My first post in about a month, and it’s all about paper (the pretty scrapbook-ish kind of paper!)
I should really be far craftier than I am.
It’s true. I love yarn. I love painting stuff. I love making things pretty (oh how I love making things pretty!) And, most of all, I love (love!) scrapbook paper.
You know that aisle in Michaels with all the pretty, perfectly stacked piles of colourful papers? I get lost in that aisle for hours and hours. HOURS. Combining different patterns. Swooning over prints. Marvelling over all of the potential for serious prettiness. Yep. It’s really rather silly considering I’m in no way a scrapbooker (since, honestly, I’m far too lazy for what appears to be a very finicky and fussy – albeit lovely! – hobby) and since (as previously noted) I’m not particularly crafty.
During my most recent trip to Michaels I picked up no fewer than fourteen (yup – fourteen) (see? I’m obsessed…) sheets of gorgeous paper. Did I have any particular plan for all these beautiful papers? Nope. I just really liked them. I also bought a few super inexpensive (they were three whole bucks each, I think) ready-to-paint (or ready-to-leave-in-their-lovely-unpainted-state, in my case) picture frames. And then I came home and started looking at the fireplace mantel in my dining room.
(Aside: I find it important to clarify that this particular faux fireplace mantel is located in my dining room, since we have no fewer than three faux fireplaces in this house. The previous home owners were indeed faux fireplace fanatics.)
And then the wheels started turning. And then I realized that the sheets of lovely coordinating scrapbook paper, and those unpainted frames might look sorta rustic-ish-ly cute on my dining room fireplace mantel.
And so began the rearranging. (Does anyone else get a little OCD when it comes to fireplace mantel decorating?) And the fussing. And the tweaking.
And here is what I finally came up with…
It’s not done yet. It needs something… more. Perhaps a few miniature pumpkins in honour of fall. Or some Christmassy bobbles and doodads (but not for a few weeks – I adore Christmas, but it’s a little too early for that at the moment, even for me!) For now, and until I get around to adding additional adornments to the mantel, those lovely papers are making me happy.
That all said, there will be more faux fireplace fussing to follow, I’m sure. And definitely more frivolous scrapbook paper purchases made in the not-at-all distant future. (I just can’t get enough!) (It’s weird, I know.)
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A tisket, a tasket, I found a brand new (sale-priced!) basket (alternate title: three cheers for Michaels!)
Michaels rocks. Can I say that? It really really does. (And I’m not a Michaels ambassador and they’re not paying me for that endorsement, I just love them lots and lots!) (not that I’d say no if they offered…) (just saying.) I popped into my local Michaels store the other day to pick up another ball of yarn for my ongoing scarf project (since I’m knitting like a madman over here lately) and I walked out with…
-a lovely basket I found on sale (regularly $44, all mine for $22!)
-a pretty metallic picture frame picked out of the clearance pile for $4 (happy squeal!)
-a sheet of lovely scrapbook paper that was neither on sale nor on clearance (but it’s pretty and, at $0.99, it still felt like a ginormous bargain)
…and my ball of yarn (of course!) Quite the hodge-podge-y group of items eh? But, oh… I had plans. All of this Michaels-bounty (minus the yarn) went toward updating my little living room and faux fireplace.
And, that all said, here’s the result of lots of rearranging and tweaking and pondering and tweaking some more…
Tada! OK. So it’s not necessarily a hallelujah moment, but I think it looks better. :) Here’s what I did…
First…
I summoned my inner DIY-er and created the world’s easiest art for inside my new (really really inexpensive!) metallic frame (which, btw, reminds me a lot of the fancy gold frames my grandmother used to have scattered around her house) (which, of course, makes me love this frame even more.) The instructions?
-cut a 4×6″ rectangle (to match the size of the frame) from a sheet of basic white printer paper
-fold it in half and cut a heart into it (a la grade one Valentine’s Day art project)
-put said piece of paper (minus cutout heart) in the frame (letting the brown cardboard backing that came with the frame peek through the cutout)
…and poof! Instant 30 second art.
Super cute, eh? And, almost as important, super easy!
That all said, I can’t really take any credit for this project. I first saw this idea here on House Pretty’s lovely blog. My method is a little different, but the overall end result is pretty similar. And I don’t want to be a big bad awesome easy art project idea thief! So, House Pretty, I’m totally tipping my hat to you on this one. :)
And then…
My second easiest-ever DIY art project? Adding that lovely $0.99 scrapbook paper to a frame for an instant print. No fancy instructions required, just add scrapbook paper to frame, put frame in a frame-worthy spot, and admire. Done!
The paper I used doesn’t even really fit my frame, if you want to get all technical about it. The paper is 12×12″ I think (or whatever standard scrapbook paper size is) and the frame is matted for an 11×14″. But it still works. Truth be told, I kinda want to wallpaper my entire house with this scrapbook paper. So springy! So happy! I’m hoping to find other places around the house where I can use this pretty paper shortly (which, in turn, means another trip to Michaels – yay!) I love it just that much.
As does Jacob. Lesson learned: never try to take pictures of things on the floor. When you do, this happens…
Yup. Jacob agreed that this scrapbook paper was the prettiest he had ever seen (and, as a result, he felt he should roll around on it.)
I’m hardly a scrapbooking aficionado, but I’m guessing that cats don’t make very good scrapbookers.
And last (but definitely not least) (in fact, the opposite of least… most?)…
The basket is my absolute favourite addition to the room. I’ve been searching for a basket to fill the fireplace void for a while now, but baskets are crazy expensive (and I’m rather frugal.) Which is why I did a little happy dance in the middle of Michaels when I realized that all of their baskets were marked 50% off. Woo! And I’m pretty sure I practically skipped out of the store. (I tend to do that when I find a good deal. People look at me funny, but I don’t care. Cocked eyebrows can’t compare with the joy of finding a bargain.)
Doesn’t it look cozy all filled with blankets? Yep! I’m ridiculously pleased with my find. :)
In conclusion…
So there! Those were my Michaels-inspired updates! I made a couple of non-Michaels-related improvements too, like the framed black and white pic of me and my girlfriends from back in our university years (that I found while rummaging through our second bedroom last weekend) (we look so young… sigh!) And I did a bit (um, a lot) of rearranging too.
All in all, the room is coming. Slowly but surely. I figure by the time we decide to sell the house I’ll get it right. I still need something on the wall to the left of my pretty little faux fireplace (besides the cats’ beloved scratch post, of course) but that’s a whole different story (that I’ve already obsessed a bit about HERE) for a whole different day.
Until then, I’ll likely continue rearranging things weekly-ish and posting regular fireplace-mantel updates.
Excited? Me too. :)
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Putting stuff on walls (and other scary commitments)
Admission: I cringe whenever I start planning to mount things (hooks, frames, mirrors, random tapestries) on my walls. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s the assumed permanency of drilling into my lovely (ie: freshly painted and yet unmarred) walls. Maybe it’s a fear of placing items too high or too low (since, um, that happens. To me. A lot.) Maybe it’s because I don’t use power tools (that’s Sweetie’s job) and because the whole anchor (necessary with our plaster walls!) + screw (in a very specific size and type) combination confuses me just a bit. Not sure. Let’s just suffice it to say that when I repainted much of this house, I actually left some of the previous owners’ screws in the walls and painted around them. The previous owners had already done the dirty work for me. Why mess with that?
But I’m thinking it’s nearly time to face this fear and address the empty wall space around my fireplace. A space that drives me a little bonkers. And now that the Christmas tree is down (it finally – FINALLY! – came down last weekend) it’s especially obvious that there’s a big gaping hole in my living room loveliness.
Yep. I’m ready to tackle the vacant (and rather sad-looking) space around old not-at-all smokey.
The corner to the left of the (faux) fireplace is particularly lonely looking. Even Sweetie exclaimed (once the tree was all packed away and the merriness banished to the attic for the next eleven months): “You’re going to put something else there, aren’t you?”
And if Sweetie (aka Mr “Oh… What’s that? You say you painted the kitchen fuchsia? I didn’t notice…”) recognizes that something isn’t quite right, something obviously must not be right.
My dilemma? What to decorate the void with. Given my fear of putting stuff on walls, I’ve been doing a lot of research on empty corner filling (since I’m a tad OCD and indecisive and generally nervous about any sort of wall-marring commitment.) A quick discussion with the lovely folk over at Pinterest (they’re exceedingly helpful over there, btw!) left me with the following suggestions…
Wall-filling strategy #1: Framed… somethings. For the record, I’m in love with this room (holy moly that’s some gorgeous tealness!) from Emily Henderson…
But what, exactly, would I put in the frames? Prints? Art? Pictures of the cats? And should I go with white frames? Dark wood frames? Metallic? Sigh.
Or I could fill the space with plates perhaps (aka “Wall-filling strategy #2.”) Just look (look!!!) at this stunning wall of pretty plates from Larissa over at mmmcrafts…
Lovely eh? I adore this idea. Although my supply of decorative plates is a little low at the moment. And planning out which-plate-goes-where seems like the sort of thing that could drive an already somewhat strange girl completely batty.
I could scatter some pretty ceiling medallions across my wall. I’ve admired Dave and Joi’s medallion-adorned wall for a long long while now…
Love love love their living room!
Or I could embrace the emptiness… This room, from my all-time most favourite designer ever Samantha Pynn (hi Sam! You rock!), makes me think that my living room void isn’t really a void afterall. Perhaps I just need to add a lovely lamp (oooh! And a chandelier!)…
I’m not sure. What I AM sure of is that something needs to happen. To spice things up a little. You know, shake it to the right (if you know that you feel fine.)
(And yep. I just quoted Spice Girls. Random? Yes. Scary? Agreed.)
Anyhow, this debate obviously isn’t over. I’ll be taping templates of some sort to my walls shortly, I’m sure. And then the inevitable (and ongoing) template rearranging will begin. And likely more Pinterest-ing too.
Being an indecisive commitment-phobe is a lot of work.
But yes! Those are my quasi plans to date. Hopefully the next time I chat about my living room walls there will be stuff strategically mounted on them.
Or, if nothing else, print/medallion/tapestry-sized paper templates.
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Revisiting my little kitchen Christmas art project (yep, the blue’s gotta go)
This weekend it snowed here for the first time this winter (although technically it’s still fall, I think), which, as you can imagine, meant that Operation Christmas truly began chez Sweetie and Joy (since snow just makes everything feel Christmassier and cheerier and happier!) (At least until New Years… soon after that I’m totally done with the snow and start looking forward to spring.)
Even my newly acquired little driftwood star got Christmassied up a wee bit…
Yup. We’re all getting in the spirit around here. (Pictures of cats wearing tiny little reindeer antlers to follow shortly, of course.)
I’ve now lived with my DIY kitchen art attempt for a week now, and I’m still not loving it. At all. :( I’ve decided that it’s the blue “inner-matting” (I should seriously coin that term, eh?) that’s throwing everything off. Yep – the blue is making me… well, blue.
So I delved deep into my scrapbook paper pile once again, and pulled out a sheet of lovely Christmassy red paper. And squealed just a little. Because that’s what I do. (Kinda freaks the cats out a bit, but it keeps them on their toes.)
And after a few minutes of cut and paste (I’m president of the International Society of Cutters and Pasters, btw), I had this…
Which looks like this on my wall…
Which makes me a very happy girl. :)
So am I done with this project now? Probably. I mean, I could be really rather persnickety and say that the red is a little more tomato-ey than I’d prefer (which, really, is quite true.) But it’s BETTER. Much better. And I have a gazillion other fun projects I’m just itching to start. (Do you see that as foreshadowing? Let’s call that foreshadowing. :)
Happy one month (less a day!) till Christmas! Hooray! Bring on the merry!
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Seeing stars (like, lots of them) (I may be a little obsessed)
Hello. I have a wee little obsession: I love stars. So much so that I’d adorn all the walls in my house with stars if I could (and if I wasn’t convinced that people would think I’m some sort of star-infatuated nut.)
I just bought another one. Shhhh… Don’t tell… And it’s LOVELY! Apparently made by some star-adoring artiste from carefully selected pieces of driftwood found alongside some remote white sandy beach (true story!), it’s natural and organic looking and I practically skipped out of Homesense with it in my arms. (And yep, people looked at me like I’m a certified crazy lady.) (But I’m kind of used to that.)
I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a Christmassy star, but even if it is I’m pretty sure it’ll be a permanent fixture on my walls somewhere. Afterall, there are stars in the sky year-round. So stars belong on my walls year-round too, non? And, for the non-holiday season months, we can call it my beach-chic star (is beach-chic an actual design style? Let’s assume it is, k?) Either way, it makes me happy.
For now, I think the wooden star will likely replace the green star above our two tullsta chairs (yep, that’s right – I’m swapping one star for another.) And then that green star will likely head on into the dining room (where we haven’t yet put anything on the walls.) (Ack, I know.) I think.
Or perhaps it will assume the place of honour above the faux fireplace…
Hmmm… Yep. I foresee a bit of wall-adornment jenga taking place over the next couple of days.
But, yes! Star (not so) light, star (not particularly) bright, (not at all) the first star I see tonight, welcome to my happy little 1940s house. You’re pretty darn swell. :)
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