And the 2 Shall have 1 Room...

Whittaker and Harper, ages 4 and 1 respectively, have begun to share a room. Part of their Christmas present was a new room painted and new bedding and decor. I had fallen in love with a bedding set from Pottery Barn Kids quite some time ago, but was not in love with the price and the entire set was gone in a flash. Thankfully, I had taken some screen captures of the bedding before it disappeared in order to replicate it at some point. So, Christmas 09 has turned into sewing central. I can tell you that I have purchased all my material and supplies for a total of $150 which would not have even bought 1 complete bedding set from Pottery Barn. So, without further ado... here is the inspiration

(above is the Austin Bedding from Pottery Barn that inspired my replications below)

(click on the back of the pillow sham above to see the detail of the stitching I used on the middle seam, since I have incorporated some baseball fabric, I wanted it to mimic the baseball seam stitch. Little details like that I'm now able to pay more attention to as I am getting better with my sewing skills. Not bad for not having a pattern?!)

(I made the W out of felt, wanted to mimic the chenille Letterman letters that are on Varsity Letter jackets. I printed out the letter from Microsoft Word using the Princeton font. Glued the white felt to the gold using fabric glue, used wonder under to adhere the gold to the plaid and then went over it with the red stitch on the sewing machine and outlined it with red stitch.)

(I used a denim knee patch for this- then iron on flocked white letters- W for Whittaker who was born in 2005- then did the outline red stitch on the sewing machine.)

(On both of these, you can see the baseball fabric that I used for their sheets and pillow cases. I made their pillow cases with the same type of opening in the back, more like a sham- mostly to save on the amount of fabric- I didn't think I had enough to do 2 standard pillow cases.)

(Below I used a product called Art Wear that I bought several years ago when I made some onesies for a baby shower. I used a font called School Spirit, printed it on the Art Wear Paper and went over the letters in a black Sharpie for it to be nice and dark. The backing on the paper comes off to iron it on to whatever surface you are working with- mine was light gray fleece. I used Wonder Under on the other side of the fleece to attach it to the sham and then outlined it with the red stitch on the sewing machine. I switched to the single foot to make it easier.)

(I'll post the final pics once everything is complete and the room put together, I'm very pleased with how it is looking so far- it's hard work, but those 2 boys are so worth every bit of it!!)

Rearranging Our Bedroom

From time to time, I just have to rearrange the furniture. But, I really love how our bedroom looks now.

Queen of the Bling Revealed

The canvases on the left were done by my friend Ralonda's 3 year old niece, just the hot pink on white canvas. I forgot to take a picture before getting started to turn these into something she could hang in her office to go with her hot pink, zebra and "bling" decor.

I taped off the edges and painted them black for a little visual stabilization and then began the first one, which was also the last one that I finished.









Ralonda's tag line (Queen of the Bling) just had to make it on there somewhere. I needed some inspiration to get it to coincide with the other one. A simple "google" search of images of "bling" brought up a picture of "bling H2O" and I just fell in love! The other inspirations for the canvases came from Hambly and their incredible line of products.




I used a few stencil elements here and there and a lot of free hand and filling in the black with a new favorite acrylic paint called "Black Sequins" that has just a hint of sparkle.

I really loved how they turned out and that Ralonda gets to have the artwork of her most precious 3 year old neice hanging in her office.

Queen of the Bling

Just a sneak peak until the delivery!

"big" shirts

A friend of mine who is having a baby tomorrow, wanted to make some "big" shirts for the older two siblings to wear when they first meet Baby Noah at the hospital. She ordered some iron-on letters from "Once Upon a Design" on Etsy.com, but wanted some help getting the shirts completed. Together with a suggestion from another friend, we got a few supplies and here are the finished "big" shirts.

For the little miss who loves her sparkle, just added some iron-on "bling" to the letters from Etsy. For the little man, I added some brown and white gingham f

abric using WonderUnder to iron it on and added the Etsy letters.

Creatively Replicated Meets "Inspire Me Monday"

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine who writes a blog for her Happy Hearts card company that she has a weekly post called "Inspire Me Monday". I had been looking for something to replace a picture that we had hanging in our breakfast nook and alas, I was truly inspired!

I went out that day and purchased my supplies, 12x12 scrapbook paper in a color and design scheme that would complement our existing decor and two - 1/2 thick pieces of foam board (a piece of styrofoam that has poster board on each side), also purchased some removable gl

ue dots to adhere the paper to the board.

A few stages into the project...

adding a strip from another paper to add some interest to the grunge red paper

then cutting out a floral swirl to finish the embellishment and fit in better with the other tiles

I ended up adding another sheet of 1/2" thick foam to the backs of each to make it stand out more and instead of covering the sides with black paper, I cut our 1" strips from the other sheets of coordinating paper to cover the sides. Here are the pictures of the finished project.

Works In Progress

I am working on two different projects right now. One is helping a friend recover some chair cushions for a $10 garage sale arm chair that she purchased to beautiful fabric to match her home; the other project is a farm mural for another friend for their upstairs playroom.

I'll put the pics up as soon as I can get them.

Barrett's Office

The picture above is one from a tv show that used to come on HGTV called "Debbie Travis: Facelift".  Barrett and I both loved the "colored geometry" on the wall and that became the inspiration for the decor in his office.

I modified the design concept since he had just painted his office and purchased an 8ftx4ft sheet of peg board from the Home Depot and some hardware to mount it.

I taped off the boarder and then the boxes, the holes in the peg board served as a chalk line would have to keep the boxes squared and even, then painted over with a coat or two of white paint.

After peeling off the tape, we mounted it to the wall with 6 washers and 6 screws.

Shade

This drum lamp shade from Serena & Lily I desperately wanted to buy and use for a ceiling fixture shade, but it's $238 price tag wasn't going to cut it.

I searched everywhere for an affordable drum shade in the nursery's color palette and had no success for any amount I was willing to pay, but I did find this shade at Pottery Barn that had sage green trim around the top and bottom and happened to be on clearance for $13.99.

I purchased more of the dark brown grosgrain ribbon from JoAnn's and some fabric glue, a light kit from the Home Depot turned the shade upside down and was able t achieve a  similar look to what I wanted at a fraction of the cost.

Harper's Nursery

This crib bedding by Serena & Lily inspired me to make Harper's bedding, one because I needed it in a different color palette, two because of the $500 price tag for a  crib sheet, bumper and crib skirt!

The damask print fabric was actually part of a  California King sheet set I ordered from Oversock.com for $39 plus $2 shipping, the large and small gingham fabric from fashionfabricsclub.com, and ribbon from JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby.  I made the changing pad cover from towels I purchased at WalMart- one matching the wall color, the other a dark brown.

I had actually intended only to use the large gingham, but mistakenly order the small by mistake, so I used both of them to create the bedskirt, an additional crib sheet, the duvet cover for the comforter I purchased at Ikea and for the top of the curtain panel.

The shade came out of desperate search for a cheaper alternative to the original inspiration.

I was able to make a pillow case and a few throw pillows from the leftover fabric and ribbon.

Crib

The crib above was one that Barrett and I fell in love with while searching for crib bedding for Whittaker.  We had located a favorite online store with some great bedding and most of the pictures used this crib.  I contacted the store and found out it was a NettoCollection crib, found a store in Dallas with it's then $1500 price tag, got all the measurements and Barrett made our crib to look like the designer one for about $100.

One of the coolest things about this crib is the shelf on the bottom slides out on gliders and gives additional storage.  The crib is now priced at $1690, we spent $100 and have used it for 2 kids, I think we got the better deal.

Bricks

our kitchen before

our kitchen after creating a stencil to make it look like a brick facade

Damask

I was exhaustedly looking for a damask stencil for my living room, and when none could be found, I found this trinket box at a Hobby Lobby store, took it to a local copy shop and had a photo copy of the box enlarged.  

I used 2 large blank stencils to trace the design and a hot tool to cut it out.

I used an interior glaze without tint and a stencil brush to apply it.

It is quite subtle and is barely noticeable from some angles.  I didn't continue the design because I really wanted a higher gloss, but accented with the 2 frames, it works for us.