31 Household Products You'll Never Have To Buy Again How to "wallpaper" using fabric I couldn't stand our boring white door anymore. Something had to be done. So over the weekend, we wallpapered it with a big, fun piece of fabric. I love it. And it's useful, too. There are four white doors in this corner of the apartment—bedroom, bathroom, coat closet, and outer door—and sometimes departing guests get confused about which one they came through. This fabric is fairly thin cotton from IKEA. For this DIY fabric wallpaper project, you'll need water, cornstarch, a big brush (or a paint roller if you want to do a larger wall), scissors, and a craft knife if you have obstacles like we did. First mix up your paste, since it will need time to cool. Boil 4 cups of water in a pot. In the meantime, measure the area you want to wallpaper and cut your fabric to size. Brush the entire door with paste, then begin applying fabric from the top down, adjusting and smoothing as you go. Use a scissors or Xacto knife to cut around any obstacles. The fabric peeled off easily.
Copper Pipe Towel Rail SUMMARY This was my project to build a new towel rail for the bathroom. TIME TAKEN 1.5 hours cutting pipe. 1.5 hrs soldering pipe. 1 hr cleaning and polishing. 0.5 hrs fixing to wall. ...........total time 4.5hrs MATERIALS 6m of 15mm copper pipe 1 x blow torch (for soldering) 26 x elbow joints 18 t-joints some wire wool some flux some metal polish 1 x 'pacman' shaped copper pipe cutter 1 x ruler STEP 1 The first thing was pipe cutting. I wanted to hold 10 towels, so that would mean 11 shelves. Using the 15mm pipe cutter.....I cut 42x10cm sections and 11 x 20cm sections of pipe (took about an hour) STEP 2 I then dry fitted the whole thing to check the design would work and all the sections all lined up. I then soldered the upright/vertical sections. (10x10cm section with a t joint in between each and an elbow at each end) I then inserted the 20cm pieces to join it all together.... checking for straightness along the way tadah. Extra Note
DIY Colorful Skeleton Leaves Skeleton leaves are so beautiful, delicate and lacy. They are great for many paper craft projects such as making greeting cards and scrapbooks. They are also wonderful crafts for kids to work on. When I was a child, I used to make bookmarks with skeleton leaves. I took the fresh leaves, pressed them in a thick book and waited for them to dry. It usually took at least three weeks or more for the pulp to completely dry out. Here are the supplies you may need: Leaves (preferably waxy leaves);Washing soda;Water;Brush;Food dye;Paper towel;Gloves. Instructions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Suggestion: Different leaves require different combination of soda and water. You may also like this beautiful botanical prints wall art. Click here for DIY Beautiful Botanical Prints Wall Art
Vivid Please: DIY: How To Make Tiny Pom Poms With A Fork! Tiny pom pom's. What more could you ask for in life? This week we thought we would show you how to make these adorable little balls of happiness with just a fork and some wool. Cute, basic and ready to be glued onto everything; now that is my kind of tutorial! Itching to get started? 1) you will need some wool and a prong-y fork. 2) wrap the wool around the outer two prongs until it gets really fat. 3) once you are ready, cut the end of the wool and using a new small piece or a little thread, bunch the wool together and tie really tightly so it is secure. 4) take your wool off the fork and cut all the loops. 5) trim all the extra long straggly bits so it is big, round and beautiful.. *Ta*Da* Cute and simple and ready for anything! We like to use these little bad boys to flourish gifts for our nearest and dearist. Enjoy...
DIY Dodecahedron Pendant Light {And an Announcement!!} It’s dodecahedron time, y’all! Time to talk about that fancy little DIY pendant Andy made for our laundry room: If you missed it, you can check out our whole laundry room redo – only $157 for this entire makeover! – right here. But back to to the light! source And, as I mentioned in the last post, it’s a direct result of my crush on faceted lighting and decor: 1. We were originally hoping to share with you a full step-by-step tutorial to make your own pendant light, but when we sat down to do that, we realized that a full tutorial would be something like a 20-page deal, because this is what I would call an expert-level woodworking project. If you don’t want to make your own, all is not lost! Okay, first, I want to show you how brillz my hubs is. Dodecahedron is made of 30 pieces of wood cut at very exact, weird angles. They end up kinda kite-shaped. Then once they are cut to the exact angle on all four sides, you have to facet the ends at – you guessed it – precise angles.
Home Made Modern: Z Gallerie Knock-Off: Eye Chart Tray I'm in love with the technique of transfering images and graphics to stuff using just a pencil! I told you how I did this with my toolbox turned planter, I've also used it to create a growth chart (which I'll share at some point), and now I've just transformed a tray using the same process. So easy! I found some old TV trays at a garage sale for 50 cents each so I snapped them up because I love spray painting these old trays for so many uses. (Hmmm...I smell a post idea.) Z Gallerie Knock-Off: Eye Chart Tray Nap Rating = 2 naps (factoring in dry-time) Tools & Materials Tray (could be metal or wood)SandpaperSpray paint in cream or whiteAccess to a photocopier (possibly)PencilPainter's tapeSharpie or other permanent marker like this oneSpray sealer Steps Lightly sand your tray if it has chipped paint or rust on it. Entered into this great contest: Shared at the thrifty project party at Our Fifth House.
Passport Art on the Cheap As you know, I have travel on the brain. So I got to thinking how I incorporate some momento of our trips into our home. We're notoriously bad souvenir shoppers so it couldn't be tchotckes. After revisiting this project (from the now defunct but sorely missed Blueprint magazine) sparked an idea. This is a re-interpretation of that concept but on a much smaller (and more diy friendly) scale using the "art" found inside the pages of a passport. But if travel isn't your bag, you could easily apply the same concept to lots of other scannable pieces like children's artwork, photographs, concert tickets, vintage receipts, cool advertisements, etc.. First off, I purchased some 6x6 wooden panels from an art supply store. Opened my quart of trusty gold paint and applied to the sides... Allowed to dry... Trolling our passports for worthy stamps, I realized that I didn't have one from Paris!! Enlarged the images to suit the size of the panels. Cut the prints down to a size slightly larger than needed.
brenna’s book page fabric I love the look of old book pages. The toasty brown edges and pale centers of the pages pair perfectly with the stark black type. Simple design with such a vintage feel, but so fragile and brittle. CLICK HERE for the full how-to after the jump! Materials paper of choice (old book pages, decorative paper, newspaper, etc.)household silicone sealer (must say “silicone” on the package)scrap piece of cardboard to use as a small spreaderscrap newspaper to protect work surfacesewing machinescissorsspray adhesivescrap fabriclarge piece of paper (at least 15 x 21)piece of heavy poster board or chipboard with dimensions larger than above Instructions For all projects except writing pad: 1. 2. 3. For the tiny notebook: 1. 2. 3. 4. For the envelope: 1. 2. 3. For the writing pad: 1. 2. 3. 3. 4. 5.
Playing With Rocks I've received a lot of interest in the romantic rock paperweight from my "Busy" post. It's been pinned, and I've received emails about it. Funny how something so simple speaks to us. I used the Splendid Transfer method (found on my sidebar) after rubbing the surface with a little gesso. That wasn't the only one I made, and I kept it. I used an Eiffel Tower image. Like I said, it was a broken piece of marble. Now it sits with another little rock, and my chippy lavender filled urn. Here's a beautiful image I transferred to a round piece of marble. Going to play with more rocks, and work on some furniture. UPDATE: Here is a breakdown of how I transferred the images. Clean the rockGesso is not necessary for the transfer here, it just adds tooth and depth. There are other ways to transfer images, but, this is how I did it with the rocks.
Filing Fabric & A Fabric Organization Round-Up — the thinking closet In case you missed it, here’s my fabric organization solution that I shared at Made with Hugs & Kisses a few weeks ago…plus 15 other ideas to suit your fancy. When Hannah generously invited me to be a part of her “Spring Clean Your Sewing Space” series, I leapt at the opportunity to join in on the fun. In fact, it was just the motivation I needed to come up with a new organization system for my fabric. My “system” (if you could call it that) was starting to look like three mini-leaning-towers-of-Pisa. See: But how to solve my problem? I stared. That’s right. I had seen it done before by the amazing Karen from Sew Many Ways… ..and I knew our file cabinet needed some major spring cleaning anyway, so I cleared out the bottom drawer and set to work. I used acid-free Pendaflex file folders that I already had on hand, cut them down the middle, draped my folded fabric over top, and loaded up my bottom drawer with files of fabric. Of course, I had to organize them in ROYGBIV order…. Featured on: