwill to look for a coffee table or dresser. So of course I found an awesome love seat and couch that I couldn't just leave there. The only bad things about them were the grandma floral fabric and broken springs. Both easily fixable. I made sure we would be able to get them home somehow (we have a small sedan... not really fit for transporting a love seat and a couch) and then bought those suckers. Here's a breakdown of this project:

Love seat and couch - $115

Uhaul(we need a truck...) - $55

Oops paint (grey, eggshell finish) - $5

 Total - $175

Really, I only painted the love seat, so I didn't know if I should include the couch in the prices and everything, but I did anyway. If you wanted to split up the couch cost and Uhaul cost between both couches, it would be around $90 for this love seat project. Anyway, here's a picture of these guys at Goodwill:

I didn't get any other decent before pictures of the love seat unfortunately because I was so excited about ripping the bottom out to fix the springs. I didn't get any pictures of that process, but it was pretty easy. I removed the legs and the fabric on the bottom and it revealed that one of the serpentine springs had come loose. Easy fix. I just used some pliers to work it back into place. I'll try to get some pictures of the big couch when I work on it so you guys can see what I'm talking about.

I had planned to paint the legs so when I had taken them off to fix the springs, I slapped a few coats of some white spray paint that I had laying around. I ended up leaving the legs off the couch for the entirety of the project so I didn't have to worry about taping them off.

Here is everything before I started painting. I got some "oops" paint from Lowe's for just $5. It was almost $20 off. Super awesome deal, it was in the color I wanted, the finish I wanted and was the only miss-mixed paint that they had at that moment. It was meant to be.

I knew I had to take it slow... I wanted to err on the side of more layers rather than less. Patience is rewarded. If I had just tried to slap it all on in one coat, it would end up blotchy and uneven. What I ended up doing was three layers. Layer one was about half water and half paint. Layer two was about 1/4 water and 3/4 paint and the last was only paint. This process worked out well for me. Of course, I cleaned the crap out of this thing before painting. It took a while because the couch has deep tufts and a lot of wrinkles and folds that I made sure to really get in to.

First things first, I took a small brush and tackled the tufting. I made sure I pulled each fold open and painted in there too. I didn't want people to sit on the couch, only for the folds to shift and expose flowers underneath the grey.

After getting in to the tufting and folds, I painted one layer over the whole couch. For the broad areas of the couch, I used a foam roller.

Day one, layer one. You can still see the colors from the fabric showing through.

Day two, layer two. Getting better. The fabric isn't showing through -as- much, but the paint is also pretty blotchy.

Day three, layer three. Pretty much right after painting. The wet paint is slightly lighter than what it ended up drying to. I waited a day to make sure the paint was completely dry, and then reattached the legs.

And here she is! I love how it turned out. It has a neat texture now. It's slightly shiny and at certain angles you can see the flower pattern of the  fabric. Not the colors, mind you, but the way the fabric was woven.

A lot of people question whether or not painting a couch is a feasible option because they think the fabric will get "crunchy." I knew this was a possibility, but I figured that since I wanted to change the fabric anyway I could just try this painting thing out and if it didn't work I could just reupholster it, especially since the paint I got was so cheap. As of right now, the couch is kind of "crunchy" but it's been getting better as it's being used, which I expected to happen. So for the foreseeable future, this thing is staying painted.

All in all, it was a neat project that I saw somewhere and knew I had to try for myself. The original plan was to paint both couches, but I've recently decided that I wanted to try my hand at reupholstering the big couch. I thought it would be a neat dichotomy to take the matching couches and show an example of the painted couch, and an example of a reupholstered couch.

I hope you all enjoyed my painted couch journey!

 

For the Home, Other, Tutorials

Letter Pillows

I've been itching for some new pillows for my awesome couch, and I ended up coming up with the simple idea of just using my boyfriend and my initials. And an ampersand. Here's how they turned out:

And I also took some progress shots for you all and will walk you through how to make these suckers.

Draw your letters out on paper, cut them out and arrange them onto a piece of fleece or felt. You want to use a fabric that won't fray on the edges. I used some leftover fleece i found in my fabric stash.

Realize that if you're going to trace them out, you want the outline marks to be on the back side of the letter so it won't show. Flip the letters over and rearrange them again.

Cut them out! (I added the little dot for the 'j' in the middle of the letters, there.)

Admire your beautiful letters.

Align your letter in the middle of your pillow fabric and pin it down. (I made my pillows out of 16 by 16 inch canvas fabric. You can use whatever you want. I just ended up using whatever plain colored fabric I had.)

Sew it up! For added interest, use a nice contrasting colored thread. I used a lime green thread.

Admire your beautiful sewing skills. Put the right sides of your pillow together and sew up the edges leaving a few inches open. Flip it right side out, stuff it, sew it closed and you're done! Yay, look at your pillows!

Here are mine arranged on my couch. I love them!

For the Home, Other

Making an Ugly Sofa Beautiful

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I uprooted and moved one state over.  It was fairly short notice, so we just packed as much as we could into an SUV and drove to our new apartment. The only "furniture" we could fit in the car was a fold up table, tiny folding chairs and a blow up mattress. After living like this for a few days, I was finally able to go out to find a sofa. I ended up finding this nice camel back sofa with lion feet legs.

Isn't it beautiful?! Not. It had the ugliest slip cover, but a quick glance at the underlying fabric and I fell in love.

This is the story of how this ugly sofa turned into a beautiful piece of furniture.

I really wanted a darker colored sofa, but I figured I could paint it a la this tutorial and still have the pattern of the fabric show though. Unfortunately, when I got the couch home and removed the slip cover completely, there were a few problems.

The cushion was only covered by the fabric from the ugly picnic slip cover fabric. Yuck. While I brainstormed about what I could do, I just wrapped up the foam with an extra bed sheet cover. You probably noticed that the cushion looks bigger here than in the first picture, and that is true! I was able to score 4 pieces of high density upholstery foam for just $40. I was so excited. I ended up using two pieces on the couch and I'm going to use the other pieces to reupholster a little chaise lounge I got. But that will be a different post.

But back to updating the sofa - the first thing I thought I could do was to stick with the original plan and paint the couch. I figured I could paint it and then buy enough (almost) matching fabric to make a new cover for the cushion. Sadly this couldn't happen because I noticed small tears in the fabric that would eventually tear more and more as we used it. That must have been why they slip covered it in the first place.

The second thing I thought I'd try was to attempt to dye the slip cover black. I felt as though that was the only color that could cover the ugliness of it or at least tone it down so the plaid wasn't too bad (a.k.a. too noticeable). After ordering a bunch of dye only to accidently lose half of it down the drain before I even started dyeing the fabric and then having the fabric not take any of the color (yay for rushing things and not figuring out what kind of fabric it was) I decided to try a different tactic.

I found this tutorial and thought that this is the one that I'll do and I will make it work no matter what. I ordered quite a lot of this dark purple upholstery fabric and got to work.

I cut up the slip cover to make a rough pattern for the pieces and to take out the piping cording so I could remake piping in the new fabric. This picture shows after I sewed on the arm pieces.

And here it is almost done! It stayed like this for a while because, even though it was only a few straight lines I had to sew for the cushion, I kept psyching myself out. I only had enough fabric to attempt this once, and I was sure I would mess it up somehow. Eventually I decided to get the cushion done, so I glued the foam together so it would appear to be just one big piece of foam, I crossed my fingers and sewed up a huge rectangle. Thank. God. It fit. I had to enlist the help of the boyfriend to get the cover on, as the cushion is a foot taller than me, but we crammed it in there and it ended up being a perfect fit.

And here it is complete (or almost... I'm really tempted to paint the legs white)! I love it so much! I wish I had just skipped the whole dyeing debacle and went straight to this, but it all worked out in the end.

Bedroom, For the Home, Kitchen

Drawing on mugs is fun!

So this post today is for two reasons.  First and foremost, I made some kickin' rad one of a kind mugs.  I got this idea thanks to craftster, roboarsonist.  She used a ceramic paint pen by Pebeo called Porcelaine 150 and used it to draw some designs on a few mugs.  Once I saw that I knew I had to try it.  I went to Michaels and grabbed myself one pen and then to Goodwill to grab up some mugs and then went to town on them.  Well, actually only two of them so far... and here they are!

I really like doing this, although I think next time I'll get the actual paint instead of the paint pen.. The pen kept getting clogged and it was harder to get a nice consistent line with it.  I'll post more about the paint after I get myself some.

So the second thing this post is about is that I finally started an Etsy store.  It's kind of baren right now because I've been busy with school and stuff, but stuff will slowly trickle in as I have spare time to make stuff.  I'm going to add these two mugs on it as well. :)

Here's a link to my little store:

chezlin.etsy.com

UPDATE: I moved my store from Etsy over to Storenvy! The new store is located at: http://chezlin.storenvy.com/

I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I thought it was time to show you all!

For the Home, Other

Oldie but Goldie: Boo table

When I was a freshman in college, my mom bought me a table to somehow fit into my tiny dorm room.. It was ugly and white, and my roommate and I knew we had to do something to make it fit into our room better. See, we were both artsy people so a plain white table in our colorful room would not do. My roomate brought a carpet one day and after situating the table on top of it, we knew what we had to do to the table. Here's a blurry picture of what we did:

(Thats my messy ass side of the room) We used electrical tape around the side of the table so it'd be black instead of that weird brown.. it made it look more finished.

But it doesn't end there!

I went home for the summer and the table came with me. My roommate and I decided to room together again that next year, with the addition of our next door dorm neighbor, and the apartments we chose had outdoor patios so I got super excited and decided to convert the table into a nice patio table fit for college students.

Here's my sketch:

It's Boo! I used precut glass tile things from Hobby Lobby for Boo, and I used broken mirror pieces for the area around him. (They from our dorm... they weren't originally in the room, we brought these mirrors... no destruction of their property, I promise!)

Here's an in progress shot:

My older sister and I working on the table.

Before grout and inside.

After grout and outside.

So, after I made this, we went up to Austin to get our keys for the apartment and discovered that our particular apartment didn't come with a closed off patio.. we just had a kind-of-big-but-not-really area at our front door.. which I didn't feel comfortable leaving my table out at. So the tables ultimate destination that year was my sisters boyfriends apartment in his nice closed off patio. And now the table is sitting outside of my room with a nice fake glass bonsai tree sitting on top of it. I can't wait for the day that I can actually use it as an outdoor table!

Bedroom, For the Home

Baby quilts galore!

Well actually, not galore.. because there's only two, but you get the idea!  When two of my friends told me they were pregnant, after the initial shock wore away, I got excited to make them baby quilts.  I was hoping that at least one of them would have a girl, so I could make a cute girls quilt, but I had no such luck for they were both having boys.  That didn't stop me from making two cute quilts though!

Here's the first one:

 

My little sister is holding it up here.

All ready to give away!

 

 

Here's the second one:

The colors are a little off here.

Close up shot of it folded up.

All ready to go!  I think this one shows the true colors the best.

 

As you can see, they're not perfect, but they're good enough for me!  These were the first quilts I've ever done.. and although it's kind of frustrating and time consuming (even when I did these super easy ones!) I think I'm hooked.  I want to make a quilt for my bed but I'm kind of scared I'll never finish it, haha.

 

For the Home, Other

ZOMBIES, WATCH OUT!

I made this for the contest over at Craftster for this month. Basically you buy anything at the dollar store, but it has to cost 10 bucks or less. There have been some amazing entries so far, so hopefully I do alright! Here's my entry:

For more pictures and a somewhat explanation/rambling, check out my post on Craftster, here. Make sure to check out the other entries as well, they're all great!