Fabric Rosette Lampshade

It's Pinterest Challenge time again! I feel like the last challenge was last week - where did the time go? I blame it on the fact that we had snow until a week ago, so the winter just started to all blend together.  Thankfully late last week the snow FINALLY melted and spring arrived.  Shorts, flip flops and sunscreen have made their way into our regular rotation now and I couldn't be happier. 

Last spring I re-did a lamp from the Salvation Army that I dubbed my Mad Men lamp (Don Draper has one very similar in his office). 

I do really like the lamp, but I always felt like it could use a little somethin' somethin'.  It was a lot of jute, and it needed something to help it stand out a bit more from the brown wall behind it.   

I had pinned a picture way back of a lamp shade that had fabric flowers added to it and I loved the idea. You can check out the original pin here and the post from Creatively Living here. 

I thought of adding the flowers right after I wrapped the shade in jute, but decided to live with the plain jute for a while before I committed to any embellishments.  But then fate intervened.

Tangent......

I have met some truly lovely and genuine people through blogging.  One of those people is Jesse from Scout & Nimble.  If you haven't read her blog before I highly recommend checking it out.  She has awesome style and was even recently featured on Young House Love (which basically makes her a rock star...and is sort of funny too since YHL is hosting the Pinterest Challenge).  Anyhow, about a month ago I was reading one of her posts about day bed cushions that she made.  They were nice cushions, but what really got me was the throw cushions she had, which were made of the most beautiful dragon fabric.  I commented and told her how nice those dragons were.  And you know what she did?  She mailed me some pieces of it!  Actual mail.  Love it.  So nice of her.

Before the fabric even arrived I knew exactly what I was going to do with it.  That pretty multicoloured fabric was going to make its way onto my Mad Men lamp.

I used Jesse's fabric, along with  a small piece of lace and a bit of gold mesh (both of which I had laying around) to make 10 fabric rosettes. There are a million tutorials on the web on how to make rosettes, so I won't bore you with my process (you can Google it and learn how to make them in about 10 seconds).  After about an hour I had a nice stack of flowers.  

To give the flowers a bit more dimension I hot glued some old buttons onto a few of them.  Super simple, but I like how it adds a bit of contrast.  (sorry, apparently I forgot to take any pictures of the button process....just imagine hundreds of buttons laying on the floor while I tried to find the perfect ones, and then burning my fingers while hot gluing them onto the rosettes.)

I didn't want the rosettes to be permanent on the lamp shade, so I attached each rosette with a little piece of Command Strip.  I just took 2 Command Strips, cut them into small pieces and then stuck one side on the flower and the other side to the jute.  Worked perfectly, and I can take them off whenever I want without wrecking the shade.

It took me a bit of fanangaling to figure out the placement of each flower that I liked so that they had some flow and didn't just look like flower blobs stuck on the shade, but I think I finally got it.

It's cute, right?  

But....are you wondering why it looks all cock-eyed?  (ya, I bet you are...).  The shade has always been slightly off-kilter, but adding the flowers made it really heavy on one side and the whole shade tipped forward. 

As we say around our house, I pulled a total Farmer's Fix.  I rummaged through my button box and found 2 ceramic knob-y things.  I seriously have no idea what they are.  (maybe a sewer out there can enlighten me??)  They were inside my vintage sewing box when I bought it. I strung a bit of string through them and taped them inside the back of the lampshade to counterbalance the weight of the flowers.

I realize that it's sort of a tacky fix, but you can't see them at all and it totally does the trick.

Better...

I guess it's a bit quirky, but I just love how it turned out.

You can't tell that Jesse's fabric had dragons on it, but it does have such a great mix of colours that go  perfectly with our living room. And I know that there are dragons hidden in there, which makes me smile every time I look at the lamp.

I couldn't stop taking pictures!

I realize that it might be strange to enjoy fabric rosettes this much!

By the way...my succulent in that pot has totally taken on a life of it's own.  It's tiny spawn are all so scraggly and unruly....but I sort of like it that way!

So tell me, have your received anything fun in the mail lately?  I'll admit that I sometimes order things online, when I could easily go to the store, just so I can get mail :)

Linking up to:  Bower Power, Young House Love, Red Bird Blue, The Shabby Nest

A Decent Recovery, I'd Say....

This is a keepin' it real post.  I am not afraid to admit when something gets the better of me.  

A few weeks ago I showed you this coral canvas that was sitting in our basement, all blank and just begging for some personality.

My original plan for the canvas was to make a giant picture on the cheap.  I had seen it all over Pinterest and it looked like it would be a cinch.  I picked up the canvas at Michael's (with a 30% off coupon) and then used a mixture of Behr's Fiery Red and Indian Dance (a concoction, if you will) to slap a coat of paint on it.  The painting part went well.  I had actually started out thinking I'd just paint the sides (as that is all that was supposed to show), but I had extra paint left over, so I painted the whole thing (very glad I at least had that stroke of genius).

I then took one of our wedding photos, put it on a flash drive and took it into Staples to have it blown up.  I asked them to blow it up to 24" x 36" on their blue print printer.  For $9, I was amazed at how good it looked.

See how happy I look there?  Ya, it didn't last long.

The plan was to use mod podge to attach the picture to the canvas (and have the cute coral peek out the sides).  It didn't take long to realize that I had a great big disaster on my hands.  The paper started wrinkling with the mod podge and the ink was coming off all over my hands.  Then the freaking paper ripped.  I tried to save it, but seriously, I couldn't piece our faces back together.  The idea of making some kind of strange mosaic crossed my mind, but eventually (before the mod podge dried), I just decided to get all the paper off the canvas and call it a night.

So, that's why the sad canvas sat in the basement for about a month.  I couldn't figure out what to do with a mostly painted, half mod podged coral canvas. 

Well, when you don't know what to do with something just hit up Pinterest.  Waste a couple of hours and you're sure to find something inspiring.  I pinned a quote so that I wouldn't forget it.  "If you work hard and are kind, amazing things will happen."  It seemed like the perfect quote to have in an office/playroom.  Inspiring for both Mom and Munchkin.

So...back to Michael's I went, but this time to pick up some vinyl letters.  I moved the mega blocks out of the way and claimed a place on the carpet to work on my masterpiece. 

I cut all of the letters out so that I could space out the words as best as possible.

At this point it just looked a little stalker-ish.  Also, apparently my camera doesn't like coral.  The canvas really is coral, not a weird orange.  I blame it on bad basement lighting and the camera, not on the operator. 

Then I used the trusty yellow level as a guide while laying down my letters.

Working from the bottom up and the right to the left, it only took a couple of minutes to stick all of the letters on.

I was going for more of a reverse image sort of thing, so I hauled out some white paint and applied a coat of paint over the top of the canvas.  I started out with a foam roller, but it wasn't working very well.  Part of the problem was that the canvas was covered in mod podge, so it wasn't smooth.  It had clear little ridges and bumps.  I switched out the roller for a brush and just slathered on the paint.  Then I used a rag to sort of smoosh it all around.  A very technical process.

Oh ya, did I mention that for some stupid reason I painted on top of my deep freeze? I have no idea why...I think maybe it was close to the foam roller???  Anyhow, that's why the pictures look like they are taken in a deep dark hole of the basement.  It's because they were.

Before the paint had a chance to dry I used an x-acto knife to peel off the letters.

Looking pretty good at this point, so I left it to dry for an hour or so and then hung it up on the wall.

And then, because I sometimes don't know when to leave things alone, I decided it needed some tszujing (think Carson Kressley style) in the form of some butterflies.

Nope, butterflies were NOT working.  Ripped the butterflies off. De-tszujed

So there you have it.  A DIY disaster, redeemed.  I really like it now.  It's simple but packs a big message that I love reading every day.

If you missed the big office reveal, you can check it out here. 

Paper Flowers for a Party

It's Pinterest Challenge time again!  My last Pinterest challenge was a great big F-A-I-L, so you know I had to pick myself up, dust myself off and set forth on the challenge once again.

Once a season, Katie from Bower Power and Sherry from Young House Love throw down the gauntlet and challenge us all to stop pinning and start doing.  This year they have some excellent co-hosts in Kate from Centsational Girl and Michelle from Ten June. 

This challenge was perfect timing for me as Saturday is Fin's first birthday and I have been in full party preparation mode for weeks now.  Our basement looks like a hot pink and lime green bomb exploded all over it with all of the decorations I have laying around. I've had these cute paper flowers pinned for a while (originally from Santa Barbara Wedding Style) and have been waiting for a special occasion to whip them up. Well this is it people! A first birthday is a very special occasion. 

I went on a little trip to Michael's, and with my coupon in hand (never, ever, ever go to Michael's without a coupon!!) I picked up 2 pieces of poster board and some green ribbon. Total cost with coupon: $2.55

I cut the poster board into 6" x 6" squares.  It wasn't an exact science, I just sort of guessed on the size - there is no need to be perfect with this craft. Then I drew a spiral on the square.  Clearly my drawing abilities are limited....

Then I cut along the line, which basically resulted in me having a hot pink spring.

Then came the tricky part...rolling.  Starting from the middle, I rolled and rolled.  The centre part is pretty easy, but it did become a bit tricky to keep the rosette nice and tight as it got bigger.

After doing about 10 flowers, I finally figured out that the trick to these puppies is to roll super tight as you go, and then at the end loosen your fingers and let the whole thing spread out.  Your hand will start to cramp at about 5 flowers anyhow, so you'll be happy for the whole loosening stage.

Then I used a bead of hot glue to secure the end.

This is how many flowers I managed to get out of one $0.99 piece of poster board.  I time most of my crafts by how many TV shows they take to make - these flowers only took one episode of Master Chef (that would be 1 hour...minus the commercials).

I grabbed some twisty twiggs that I had hanging around (old decor that I was no longer using) and broke a bunch of them up, and then hot glued them onto the flowers.

I then arranged them in some old bottles and tied a green ribbon on (obviously we have a pink and green theme going on for the party).  After making a few white flowers and mixing them in with the pink, I decided that I wasn't a fan of the colour combo so I nixed the white and stuck with just pink.

Mine are definitely not as perfect as the ones that I originally pinned. They are a little more shabby chic and quirky with their twisty stems.

My plan is to use these as table centrepieces at Fin's party.  I'll share some of the other part-tay (who's a child of the 90's with me?) details with you next week. I still have quite a few tissue paper poofs to make and a bunch of food to get cookin'.

Have a great weekend.

Rainbow Cake FAIL

I am always up for a challenge and a Pinterest challenge is even better! When Katie at Bower Power recently announced the winter edition of the Pinterest Challenge I knew I was up for the task.  The general idea is to find something that you love on Pinterest and attempt to make it yourself then send it out into the world and get huge adoration (see below to find out how it is NOT going to happen in my case!).

I have been oohing and ahhing over this for quite a while:

Source

I am sure if I made this I would win Mother of the Year award and Fin would babble away to all her baby friends on what a fantastic Mom she has and how her play kitchen is the best on the block.  The fact that she cant stand up by herself yet and that to her pots and pans are only musical instruments is totally beside the point. But back to reality I have about 8 seconds a day to do a project, so there was NO WAY that I was going to ever get this done in the week time frame for the Pinterest Challenge.

I started searching for something else that was equally as exciting and stumbled upon this fabulous cake.

Source

We are having a St. Pattys Day shindig at work on Friday so I figured it would be perfect for the occasion.  And seriously, a rainbow in a cake - how hard could that be? Easy peasy.  I decided that we needed to do a test cake before the party just to make sure it would work, and also so that we could have a cake to eat at home.  I convinced Justin that this would be fun to do one night after Fin went to bed and thank God he was gung ho.

We started with good ol Betty Crocker:

Once the cake mix was all combined we then separated it out into 8 different bowls and colored them each a different color of the rainbow.  It wasnt good from the start. Apparently Wilton food coloring (the fancy ones in the jars) dont actually last 5+ years once they have been opened. We tried to dig out the food coloring paste with toothpicks but it was so dried up that the toothpicks kept breaking (that should have been our first indication to just stop right there).  Thank goodness my brilliant husband came to the rescue and suggested adding super hot water to the little jars. It worked! 

This is sort of off topic, but am I the only one who knows about a great guy named ROY G BIV? One of my elementary school teachers taught us to use ROY G BIV to remember the colors of the rainbow. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.  It works I never forget the colors.  Justin, of course, had never heard of this and thought I had lost it completely.  Apparently in Manitoba they dont teach handy little acronyms.

Anyhow, after all of the batter was colored it was time to start pouring it into the pan (via Ziploc bags).  This really shouldn't be that hard of a task but by this time it felt like it was midnight and it was taking all the concentration I had to pour in an even line.  I think the batter looked exactly like it was supposed to and I was still hopeful that this would work.

I very gingerly put the cake into the oven being careful to not jostle the rings, set the timer and went downstairs to watch the finale of Top Chef.  We figured watching Top Chef would help send good cooking vibes up to our kitchen.

After 40 minutes the cake was cooked and looked pretty good.

We waited very patiently for it to cool.  To waste time Justin started making the icing.

Once it was cooled I cut around the bottom of the pan to release it and tried to take it off the mold. This is where it all went awry.  The cake didn't just slide right off the pan, oh no, it fell off and broke apart in big chunks all over the top of our stove.  Not only was it broken, but the supposed rainbow looked like a tie die project gone bad.

I gathered a few of the pieces up and attempted to make them still look presentable.  Maybe once we iced them it would be ok???

Nope!

This thing was seriously ugly.  Now it really was just about midnight so we sat down with two forks to share a piece of ugly cake and then went to bed.  Needless to say this is not being repeated to bring to the work party. Ill just be the loser who has to sneak in on Friday because I didnt bring anything to the party but still want to sample everyone elses concoctions!

P.S. I'll also be linking up to the co-host's sites for the Pinterest Challenge.

Young House Love

Hi Sugar Plum!

The Great Indoors