May 2017 - KREATING HOMES

bedroom, before & after, DIY, loft life, upcycle

Bouquet Boxes

May 26, 2017 No Comments

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Bouquet Box Before and After Keepsakes. Memorabilia. Trinkets. Call them what you want but us sentimental types all agree they have personal value for so many reasons. I used to spend a large portion of my free time scrapbooking and obviously as a photographer my pictures and images are especially important to me. But what about the other “stuff”? Say… maybe… a bouquet from a special occasion? This last year Q and I renewed our wedding vows and I’ve been hanging on to my bouquets knowing I wanted to make them into more of a keepsake. I’ve seen several versions of shadow boxes out there for wedding bouquets but I wanted something more open(no glass) and stand alone(no stationary/invitations). Moving around some old canvases I noticed the frames are essentially the perfect size and shape for my version of a bouquet box!

Bouquet before.

The bouquets I put together myself(very long story) using artificial flowers so they’ve held up extremely well. And the real touch… sigh… if I had only known about this at my actual wedding! I tell every bride about these flowers because I have been that impressed. These are some next level blooms y’all!

*Side note: if you had a real flower bouquet you could still do this project! Just preserve the flowers first and take a little extra care when assembling and cleaning. Preserved flowers can be a bit fragile but absolutely gorge so totally worth it!

Bouquet Blooms

I stripped the blooms off the stems and separated most of the foliage. Once I had the blooms cut I just flipped over the canvas to see how many would fit and/or how many canvases they would fill. My bouquets filled two canvases(10″ and 12″). Obviously these were some well loved canvases…. Ha! Bouquet Box Canvases I slapped a couple coats of Navy paint(sticking to my Navy/Rose Gold palette) on both sides of the canvases. No need to be concerned with any brush strokes, lumps, or bumps as the majority of the canvas is actually just covered in flowers or facing a wall. These two were covered in hot glue, tags, and super thick coats of acrylic from a project too old for me to remember! But hey, extra points for upcycling old supplies right?

Bouquet Box Assembly Once the paint dried I simply hot glued the blooms into place. I anchored a couple blooms to the sides and the rest were attached straight to the fabric. Also, I added in the shell picks and some faux coral. Which, of course, I hit with a couple coats of my favorite Rose Gold spray paint. Our master bedroom has a few beach touches (and we renewed our vows on the beach!) so I liked sneaking in a few extra beach elements. When everything was set and dried I just cut a couple lengths of rope, knotted the ends, and tacked them on with tiny finishing nails.

The corner of our loft/master bedroom has a small sitting area which is totally a work in progress. I’ve slowly been adding pieces and testing items… but Ive got a few big ideas brewing so I’m sure this will be changing. For now, the bouquet boxes were the perfect wall art for the area. They have only been hanging a couple days but they make me smile every time I come up the stairs!

So what keepsakes have you decorated with? Did your wedding or renewal bouquet get upcycled? You know I’d love to hear all about it in the comments! Happy Friday peeps!

DIY, loft life

The Maps.

May 17, 2017 No Comments

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KreatingHomes_Maps-1

You ever have a project sit on a Pinterest board long enough to make you start wondering if your just ever reeeeeeeally going to actually do it? This project was that exact case for me. I’ve seen more versions of this than I can list on this blog and I’ve had a handful pinned for quite a while. But! When I was setting up our mini hall/laundry/entryway space (aka random chunk of wall) I needed something compact to decorate with and the map project was finally brought to life:

KreatingHomes_Maps-2

I’ve seen maps cut into hearts around places you’ve lived, proposal/life stories stitched on maps, stitched hearts of travels on maps, and many more but I wanted to keep it pretty simple for our version. Plus, I wanted to fill the whole frame with the map image. I grabbed the state images here, cropped them to fit our frames(5×7″), printed them on straight copy paper, and stamped the places we have lived so far.

Maps

I tried doing this with white acrylic paint first but it was too subtle. So I stamped right over the white hearts with black ink which I stamped on scratch paper first(An old coworker taught me this! The effect is more distressed and you never over ink). Once it dried I used the paint stirrer hanging trick to get these up on the wall super quick.

KreatingHomes_Maps-3

It’s just a small addition to the wall space here but I love that its our story. So what projects have been lingering on your Pinterest boards? Any map projects in your future? Tell me all about it! Happy hump day my peeps!

bedroom, before & after, DIY, ikea hacks, loft life, upcycle

Ikea Nightstand Hack

May 13, 2017 29 Comments

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I know people have probably been hacking Ikea goods for as long as the place has been churning out affordable furniture. I also know Im totally late to the hacking party! While I’ve bought plenty of Ikea furniture over the years its never been with the intention to hack from the get go. That is, until this move. Until this Ikea ‘As-Is’ section. Until this Ikea nightstand hack.

The Raw Goods

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you will remember our latest Ikea haul that maxed out our Prius’ packing capabilities(above). Hidden in that pile of discounted goods were two beat up MALM nightstands priced at a whopping $27. We may have knack for finding crazy as-is deals(what can I say?!). These guys are still reasonably priced new but seeing the pair marked down so much with what I considered strictly cosmetic issues I threw them on our cart as quickly as possible.

The Paint

After rolling around a few color schemes for our new bedroom space I decided on a Navy, Rosegold, Beachwood combo. With that in mind I skimmed the chalk paint color selection and grabbed a jar in the color Nautical. The label initially looked pretty close to the shade I was going. Unfortunately, after I swatched it I realized it was way too light. Straight out of the jar this is closer to a royal blue. So I grabbed a container of Rich black and started mixing. After 2 coats of paint, 1 coat of Wax, and 20 minutes of elbow grease buffing these looked ~~good as~~ better than new!

DIY note: if you’re mixing a custom color its really helpful to weigh as you go. I use our digital kitchen scale and and write down the “recipe” as I mix. This way I can create multiple batches while covering larger areas and duplicate the shade exactly as needed. The final color came out to about 3 parts blue and 1 part black.

The Hardware

I’ve used these simple pulls for other projects in the past and loved them. I knew I wanted to use them again to keep the look pretty clean and modern. Plus, you can grab the multi pack of 10 which is great because I have plans for the other 6 handles (more on that later). I’d been lusting after all the gorgeous rose gold hardware floating around Pinterest for some time but after seeing a couple price tags(who pays this much for handles??) decided I could get the same look with some good ol’ spray paint.

*Update: Amazon has now started making their own version of these pulls for a fraction of the price! I’ve used both and they’re equally well made and versatile for DIY projects.

I started off with the Valspar Rose Gold since it was so highly recommended online. This was great on coverage and it did have a rose-y hue but I like my Rose Gold pushing the line on Copper so I went in search of something else. Now, looking at the Dusty Pink by Krylon you would think this is going to come out straight Pink sans any Gold but NOPE! It came out my dream color mashup of Copper and Rose Gold(que the spray paint angels singing! Ahhhhh!). You can see the difference pretty well below. The right has just one coat of the Valspar and the Left has the additional coat of Krylon:

The Final Hack

I know I’ve been blowing up my social media with a lot of #chalkpaint but I’m still totally in love. Get used to it peeps! Any product that has this kind of coverage and staying power without me having to sand a single square inch is here to STAY! This covered all the scrapes and scratches these floor models had and made it look like part of the wood grain. And again: NO SANDING!

We talked about adding feet/legs(and we may still) but for now we are loving these new-to-us nightstands! So have you intentionally hacked any Ikea goods? Done a nightstand makeover? You know I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!