tag: DIY



Feb 07
2012
 

Our house: office gallery wall

So as I mentioned last week, life has been busy. Hectic. Unorganized. So not much has gotten done around the house but I am trying to keep doing things that don’t take a lot of time or supplies. One of those things has to finally hang photos and art.

In my office I have a wall across from my desk that I stare at all day long and I decided to create a gallery wall full of images & objects that mean something to me or just that I like to look at.

And it is done!

my office gallery wall

I love my wall. It is random and pretty and makes me smile all day long.

Starting from the top left here is what it consists of:

  1. ‘be’ canvas – dollar store canvas and some paint. I printed the word off on my printer and used carbon paper to trace it on the canvas and just painted around it letting the white canvas show through. I made to remind me to just be myself and not worry what anyone else thinks about me.

  2. paper tole flower art – this was my husband’s grandmother’s. She had it hung in her house and we received it as a gift to remember her by. His aunt made it and I reframed it in a Ikea Ribba frame to bring it up to date. I love it!

  3. grateful print – by vol25.

  4. lanscape print on canvas – $5 from a flea market

  5. clock – $4 from walmart

  6. peace print (grey print in the black frame) – free printable from simple as that. I love this print because I had chosen ‘peace’ as my word of the year and this describes what I mean by that perfectly.

  7. skeleton key – found at a local country general store

  8. wooden letterpress ‘j’ – a gift from a friend. So happy to have it on my wall!

  9. mini canvas – a canvas I created using my grandmother’s handkerchief.

  10. dream – metal sign I purchased at a home show years ago. Was originally aged white paint and rust coloured so I painted it to go in here.

  11. Wizard of Oz poster – I have had this since I was in my teens. It is a mounted posted that was hung in my bedroom. It got placed in my office temporarily while we were dealing with our rec room carpet and I loved it. So it stayed.

  12. Photo of a rainbow – caught this gorgeous photo of a low lying rainbow in the back fields near our house. Took the picture with my iPhone and loved it.

  13. small print in gold frame – $5 at a flea market

  14. letter j – this was a cardboard letter from the dollar store and I covered it with some free printable paper with modge podge.

  15. a picture of me and a dolphin – a picture from a vacation I took where I got to meet (& kiss) a dolphin.

  16. Julia Child print – from unraveled design.

Up next? Painting the cabinets, organizing my files & making a note board.

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, our house
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Jan 22
2012
 

mini canvas

So since I have been working on a gallery wall in my office as well as adding some new art to the kids’ rooms, I have been keeping my eye out for things around the house to make interesting and meaningful art. And this mini canvas is a perfect example.

This was a souvenir handkerchief my grandmother had in her possessions that I was given after she passed away. It was from Florida and I just really like the design and colours but don’t have any real connection to Florida itself. I just wanted to use one section of the hankie to showcase – the flower.

First I searched my house for the perfect frame but couldn’t find what I was looking for (and believe me, I have a lot of frames hanging around – my plans are to get them all on the wall by end of February) but then I remembered a mini canvas I had and gathered some supplies:

my supplies

So I laid out the mini canvas and used hodge podge to attach the fabric the way it would show the flower and the pretty scalloped edge. I also removed the staples from the visible side and just hodge podged the canvas down on that edge to make it look cleaner.

And now I have this little piece of art in my office.

my new wall art

And I love it!

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Dec 09
2011
 

customizing school pictures

To be honest, my kids never take the greatest school pics. Somehow the idea of smiling on cue is lost on them. I never do reshoots though as I am worried the second batch may be worst then the first, and besides, these are who my kids are right now. I want to remember them exactly this way.

What I don’t love is the backgrounds you get with school pics. And so I was inspired by this pin on pinterest.

source: www.feltphotography.com

So I created my own versions.

my new school pictures

The top are the original images (love the expressions) and the bottom are my new ones. I hid their names.

What a fun way to remember them at this age.

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Posted by Janet under create, happy list, life
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Dec 01
2011
 

our advent calendar

There have been so many great ideas about activity based advent calendars on blogs and pinterest in the last month, that I wanted to make my own. But I wanted it to match my style and use things I already had. So first I went shopping in my house. I found this:

old ikea drape and a 16 x 20 canvas

A blank canvas and an old unbleached cotton drape. So I cut up the drape. One piece to fit over the canvas and the other into little squares that were about 2.5″ X 3″ in size. 48 of them to be exact. I had made my measurements on a piece of paper and then used a cardboard template to trace the squares on the fabric.

yes, pencil on fabric! ;)

Then I sewed the little pieces together like pillows, turned them inside out and ironed them to make little patches, so to speak. (side note: I did this because I did not have any reinforcement to stop any fraying if I left the edges raw).

Then using embroidery floss, I stitched the numbers 1-24 in random colours on the front of each patch.

embroidering the numbers

And using matching thread, I stitched each patch on to my large piece of cotton on 3 sides to make little pockets.

sewing the pockets

I then stretched the fabric over the canvas and stapled it to the back (I had a hammer to make sure the staples went in flush). I covered the staples with masking tape to make the back look nice too!

stapling it to the frame

Lastly I printed out my activity list in different (again random) colours to fit in each pocket.

some of the activity cards

Next year I may add some more embroidery decoration to the background fabric, but for now I love our family’s new reusable advent calendar. (excuse the early morning photograph/bad lighting!) It sits perfectly at home right next to our 3 foot nutcracker.

our advent calendar

And for those wondering about my list, this is what I have (not necessarily in this order).

  • hang lights
  • get tree
  • decorate tree
  • hang stockings
  • go see santa
  • pizza night
  • gingerbread houses
  • bake cookies (x2)
  • christmas shopping
  • wrap presents
  • go to the library
  • hot chocolate
  • bubble bath
  • dinner at a restaurant
  • movie and popcorn
  • play board games
  • make paper snowflakes
  • christmas colourings
  • give a toy to charity
  • go to the library
  • wear red to school
  • breakfast for supper
  • open one special gift (for christmas eve)
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Nov 13
2011
 

our house: girl’s bedroom update

So although I thought I had finished our daughter’s room, I was wrong. Since Little Man got new bedding that was more grown up, Little Miss wanted the same thing (after all she is FIVE now) ;) So after looking and looking we finally found something we both liked. Funnily enough it was from the same company Little Man’s was.

her new bedding (the flannel sheets she already had (from Pottery Barn) and happened to match perfectly

But now that she had new bedding, the existing drapes no longer matched so new drapes were in order, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. So I found some drapes at Giant Tiger that matched her wall colour exactly and were $12.99 a panel. Can’t beat that. But… they were only 84″ long and we have tall windows. We need 90″ inch drapes. So I needed to come up with a plan to extend the drapes and work with the new bedding.

Here is what I did.

my solution to extend her drapes

I cut the drapes 10 inch from the top and added a panel of white fabric, which was actually a flat sheet from when we had a double bed in the guest room (upsized to a Queen last year, but kept the sheets for fabric). On this I made stripes. I wanted one pink and one turquoise. The pale pink is actually a strip of fabric I cut off her existing cotton flat sheet she has for warm weather. I noticed that it was quite long and she isn’t, so she doesn’t need all that length. She won’t even miss the bit I cut off. The aqua and the darker pink (on top of the light) are ribbons I purchased on sale at the craft store.

Anyway, I love the new drapes and how they match the new bedding.

her bedding with the new drapes

BUT I am not sure how I feel about my baby girl growing up!

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Oct 29
2011
 

our house: boy’s room – lego table

So I posted a while back a bunch of pictures of Little Man’s bedroom but didn’t show you the side of the room where he has his lego table. He LOVES lego and so last Christmas I wanted to make him a table and an area that allowed him to build and keep that stuff together.

I showed you the view towards the bed

view from the door

But never towards the corner

view of his lego table

Here is a closeup of the table. I made it with a Lack side table from Ikea (no longer showing on Cdn site and no longer in blue on their US site) and four large blue Lego bases glued down with Gorilla Glue.

lego table

I also found a storage bin that fit perfectly under the table on casters (again from Ikea) to house all his lego pieces.

lego storage bin

One tip when you are gluing down the bases: Make sure you use a lego piece to space them properly apart. I started to push them flush together before I wondered if the pieces would work across the seam. I am glad I did as there is a TINY gap required between the plates.

use lego for spacing

Now I have to say, I love lego. It is the one toy I am definitely willing to sit down and build and create alongside my kids. Yes, I did have something to do with these rainbow coloured houses. :)

my rainbow creation

And what I love even more is how my “houses” are suddenly taken over by Star Wars soldiers and command central.

command central

Awesome. :)

I am linking up to

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, organize, our house
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