When I was browsing through Amy Butler’s website yesterday, I found some free patterns. There are beautiful quilts, scarfs, and pillows. But the thing that caught my eye are the fabric silhouettes . I’ve been looking for a cheap placeholder for my walls until I can afford something amazing (therefore expensive) and this just might be it. Now I just need to find some inexpensive frames…I need to go to some yard sales!
Images from Amy Butler’s website.
I have a tree in my yard that is producing little seed pods that I thought would make a beautiful wreath. So I took an hour out of my day today and made one. And, dang I’m good! It is good lookin’! It was super easy to make and looks great on my front door, so I want to share how to make one. There are probably a lot of things around your yard that would make a great wreath. (I can’t wait to make one in the fall when the leaves on my trees change colors.)
First, gather your supplies. All you really need is a grapevine wreath (mine is a 10″), some floral wire, and scissors. (Side note: grapevine wreaths happen to be 40 percent off this week at Roberts. They are usually about $2 for a 10″, so you can get it for just over a buck right now. Floral wire is about $1.60.)
Second, cut off enough bunches of seeds, leaves, or flowers to make your wreath. My hand shears made this super easy.
Next, gather enough seeds to make a thick bundle and secure the stems together with floral wire. I gathered three to four branches of seeds for each bundle. Once you have enough bundles to go all the way around the wreath, start securing them to the grape vines with the floral wire. The trick is to make sure that the top of each bundle hides the stems of the one before it.
Once I got this far I realized that the stems are pretty flimsy, so I wound a long piece of floral wire around the entire wreath to make sure the seeds didn’t flop over when I hung it up. I also sprayed it with some floral spray to help it keep its color for a few days longer that it would without it.
Ta da! After a short trip to Roberts to buy a $.99 wreath door hanger and some pink ribbon, my new wreath is proudly displayed on my front door. My husband keeps asking me about where I got the idea for it. He can’t believe I came up with it myself.
(P.S. Don’t you think this would make a great centerpiece if you lay it down and put a candle in the middle?)
I think a lot of people know that a good trick to saving money when they want to remodel their kitchen or bathrooms is to keep the cabinets and either paint or stain them. Well, I just wanted to show you proof that this is true.
In my old condo we wanted to redo our guest bathroom because it looked gross. Seriously it was bad. People would come out with their nose wrinkled, and I just knew they were thinking their body was probably infected with some horrible fungus just by stepping in there. However, we didn’t have a big budget. After finding a beautiful black-framed mirror for cheap ($17.77 in the clearance section at Furniture Warehouse on Redwood Road!) we decided to paint the water-warped cabinets to match. We had tried to stain the cabinets a few months earlier, but it just brought out the flaws even more. I was very pleased with the outcome of our paint job.
Here are my tips if you decide to paint your cabinets:
Enjoy the before and after pictures!
Here are a few things I would have done to this room if I had stayed in this condo a bit longer: bought some sweet handles for the cabinet doors, replaced the faucet, and actually have bought a toilet paper holder. Those seem to work well in bathrooms for some reason.
I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to make a beautiful lavender wreath. I saw a lot of people making them at Lavender Days and thought they looked complicated, but they are actually pretty easy to make! You can make a beautiful wreath with any flowers or greenery that you have in your yard, you just have to have a grapevine wreath and some floral wire. My friend Suzette gives step-by-step details on how to make these wreaths on her blog My Simple Stories. You can get the wreaths at Roberts (or any craft store) for a few bucks. They may only last a few weeks before they look dried up, but they turn out so beautiful they are worth it.
Photo from Suzette’s blog, My Simple Stories.
I love the idea of having silhouettes of my family above a fireplace or a series of them going up the stairs. Design Sponge posted a great tutorial on how to make your own silhouette.
There really aren’t too many steps. And, as you can see, the results are darling! Seth and I got some silhouettes done at Disneyland. It was actually pretty cool to see the lady just look at your profile and snip, snip, snip–one minute later your silhouette is done. The little shop is on Disneyland’s main street and opened just a few months after the park opened. The lady who cut our silhouettes out told us it was a lingerie shop for those first few months! I guess it didn’t go over too well.
Picture from Design Sponge
Look at this awesome dresser transformation from Sunset magazine. They found an old dresser on Craigslist for $25 and made it into something that is freakin’ awesome. They spent $100 on the transformation goods, and I think if you are a little bit more budget conscience, you can spend less than that and get the same look.By the way, here is the before:
I am imagining the possibilities for this dresser in Orem.
Thanks for the great article Suzette!
I was searching the blogosphere today (using Google’s blog search–way fun) and came across a blog called Sparrow Originals by an interior design student at Utah State University. She posted a great little tutorial on making fun paper globes.
I think this idea can be used by so, so many women in Utah because I know they have a ton of paper scraps lying around because of all the scrapbookin’ going on in the house! I don’t even scrapbook and I have a ton of gorgeous paper scraps lying around. (Ok, here’s the truth. I don’t scrapbook, but I do make homemade cards. They are too fun to resist.)
Can you imagine a bunch of these hung from the light above your table on a special day, or strung on a string to make a garland?
I love this DIY spool/chair/table I saw on Design Sponge. I also love how some of the comments people left on the post analyzed the piece as if it came from a budding furniture designer who needed to be knocked down a few pegs. So the proportions might not be perfect, but I still love it enough to drive to Salt Lake City and go dumpster diving to find myself a sturdy spool or two. We all know there is enough construction happening downtown that some of these just have to be lying around.