Before + After: Dresser Makeover

For obvious reasons, I ought to be hesitant about posting pictures of something as personal as a bedroom.  However, I'm so.incredibly.stoked about a dresser makeover I just finished and since it just so happens to live in our bedroom...

The only art in the room are framed prints of old school postcards I put together as a birthday display of "GreetingsFrom...Places You've Lived" Jamie one year.  They are 13"x18" prints of postcards from Tucson, SF, and Los Angeles.  Hope we get to add more postcards in the future together!

Let's get back to that dresser, shall we?

Ahhh...close-up.

That simple wooden dresser is my first piece of furniture I was able to purchase with my first paycheck after college.  I distinctly remember that purchase + the shopping trip itself as monumental as I was transitioning between stacked plastic crates to a REAL piece of storage. It signified a growing-up, a breaking free of the necessary state of mobility that I maintained during school.  As is the case for many, I moved every 3-9 months without a vehicle to call my own, so it was necessary to maintain all worldly possessions in a few suitcases and disposable furniture.  Obviously, a stark contrast to the crazy amount of crap I have accumulated since...sheesh.

Back then, I lovingly sanded each bit and whitewashed the whole thing to tone down the yellow of the originally unfinished pine.  It didn't come with knobs so I picked up a couple packs of simple ones from Ikea and had been relatively happy with its simplicity.

Until a week ago.

I stared at it long and hard one morning, realized the blank canvas potential, and immediately started prepping the drawers for some paint action.

*Insert picture of dresser with blue tape and its first coat of Valspar Paint *

It took a couple of nights to complete (why do I choose to paint at night?) and a couple of pixtext consultations with Jen on how to handle the smaller drawers on top, plus about a week to allow the clear coats time to "season".  All in all, totally worth it.  Here are some more shots of the clean, Hollywood Regency inspired dresser.

The dresser redux has even proven satisfactory to v.apprehensive guy I live with!  You know, the one who believes the potential to get super-girlie with furniture painting is just too risky to attempt?  Yup, him.  He thinks it's just great now.  Phew.

What do you think?

All the King's Horses...

jen mailed us these AWESOME tchochkees (sp?),
but they did not survive the US Postal Service.
so.sad.
it's ok though, folks.
Gorilla Glue to the rescue.
back to original form...
well, pretty darn close.
it's a shoutout to my people.
holla back at the samurai guy and geisha girl.
aren't they a great engagement gift?? luv.
the soon-to-be mr&mrs benihana mugs will live on this shelf.
they're happy here.
*quick shout-out to annie for helping us put these together!
oh, ps...
we put up shelves and moved plates and stuff here.
feeling much better about this wall.

Book 'em...danno.

Yup. I'm on a home improvement roll.

couple of ikea bookshelves.
bleagh. bleagh. bleaaaaaaagh.what looked like a tan in a spray can*,
turned out to be a pretty sage.
((*hehe, i should've used the word 'beige' or something))it opens up the hallway so much!
now if only i could paint the molding...and doors...and walls.me + spray paint = woah.

Off to Honolulu and Maui tomorrow. Gone for a week. Only will a transpacific plane ride keep me from continuing to paint EVERYTHING in our apartment. It's transpacific, right? I can call it that?

Screw Ambien, Get Yo'Self These Pillows.

*Based on the initial comments, I'll add some more "instruction" and detail on how I did these! Holly, I totally thought of these in my head, but there's no guarantee that I didn't see it somewhere first (double negative!). Let me know when you guys start doing your own stuff!

Freezer paper stenciling action has returned to the craft room, folks. In full force. This time, instead of tracing onto the freezer paper, I just sent it directly through the printer! Ha, skipped a step. Take that, freezer paper. Here, I'll take you through my recent fun-times:

You can easily trace images onto the non-shiny side of Reynolds Freezer paper
or, as I did, draft an image or text on your computer. And get ready to print directly.
Cut the Reynolds Freezer paper to 8.5" x 11" sheets.

Carefully feed it through to minimize a paper jam session.
I used a landscaped 288pt Impact Font.
Cut out all the black portions of the paper. You're creating a stencil of sorts.
Toss the black parts away , but don't forget to hang onto the center of letters, etc.
Like the middle of the "g" above. See the little doo-hickey? Hang onto that. You'll need it.
Iron it onto material well.
Don't forget the doo-hickeys.
Waxy side down. The wax creates a seal on the fabric so none of the paint will go there.
If you get a good seal down, it won't leak through AT ALL.
Fabric paint the heck out of it.
You could easily take artistic liberty here by going with more than one color, a pattern, whatever. I tend to stick with one color straight from the bottle or one I blend. Works better for me. UNLESS, I do sunshine. Then I do a radiated lighter-to-darker color.
I've tried acrylic + fabric medium (a liquid additive), but not a fan (too hard).
Tulip is a good, soft brand. It makes the painted sections not feel as much like paint and is readily available at most craft stores.
Wait until dry and peel off.
Play with this part. Sometimes I wait until REALLY dry, sometimes I don't have patience.
Either way, sometimes I get leak throughs and sometimes I don't.
I've figured out the perfect time for the amount of paint layers I do, but you should play with your own technique and fabric material.
Tote bags, for example, don't get a good seal for me. Has too many little ridges, like a ribbed tank top. Blah.
Iron for 3 minutes to set the color. -important so it doesn't wash off.
Throw on bed and marvel at your handiwork.
Can't wait for bedtime.
Zzzzz.
hope the additional language helped!

Furniture Remodel

When Jen and I moved into a 5' x 6' room in our sorority house, we quickly figured out that the two of us were pretty great at working all sorts of crafty projects together. Creating unnecessarily tall piles of laundry and distracting each other from any sort of studying were certainly at the tops of the list...what? talking for hours on end takes some sort of creativity, folks. :) Since then, we've recovered cushions, sewed things, built things, cooked things, and even started a few scrapbooks here and there! The last item is something she's run with while I gave that schizz up looong time ago.

hmmm...i'm thinking that scrapbooking was simply taken over by blogging. is this my digital scrapbook?

Anyway, when jen needed some help refinishing their dining room table, I was all over going over to help.

Hand sander action - i totally LOVE power tools.

so smart to use keg cups for smaller tasks!
another jen tip: throw a paper plate under your gallon of paint to prevent spillage.
looks grey-ish, but it turned out pure black ya'll....v.classy.
super warm that day in the country!
pepper + bailey were nice enough to share the backyard with
hudson and little molly...prince was there too, but apparently camera shy.

Crafting - Bridal Shower Stuffs (explained)

It pays off to take pictures of your friends, particularly @ bars or at any other time of outlandish performance. And it reeeeally pays off to have friends pull mad faces & pose ridiculously. I'm v.proud to know they'd surely struggle to find equally ludicrous photos of yours truly.

Per Sarah's request, here are a few tutorials on how to accomplish some fun favor items! And to the few who have asked, I totally run a daytime job. Although, good call. I am a bit un-enamored with it at the moment - eep. Does it really look like this stuff took an extensive amount of time? Maybe my craftier friends have trained me into higher productivity, keeping me up all hours into the night to polish off Halloween invites (ahem, devon) or covering every inch of a 2000sqft home with all things sorority (ahem, jen). Mostly, I think I've known about dev's bridal shower needs since last year; leaving plenty of time to hunt for, make, and gather things!! :) ok, moving on...

1. Picture Frames
• pick up some cute, teeny frames. these had a 2"x2" window. places like target, costplus, lnt-ca have good deals, keep an eye out and stock up ahead of time. big box stores have superb return policies if you get extra, which you should totally do jic.
  
• trace the glass onto a patterned piece of paper. i stock up on scrapbook kits that go on sale for coordinating, fun papers. also, look @ the magazines or catalogs you have @ home. they have plenty of large enough sections of patterns that would look great in a frame.
• find a terribly funny picture of your friend, crop + shrink (i just use MicroWord), print in multiples, and cut out. don't get weirded out when your dog picks up your friend's head and starts chomping down. hudson just loves devon's face.
  
• print out a phrase + speaking bubble, also in MicroWord, onto vellum paper.
• glue the bubble + picture onto the patterned paper, wait to dry, put in frame!
• I like this glue or this one for most paper stuff:
2. Personalized Chocolate Bars
• pick up some yummy + diff chocolate bars.
• cut out + wrap the bars with some pretty patterned paper.
• copy + paste a pretty/pretty pic onto MicroWord, make b/w + transparent (in Format Picture - Color Lines - Fill), and definitely put the picture behind the text (in Format Picture - Layout - Wrapping Style).
  
• Find a fun font and type your phrase directly onto picture. i chose, "celebrate ME, bitches!" you can choose something, perhaps without a profanity?
  
• Print + cut out. Glue directly onto patterned paper!
3. Aw Nuts! Bags.
• get cellophane bags of any flat variety. i chose these from martha @ michaels (really cute site, btw). i thought they were pretty.
• download a landscape template from Avery + use their mailing labels to print a fun photo + statement.
  
• print + stick onto each bag.
• fill with items of choice: i did a mix of home-cinnamon-roasted-almonds, honey roasted peanuts, & wholefoods trailmix. dude, wholefoods rocks and i don't mind that they're taking over the world. they're all over cali, some in colorado (yay, liz!), and even one in freaking tulsa. woo-freaking-whoo!
• disclaimer: i made the almonds when jamie was out of town for a few days so that any trace of almond dust got out of the kitchen before he got back. can't have him get grossly asphixiated because of a rouge, tainted wooden spoon, after all. peanuts + cashews are cool, almonds + walnuts are the worst. he calls contaminated items "death-____"...as in "death cookies" & "death cakes" etc.
  
4. Tote Bags
• sketch your inspired image onto regular paper. i just doodled the first three images of LA that popped into my head. palm trees, check. sunshine, check. aeroplane, check.

• trace each image separately to prevent leakage and to enable overlap when painting.
• freezer paper paint onto tote bag in separate phases. i did the sunshine first bc it was the most gratifying; lots of mixing colors, adding gold paint to each of the orange/red/yellows for extra sheen! the palm trees were a bit tricky in that the freezer paper didn't want to create a perfect seal on the ridged tote bag, so if you want crisp lines, look for a smoother surface to work on. luckily, palm trees are rarely smooth, but rather ridged in nature so i convinced myself it was a-ok.
• heat set everything so if need be, the bag can be machine-washed!
  
• print out letters on t-shirt transfer paper + iron on last.
• tie on a name tag for each person & some sparkley wirestuffs just for added snazz.

And that's it! I think...did I miss anything?

ps. How many of ya'll are becoming obsessed with David Archuleta?? I feel like he really gets me.

Happy Birthday to Me - love Jen.

I needed help "decorating" the pretty stark and yet somehow restrictive bathroom in our apartment. Here are the restrictions: uh...RED sink and RED tile + we rent so there are certain things that are just not worth it (like redoing the tile). I am totally not a morning person, but I have to tell you, this whole boring bathroom situation sure doesn't make it any easier to want to get my day going. Jen has heard me gripe about this room for awhile now and for my birthday she decided to take matters into her own hands!! Check it out.

Now go back to the top pic and note that she went totally out of her way to pick out Valspar paint chips...that's where Devon's Patrick works! Mind you, the girl has like two weeks until her due date. Crazy, huh? Don't you worry, I'm not THAT great of a friend; you know, one who will turn down some decorating advice for the safety of an unborn child? Nah. Here are the before photos. After photos to follow in awhile and shut up, I know I have to put away the Christmas bulbs:
Plus a photo of Jen during phase one of "b.room redecoration" thinking this would be a great addition to the b.room...waaaait a sec. What the heck does the Caller ID window mean? LuWamH?

She also took me to lunch @ Fenton's to split a yummy tuna melt and I got to get my own state-of-the-art ice cream sundae! "Petite" scoop of chocolate marble (petite? ya right.), banana, chocolate peanut butter hot fudge. Oh wait, here's a pic of Jen's...I must have already inhaled my own. But doesn't it look like a perfect sundae?