DIY: Updated Lamp Shades

I saw this lacy lamp shade post on Pinterest and really liked the look of the lace. I happened to have two blank lamp shades that were begging for a makeover.

I decided to do the lace treatment to one of the shades that was in our bedroom and chose to wrap the second shade in yarn and put it in our basement.

Basically, I followed the exact steps listed in the link above, so I'm not going to rehash the whole process, but will offer a few tips at the end of the post that I wish I would have known.

First, the lacy lamp shade.

My lamp shade was a dark gray color, so I stuck the lace on top of that and spray painted white. My friend also made one, but her lamp was white and she spray painted navy over the lace.

I really like how it looks and the lamp goes nicely with the colors in our room. Once I get the bedroom completely decorated how I want it, the lamp will tie in nicely. 

Now for the tips:
1. Make sure you stick the lace down really well with a repositionable spray adhesive. There are some spots on our lamp shades that got a little blotchy because the lace wasn't completely stuck down. Fortunately, we were able to just turn those parts toward the wall.

2. Use light, even coats of spray paint. I think I went a little too heavy handed in some spots. 

3. My friend's lamp shade was a weird shape and it was tough to get the lace cut out to fit the shade. We ended up cutting two sections that looked like a 3rd grader cut them, but it worked in the end. But, I would definitely say this method is easiest on a perfectly round or square lamp shade. 

I wrapped my second lamp shade in yarn. I had this pinned, so I figured I'd whip up my own version. I already had some gray yarn and then I picked up a really nice goldenrod yellow color. I really didn't have a reason for that color combo other than I like gray and yellow together. 

There is a nice ugly strip of yarn in the back where I stopped and started the different colors of yarn, but I'm not sure how that could be avoided. Again, I just faced that side to the wall and it looks just dandy. 

Past DIY: Our Wedding

When my husband and I got married in November 2010, we decided we wanted to create as many of the day's items as possible to save money and put our own spin on our wedding. In the end, the items we created included save the dates, invitations, coaster favors, boutonnieres for all groomsmen, dads and grandpas, wrist corsages for the moms and grandmas, bridesmaid gifts, programs, various signage for the day, centerpieces and ceremony decor. I might be forgetting a few things, too.

Our colors were navy and gray with touches of apple green. We used peacock feathers as accents, as well, which were included in the boutonnieres, bouquets and centerpieces.

I don't know how much money we spent on all of the DIY projects, but we regularly shopped sales and used the Dollar Tree as a major source for our projects, so I'm confident we came in way under what we would have if we'd used professionals for every item. Crafting isn't always cheaper than just buying the item pre-made, but in this case, it worked well for us.

Also, we really weren't concerned with putting too much effort into some of the items, such as the invites. We kept them very simple and printed them at home to save money. We really didn't see the point of spending a lot of money on something that would get thrown away. 

Invites (names blurred):

 Back of envelope

Front of envelope (we used a DIY wrap around label)

 Invite with belly band

RSVP card (we had guests RSVP via email)

Corsages and boutonnieres:

For the guys

For moms and grandmas

Centerpieces: It took us a while to figure out what we wanted to do, but we knew we didn't want to use flowers so we could save money. I saw these green balls on saveoncrafts.com and thought they would be a good vase filler. From there, we decided to use some branches to add height to the centerpiece. We had long, rectangular tables, so these were in the center with two smaller vases on the ends with a floating candle. Our table settings cost us under $10 each because the vases were from the dollar store and we bought things in bulk. 

Centerpieces used in ceremony space (vase filled with split peas)

Homemade curtains to cover some paintings in our ceremony space. 

Signage:

Favors: Our biggest labor of love! We made each guest a set of two coasters that doubled as escort cards to find their table. They also showed the servers which meal the person chose.

The coasters were made from 4" x 4" white tiles that we bought at Menards for about $.16 each. We put felt on the bottom of each tile. We then cut two patterns of scrapbook paper and Mod Podged them to the tiles. We also created a little monogrammed sticker to put in the corner with our names and wedding date. The final step was sealing them so they would hold up when people put wet glasses on them. We probably spent 24 hours on these over the course of a few months, but they turned out great and we got so many compliments on them. People always tell us they still use them every day!

So those are most of the items we made to make our wedding "us." We absolutely loved our wedding and wouldn't change anything, even though it was a lot of work to get all of this together!

DIY: Gallery Wall

I've had the bug to create a gallery wall for a while, but was too lazy. It seemed like a lot of work to figure out the alignment and hang everything up. But while my husband was in China and I was bored, I realized I pretty  much had most of the pieces I wanted to use. I worked on a few additional pieces and before I knew it, I had my wall laid out on our living room floor.

I had to do a few extra steps because we had some shelves on the walls from the previous owners and they were a pain to get off. Half the screws were stripped and each shelf had seven of them. I had to go buy a long drill bit to finally get them all out. Then I had to paint the spaces they were in because the old owners painted around them. Thankfully, they left us all of the leftover paint from all of the rooms in the house. I'm pretty sure the paint was well past its expiration date, but it worked.

Offending shelves on left wall (old owner's furniture and stuff)

I didn't trust myself to hang all of the stuff myself, so I waited until the Mr. got home so he and his perfectionist self could help me hang things evenly. I didn't want it perfectly symmetrical, so that was one good thing we had going for us. 

I roughly cut paper into the shapes and sizes of my pieces and taped them to the wall. We stared at them for about a week, rearranging things here and there until we decided we liked how it look. It took us about two full hours to hang things up, along with a few frustrating moments (for my husband) when measurements didn't quite add up. But in the end, I'm thrilled with the result!

The final product.

The little asterisks by some of the items means I made it or it was something special that I framed. I love that the wall incorporates so many unique things that aren't just photos.

Here's a closer look at some of the pieces:

I made this wreath over the winter and making all those flowers was a pain, so I wanted that work to be a permanent fixture on the wall. 

My sister-in-law and I took a class to create a mosaic mirror last summer. 

I bought this little frame at Goodwill for $.25 and decided to paint it. I didn't know what to put in it so I was rummaging through some mementos and found the receipt from the first date with my husband. It fit perfectly! (And let it be known that he's the one who kept it, not me! Such a sentimental chap.)

I ordered one of these plates for a friend's wedding about three months after ours and decided I liked it so much that I ordered one for us, too. (Husband's name blurred to protect the innocent.)

We saved the corks from the champagne we drank on the night we got engaged and the night we got married and wrote the dates on them. I just removed the glass from a Goodwill frame and glued the corks to some felt. 

We had a boutonniere that we made for my husband and the groomsmen for our wedding so I decided to glue one to a glass-less frame that was also leftover from the wedding. 

Three Pinterest projects rounded out the homemade wall. The ombre hearts was something I've seen all over, so I glued some scrapbook paper and hearts on top of this ugly painting I got at Goodwill. The L was just a random project I decided to do after getting a little wooden 'L' at Goodwill. And then geometric piece was a whim as well. I had a blank canvas from Goodwill and wanted to do something with it, so I grabbed some tape and some spray paint and got to it. I love the copper color! 

Finally, here's a picture that shows the scale of the wall with our giant couch underneath it.

I suppose I could have propped the pillows nicely and moved those spare frames from the floor, 

but I'm just keeping it real! 

DIY: Toilet Paper Roll Art

After starting this blog six months ago, I fell off the wagon- again. But, I've done a ton of projects since then and I think I'm finally ready to blog them out.

I want to reiterate that I am not that good at coming up with ideas on my own. I get almost all of my ideas from Pinterest and go from there. I'm all about giving credit where credit is due, so I'll try my best to link back to whoever came up with the original craft I'm recreating. 

Also, this blog is not going to be a step-by-step guide on how to recreate something. You can go to Pinterest for that. In fact, I encourage it. Pinterest is a great way for people like me who like to craft, but aren't that good at coming up with the idea. 

So, now that we have that out in the open, here's my first project! (Keep in mind that almost all of these were done in the past six months.)

Last year, my husband and I bought a big house. It has a lot of extra rooms that we barely use and lots of walls to fill. I'm a cheap-ass when it comes to buying decorations and get a lot of mine at Goodwill or HomeGoods. Otherwise, I make them. 

To fill a blank wall in the basement, I wanted a big piece that was cheap. Cue toilet paper roll art. 

This DIY projects was one of the slower going ones, as I had to save up toilet paper and paper towel rolls. But, sure enough, I collected, cut and glued enough to make this. I know this picture looks like crap (it's an iPhone picture), and for some reason the scale of the couch and the TP art looks off, but alas, that's the point of this blog. I don't take professional quality pictures of my projects and I sure as hell don't edit them. 

This project was free, except for the spray paint, which I'm guessing ended up costing about $5. 

A very high level breakdown of the project:

• Cut TP rolls to desired width. I did about 1" and was not exact. I bent mine a little to give them a petal shape. 
• I would recommend spray painting them before gluing, because getting in all of the crevices was a pain. Plus, I had to use more spray paint to get in said crevices. 
• Hot glue the pieces into a desired pattern. There are many ideas on Pinterest.

This really was easy, just a little time consuming. Since I created it, gravity has taken over a bit, so I need to revisit the hanging situation. Other than that, I'm happy with how well it covers the empty wall and the fact that it was free doesn't hurt either!