Pinspiration 5/5 + a bonus project.

For Pinspirations 1-2 see HERE.
For Pinspirations 3-4 see HERE.

For my 5^th and final (well, not final, but the final one of at least 5 that I promised myself I would do) little Pinterest project, I made over an old shoebox to hold my many pens/markers/pencils, as well as a few extras like exacto knives and paint brushes.

The Pinterest caption: Shoe box + paper towel tubes = storage for pens and other office/art supplies.



I did mine in red/tan since it was going in the office/2nd bedroom and the color palette in there is cream/red/brown/tan.

Easy as pie, and a fair amount cuter than the Ziploc freezer bag they were previously stored in. I'll probably take those rolls out and cut them down some more so they're not sticking over the top, but the sun was setting and I wanted to snap some pics in decent lighting.

I covered the inside in a plain tan cardstock with some very light texturing just so things wouldn't slide around as easily. The outside looks like burlap, but it's just a patterned cardstock. I cut and measured individual pieces for each side of the box. It's totally up to you, but I covered the bottom of the box too even though nobody will ever see it, I'm just a little anal that way. After the paper was all on I just hot glued some twine around the edges and the middle to make it look a little more finished, and then just organized my writing/drawing utensils by type and color. fin.

When I went to put it away on the desk I looked at my bookshelf and decided that while I was at it, I was also going to attempt a fairly popular design element and organize the small bookshelf in that room by color. (Are you sensing a pattern? You should see my color-coded closet. It's ridiculous.)

Color-coded bookshelves are all over the blogosphere and design/decor magazines. A quick Google search comes up with a cornucopia of options.

I personally am not a huge fan of full wall rainbow so if I had a large bookshelf I wouldn't do it that way. I might still color block, but not in a rainbow pattern, and I would break it up with small decor items and books stacked in different directions. To each their own, though. I sort of caught some flack about this when I posted a photo of my finished product on Facebook, and then when I was looking for a link to show people that yes, this is in fact a thing that people are doing, I came across THIS Apartment Therapy article explaining why people do this. It wasn't the article that struck me though - it was the comments.

WOW. People get really unnecessarily mad at other people's design choices. Seriously, really angry and rude and judgmental. There were a lot of comments saying that this was a disgusting thing to do, and people who do this must buy their books strictly for looks and have no respect for books and never read them - so on and so forth. I mean... I like books, and I read all of the books that I have, and I happen to already have a fairly varied assortment of colored spines - but I also like things to look cute. So, you know, whatever. If any of my readers are the super angry commenters from that post then please feel free to skip the rest of this entry!

I took everything off the bookshelf and arranged the books into stacks based on color. I moved the piles around a few times before I was satisfied with them, and then added a few small pieces for visual interest like a Dwight Schrute bobblehead and beet stress ball, a Rubik's Cube, a photo from a friend's wedding, a souvenir box from our recent Seattle trip, and a small glass vase filled with bookmarks.

#ravenclawpride

I like it. I think it looks cute and cohesive and adds both some fun color and some much needed structure/organization to what is currently a very disorganized room. Now I did have to sacrifice some books for this to work - for example, I just really can't bring myself to separate books in a series, so anything like that (*ahem* like, oh, I don't know, 10 Harry Potter books) will wind up in a new home. It looks a lot better though. It was cluttered before and in addition to books held things like old cameras and previous years' taxes, which needed to be put away somewhere better anyway!

Suck it, haters.

 



Have you made any controversial design decisions? Have you ever typed up a blog post and felt absolutely ridiculous writing the words "controversial design decision"? Because I know someone who has...

Pinspiration(s) 3-4/5

For Pinspirations 1-2, click here!

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the Reissig camp. In late August we took a super fun vacation to San Francisco and Seattle and since then have been in catch-up mode, both at work and home. I'll definitely blog about our vacation, but that's going to be a much longer blog post, so I'll save it for another day. For now, a couple more of my completed pins.

Pin 3 - Painted Knife Block:

I've seen this one floating around for awhile. The only color in my kitchen is blue - several shades of it. I have a lot of lighter blue/teal in there right now and have been trying to bring in some darker shades as well, so I decided to go for it with the painted knife block.

I bought 2 colors of paint. I liked the metallic blue and wanted it for a little extra oomph since the block goes in a shadowy area, so I also bought a darker, sort of cadet blue, and decided to just mix the two.

Mixing my colors.

Before, and during (1st coat, still wet.)

I painted down about a half inch into the two larger slots since they are just for scissors and shears, but I kept the paint out of all of the other slots for food safety. Not pictured - after application and drying of two coats of paint, I also painted a clear gloss coat over the top to both protect the paint, and just to make it glossy and give it a little something extra with that shine. After another day of drying, I put the knives back in and put the block back in his home on the counter. (well, most of the knives - some were dirty, ha!)

The block in perspective, and close-up. Left with flash, right with no flash.

Pin 4 - Food Inspired Prints:

Like approximately 5597848395065948392 billion other people, my favorite corner of the internet is Young House Love. There was an awesome post awhile back about adding personal touches to the decor all around their house that I absolutely adored, because I am a total sap. (See here for the post.) They had a super cute idea of putting not just food-related photos in their kitchen, but food items from their wedding! I pinned the link to one of my boards right away and today Clinton and I decided to go to IKEA, so I picked up a frame while we were there to get it done.

The original photo from YHL.

Knowing I only had room to put my frame vertically, I went for 3 horizontal pictures instead of the vertical ones the original shows. I picked a table setting, the gelato bar, and our cake (with the little crab topper I made!)

The frame I picked up at IKEA for only $9.99. Our dining table is brown, so that determined the color of the frame.

Hung! Please excuse my overflow of Food Network magazines, ha!

A close up from Instagram.

I love having a little reminder of our wedding day at dinner now! Anything I'm eating will taste a little sweeter looking at that groomy crab's jaunty little top hat!

So that's it - both very simple but both things make me smile when I see them, and what more can you really ask for? I only have one more pin to meet my goal, and I've actually started one but need to finish up before I can post it. Until then, I hope you can find some inspiration too!