It happened to me this weekend. I was standing in line at my favorite home decor store behind a woman who was heavily negotiating down prices that she was purchasing.  It seemed like she was really on a tight budget, asking if she could put half of the stuff on layaway.  Not that I am against asking for a better price, or putting things on layaway, but this process was taking forever! I was having to wait, and wait and wait in line to pay while she negotiated her purchases.   During this long wait of mine, I had to  listen to the woman talk about how beautiful her house was and how her house should be in Romantic Home Magazine blah, blah blah.  “Come on ALREADY”  I was saying in my mind, I just want to pay for my stuff and go!  So when I finally get out to the parking lot after I made my purchase, I see her loading her car, and she is driving this new tricked out Range Rover.  Seriously? If you have to put stuff on layaway paying a month at a time, then you shouldn’t be driving a Range Rover right?  Makes no sense.  What is the point of driving an expensive car if you really can’t afford it. I just don’t get that.  Or it could of been a borrowed car.  But if you are going to borrow a Range Rover, you have to buy like you own that Range Rover.  Or here is a novel idea, buy what you REALLY can afford.  Ok, that was my gripe for this weekend, I just had to get it off my chest!

I did do a couple of little projects this weekend besides griping. On Saturday, I made a sign for my friends salon I am helping with the design and she is on a tight budget {and no, she doesn’t drive a Range Rover lol}. I did it on a whim, pretty much an excuse to use my silhouette machine. I used this piece of artwork I had forever that I had been wanting to make into a subway sign. {I snapped all the pictures with my iPhone, because I was too lazy to go get my camera}

I  first sanded off the paper image because I knew there was porous surface underneath that I could paint. I painted the front using the blue she has on her walls at the salon and a darker grey around the outside edges.    I cut out two of an enlarged damask image from my machine using white contact paper.  After laying out the stencil and inserting the small pieces to fill in the design,  I painted a lighter blue on the stencil.

I love that you can import any font into the silhouette software. Once I  found the font that she is using for her salon, I imported it  and enlarged the letters to fit on the sign.  I used my roll of white contact paper to cut out the letters, that $5 roll is lasting forever!.  Once I had it all done, I noticed there were staples showing all around the edges of the board, so I used crystal trim to cover them up.

I know this is a poor picture, but in person it looks really cute.  I will take a better picture when she hangs it in her salon.

Another project I tried, was stenciling on curtains.  Everyone is doing that lately, so I wanted to try it.  I bought a trellis stencil last year and have never used it.  The problem with it is that the pattern is reversed.  Meaning, if you want the skinny lines to be white, you have to start with a white background. I was using an Ikea grey curtain with white acrylic paint with a little textile medium

See what I mean? The curtain was becoming mainly white rather than a white outline with a grey background.  Not to mention it was sucking up so much paint, I seriously thought it was going to take a gallon of paint for two panels.  Getting a smooth solid white look wasn’t easy either, and evidently the stencil didn’t adhere very well in spots so it bled outside the stencil

So this was a totally fail.  These Ikea curtains come really long, so I am hoping that I can cut off the stencil part I did and still salvage the curtain.  I ordered the correct stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils, hopefully when I get the new stencil I will be more successful.

I also came across these two very funny blogs this weekend.  I love a good sense of humor, and these two ladies have it down pat.

http://mylifeandkids.com/2011/12/my-10-favorite-posts-from-2011-and-yours/

Check out her Vlogs at the bottom of the page, I loved the Woot one.

http://www.mamakatslosinit.com/mama-kat/

Overall it was a nice relaxing weekend with a few fun projects done.  What did you do this weekend?

If you are going to drive a Range Rover, buy like you own a Range Rover! is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

Just to give you an idea of how popular this style of chair is and what it sells for

Horchow has a pair of these identical chairs for $699

Which actually seems like a good deal compared to Jonathan Adler chair at $695 for just oneOf course neither compares to my price of $10 LOL

This type of side chair is such a classic style, it can pretty much fit into any style of design.  Just by changing the color and fabric it can go from traditional to modern effortlessly.

This dining room has a farmhouse style to it, but the chairs flow perfectly with the design.

Via decorpad

It is a very versatile chair because you can change it’s look so easily with paint and a 1/2 yard of fabric.

Via decorpad

Via decorpad

I really didn’t have a specific place in mind for this chair when I purchased it, but knew for the price it was going home with me.  Then it came to me,  my niece needed a chair for her bedroom and this was the perfect size for her room.  Since it was her birthday last month, I thought I would give her this chair and a small white desk for her room. She told me she wanted some color in her room so I decided to go bold and spray paint it deep purple

I can’t say I am 100% happy with the color.  I had purchased the perfect purple from Michaels, but needed two cans and they were out.  So I went with another brand from Home Depot, thinking it was going to be the same, but it wasn’t.  I was looking for more of a grey purple to match the lavender velvet fabric I found, but I think it leans toward Barney purple.

As you can see, I didn’t finish upholstering the seat because the fabric wasn’t working for me.  I thought it needed a pattern on the seat to keep it fresher looking, so I found this fabric at Joanns

I love the damask but the purple color on the chair still isn’t doing it for me.  Sometimes I look at it and love it, and then sometimes I see My niece hasn’t seen it yet in person, but from the pictures I have sent to her, she isn’t hot on the purple either.  But that is what is great about this chair, all I need to do is get some more spray paint and poof!  I can change out the color.  I need to find a desk and put it next to the chair in her room and see how it looks before I change the color.

I still need to get a desk to go with the chair.  I thought it would look great with a mini parsons desk like this one from West Elm

But it is pricey, $199, especially for a birthday gift.

Wal-mart has one similar for $29

What? $29, now that is doable!  The reviews are mixed on the Wal-mart desk, but I might just order it and take my chances.

So if you are cruising Craig’s list, garage sales or estate sales and come upon this type of chair for a great price, snag it!  I guarantee you can find a spot for it, no matter what your design style is.

Faux bamboo Chippendale style side chair is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

I want to say for the record, that this bathroom was done on pretty much a zero budget. It originally started out with all white walls, no personality what so ever.  I had to be creative, so I did all the faux finish and stamping on the walls myself and had my brother-n-law add the bamboo molding and accessories for me.

Lots of green and fern stamping.

I made the curtains out of a shower curtain and used napkin ring holders as tie backs…what was I thinking!

I wasn’t really good at blending the corners of my rag roll faux finish so I came up with the idea of using bamboo in the corners to hide the imperfections…what was I thinking?

Thank goodness the quality of the picture is bad (never thought I would say that on my blog) I went all out and made the toilet area a tropical paradise.  I glued plates on to rattan chargers for the artwork and finished it off with the pineapple hurricanes….what was I thinking?

I couldn’t take it any longer.  Every time I went over to my sister’s house I cringed when I used this bathroom.  So for her birthday in January, I told her I wanted to re-do her powder room as my gift to her.  She was ecstatic, telling me I was such a sweet sister to do that.  But in reality it was a selfish gift on my part, I couldn’t stand the thought of my name still being attached to this hideous bathroom.  My repetition was on the line.  Who was going to hire me after seeing that tropical over load mess of a room.  Due to other things going on in her life and mine, I am just now re-doing her bathroom, but wow what a difference it is already.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when OneKingsLane had wallpaper on sale.  I feel in love with this modern damask print (go figure) and I quickly made the decision it was going to be the new walls in the powder room.

My sister wanted me to do the bathroom in a dramatic style and I thought this fit the bill.  I also ordered some grasscloth to go with it, because I felt that it might be over kill using this pattern on each and every wall.

I don’t know if it is a good thing or not, but my sister always gives me full rein when I do anything for her.  She trusts my judgement (although after seeing her bathroom before I am baffled on why she does)  I chose to use the grasscloth on the back of the toilet wall and continue on the side wall. I am not good at hanging wallpaper, so I hired a professional to install the wallpaper.

Wow, what a difference from the tropical overload that was there before!

Way more sophisticated don’t you think?  It is not completed yet, still need to do a window treatment and have my brother-n-law install the new light fixture. But oh so much better than before.  My sister now has my permission to use my name again as the designer of this bathroom.

A Powder Room Updated is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

I stopped by HomeGoods today to look for a bulletin board my sister wants.  They didn’t have it, so on my way out I stopped in the lamp section.  Woohoo, am I ever glad I did.  Look what I found

I know it isn’t the same exact one, but the style is the similar and the price a WHOLE lot cheaper.  $39.99 for the lamp and $12.99 for the shade.  Compare that to Pottery Barn, $150 for just the lamp, no shade, score.

I think I might need  to tone down the wood color a bit to match the dining table, and maybe distress it a little.  But for now I am just going to live with it the way it is and enjoy my savings.

Pottery Barn Knock Off Score is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

It wasn’t a person sitting in the car, it was a big ole dog! I guess he was ready to leave..

Ok, back to the post.  Recently my daughter picked up two of these pillow covers at Ikea for $6 each.  She wasn’t so hot on the bland brown color of them, but I told her for $6 you can’t go wrong, and they had a zipper closure to boot.  Sure enough, she got them home and hated them.   Feeling bad that I convinced her to get them and now she hated them, I decided to take the pillows home to my studio and see what I could do to pretty them up.  I was debating on adding continuous ruffles to the front, or a large fabric flower in the middle, but it just wasn’t doing it for me.  Since the rage right now is letters and numbers, which I am loving by the way,  I decided to go that route.   I already had the number stencils on hand which happen to be next to my damask stencil (imagine that!) so I used both.

I just used acrylic paints for the stencils.  Then went back and added some blue to the white damask to tie it in.  Happy to say, my daughter loves it, phew! And I love how it looks on their brown leather couches.

Now all I have to do is get the other one done.

(oh and by the way, my stop was really good at HomeGoods and I only spent $13.  I got three different pairs of these pretty rubber cleaning gloves for $3.99 each. Gotta be styling while your cleaning right?)

I finally get to link up to Jami’s fun party

A Stenciled Pillow is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

A couple of moths ago I had posted a picture of this light fixture I had gotten for my daughter Shannon’s dining room area during the renovation stage of their house.  Loved it.

It was perfect for the space.  It fit both their decorating styles, a little bling for Shannon and stream lined look for Nate.  Here is a picture of it hung during the renovation construction

But unfortunately we had to send it back.  We noticed that once it was turned on and actually was being used, the paper around the shade that had all the bling on it started warping from the heat of the light bulbs.  I guess no one thought of that when they designed it.  We were so bummed, but it just started looking like a really cheap light fixture the more they used it.  Overstock.com let us return the fixture with no problems.  They have the best customer service and you can’t beat their prices!  So for about 2 months now there has been no light fixture in Shannon and Nate’s dining room.  It was hard to find the right fixture to compliment their styles without spending a ton of money and not looking cheap.  The drum shade style of the old fixture really looked good in their house, so I was on the hunt for something along those lines.  I have always loved these type of drum shade chandeliers

via Horchow

But they are pricey!  And the ones that aren’t so pricey look cheap.  I thought I could make one, I mean really, all it is a drum shade with a chandelier inside of it.  There are a lot of beautiful inexpensive chandeliers you can buy.  All I needed to do was find the right shade and chandelier. But I was having a hard time finding a large enough drum shade that would fit over a small chandelier.  Until a week ago, when I saw this lampshade at a local store in Solana Beach, called Bon Bons.  It was pricey, $125, but oh so beautiful.  It is by a designer called Cindy Ciskowoki, here is a picture of it on a table lamp from her website

It is a linen flax color with a slightly shimmery silver/blue damask pattern. It is way more prettier in person, these pictures don’t do it justice.

Then an idea just hit me when I was in the store drooling all over this shade.  I had an old PB Teen chandelier at home that I have been holding on to for 4 years. thinking I would find a use for it someday.  {you know, one of those items you just can’t part with when you are purging and organizing this time of year} I thought it would fit nicely inside this shade but wasn’t certain, and this shop has a no return policy.  So I crossed my fingers and bought the shade. The whole time I was  justifying in my head that the the finished  light fixture is going to be pretty darn cheap compared to those high priced ones I love.   For $125, which was about the cost of the previous overstock fixture,  I could get that classy drum shade chandelier look I wanted for the space.   If worse came to worse, and the chandelier wouldn’t fit inside, I knew I could buy a hanging pendant lamp socket from Ikea and a diffuser from Lampsplus and still have a really nice fixture for them.   Shannon was with me when I bought it and she also feel in love with the shade and loved my idea on how we could use it.

And phew!  The shade fit perfectly over the chandelier.  I swear it was if it was made for it.  I had to have my husband make a slight adjustment to get the shade over the main arm of the chandelier, it took him a whole 5 minutes.  All he had to do was take off the top decorative piece so that the shade could slide on.   It sits just right to show the bottom of the chandelier, just like all those fancy smancy expensive ones.

{this is a picture of the inside of the fixture and how it looks with the shade on}

This chandelier comes with draped beading,  I was going to change it out to crystals chains that I have, but Shannon liked the bead look, so I just added on some hanging crystal drops to the beaded ones it came with.

They both love it!  I surprised them yesterday and had my husband hang it while they were at work and they were blown away when they came home.  Mission accomplished.    I would show you pictures of the whole room, but the lighting was poor (I wasn’t even happy with these pictures I took, the chandelier looks more yellow than it is) and honestly there is nothing sitting under the chandelier but a rug, so it looked kind of funny when I uploaded the pictures.  Now all I have to do is help them find a table and some chairs to go underneath it and that room will be complete.  Day 5 of 2011 and I already have one project done, I think this might be a good year for me.

PS. Anyone surprised the drum shade I fell in love with was a damask print?  I didn’t think so.

Linking up to Jen’s Weekend Wrap up Party at Tatertots & Jello

Drum Shade Chandelier is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

Much better don’t you think?  I can not tell you how much expired stuff I threw away!  I used a coordinating fabric and chalk vinyl for labeling the pull out shelves. They could be cuter, but this isn’t a magazine spread for Better Home and Garden right? It is just a pantry. I just hope my family will read my labels and put everything where it needs to go, they have promised they will.   I purchased various containers at Wal-Mart, Home Goods and The Container Store to organize the various foods on the shelves.Oh and I couldn’t just put back this useful dog food binSo I gave it a make over too!  I had just enough of the left over fabric to Mod Podge it on to the bin, made a ruffle with the coordinating fabric and sprayed chalk board paint on the lidFlows much better than that gray one don’t you think?Here is a before

And the afterThe feel of it flows so much better with the rest of my house when you leave the pantry.  No more ghetto pantry. Woohoo!Now that I see that I actually have some open wall space, I looking to do some fun projects, like a pantry subway style sign and who knows what else!  Just another fun project to put on my list.   Linking up to these parties!

Pantry Revived is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

Mod Podge Tables is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

I love the way it turned out!  Hopefully it will give her joy to pack her lunch for work after coming back from the summer break. 

{I freaked when I posted this picture!  It looks like her name is crooked, but I checked, it isn’t, it is just the angle of my camera, and the way the bag is sitting, whew!}

Here is a quick tutorial on how I spruced up the lunch bag. I ruffled some ribbon with my ruffler foot, added some rhinestone trim and made a cute fabric and silk flower rosette with a rhinestone button center. I used some black velvet iron on letters I already had {not that I thought someone would take her lunch bag, but I thought it would be cute for the kids to see their teacher bring in her own lunch bag with her name on it}.

Got out my handy dandy bejeweled tool and added some crystals to her name for some extra bling.  I love this tool.  I used it over and over again last year for my daughters wedding invitations and menus and what ever else I could think of to bling!  The crystals come in different sizes, and the ones I used here are really small.  But the trick is to lay them on the spot you want to put them on and then use the iron tool to attach the crystal.  I really got to know the ends of out of using this tool after doing 250 invitations and menus!  {This tool is so much fun. They stick the crystals on strong to paper, fabric or I am sure what ever you can think of that won’t melt from the heat of the iron.  And they won’t fall off during washing! Just think of how many cool things you can bling}To attach the damask to the acrylic crystal, I printed out a damask paper from my computer, traced it and then cut it. 
I used a sponge brush and put a thin layer of mod podge on the back of the crystal and once I attached the paper to the back of the crystal, I added another thin layer of mod podge to the back of it to seal the paper.  Whew, this turned out to be a long ole post!  I think I will stop now, thanks for stopping by!  Linking up to

and

Teacher Lunch Bag is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.

So for the first post, I am sharing a card box I did for a bride back in January.  She wanted to use it for her engagement party in New York and for her wedding in May.  She needed ASAP {like within a week} and she wanted to incorporate all of her theme into the box.  Peacock, chandelier and damask.  Yikes I thought, how in the hec am I going to pull that off? 

Once I started pulling it together, I was pleasantly surprised on how all the elements flowed together.


The bride loved how it turned out and I was even able to express mail it to her in time for her engagement party.  The chandelier even turns on and off! I have the battery pack inside the top box.  You just push on the bottom of the chandelier and it turns on and off.  Pretty darn cool don’t ya think?  It is one of my favorite card boxes I have done. Sharing this with

Peacock, Chandelier, Damask Wedding Card Box is a post from: Cre8tive Designs Inc.