DIY Thrifty Baby Art

Found this cute idea on Ohdeedoh, one of my favorite kid sites. How fun would it be to make a project like this? You can find the link to the tutorial here. Pin It

Caution: Wet Paint

This week I've been painting my new bathroom. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get anything done with a toddler around. Or maybe you know. That blue painters tape is just so fun to pull off the walls!
Since my walls have that awful orange-peel texture, I decided to follow the advice of Dana from MADE. She has some good instructions for avoiding paint bleeding when doing stripes on a textured wall. Plus a whole lot more. Find it here.

Pin It

Celebrating Handmade

My sister-in-law made this cute onesie for a baby shower and I wanted to share. She decided to skip the sewing machine and stitch it all by hand. She cut out her pieces and roughed up the fabric and then hand stitched it on. Idn't it sweet?

Pin It

Bathroom Makeover: The Plan

This is probably the last room in my house that I should be decorating, but it's small and cheap and I just keep thinking about it. So on I go. It's the half bath on the main floor, and is about as plain as they come. White walls, white trim, grayish formica counter-tops. Blaaaaaaah.

Here's my plan. Grey horizontally striped walls (13" tall per stripe). Repaint cabinets white. Yellow accents (hand towel, wall-mounted magazine rack, artwork). I'm afraid a small yellow rug would get grungy too quickly, so I'll probably go grey on that. And then some pops of spring green (plants?) and maybe orange?

By the way, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a cute patterned yellow rug or hand towel. And it's hard to find many options for a very small rug too (even in grey!). They are mostly just solid bath mats. So if anyone has any suggestions of places to check out, I'd love to hear them!

So, I wanted to use this great mirror I inherited from my parents, whom I believe inherited it from my grandparents. I was going to paint the frame all yellow (is that a crime?), but was devastated to discover that it is about a half inch too wide for the room!

After some disappointing shopping trips, I've decided instead to use this mirror from my bedroom and paint the frame yellow. It will replace the flat mirror currently over the sink.

So here's the plan (plus painting the cabinets white)

Or at least that was the plan until I discovered that rug is no longer available and the towels are the only one on the website where the hand towel is not offered. Now what? I swear I've searched high and low. I'm going to go ahead and paint anyway. If you've seen any great yellow or grey rugs and hand towels, please let me know where!

Pin It

Textured T-shirt Tutorial

Now that's a lot of T's.

I've been wanting a white or cream shirt that has texture, that I can just layer under cardi's and jackets. Most of what I've been seeing has been more expensive than I like, so I decided to make my own. I ordered 2 of the same shirt from Forever 21 ($6 each) and in 2 different sizes, since their sizing is somewhat inconsistent for me (not to mention my growing pregnant belly). I like the material of this shirt--it's a soft somewhat dressier jersey knit and a scoop neck that is not to low for bending over and picking up a toddler. Not to mention it's long enough to cover my enlarge abdomen for at least another month or two!

Here's how to do the rest:

1. Using an erasable fabric marker (the kind that disappears with water) and a ruler, mark down the sides of shirt #1 where you want your edges. In the last 2 photos you can see that the texture is a panel down the middle, doesn't go all the way accross. You can also see that I skipped this important step myself and tried to eyeball it.

2. Cut shirt #2 up the side seams so that you can attack the front and back of the shirt separately. Using a solid cutting edge (metal ruler) and rotary blade, cut shirt #2 into horizontal strips about 3/4 of an inch in height.

3. Measure the width of your proposed panel on shirt #2 and trim all your fabric strips to that length.

4. Pin one fabric strip onto shirt #1 at the top. You will quickly see how the jersey knit curls up at the edges. I used about 6 pins per fabric strip. Line up your next fabric strip so that the edges touch the first strip of fabric (and you can even slightly overlap them since they will curl). Repeat again and again and again.

5. Sew two lengths of stitches parallel all the way across the shirt on each strip of fabric. Trim all your threads. Repeat again and again and again.

6. Using water, erase you guide lines and then congratulate yourself on a job well done!

p.s. I think this would also be cute if you only took the texture 1/3 of the way down the shirt for a tuxedo effect.

p.p.s. You could use another matching material besides jersey knit, like layers of matching colored linen, or chiffon, or cotton, etc. Something that won't fray though.

Pin It

DIY Paper Cup Wreath

I see a lot of crafts in the blogosphere that I think, "That looks okay in the photo but in real life I think it would look cheap." But here is one craft that is cheap but I think real life (and in the photo) would actually look pretty darn cool. What do you think?

A DIY paper cup wreath! Modern and elegant. Twig and Thistle does it again. Pin It

Fancy Cuffs

Do you watch Modern Family? Cam always has fancy shirts with fancy cuffs. Do you know what I saw on last night's episode? Take a close look at Cam's shirt cuffs.

It's the very same fabric I used to make my high chair cover!

Pin It