My entire body is sore and I’m still a bit high on paint fumes. You know what that means… yesterday was the day I was waiting for – Paintapalooza!
I took off work for this entire week and my mom watched baby Jack for the day, so I went all buck-wild, turned on my iPod “party mix” and painted all day long. Seriously. All. Day. Long.
I’m super happy with the results though and can’t wait to share!
I first talked about my bedroom makeover here with my very first mood board. As always, once I started putting things together a few things changed from what I thought I wanted.
Let’s let the pictures tell the story:
Here is a before shot of our bedroom. The wall color was almost the same as the carpet color, so it felt like we were living in a big beige box.Here’s another view. I’ve never really LOVED this bedspread, but it’s nice and comfy. Oh and the upholstered trunk at the end of the bed is new, a $50 bargain on clearance at Homegoods (it was missing a foot, so I just ripped the other three off!)Last view of the “before” bedroom. It just looks so blah!
Okay, now time for the fun pictures. My “after” shots of our “new” bedroom. I painted the whole room with two gallons of Behr paint in a color called “Skipper.”
Oooh so pretty! I love the way the walls in the bedroom tie into our bathroom shower curtain. Also, the blue walls really make the white dressers POP!I’m in LOVE with our new bedspread (duvet cover from West Elm with our old bedspread inside), dyed sheets and fun headboard.The original curtains from the mood board turned out to look super different in person. So I found these curtains at Target on sale!I’m pretty sure that this is my favorite view, so when guests come over I may make them stand in the corner to take it all in… That’s not weird, right?
I already walked you through how I dyed my sheets, but here are a couple little tweaks I did between the “before” and “after” pictures:
Easiest upholstered headboard ever — just threw my thrift store quilt over our old headboard and BOOM there ya go! (inspired by YHL’s book!!)Here is a close up of the dyed flannel sheet, along with some regular old pillowcases we already had. I can’t sleep on flannel pillowcases — my hair gets all full of static and I look ridiculous!I was searching for a thrift store nightstand to redo (was going to paint it navy blue) but never found one. So I dragged in this chair from another room (also a YHL tip) and I kind of LOVE the old messy gold paint against the blue walls. And here is my yellow owl from the original mood board.
There you go — I was finally able to do my master bedroom update almost exactly 10 months after we moved in. I’m loving the changes, especially the fact that I was able to reuse all my old stuff and just add in a few more things!
While I was in my painting frenzy I also FINALLY got to the ugly green bathroom. So as soon as my picture arrives in the mail I will post on that room too. Hope you’re having a happy Thanksgiving week and not working too hard!
Those of you who follow me on Facebook already got a little preview of this project. Well, not so much the actual project – more like what happened to my finger while doing this project.
I’ve been working on my master bedroom update for awhile and have been collecting new stuff for the room over the past few months – new duvet cover, a pretty quilt, curtains, a new trunk for the end of the bed, blah blah blah. Well, all these thing cost money and I was starting to feel like this project was adding up to WAY more than I wanted (I haven’t actually totaled everything yet, I was just getting that feeling).
So, when I started shopping around for new sheets and realized that I couldn’t find exactly the color I imagined in my head AND they were all super expensive, I decided to get a little crafty.
I already had a pair of flannel sheets that were super worn and comfy, but they were kind of an ugly light green color. I’ve never actually dyed anything before (besides my hair and tye-dying stuff at Girl Scout camp), so I was a bit apprehensive about dying my sheets. It just seemed like a great big pain in the keister while also being quite messy.
I put on my big girl pants and decided to do it and I’m kind of mixed on the results.
First, here’s my step-by-step of what I did:
Step 1: wet the sheets. Hey look, having an ugly green tub comes in handy because I don’t have to worry about staining it!Step 2: fill plastic container with hot water and add 2 bottles of Rit dye. I used Evening Blue.Step 3: add wet sheets to container of dye/water and swish them around for 30 minutes. I’m wearing gloves AND used a paint stirrer to swoosh, but I still ended up getting dye on my fingers.Step 4: yeah, you didn’t really think I was actually going to stir for 30 minutes did you? I stabbed the sheets down with my paint stirrers and wandered away after about 10 minutes.Step 5: CAREFULLY dump out the dye/water. No splashing around otherwise you’ll dye everything blue!Step 6: rinse out the sheets over and over again until the water finally runs clear. Once again, I’m kind of lazy, so it wasn’t TOTALLY clear but close enough. I then threw the sheets in the washer and put it through with my normal detergent.All done — here are the finished sheets after going through the washer and dryer (washed them on cold, but I pretty much wash everything with cold water).
So, yay — I saved money and dyed my own sheets. I kind of half-way followed the directions on the Rit bottle, but looking back I probably should have bought a couple more bottles of dye to throw in there. I really wanted a more vibrant blue color… kind of like the shade of blue they were before I washed all the dye out. Of course, who knows if the sheets would have even sucked in more dye if it had been added.
All in all, I’m not really going to call this little project a “win”, more like a “eh..better than they were before”. In person, they do look like a pretty faded blue, rather than a dumpy pissy green. So, I can’t really complain too much — I spent around $8 and it took less than 30 minutes of my time.
How about you, have you dyed anything instead of buying new?
PS. If you haven’t completed my quick one question survey (and entered to win something AWESOME), please take a minute to click here.
For my second little project that went down when I was home on Hurricane Sandy arrest, it literally took me about 10 minutes and made me super happy.
My Nana passed away in March and after her passing my grandfather allowed me to choose some of her jewelry for my own. Well, I’m kind of a picky jewelry person but I did find a few pieces that really reminded me of her so I added them to my collection.
Some of the things that were so very Nana were a few of her brooches. She wore them all the time to dress up a nice jacket or sweater and liked them so much that my mom started giving her one each year at Christmas.
She had one pin in particular that was very special to me, a small circle that was engraved with her name, Claire. She had lent me that pin on my wedding day as my “something borrowed” and I had it attached to my bouquet that I carried down the aisle. At the reception, instead of throwing my bouquet, I presented it to my grandmother because she and my grandfather were celebrating 60 years of marriage that same year that my husband and I got married.
When going through her jewelry, I chose that pin as well as four other brooches that she liked. Since I don’t really wear pins myself, I decided to use them for a fun project while still keeping them untouched so I could wear them in the future.
My materials: fabric (which needed ironed), frame and pins. Staple gun not pictured.
I stapled the fabric on to the frame with a staple gun, keeping it pulled tight all the way around.
Ka-BAM goes the stapler
Then, I just stuck the pins through the fabric in a way that I thought was pretty. That was it. Super simple and a snazzy way to display my Nana’s brooches when I’m not wearing them.
Finished project. So easy and so pretty!
I’m not exactly sure where I’ll put the brooch canvas yet. I’m thinking that after I finish my master bedroom update I might hang it or lean it against the wall. I just think it’s a cute way to display my grandmother’s jewelry and makes me smile whenever I see it.
