Scrappy Post: Snow Flakes!

Ok, I have to admit. I love snow pages!  Snowflakes are just as much fun on scrapbook pages as they are in real life.  Maybe it's because I grew up in Louisiana and lived there exclusively until 4 years ago when we were transferred to the midwest. Obviously, I have been snowflake deprived for most of my life. ;)

Here is the color inspiration for my challenge at GCD Studios this month.  Yummy looking right?

Here is the page I created with snowflakes and that lovely color inspiration!

A few fun things to note:

I created the journaling tag from the back of one of the Great Outdoors packaging.  I just couldn't resist using that mountain scene.

I painted one of the chipboard boarders from GCD Studios and wrapped it in red and white baker's twine to bring in the red from the isnpiration.

I created the snowflakes to mimic the felt letters in the title.

I used the Slice to cut out the snowflakes and then applied glue with a glue pad and sprinkled it with Soft Flock fibers.  Once it was dry I set it with Super Seal.  I love that stuff. It's a great way to make sure glitter and the like stay where you put it and not all over your scrapbook page.

A few close ups.

I've been meaning to share this little tip from my whole layout design process.  I confess, I am a consummate paper pusher, moving all the pieces around on a page until I get every piece exactly where I want it before I glue any piece down.  I found that occasionally, I forgot exacly where a little piece was before I took it apart and found that very frustrating. I now keep my phone handy to snap a quick photo of the layout before I take it apart to glue it and in this case, I decided to mist the cardstock in background.

Here's another look.

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios Great Outdoors, Homespun Chic, Ella Blue
Chipboard: GCD Studios, Letters: American Crafts, Ribbon: Love Elsie, Pebbles: Prima

Wishing you snowy, fun filled days this winter!

Slightly coastal tree

As the holidays approached, the one thing I was most looking forward to decorating this year was this little silver Christmas tree.

I picked it up at the end of season sale at Wal-Mart.  I never opened the box until a week or so ago.  From the photo on the box, I assumed it was a cute little retro tensil tree. Well, to my surprise it is quite the disco ball, psychedelic number.  Obviously I've dolled her up to hide her true tendencies. :)

Now onto the ornaments.  Once it was decided that the tree was going in the dinning room I thought it would be fun to have a few coastal themed ornaments.  I had this crazy idea in my head that it was going to be easy to find ornaments that were kind of coastal at craft stores and the like,  But apparently I forgot I live in the mid-west and coastal trees aren't the rage here.

So of course I had to make some of my own.  I started with these glass balls, well they aren't really balls. they are kind of flat.  I was going to swirl the inside of them with Duck Egg Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to match the dresser, but then decided because they were more flat than round, I could glue something to the outside.  Enter the infamous junk drawer, where I had a stash of sand dollars Miles brought home from a trip to the beach before we moved here. 

I simply used Gorilla glue to adhere the sand dollar onto the ornament. I also poured sand and small shells from this summer's trip into them. (And see, up-close, the tree is quite psychedelic.)

I did end up using the Chalk paint to cover chipboard birds from GCD Studios that I glittered. 

The other especially beautiful ornaments on the tree are antiques from my mother-in-law.  I'm happy they have a safer spot on this little tree.

Linking this up to Centsational Girl's Holiday Craft Link Party and

Breaking the room down, corner hutch

Today, I'm sharing the before and after of the corner hutch from the dinning room reveal.  It's a unique, handmade find from Craig's List I got for $60.  It's not perfect, but as I was painting it I began to imagine that someone handy guy built this for some one he loved. That made me smile and love it even more.

Here's the before, a lovely iPhone shot. :)

And after lots of Duck Egg Blue and Old White here's what it looked like at Thanksgiving.

Here's what it looks like now.  I love that it's the perfect spot to display our manger scene and creche this Christmas. Every year, I've never felt like I've had the best place to put this. I do now.

I kept the original hardware on the bottom.  For the upper cabinets, I picked up some knobs at Hobby Lobby and painted them Old White.  I kind of like that the hardware is not the same.  I just didn't feel like the top hardware really worked on the glass doors.

I love having a cabinet to display some of my china.  I feel very lucky I found this piece that fits so perfectly in the space at such a great price!

Breaking it down, curtains on the cheap

The inspiration for the curtains in the dinning room reveal I shared yesterday came from this lovely image.

Via Centsational Girl

After a little research, I found that this patterned fabric also comes in other colors, namely gold.  I thought it was so beautiful and hip and the perfect fabric addition to the new dinning room.  The price tag for this perfect fabric though, not so perfect. I did the math and the fabric for two 94" panels would be around $180. Ouch! While beautiful, I couldn't swing that price tag.

I remembered seeing ready-made curtains that had been stenciled with great designs, but I couldn't find the right length inexpensively and locally.  So I decided to use the cheapest, long length of fabric popular with blogging DIYers- drop cloths!

I copied the style of curtains I had hanging here previously, a back tab panel.  I used strips of leftover drop cloth material to sew on the tabs, spaced almost exactly like the old panels.

I lined them with white twin flat sheets, thanks to a fabulous tip by Miss Mustard Seed.  Flat sheets can be purchased at Wal-Mart for only $5.00 a piece!

The drop cloths were purchased at a newly opened Big Lots for $10 a piece.  I believe the size I used was 4 x 10. Unlike the wider size, there are no seams in the middle and fairly nice edges.  I even had plenty of extra material at the bottom to use for other projects.

I could have bleached them, but after hearing the horror stories from my friend Dana who ended up with blotchy unbleached spots, I decided against that idea. (An important side note here, Dana says the Wal-Mart drop cloths are inferior quality to the Big Lots versions.  Just today, she had to have a plumber come and dig out all the strings that were stuck in her washing machine drain! Yucky and expensive.)

I have also had good luck with ones from Home Depot.  I used those for outdoor curtains on our pergola this summer and they have held up well, even after several washings.

I ordered the stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils. They are a little expensive in my opinion, but the quality really warrants the price.  I could justify the cost as well because I plan on using the stencil again in the powder room just off the kitchen.

 

This is how I secured the drop cloth to the floor and covered the floor with a plastic drop cloth to protect the floor.  It worked great.  Using the stencil was very easy and quite forgiving actually. I used a small, sponge roller (the ones for trim and cabinets) and latex paint. I purchased one of the "quarts to go" from Sherwin Williams for about $7 and have nearly the whole quart of paint left.  (Any great ideas on what to do with that left over paint?)

You'll notice that I ended up using a happy green color instead of the gold.  I pulled that color from the fabric I used to recover the chairs.

There is also a hint of this green in decorative paper I matted and framed on the opposite wall. This is why good design is an evolutionary process. The gold, or even a blue green, I had considered would have been boring.

Here are the curtains again in the room.

It is with my sincerest gratitude that I dedicate this post to my dear friend Dana.  She is constantly fielding my "what if" questions and politely listens to all my "grand" ideas. This room would not be what it is today with out her support and encouragement. She's the best!

Dinning Room Reveal

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to finally make the promised reveal.  I think I mentioned the dinning room enough times recently without actually sharing it, don't you think?!

Let's start with the obligatory before. It was really hard for me to find a photo of the room without people sitting around it for a meal. :)

This photo was taken soon after we moved in and basically, besides the addition of brown silk curtains this is how it stayed for several years.

When I first considered updating the look in our house, my friend and decorator, Sherry came for a consultation and we switched the brown rug above for the gold one from the living room.  And while it made the room brighter, these dark brown curtains didn't seem to work anymore.

After I acquired this buffet and these lamps at an auction, which I talked about here the wheels were in motion to do some real decorating in this room. The room had been in serious need of more furniture.

Here is the room set for Thanksgiving dessert, my self-imposed decorating deadline, on a very rainy day. (Thank goodness for a flash you can bounce off the ceiling.)

And now decked out for Christmas, on a brighter day.

Over the next few blog posts this week, I'll break down some of the things I created on a budget for the room, including the curtains and the paintings.

I will share a little about this corner hutch. It was a lucky, inexpensive find on Craig's List.  I got if for $60 and painted it to match the buffet. I now have a place to display our wedding china, which just happens to have a shell pattern on it!

Of course the colors are a lovely mauve and grey from the early 90's, but that's okay. I didn't even remember this when I stumbled into a "beachy" theme by using the decorative paper I found in my studio and framed it for the top of the buffet.

The only thing left to do with this room is to refinish the dining table top and paint the bottom half Annie Sloan Chalk paint, Old White like the chairs.  That will have to wait for the spring.  My garage is too cold now for painting and refinishing. :(

I love that it is so fresh and bright.  It's like a ray of sunshine and just a little whiff of the beach when you enter the house. Who cares if I live in the middle of Missouri, right?

Linking up to










Be sure to check out later posts for more details.