Ikea Hack: Floral Wall Decor

Hello again, everyone. It’s been five years, FIVE YEARS, since I last blogged. Why? Lots of stuff happened in that time: moving back to Illinois from Arizona, getting a job, and then a different job, and a DIFFERENT job, moving in with my father-in-law (barf), and buying a house! I just didn’t have time or motivation to blog, until NOW!

IKEA hacks are pretty popular right now, probably because their products are very minimalistic, so you can do all sorts of things to them. Of course I came up with my own, not because I wanna be trendy (insert glitter throw), but because the hacks are usually cheaper than buying a custom finished product.

My inspiration was this product from Etsy:

And while I would’ve LOVED to pay for it, it wasn’t in my budget. Plus, the flowers and letters are HUGE, and my kid’s room is not the biggest. So I figured I’d do what any other penny-pinching parent (say that five times fast) would do: I made one myself!

Now, I suppose you could hack any bouquet of fake flowers from any old place, but I found mine at IKEA. They’re a pretty pink with some extra greens and baby’s breath, and the flowers are nice and full and big.

Big bulbous blossoms

Besides literally just sticking the flowers to the wall, I didn’t know how to get to to look like the inspiration picture. Eventually I figured I’ll stick them to cardboard first, and then stick that to the wall. Brilliant.

I didn’t want the stems, and these being fake flowers, it’s very easy to pull them off and pull the flowers apart layer by layer.

literally just ripped the flowers off of the stems

Pulled the leaves off, then the flower petals, then the middle stuff

I grabbed a piece of cardboard (we just moved into our house, so there’s cardboard EVERYWHERE) and laid out how I wanted the flowers to be arranged. No one wants to just start gluing all willy-nilly without a plan. Or at least I don’t.

Hm, yes. Quite.

Then I started gluing the layers on one by one. I started with the leaves, then the biggest petals to the smallest petals. Be sure to line up the middles of the layers. There’s a hole where the stem went through, so just line up the holes.

Hot glue your heart out.

Once the flowers were in place, I glued the greenery and the baby’s breath around the flowers, just in a way that looked balanced. 

It makes sense in my mind.

After letting the glue cool completely, I cut the cardboard down to just around the hot glue spots so it wouldn’t show when hung up on the wall. I don’t have a picture of this step because I didn’t think it was that important to show me cutting some cardboard.

Now, the letter was even easier if you don’t mind just using cardboard like me. And no, I did not just pour glitter all over a cardboard letter. I have a much easier way using this:

Basically just a roll of glitter

This glitter table runner is perfect because the glitter doesn’t fall off, and it’s thin enough to be wrap around anything. Specifically, the board of card. I simply cut out a “K,” hot glued a square of the runner to the “K,” and cut the runner down to slightly larger than the letter. That way I had enough to wrap the glitter runner around the back, so you can’t see any of the board on the sides. The runner is plastic, so it is possible to melt it with the tip of the glue gun.

The finished product!

As I had mentioned, I didn’t want the flowers and letter to be too big, but if you want to go as big as the original product from Etsy, I suggest another bouquet and bigger cardboard. Heck, cover the whole wall. At least you won’t get glitter everywhere.

Happy crafting!

My First Sewing Project: Belly Dance Costume

I recently took up belly dance as a way to get more exercise. I didn't realize that, eventually, there would be recitals. After learning about the recitals, I was informed that I would need an outfit for it. For my very first recital, I wanted to keep it simple. I ordered this two-piece outfit, except my belt was white.

Via Light In The Box

While this was a nice outfit, I realized, while at the recital, that it was a bit too plain. Everyone else had some sort of embellishments on their outfit, or fancy belts, or jewelry on. I knew that for my second recital, I'd have to take it up a notch.

Since "fancier" outfits tend to be a bit expensive, I decided to make my own. Turns out, fancier outfits are more expensive for a reason, but I still made it all myself because I already bought the pattern. I only used the pattern for the skirt. The top is just a bra with embellishments and halter straps instead of its regular straps.

The skirt used 6-7 yards of fabric. The pattern said 9 yards, but I adjusted the layout to use less.

I think I'm going to add more to the top, especially the middle. It's a bit bare. I also got the arm things from Light In The Box.

The belt is just a 2" strip of blue chiffon, blue tassels, with a stud ribbon sewn on top, and two jewelry-type chains.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself considering this is my first big sewing project with an actual sewing machine. Hopefully I can continue belly dancing because I love these outfits, and I really enjoyed making it, despite it taking me over a month.

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: Sailboat Painting

I finally got around to painting the bigger canvas.

I'm pretty sure it's a 16"x20". It's not spectacular or anything. I'm really out of practice when it comes to painting. I've been focusing on my costume for my upcoming belly dance recital. I'll post that when I'm all done. ;)

Anyway, I just used a basic sailboat shape for the painting, on a blue ocean with a beautiful blue sky.

If it wasn't for the mast, the only colors I utilized were blue, red, and white. The mast added a bit of yellow to the painting, breaking up all the blue which brings your eye to the boat.

Since my other painting is all blue, as well, I think I'll add some orange to the wall so it's not so monotone. Orange matches the decor on my toilet, if you haven't seen my last post regarding my bathroom.

I'm very pleased with how the reflection in the water came out. Like I said, I'm out of practice, so I'm sticking to the basics.

Now go be inspired!

Easy Spice Jar

My husband and I love a certain pizza chain. We get a ton of their spice packets, and I'm not one to waste anything.

I kept some of the jars we get from our jellies/jams, and I kept the top of a Parmesan cheese bottle.

I don't know how many packets we had, but we had a lot. Enough to almost fill half of the jar.

Nothing too fancy or difficult. Just a simple way to utilize things that you may already have on hand. :)

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: The Toilet

Recently, I've taken to putting those smell-good things in the bathroom because, well, it needs it. The containers aren't exactly pretty, though, so I needed a way to hide them that would still fit into the nautical theme.

Beautiful, no?

 One of my favorite craft stores still has their summer nautical decor on clearance, so I looked there for a solution. I found a neat candle holder and tea light holder, and they were both orange. (My theme has both blue and a bit of orange.) The larger candle holder was the perfect size for the scent thing, and I bought flame-less tea lights from the dollar store. Perfect for the just-in-case scenario of my toddler grabbing it. (Which she did eventually.)

Much better.

It's not the most amazing transformation, but it does make the toilet more aesthetically pleasing. It was also cost effective; regular prices of the starfish and candle holder were $16.99 each, but on clearance they came out to just under $9 for both.

I'm super excited for my bathroom to come together. I'm very slowly putting all the decor together, and crafting up the rest that would be too expensive to buy. Stay tuned for the rest of the transformation!

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: Compass Rose

I'm currently in the process of redecorating my bathroom. There's nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but nothing really matched too well. I wanted a green and brown sort of color scheme, so I had put brown and green things for the bathroom on my wedding registry. My mother-in-law bought us the floor mat, shower curtain, and one set of towels, and that suited us for a long time. However, I wanted to put some actual decor in the bathroom. Maybe on the walls, on the counter, on the wall behind the toilet, anywhere to make it more "homey." Anyway, nothing I could find that was green and/or brown really tickled my fancy. I tried to paint some jars brown and green, but it only brought so much to the table.

It was time for a change.

Nautical stuff is apparently trending, and for some reason I'm really into it. Lots of stores, including my lovely craft stores, carry (carried) nautical decor, but the prices were a bit out of my budget. For the most part, I just waited until they had it on clearance. If you're lucky, the store will slowly mark everything down to the point of almost free, you just have to wait a while. The "paintings" I wanted (they weren't actual paintings, just prints on canvas) were still more than I wanted to spend, so instead I decided to paint some canvas myself since I'm not too bad in the art department.

I want two paintings for my wall: one of a compass rose, and one of the ocean, maybe with some boats. Here's the inspiration picture for the first painting:

I wasn't going to paint every part of this because there's a lot of stuff, but the most important parts, obviously.

I painted the background a light-ish blue, and then used a ruler and pencil for the compass parts. I painted it at an angle for a more abstract feel. After I got done outlining everything in pencil, I proceeded to paint. Oh, and I used a canvas size 8x10 inches.

Price of the canvas: $9 x 40% off coupon/sale = $5.40

Price of paint, blue and black (if you don't have any): $2

Total: $7.40

Compare to the original price of any 8x10 canvas print at the craft store: $19.99.

Yay savings!

Easy Busy Board

I'm sure you've seen "busy boards" all over Pinterest, especially if you like doing crafts for/with your kids. They tend to have lots of engaging things on them, especially for fine and gross motor skills.

After (probably) a whole year of thinking about it, I finally made one for my youngest. I included a few things that most busy boards don't have, such as a big plastic zipper, a set of beads on an eye hook and command hook, and a piece of PVC that leads to a jar for small balls. I made sure to sand down all the sides, and I rounded out the edges so they wouldn't get splinters. The purple paint was leftover from another project, and I'm pretty sure it's some sort of latex paint made for interiors or something. I don't know. I'm not a paint pro.

The PVC was simply glued on with some SUPER super glue. On the other side of the jar is some heavy-duty Velcro so the kids could take it off and get the balls (or whatever) back. The zipper came from the craft store, and I'm pretty sure it's the kind for sports bags. It's definitely not for clothes, I know that. It was hot glued on, but I'd suggest a staple gun instead.

Everything else was drilled onto the board using screws that were (obviously) shorter than the wood was thick. The screws that came with the hardware would've been too long.

I also wanted my girls to have some sort of art easel or chalkboard to draw on. Buying new baby gear isn't my thing since they don't use it long, but I couldn't find one that I liked.
The plywood came from the hardware store, and I technically paid for the whole big piece, so they cut it down for two equally-sized pieces. Finally, I decided to use the extra piece for a chalkboard. I sanded it, painted it, then taped off a big rectangle for the chalkboard paint. It required 4-5 coats rather than 2 because of how shiny and "slippery" the purple paint was. I bought a couple really basic hinges to attach the two boards together, lined them up, and drilled them into place.

Now my girls have something to draw on and a busy board to fiddle with. Overall I'm really happy with how it turned out, though I wish I could've grabbed a cheap doorknob or something else for the open spot, and I plan on adding a chalk holder below the chalkboard so there's not chalk all over the place.

Good luck with yours, and feel free to post any questions you may have! :)