Special project reveal

I'm one of those people who is addicted loves browsing on Pinterest.  Some time ago Genevieve was looking over my shoulder and saw the image below and fell in love with it.  I fell in love with it just a little bit too.

Image dottieangel.blogspot.com

Genevieve has her room decorated with French elements, lots of white and old worldy type things. After viewing a few more of these gorgeous images below, I started to hatch a plan which has been brewing for a couple of months.

Image from Pinterest

Image from Pinterest

Image from Pinterest

Today I finished my version of a lace patchwork curtain for Genevieve's room.  I used calico for the header (already on hand), off cuts of sheer fabrics, (op shop), lace hankerchiefs to fine to be of any practical use (inherited from mother-in-law and grandparents), cotton and lace doilies (op shop), lace fabric from a tri-pillow slip, deconstructed (op shop), assorted blouses made from sheer fabric, cheesecloth and lace, deconstructed (op shop) and old lace (inherited from grandparent).  Total cost of supplies about $25.00 including the curtain rail, curtain ends, calico fabric from my stash and cotton sewing thread.

 

I encountered a number of problems when making the curtain.  The most difficult was dealing with the different weights of fabric and lace used.  It made for rather uneven sewing and of course I'm lazy and cut most of the fabrics free hand so of course they weren't particularly straight.  The beauty in my opinion with a project like this is it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact a little shabbiness adds to the character.  I hope.  :)  Anyway overall I'm very happy with how it turned out and the most important thing is Genevieve loves it.  She came home from uni this afternoon, went to her room and came out with a big smile and her face and said thank you.  That is reward enough for me and the satisfaction that I have actually finished a project in about a week and a half instead of it turning into an eternal W.I.P. or U.F.O.

Thank you for taking an interest and trying to guess what I was making.  Cherrie from the blog Willy Wagtail was closest to guessing what I was making and where my inspiration came from.  Go Cherrie!! 

I have another project for Genevieve's room in mind which I might start next week.  I'm on a roll.

Anne  xx

Insomnia

The dreaded 'I' word.


Definition from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/insomnia in·som·ni·a

n.

Chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time.

Do you suffer from it?  What triggers it in you?  What do you do to relieve it?  

The past three nights I have not been able to sleep for any length of time.  I go to bed at the normal time, perhaps doze for 15 minutes or so and then I'm AWAKE.  I'm awake when I need and want to be sleeping and resting.   AHHHHHHHH!!!!  It's o.k. really, just feeling a little loopy, hazy, dim witted, sluggish, oh and did I mention tired?

On a completely random note, I found this image of my dream laundry on Pinterest.  So ordered, so tidy, so pretty, so impossible!

Source http://gardenviewcottage.tumblr.com/post/4987629945

How about this one?  This is really more what I'd love, bold, bad and brassy.  How could the laundry get you down if you had these bright colours to wake you up as you walked in the door?!  (Perhaps I need red in my life today to wake me up.) 

Source http://www.decorpad.com/photo.htm?photoId=90978&relatedPhotoId=90367&index=1

This Pinterest business is very addictive.  I started a board titled Bohemian and now have 226 followers. WHAT!!  All I do is look for bold, bright, colourful, eclectic, hippyish......anything goes type decor images and pin them.  I can really let my hair down 'virtually' so to speak without offending my family with my artistic, decorating urges just waiting to burst out.  (I find it so hard to be retstrained at times.)  I've often though it would be nice to have two or five houses that I could decorate in different styles that I love.  Now I can do that vicariously on Pinterest.  Hubby should be very pleased that Pinterest is saving him lots of money.  :)

Do you have to restrain yourself?  What ideas do you have to reign in?

Sorry this is a bit of a scrambled eggs type post, that's all I'm good for today.

Enjoy your Sunday and I hope you had a good sleep last night!!

Anne  xx

Throne room improvements

Sometimes the smallest room in the house gets neglected, it's just not a priority when it comes to decorating.  However, this small but important room has been bugging me for some time as I like things to look nice.  I think the following photo says it all adequate but not very nice.

I'm sorry about the quality of this photo as it was taken very late in the day and using the flash made the colours look all wrong.

Here is our improved throne room.

 

I didn't want to spend too much money on this improvement and the only thing I paid money for was the metal storage unit which I found on Friday for $22.  All other improvements came from using what I had.  Frugal decorating, I love it.

The first thing I did was spray paint the basket that previously held the toilet paper with a flat white paint.  I only gave it a light coating so that some of the natural cane colour would show through.  I had thought I would buy a new  rubbish bin but suddenly hit on the idea of putting the bin in the basket to hide it.  It also hides the toilet brush.  Yippee!  Cost $0.

I wanted to add some sort of all day fragrance to the room but wasn't prepared to buy an expensive solution.  So I copied an idea which is in many of the lovely home wares shops.  I've seen these priced at $38.  I found a small glass bottle I already had and filled it with water and added some drops of my favourite essential oil.  I found wooden satay sticks in my kitchen draw and added them to the bottle to diffuse the essential oil.  I found disused saucers from espresso cups and used one to go under the bottle to protect the surface of the metal storage unit.  Cost $0.  

 

To add a little more decorative interest, I placed some pebbles on another saucer.  The pebbles were in the garden and were originally found on a beach visit some years ago.  After a good scrub they came up looking gorgeous and just the right colour.  Cost $0

The toilet rolls were  placed on the lower shelf and for a little more interest, I added the hanging heart which I made years ago and was previously hanging on the toilet door handle.  Cost $0.

Here is a closer look.

Such a long post for such a little room.  :)  What do you think?  I'm very happy with the outcome.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone,

Anne  xx

Storage

 I recently discovered a blog called Full of Great Ideas by Stephanie who is one very creative lady.  She recently set herself the challenge of a $0 spending month other than for things such as bills and essential food items.  As she loves to create and decorate, she is looking at what she already has in her craft room to use.  I am fascinated by what she is creating and how inventive she is becoming.  I've been encouraging her because I think we can all fuel our passion to create and decorate without spending, especially if you have a well stocked craft room like me.

Can you identify what this is?

It's supposed to be a CD holder.  It's a useless piece of wire that doesn't function as as a CD holder.  Check this out.

CD's spilling out all over the place.  We don't have room for CD towers due to limited floor space and besides they are so ugly.  So what to do.  Light bulb moment inspired by Stephanie, dig out a cardboard box from the recycling bin and make something.

Cut box in half and glue top and bottom flaps and reinforce the bottom with some heavy card saved from some other packaging at an earlier date.

I've used curtain fabric samples to cover the boxes with.  I used craft glue as the hot glue gun just wasn't doing it for me.  (All tips on how to get a hot glue gun working properly would be greatly appreciated.)  The fabric has been tucked away for years (given to me by someone who had a shop) and while it's not my favourite fabric, it serves perfectly well for this project.  The boxes aren't going to be on display after all.

I have white card strips also tucked away and I stamped them with fancy alphabet letters for a bit of whimsical nonsense.  Can't have CD's out of alphabetical order now can we?

I

Here is the second box covered in outrageous fabric.  Can you imagine curtains made from this fabric about 10 -15 years ago?  Of course I used the same outrageous colours to stamp the alphabet letters on the card strips for this box.  My stamping skills leave much to be desired, but hey, out of sight again.

This is a slight improvement on what was there before. 

I just have to tackle the cassettes now.  Yes, I still have cassettes and until I find some way of converting them to CD's, they are staying put.  I probably could have used plastic boxes to store these in, but plastic is so ugly and I would have to go out and try and buy something to fit.  This was so much more fun and it cost me zilch as everything I used was in my craft room.  As a side note, the blue box contains classical music (hubby) and the big circle box is for contemporary, boppy music (me).  :)

Enjoy your weekend and if you live in Victoria, enjoy your extra long weekend.

Anne  xx