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) 1-2/5

At the beginning of each year, Clinton and I make a list of things we want to do through the year. Not to be confused with a typical "Resolution" list of things like "lose weight", "stop smoking", "eat a carrot everyday" or anything like that. Just a list of goals. Some are lofty and some, like this one, are not.

Like approximately 58,966,544,124,589,654 other people, I have a slight addiction to Pinterest. I like to think that I use mine pretty practically, and I don't use it to pin every pretty thing I've ever seen in my life. I only pin things that I can realistically achieve. I have several things pinned that I'm waiting on until we buy a house, mainly just because I don't want to build a piece of furniture or something and then just have to move it. However, I put it on my 2013 list that instead of just "someday pinning" I was going to actually do at least 5 things from Pinterest this year.

The first two I'm going to post were super easy ones but hey - if it's something I pinned and then actually followed through on, it counts!

Pin 1 - The Fruit Saver:

The original pin.

We buy a LOT of produce because I'm not a terribly big meat-eater, and we just prefer fruit and veg for snacks to chips and stuff like that. Sometimes we get a little overzealous in the produce department and wind up with some extra fruit that I have to make smoothies out of or something because it's getting too ripe - so I decided to give this a go. Can't hurt, right?

GUYS. IT TOTALLY WORKS. Seriously. That was my first attempt and not only was the water waxy, but the fruit lasted forever. I left it uneaten for longer than normal just to see if it actually worked and it did not disappoint. I do this with all of our produce now as soon as we get home from the store. I seriously cannot recommend this enough! Oh, and if anyone is wondering - no, the vinegar does not have any effect whatsoever on the taste of the produce. Pretty sweet and if you're not doing this already, I definitely recommend it.

Pin 2 - Love Notes:

I actually pinned this ages ago, but I just never got around to finishing it. I half started it a few months ago and then kept forgetting that I needed ink for our printer, so the frame sat in the spare room just waiting.

 The original pin.

 

I thought this was super cute - we already leave each other little notes sometimes so I thought having a place for it was a good idea. I knew I wanted to put it in our bedroom, which is full of black furniture, grey linens, and pops of color in the other decor (candles, vases, etc.) so I needed something fairly neutral. I used a black wood frame that I already had, and picked up some printed cardstock on one of my many trips to Hobby Lobby - only later did I realize that I had picked the same cardstock used in the pin - it honestly wasn't my intention, I just picked a neutral one that I thought was pretty! I can't remember where the flowers I used were from - they are something I had leftover from a previous project and I found them in my craft box.

 

When I sat down at the computer yesterday to finally print out the "I love you because..." part, I ended up getting super frustrated and failing a few test prints, so I just did it the old fashioned way - held the paper up to the computer screen and traced it. I traced with pencil first (so it wouldn't bleed through onto the computer), and then filled it in with a fine tipped permanent marker.

 

My version now sits on a corner of our dresser in the bedroom - and of course I had to get things started by mentioning my source of inspiration! I think it'll be a fun little thing to have, so I'm happy I finally decided to finish it.

2 down, 3 (or more!) to go. It's the little things, people. :)


Grad Party Part 1 - Decor

For those of you that don't know, my mom (who has been going to school and getting degrees for almost as long as I can remember) recently graduated with a Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling. A MASTERS DEGREE! Pretty awesome. And oh yeah, did I mention that she graduated with Distinction? Yeah, my mom is kind of a badass.

She had orignally planned to take a vacation after graduating and before starting down her new career path, but as we all know, life gets in the way sometimes and she had to adjust her plans. She mentioned off-hand that she was thinking about having a graduation party and I told her that it wasn't even worth questioning, that she could definitely do it, and despite the 730 miles between us, that I could plan it. After a very short-lived idea for a luau/tropical theme, my mom decided that she wanted her party to have a literary theme with psychology references if possible.

I introduced her to Pinterest, and then I didn't hear from her for a week. Ha! Only joking. (But seriously, Pinterest is the great time suck to end them all!). I started a Grad Party board that we could both pin to and after a few weeks of looking at inspiration photos, I dove into crafting. In this entry, I will show you the process for some of these crafts, and some sneak peak photos. I will also post a similar entry about food and drinks. The third entry in this series will be about the party itself and show pictures of how everything came together. Now keep in mind that while I did gather some inspiration photos, they were to be used for just that - inspiration. So don't expect exact replicas here because that's not what I was going for. So with that, let's get started, shall we?

A couple of months ago I saw some cute floral print plates and napkins at Party City and ended up using them as the base of my inspiration. I thought they were really cute and tea party-esque and decided to pull colors from them for the rest of the decor.

After that, it was time to craft. First up: Tissue paper flowers.

I have seen these tissue paper and/or coffe filter flowers all over the place but never really had any reason to try making them myself until now. I used tissue paper so that I didn't have to bother dying coffee filters, but you could use either. Everyone will have their own method, I'm sure, but here was mine:

Lay out a stack of 8 sheets of tissue paper.
Trace a large scalloped pattern on the paper as many times as you can. (I try to throw away as little paper as possible)
Place a staple or brad in the middle of each flower.
Cut around the template into more manageable squares.
Trim the edges.
Starting with the top layer of paper, pinch up and crumple into a little ball so the other layers will have something to form around.
Bring each layer up individually until all layers are crinkled.
"Twist" the finished product in your hands, carefully, not ripping the papers.
Open up the layers some, and "fluff".

Getting started... Popcorn for breakfast and Sorcerer's Stone keeping me company.

A whole bag full of paper edges. Oops.

I also considered making teal and lilac flowers, but didn't want the colors to get muddled, so I just stuck with white, pink, and yellow.

I made a TON of these flowers. Probably like 60. I used some of them just scattered around the room and tables, and then others were used in bouquets with the next project - flowers I made from book pages.

Aren't those adorable? I used them as the jumping off point for my page flowers. I used some old packing paper I had, some book pages, and some little tweed flowers for the middle. It hurt my heart a little bit destroying a book.... but it wasn't a good book, so I was able to forgive myself.

The Process:
Borrow an array of paper punches from your ever-crafting mother-in-law.
Rip up a book. Cry a little. Drink some wine if that's your thing.
Punch out whatever papers you are using. I made large book circles, medium plain circles, small page flowers, and some little leaves.
Put the flowers together - I used these little green sticks with small copper wire that I got from the floral department at Hobby Lobby. You could use pipe cleaners or wire or any other number of things - this is just what I had on hand from a previous project so I made it work.
Hot glue mini tweed flower to the middle of each flower.
Reinforce at the base of each flower where it connects to the stick/wire/whatever with a dab of hot glue.
Place upright (I used mason jars) to dry completely.

Oof. :(

Finished flowers.

After I was finished making all of the flowers, I attached some of the tissue paper flowers to the sticks as well, and then I bunched some together to make bouquets. Each bouquet was made up of 4 flowers - 2 white, one book page,  and either 1 yellow or one pink flower. I just squished them together and bound the "stems" with a tiny rubber band.

As you may have noticed, the bouquets were then placed in some little mason jars. I figured those would go well with the whole kind of high tea/garden party theme we had going on.

Process:
Gather leftover pages - measure to cut to fit around the jars.
Make a couple more page flowers to place on the jars. Add leaves. (I used hot glue.)
Tie a cute ribbon or twine around the top of the jar. Voila!

Originally, my mom pinned those sparkly faery light mason jars to our board - let me just say this - that pin is totally bogus. I thought it looked too good to be true so I tried it with one and it was a disaster. SO not worth it, seriously, stay away. So instead I used my mason jars for vases, a la the second inspiration photo, and we put some uncovered mason jars with tealights in them on the outside tables next to a vase of paper flowers. Below are my inspiration photos, and some of my decorated mason jars.

I also made a penant banner to hang in the room - it was just a plan brown banner and I used different fancy papers to cut out the words "Hooray Grad!" - the completed photos will be in the entry with all the finished products, for now, here's a sneak peek:

Mom also pinned a picture of this sign that points out the paths to different fictional places. If we were having an outdoor party, I might have tackled actually making the sign, but since it was a party in a room, I instead just blew up and printed the photo, matted it on some floral printed paper, and put it in a pretty brushed brass frame.

My absolute favorite thing that I made though, was this paper "curtain" - I didn't know where I was going to put it or how it was going to fit into the decor, but I saw a photo on Pinterest that I LOVED and wanted to make my own version of it.

I used the paper punches again with some pretty cardstock and the scraps from my pages.

Process:
Use a ruler to mark off a small rod (I used a 3 foot rod) so that you can evenly space your hangings.
Measure out several lengths of string/fishing line/ribbon/twine. I just used white string. (Oh, and my "measuring) was having my husband hold his arm up in the air and cutting string from there to the floor - ha!
Tie your string to your dowel/rod where you marked it off. Add a small dot of glue to reinforce.
Lay dowel on floor and stretch out the strings.
Punch or cut out all of your circles/shapes and staack so they are ready to go.
If you have a focal point (mine were the book page flowers), place those next to the string so you know where you want to put them before attaching them. Place a small dab of hot glue on one piece of paper. Put it under the string, and place a secon piece on top of the string. Hold for a few seconds to firm up.
Repeat with all main pieces.
Use the same process for the smaller/colorful pieces.
Add small decorations to the rod to cover where you tied off the string. (I used the small tweed flowers from earlier, and a couple of the large pink paper flowers for the ends.)

I loved this - I just thought it was so cute! It took forever though - but it was worth it!

And lastly, *deep breath* a few inspiration photos that aren't exactly crafting, but I don't want to show the photos for from our party until the wrapup post.

Stay tuned for the next post - food!

For food, see Part 2 HERE.
For the full party recap, see Part 3 HERE.



Success!

I recently had a successful shopping excursion and figured it might be the teensiest bit blog-worthy. I know it's not for everyone, but I'm a sucker for good deals and always have to brag a little when I get one - or in this case, three!

I've been doing a lot of crafting lately and I realized that I was out of pretty cardstock, but I needed some more to finish up one last project, so I decided to head on over to Hobby Lobby, which is basically my 2nd home - ha!

I headed on over to the scrapbooking area because even though I don't scrapbook, most of the stuff I do is considered "papercrafting" so that's where I usually stock up on most of my supplies. And then, something marvelous happened. All scrapbooking paper books were 50% off! I never ever EVER buy those books because they are $19.99 and as much as I love pretty paper, I just cannot justify dropping a twenty dollar bill on it. I had only intended to pick up about 5 sheets but at only $10, I just couldn't resist this book.

Once I got home I was able to finish up my last project, and I still have about 170 pages to spare for future projects - whoo-hoo! I know, I know, I am way too excited about paper... hey, I never claimed to be cool!

After that, I had the shopping bug and decided that while I was out, I might as well go and see if I could find a cute new dress to wear to a party this weekend. More success! I found a cute, summery dress AND some adorable little brown flats to pair it with for under $30 total! Sa-weet!!

I came home all excited and had to share with my husband the steals that I got. He was not nearly as excited as I was, but I'm just going to pretend that's because he was busy playing Call of Duty. Yes, I'm sure that was the reason his eyes started glazing over as I went on and on and on about my pretty paper...

Folks, denial is not just a river in Africa.

So, how about you? Have you scored any fabulous deals lately? I'd love to hear about them!

Ribbon and glitter and wood - oh my!

Things that I am thinking right now:
1) I can't believe it's only Wednesday.
2) How is it already Wednesday?!

I simultaneously feel like this is the longest week ever, and that I need more time in the week for all that I have to do. People keep asking me if I'm enjoying my time off, but it doesn't really even feel like time off. I had a bad day yesterday - I feel like I'm supposed to relax and enjoy this time, but I'm so stressed out I don't even know what to do with myself. I woke up at 430a today for no damn reason and laid in bed for 30 minutes trying to force myself to go back to sleep but it wasn't happening, so I figured hey, why not blog?

Clinton had his bachelor party on Saturday and while he was out doing that I decided to take advantage of having the place to myself and make a total mess while doing my crafts and trying to get things organized.

At some point in the night, my living room was actually even MORE cluttered than this. I did not take a picture however, because it was after 3am and I was delirious.

First I finished up all of our favors.

After the favors I decided to get everything organized and ready to go. I made stacks of candles so that when we do our set-up it will be really easy - one stack per table, no confusion, and hopefully not 10 people asking me where things go. I packed everything for our centerpieces neatly into 2 boxes, and a 3rd box for table signage. I also packed a smaller, separate bag with important small things that I need easily accessible in it - ring boxes, flower girl buckets etc.

Next, I got to crafting. The first thing I made was a card box. There are DIY cardboxes all over the internet that look like a 3 tier cake - the point of these is to make something people can put cards into so that they can't be stolen. While this was originally my intention, when I went to Michael's to buy supplies, I realized I just didn't want something that big and plus, we're having a relatively small wedding - we know/love/speak to everyone there on a regular basis and are close enough to them to not have to worry about anyone stealing anything. So I went in a different direction and just bought a small, plain wood, card-sized box. I also bought a metallic champagne paint, some burgundy cardstock, and some gold letters (I already had the sheer ribbon pictured).

From this...

And this...

To this!

It's kind of hard to see the color, but it's a very light gold/champagne with a bit of shimmer to it.

It wasn't difficult, just required a little bit of precision for the lining, and patience for the paint to dry between the 3 coats. I guess some people might say it's a risk to have an open box like that but I don't know, I kind of feel like if you think it's risky, then you probably invited people to your wedding who shouldn't be there.

My next project was a cake topper. Now, this cake topper journey has been a trying one. A week before the wedding and still didn't have one - so frustrating. I (well, we) knew exactly what we wanted but it was proving nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find. As mentioned in a previous post, we have a sort of inside joke with crabs - the extremely short version is that before saying The L Word, we used to say "I peench" to each other (which basically meant the same thing, but SOMEONE *cough*notme*cough* was too scared to say it) because of this old commercial for the Honda Element with Gil the Crab. It's a little too silly to explain much more, but it's something that has stuck with us. We still say it sometimes, and always draw little crabs on cards and stuff. SO. Even though our wedding could not be farther from a beach theme, we knew we wanted crab cake toppers no matter what.

DO YOU KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO FIND CUTE CRAB CAKE TOPPERS? I WILL TELL YOU. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT. Apparently people just don't want their cake topped with a couple of cute crustaceans, believe it or not. I found a few, but they were mostly real-looking crabs, which, I don't know, just doesn't seem cute to me? I wanted something cartoon-ish and simple. I finally found ONE thing that I liked on Etsy. I didn't end up buying it because the seller was charging $70 for it, and it probably would have been even more because hers were blue and red and I would have asked for custom white. Finally I decided I could not possibly justify spending that much money on something that nobody else would probably even notice, so I thought I'd give it a whirl and see what I could come up with myself.

While at Michael's for the card box materials, I remembered that I had purchased the little wooden crab for the our save-the-date pictures there too. I found some crabs in the same section that were similar, but not exactly the same. I actually liked these ones a little better though, because they were slightly rounder and friendly-looking. I bought 4 of them so that I could do a trial run and a final draft, but I ended up only using the two because I was happy with my first attempt.

Plain wooden crabs.

First I traced them onto a piece of paper.

Then I drew the design I wanted on the picture and cut out some construction paper accessories.

Next up, 3 coats of plain white paint, then a tiny brush w/ some black paint for the faces.

 I don't have pictures of the next step, but basically I used some burgundy carstock painted black to make a bowtie and top hat for the groom. Next I cut out a tiny piece of tulle to make a veil for the bride. I also placed a few rhinestones on her claw as a bracelet. I decided to skip the bouquet because it looked unnatural anywhere I placed it. I had also purchased a small wooden base and I used mod-podge to stick the little guys to it. The base is painted white, and it's hard to see but there's also 1 coat of  clear iridescent glitter on it so that it is not the same finish as the bride and groom crabs.

The final product.

In better lighting, but hard to see the shimmer.

Final cost - like 4 bucks. Take that, $70 etsy topper! I did this one all on my own without consulting the groom which was a bit of a risk - he's been involved in nearly every decision thus far so I was worried he may not like it, but I didn't want to be texting him while he was having his boys night out. The good news is that the next day when he came home, he was in the middle of telling me a story when he stopped and asked me where/when I bought the cake topper, because he really liked it and didn't remember me showing it to him. Score one for me! It was pretty sweet to say, "oh I didn't buy that, I made it last night". Bonus point - he also loved the card box. Whoo-hoo, go me! DIY Bride for the win.

I also finally finished painting the initials for our Sweetheart Table. This was actually a long process because they originally started out neon green and yellow, so I had to primer them and use A BAJILLION COATS of glitter paint. That is an exact number.

And lastly, my most recent project this week has been the seating chart. Talk about a tedious task. That is definitely one of those that I wish I could have delegated to someone else, but wouldn't have trusted anyone else with, so I got stuck with it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought but I did have to do some finagling to get everyone where I thought they might be comfortable. Of course, there's always that one person who you don't want to subject anyone to and finally you just have to put them somewhere and hope it all works out haha.

Step 1 - Posterboard. I highly suggest this method. I also highly suggest a pencil instead of a pen. Rookie mistake.

Final product after I typed it all up and matted it in this frame I picked up for only $5!

 So that's what I've been up to this week! My living room no longer looks like that 1st picture, but one wall is stacked several boxes high. The spare room is mostly cleared out and will be finished today because OH HEY MY FAMILY ARRIVES TONIGHT! Actually more than one part of my family arrives today - my mom, step-dad and brother get in tonight from Nevada and are staying with us, and my sister and her husband and my 4 nieces are getting into town from Oregon. I hope I have just a moment to spend with other out-of-towners before the wedding, but everything is so hectic it's impossible to say. I can't believe how close the day is! I hope to blog again before Saturday, but no promises!