cap-toe shoes // diy

Today's DIY is a simple one. It's probably so easy that it doesn't even warrant a tutorial, but I snapped some pictures while I was doing this and figured HEY why not.

Materials:

A pair of shoes that fit well but are showing wear along the toes. I picked my FAVORITE two-year-old glitter flats because the toes are suspiciously glitter-free from all the tripping and toe-stubbing I do throughout the day, and if I ruined them it was time for a new pair anyway.

{not pictured: foam brush, acrylic paint, and plain-'ol scotch tape} 

Step 1: 

Start by taping off the section of the toe you'd like to paint. Curve the tape a little, although straight-across would look good too. Press firmly on the tape to get it to adhere to the crazy glitter of the shoe you chose. Start rethinking your decision, but don't stop now!

Step 2: 

Squirt a little paint onto the toe part and fret a bit because it wasn't exactly the shade you were expecting. Go with it anyway. {Tip: A little goes a long way. A dab this size was able to cover both toes well}

Step 3. 

Start painting! Try to start on top of the tape and brush down, to minimize paint seepage underneath. 

Step 4: 
Peel off tape carefully, while paint is still wet. Do a little happy dance, but make sure to subdue it since the paint is still wet and your husband is getting tired of finding paint on the carpet.

Tadaaaaaaa! These are still my favorite shoes, and now they've got a pop of color!  The paint has a sort of satin finish rather than gloss, so it has good contrast to the shiny-ness of the shoe. But when the sun hits it, the glitter still shows through!

I'm probably going to line the cap-toe with some gold paint, to give it more of a crisp edge. There was some bleeding {as you can see above}, but it's not noticeable unless you get really close, and I've got some gold paint that would match the shoe perfectly!

Yay!

striped accent wall: a tutorial! // diy

Today I'm going to show you how to go from this:

To this:

We are 100% in love. This was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment project and we are so thrilled with how it turned out. The diagonal stripes were Tim's idea; what do you think? I wasn't so sure at first, but as soon as we started painting, I was thrilled we went with his choice. Go Tim!
The darker color was a lovely bluish-gray Behr paint+primer-in-one that we found in the mis-tint section at Home Depot for... wait for it.... SEVEN DOLLARS (for a gallon!!!). I don't know how familiar you are with paint prices, but that's a good 80% off it's normal price. Moral of the story: check the mis-tint section first.
The lighter color was just our darker color mixed with some white paint we had in the garage (it was the same finish). We really wanted a tone-on-tone color pattern, and since a) we didn't want to buy more paint and b) our first color was a botched custom color anyway, we just mixed our own. The ratio ended up being about 2 parts dark to 1 part white, maybe? We kind of played with it until we liked it, then of course painted a test board to make sure it was the contrast we wanted.

We wanted the stripes at a 45 degree angle across the wall, and we wanted them to be about six inches wide.  So, we marked every six inches across the floor and one side wall, then used some basic geometry (Remember that? Huh? huh? Yeah, Tim didn't either.  he was no help) to get the ceiling and other wall marked. It's not as hard as it sounds, I just stink at explaining. Basically, some of the stripes ended in the middle of the corner, and we had to figure out where the other edge would go.

To get a perfectly straight line between the marks, we used a "snap line" as a guide. They sell them in the hardware store, but pssh on that! We used a piece of yarn we had covered with chalk (we literally colored along the yarn, it worked great), stretched it across the wall from one marked point to the other, pulled it taut, and gave it a SNAP!

From there, it was just a matter of taping off the stripes and painting! We taped off the outside of the stripes we wanted to paint, and then figured out our painting technique.

I haven't done a TON of painting in my life, but I've done enough to know that using painter's tape doesn't always guarantee a perfectly crisp line. This of course was a bummer when a crisp line was exactly what we wanted! I tried a couple techniques, but settled on one I first saw on House of Hepworths, which worked really well on our test board:
The lighting in that photo is pretty off (Left and Right photos should be same colors), but it's pretty clear that painting the base color on top of the tape before painting the stripe color really made for a crisp line. Any "bleeding" done under the tape was the base color, which then blocks the accent color from bleeding at all!

So, even though it meant extra drying time, we made sure to paint over the edges of the tape with our base color before we added in the accent color.

After that coat was fully dried, we painted in our accent stripe color. We pulled the tape off when the paint was still a little bit wet, and had no trouble with the removal.

Can I just say that there's nothing more satisfying than pulling off painters tape and seeing exactly what you wanted to see? The most beautiful thing in the world.

We are absolutely in love with our silly little wall. It just perks me right up coming home from a rough day at work (this is one of the MAIN benefits of a pretty accent wall, don'tcha know?).

We finished it off with some $5 over-the-door mirrors from Target, rearranged the furniture a bit, and and of course you can see our "new" chandelier! Just a couple little tweaks made the room look SO different, and we actually like spending time here.
What do you think?

Shared at Not Just A Housewife, Sugar Bee Crafts, Krafty Kat

circular saws, popsicles, and wood glue // diy

Those three items characterized my last few days. It's been wonderful.

Although side note? Girls in lipstick don't get taken very seriously in hardware stores.

Back to the story. The guest room in our apartment has this awkward nook next to the closet that we've never really known how to use. It was the perfect size for a little end-table, but not much else, and when you're in a little-ish apartment, every little bit of space counts. However, this is what it looked like once little Spock joined our family:

Yep, it's been commandeered by the bird, which we're totally okay with, but look at the "Beverly Hillbillies" setup we've got going on. To make the cage high enough, we had to stack a side table on top of another side table. It's the leaning tower of Pisa! We put up with it for three weeks, and then enough was enough. Our Printer kept getting covered in birdseed, Spock discovered he could hide in the spot between the wall and the giant stack, and, well it looks dumb.

But seriously nothing else would fit there! We'd need something a little over two feet wide, tall enough to reach the window, but not too tall as to block it. Now, we had a dresser that was the perfect height, but was a little bit too wide. It was Tim's dresser when he was a kid, and we'd been using it to store all my crafty-supplies...

...in our hallway. This was another reason I was itching to figure out a way to make this work.

It was at least 10 inches too wide, so if it were to fit into the "nook" we would have to do surgery. We figured, what the heck?

The plan was thus:

Tim was really skeptical. However, this one project would tackle both the giant tower of end-tables AND the dresser blocking part of the hallway. So it was HAPPENING.

I marked the center point on the dresser with chalk, and then again with tape so I'd know exactly where to cut. Because tape was a lot easier to see than chalk, and I was scared.

And then, it was time to cut.

MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Holy moley, there's nothing like a good power tool. AAAANDTim let me use the circular saw when he wasn't home. That's growth, man.

(of course, he did "surprise" me by coming home for lunch when I texted him a picture of my progress... Maybe we still have a little ways to go in the trust department.)

TADAAAAA!

Just kidding. We still had a ways to go.

Using Gorilla Wood Glue, we attached the two dresser pieces together. When I replace the drawer struts, it will get even more support, but since it would be tucked into a small space and only would be holding a birdcage, I wasn't worried about strength. 

Then came the paint job.

Step 1  //  Step 2

We finished this dresser with a paint job similar to that of our dining room table, with a few tweaks. We knew we wanted to use color, so rather than white-washing it, we watered down some blue paint (using a 60% water; 40% paint ratio). It only took one quick coat to get the effect we wanted, and 1/3 cup was more than enough to get the job done.

It fits perfectly in the awkward nook, and you can only tell it was pieced together if you look really closely. Success! Eventually, I'll get around to surgery on the three drawers, but for the time being, we've got a burlap curtain hiding all the little things that will eventually live in those drawers. It does the trick.
 

tray chic // diy

I LOVE me some Breakfast in bed. Except for the fact that someone's got to get up and make it, breakfast in bed is like having room service at home.

I knew when we got engaged that I wanted to register for a breakfast tray, but couldn't find one that I liked enough. I'm super indecisive. So, it didn't happen.

Months later, though, I was browsing in a vintage shop and something called my name from the shelves. It looked something like this:

It was heaven-sent. It was juust big enough to carry two plates AND two cups of coffee, which makes it the perfect breakfast-in-bed tray. It was five bucks, compared to its regular almost-40. It had legs (which I initially planned on removing, but left them on when I discovered how handy they are).

The only negative thing about it? It was so booooo-ring! I knew I definitely wanted to paint or stain it to be much darker, and probably would line the bottom with something a bit more interesting. But again, my indecisiveness decided to rear its ugly head. I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted to do!

So I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. There were so many options! I could use almost anything:

Fabric via Centsational Girl

Backsplash tile via just a girl

Patterned paper via eat live shop

Monogram via homeroad

Paint sticks via Sweet Charli

Which one did I choose? Well, if you were around a couple months ago , you already know which one I chose:

That's right, we went with backsplash tile! Easy to clean, pretty, and high-impact. It was also probably the most complicated solution, but I really really wanted it. I loved the offset pattern and the colors of this tile!

I probably should have stained/painted the tray before I laid the tile, but I was so excited. I slathered some thinset mortar along the bottom of the tray, stuck the tiles in (I got the tiles that came in a sheet--I'd have had never finished it if I had to do each tile one-by-one.), and let them dry overnight. Then, I darkened the wood using some dark wipe-on stain.

+ =

And that is how it remained for a good five months. 

From there, it was just a matter of mixing and applying some grout, but I just never got around to it. Until yesterday!! Since these tiles were made of glass and liable to scratching, I made sure to use non-sanded grout, which I happened to have left over from creating my custom-colored chalkboard paint. 

I taped it up, smeared it on, let it dry, wiped it off, and started using it again!

We love it. So much so that we used it during last night's Movie Night! (anyone seen the "new" Sherlock Holmes movie? We thought it was great--but then again, it was Robert Downey Jr, and you can't really go wrong with him).

How would you bling out a serving tray? If I didn't have to share mine with Tim, I probably would have covered mine in glitter, but I got vetoed.

Custom-Color Chalkboard Paint (with recipe!)

What is it about chalkboards that are so popular right now?

When I was planning our wedding, I noticed chalkboards EVERYWHERE in the wedding blogosphere, and they're becoming more and more popular in everyday home decor. Seriously, I see new chalkboard projects on pinterest like every day.

Source: 1 2 3, 4 5 6, 7 8 9

So many cool options!

Husband and I rent, and although we've been given permission to paint the walls, we'd rather not invest too much moolah into a space that isn't going to be ours for too much longer. SO, a chalkboard wall is probably out of the question. And, if I did a bunch of black chalkboards with neutral frames and hung them on a white wall, it would be BOOOOORRRING.

This looks a little bit more "exciting" on a wall :)

The recipe for custom-colored chalkboard paint is simple:

1 cup paint

1Tbsp NON-SANDED grout.

I've read that you should use latex paint, I've also read that anything other than flat wall-paint will not work; it really doesn't matter. I've tried this with latex paint, water based paint, even satin-finish paint, and it still works every time. I personally liked the result best when using flat water-based paint, but I think that chalkboards shouldn't really be shiny. So moral of the story: use whatever you've got.

Mix the ingredients well; it will be slightly lumpy when mixed but will dry really smooth (unless your paint has been sitting out for a couple days. That's what I did for one of my projects, and trust me when I say don't do that...)

After several coats of the chalkboard paint mixture (letting them completely dry in between coats), you have to prep the surface. I don't have a picture of this part of the process, but you basically just lightly color all over the whole chalkboard surface with the side of a piece of chalk and then erase it. It will ensure that whatever you write on the board will completely erase (rather than leaving those ghost words that don't really come off).

I found a picture frame at the Thrift Store that had beautiful detailing, so I pulled the glass out and painted the chalkboard paint on that. It was beautiful, and perfectly smooth, until...

Sad broken chalkboard :( I haven't thrown it away yet. I'll eventually cut a piece of plywood to fit, but this works for now :) I also painted the backing of a broken Ikea frame and am currently using it in our living room.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my chalkboard paint experiment. I love the pop of color the bright chalkboard brings to the room, and love how colored chalk looks on the teal background. It was a great way to repurpose a frame that would have otherwise ended up in the trash!

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Linking up here: C.R.A.F.T., The Southern Institute, Between Naps On The Porch, Skip to my Lou, Marvelously Messy and Harper's Happenings