Archive for January, 2012
Is It Bad Luck Not To Say Thanks?
**Psst- We know most Fridays we just post once, but every month on sponsor shout out days we double up. So Sherry will be back in a few hours with a quick tiling + furniture rearranging update.
It’s time for our usual monthly show of gratitude to our sponsors. You know, the people who make the other 30+ posts possible… and generally keep us away from black cats and stop us from walking under ladders (okay, not really the last part). But since today – Friday the 13th – is a sinister day cast in the shadow of superstition for some people, we tried to find some joy in the darkness by highlighting a few black, white, and grey items from our sponsors (none of which have been gifted to us – here’s our no-swag policy). And if you need some luck today, check out of some of the special discounts bulleted at the bottom. Happy Friday the 13th everyone!
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- Bien Living Design‘s Long Distance Design service – especially the after pics.
- Natural and organic goodies from Limegreen, made by a country girl in Brooklyn.
- Personalizing just about anything over at Initial Presents, like this ikat pillow.
- Everything from The Tile Shop that’s getting us through backsplash-fest 2012.
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- All of the quatrefoil-y goodness happening over at Shades of Light these days.
- Speaking of quatrefoil, Z Gallerie‘s new 2012 stuff also has it going on.
- WallQuotes‘ simple kitchen decals (are you surprised we have kitchens on the brain?)
- Hoards of inspiration on Hometalk‘s Pinterest page. Oh look, another kitchen.
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- “Estelle” from Jenna Lou Designs, which had Sherry in love at first sight.
- Dot Coms For Moms‘ DIY section, which includes a round up of cool free printables.
- Old photos from Ruby Lane (they’d make for an awesome wall collage).
- This geek-tastic retro calculator iPhone cover from House 8810.
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- These stacking rivet rings from Heart & Stone Jewelry which could be our book motto.
- Beautiful custom wedding suites from Smock Paper for those getting hitched in ’12.
- Royal Design Studio‘s zebra stencils, which have us in the mood for safari.
- Chic Shelf Paper‘s bold animal pattern (speaking of safari…) – so graphic and fun.
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- Flashcard style + chic silhouettes + great nursery art = Sarah + Abraham.
- This guy (well, pillow) from Jilly’s Happy Home (he just looks fun to have around).
- Liberty Hardware‘s good lookin’ Delta Porter Bath Collection.
- Lasting Greatness from FLOR (hah, that’s actually the name of the pattern).
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- This (glue-less!) paper plane wallpaper from Trendy Peas (Sherry audibly gasped).
- Le Papier Studio customizable silhouette mugs from their Valentine’s Day collection.
- Amen, A Vintage Poster. Amen.
- And for kicks here’s Burger, who looks like this in the morning (yup, he’s laying on a pillow, belly up with his lower half under the covers)
And now for those DISCOUNTS:
- Shades of Light: 10% off using code YHL0811
- WallQuotes.com: 15% off with the code YHL15
- The Tile Shop: 10% off when you use the code YHL10
- Heart & Stone Jewelry: 10% off your purchase with the code YHL10
- Royal Design Studio: 10% off stencils with code YHL10
- Jilly’s Happy Home: 10% off custom orders using code YHL
- Le Papier Studio: 10% off with the code YHL10 (thru Jan 21st)
- Initial Presents: 10% off your first order with the code YHL10
- Jenna Lou Design: 10% off with the code YHL10
Reader Redesign: A Monstrous Duvet
Okay, okay – so we’re taking a breather from our usual kitchen-related reader redesigns to share a super cool project on a smaller scale. Well, if you call a project that involves 120 hand-drawn monsters a “small” undertaking. Now I’ve got your curiosity piqued, eh? I’ll let Jen explain:
My son Daniel is a prolific artist and I wanted to showcase some of his sketches and decided that I would do so on a duvet cover. He designs his own Pokemon, complete wtih names, types, and evolutions and he chose those for the project. Here are his design sheets:
I photographed each chosen design. Then in Photoshop I erased all extra marks around the edge, used the Hue / Saturation tool to effectively bleach out all colour, converted it to grayscale and increased brightness and contrast to get a nice, pure black & white image to trace. Then I resized each chosen character to fit on a sheet of paper and printed them out.
I chose the first image to trace, put it on a piece of cardboard and slid it into the top left corner of the duvet cover. Then I began tracing it with the fabric marker.
This is after about four and half hours of tracing:
Preparing the images took around 2-3 hours (I didn’t take note of the time) and the actual tracing took around 8 hours. I didn’t do it all in one go but worked on it as and when I had time, packing it away in between tracing sessions. And here is the final product, which I am so happy about – and thankfully Daniel likes it too! – Jen
Now c’mon, how cool is that? Daniel not only gets to sleep among his (very inventive!) creations every night, but also gets this daily reminder of how dedicated his mom is to celebrating his imagination. You can check out Jen’s blog for more pics and info on the process, like whether or not it survived the wash (spoiler alert: it did!). Maybe we’ll make Clara one of these someday. And even if kid doodles aren’t your design of choice, I can see this method working to transfer a large handwritten love letter or something. So cool.
Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.
Another Post That John Wanted Me To Name Stool Boom
Here’s why John likes to name things Stool Boom. Anyway, a while back I redid a stool that wasn’t ours. It just showed up in the mail and I spruced it up. More on the mysterious mail thing in a minute. First here’s how I got ‘er done. This is a terrible before shot, but picture an old beat up periwinkle blue stool with nails and holes and a rotting wood top:
The first thing I did was get all the old nails out with the back of a hammer:
Then I primed it and painted it a rich navy color (I just grabbed a $3 test pot of paint in Benjamin Moore’s Santa Monica Blue). Ignore the crazy-bright blue color going on in this picture – it’s a very strange camera trick. In real life = navy. Anyway, after my two coats of paint were dry, I dug up some extra loft batting (originally from JoAnn) that I already had and some fabric that I had around as well. Why? Because I’m cheap. And it’s not my stool. Haha. If you’re keeping track, so far, I had sunk $3 into someone else’s stool.
Then I got fancy and picked up two $1.79 boxes of decorative nail heads (from JoAnn). I know, I splurged. What can I say, I’m a giver.
I figured I could use these guys to secure my batting and my fabric along each side of the stool. So I just cut the batting and the fabric about two inches larger than the top of the stool on all sides, and pulled the excess down and folded it under for a nice clean line. Then I tapped each nail head into place to keep things secure. I spaced them about 2″ apart (and used a 2″ piece of cardboard as a spacer to keep the gaps consistent). About thirty taps later I had done one side…
I continued to tap my way around the other three sides and I was left with a sweet little stool to not call my own. Total cost: $6.58. Except I have no earthly idea why she looks royal blue again. See the pics above – that’s probably the most true that the blue looks. So it’s a nice rich color but not too bright in real life.
Here’s a full shot from the side (the same pic I should have taken as a before instead of a zoomed in crazy one):
Then I hugged her, kissed her (more than once), and lovingly sent her off. Sniffle. Weird stool business going on, right?
Well, it was actually for the fine folks at Do It Yourself magazine…
… where we have a Q and A column called “He Said, She Said“…
… but in our column we don’t redo furniture, so the stool was for another article they were running in their winter issue about makeovers by a few bloggers who all received surprise items in the mail to redo. There were some pretty amazing fellow bloggers in the mix, like: Style Me Pretty, Centsational Girl, Jen Geigley, Renegade Handmade, and Lori Andrews. It was really fun see what they did, like this two-tiered-table turned cake stand from Style Me Pretty:
And here’s my little stool makeover. I love how they styled it with yarn because of all the craft stuff that I have in our house, I have zero yarn. Haha.
Oh and really savvy folks might even recognize the fabric as one of the ones we used for Clara’s weekly pictures. We love how it looks like water and the bean looks like she’s swimming in this pic.
After making her quilt and birthday banner there was still more than enough for a surprise stool makeover. Gotta love it. What furniture have you guys been making over lately? Any painting or reupholstering going on? And kiddos swimming around on fabric? Hey, if it makes ‘em happy…
Psst- We might be biased, but we think this video of Clara singing a medley of songs is the cutest thing ever. That girl loves to sing!
