Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Every Box of Bobble Heads Has a Silver Lining

Mine did!

Yes - the much anticipated bobble heads arrived... And while just as hideous as expected, there weren't all that many of them. So that's good. And of course they were meant for the boys' room - it's not like Chris' mom decorates her own lovely house with bobble heads!

Anyway - she put some other goodies in the box for Eleanor, mostly in the way of junk jewelry. But there was a little something for me as well:



Isn't it gorgeous? It's a vintage candy box - or tin.


I'm madly in love with it and need to look up when it was manufactured. Based on the age of great grandparents, it should be the 40s...or possibly a little older?  How does one go about that? I know people do online searches for this kind of thing. But I'm not sure where to start - Ebay?

I do have this info from the bottom:


Here are some more views.







Now I just need to figure out where to put it...

Do you have any old everyday items that are now fabulous and vintage? Makes me want to start saving things for my grandchildren.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Monday Color: Sitting Pretty

Here are some colorful seating arrangements to start the week!






Just add company and refreshments.

Happy Monday!





1/2/3/4/5

Friday, June 24, 2011

Framing Odd-Size Prints with Standard Frames (two ways)

Last week, I posted some pictures of bedrooms for my children that I recently pulled together with a very small (non-existent) decor budget.

I bought cheap Target/Michael's frames for several prints I already owned - but some of the pieces weren't standard sizes.

Three were prints of room renderings...


...and three were pages from a children's book that fell apart.


Here is how I was able to frame all all of them without expensive custom work...

First, the book pages. We had a used book, Willy The Wimp, with great illustrations that my children loved. Sadly - they loved it so much that the binding failed and all of the pages fell out. I hated the idea of throwing it away, so I saved my three favorites assuming that I'd find a use for them someday.

And TODAY, that would be wall decor for Oliver and George's room.

The images were square sizes, so I looked for frames with those dimensions. Since none were a perfect fit, I thought I'd buy ones with mats and mount the pages on top of them instead of behind.

All I needed was a blade, a straight edge (like a ruler) and a piece of cardboard to protect my table.


The first page included a border, so I thought I'd just use that for my cut line.


But - AARRGGHH! - as soon as I finished, I realized that it was now too small to mount over the mat!


Seriously - dumb mistake. But before I tossed it, I tried cutting the middle border off of the mat (which was supposed to hold four pictures) and putting an extra unneeded page behind the mat to fill in that gap.




Not perfect - but for a kid's room? It's fine.


In the future - one improvement I would make on this would be to use another piece of paper to cover the cut of the mat. It would create an additional border for the image and there wouldn't be any gap - noticeable or not.

The other two images filled the page, so I just needed to trim the ragged edges. One had a small tear...



...but again - for a kid's room, it's barely noticeable. My six and four year olds certainly aren't complaining...




I think they look pretty great!

Next - the prints of watercolor room renderings.




My mother gave these to me years ago, thinking that they'd look cute in frames - possibly in a bedroom. I never got around to it for my own room, but they're perfect for Eleanor.

I knew I'd have very small wall space to work with and frames with mats would be too big. So I found some that would almost fit allowing for just a little space around the images.

Since they didn't come with mats, I picked up some art paper (sold by the sheet) that I thought would provide a neutral background. A pattern or color would also have looked nice - but in this case, the border wouldn't be uniform and the effect would be odd.

The rest is obvious. I trimmed the images (which were mounted on sheets with printed borders) and then cut the art paper to fit into the frames.






Ta da! Took just a few minutes, not a lot of money...and for a little girls room? They look adorable.

Sometimes I think I avoid doing projects around my house because I know that it will look amateur. Well - maybe so - but amateur is better than nothing when you have limited means!

I'm going to go for it a little more often - things can always be re-done by professionals later.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Monday Color (Late Again...)

It's officially summer in our house now. The school year is ending. And I made the insane decision to unplug the TV for the next couple of months and tell the kids it's broken.

I have my reasons for this of course - ones I'll talk about on The Big Piece of Cake - but an indisputable consequence will be a significant decrease in computer time for me (as if it was "significant" to begin with).

And as a case in point, I wrote the above text on Sunday night!

Luckily - this is a website that pays homage to color and I have a bit of inspiration outside my door right now. It's early summer so the flowers are still blooming everywhere. Here are some shots from my garden (okay and that of a neighbor or two):








I know - that last one is a weed... But I remember thinking they were so pretty when I was a little girl. I'd gather as many as I could find for mini-bouquets.

And peonies are in season! So here is what I have on my dining room table:









"My signature colors are blush and bashful..."

I'll be back tomorrow with those pictures I promised in my last post about the low-budget/low-skill level DIY project.

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