Thursday, April 10, 2014

(#TBT) Power Tools are a Girl's Best Friend

Happy Throwback Thursday! Today, we're throwing it back to my first (and only, really) interior design project. This is the basement bathroom of my parent's home. 
The room was completely DIYed, but I never broke down the projects into their own posts.
I'll be re-visiting a project or two from the room over the next few months.


The vanity has quite a story of it's own. When I began designing the bathroom, I was set on using a dining room table as the vanity. I had even chopped the table in half, and cut the hole out for the sink.


As time went on, I fell out of love with the table. I didn't feel like it was the right height or style anymore. The idea of using a dresser was born. Let's just say it took a while. About a year, maybe? I'm kinda a procrastinator, and I wasn't going to settle for anything short of perfect. 
Eventually, my mom gave me an ultimatum. If you can't find a dresser in two weeks, you have to use the table. Well, day 14 came. I'd pretty much given up hope, but decided to stop by Goodwill one last time. And there it was. In all it's [perfect height, depth, and width] glory! The price tag? $25.
AHHH! I screamed! &*$@# FINALLY! Huzzah! Take that, mother. (JK, she's pretty awesome.)


Enter the power tools. Turning a dresser into a vanity isn't too complicated.
You can see a full tutorial over at DIY Network.

It mostly involves cutting out room for the sink and plumbing parts.
Sadly, this leaves most of the drawers pretty unusable.



A few coats of polyurethane later, and much assistance in the plumbing department, it was completely installed and operational!



Be sure to subscribe for a new #TBT next week! 



Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Hiding Behind a Sheet & Splattered in Paint? Dart/Balloon Art DIY!

Growing up, my all time favorite movie was The Princess Diaries.
The movie came out when I was 6 years old.
When I first saw it, I was majorly in the middle of my princess phase. Still holding out hope that I'm royal.

Anyways. Remember this scene?! Bucket list worthy.

Well, I decided to start ticking things off of that list!


I fell in love with the following balloon painting:

Source: My Good Morning

This is definitely a different style than the movie, and I plan on eventually making both styles.

Ok, let's get started! 

Gather the following supplies:
[I really using suggest all of these. Hint: I didn't]
-A canvas
-Tons of drop clothes 
-Lots of coordinating paint colors
-Lots of balloons (I used about 16, but suggest more)
-Darts
-Pins
- Metal Key Ring (optional)


I cut down costs by DIY-ing my own canvas. I simply put two layers of indoor wall paint on an inexpensive piece of cotton fabric. After it dried, I stretched and stapled it to a thrifted bulletin board. Not perfect, but hey! It's going to be covered in splattered paint anyways!

Next is the setup. This involved lots of sheets/ drop-cloths around my workshop to cover things that couldn't get paint on them. Even if things are far away, don't take the risk. Paint flies, people!

BUT if you do it outside, you really only need one underneath.


Outdoors wasn't an option for me at this time, but I feel like that'd be much better! Splatter prevention and all.. hehe. 

 The next step is to fill your balloons with paint. 
First, blow up your balloons a bit to stretch them out before filling with paint. 


Here is where the key ring comes into use. 
This created a bigger hole, and helped prevent paint ingestion... 


OOOO. They paint in the balloon looked pretty cool in person...
Experiment with a variety of color combinations, amounts of paint, and amount of air in the balloons.


Then, randomly arrange your balloons and pin them to your canvas.


Then comes the fun part!!
Confession time. I didn't actually use darts. I couldn't find any, and was too lazy/cheap to go buy some.
I first attempted a Macgyver dart, made with a pencil, eraser, and pin.
I don't think it was exactly heavy enough or something. It kinda just bounced off of the balloons.


 After chucking 3 random pointy things at the canvas (my mother's suggestions!), I gave up.
SO! Solution time! 
Macgyver dart was back, but not really as a dart. Prepare to be splattered, people!
This involved a bit of hiding behind the drop cloth. Didn't do much in the splatter avoidance.

After all the balloons were popped, I did a little splattering to add a bit more color.


Splatter avoidance? Eh, I tried.


After a little finger painting, it was perfect!


Macgyver dart was preeeetty afterwards :D


And so were my hands.



TADA! Finished piece.



I apologize for the lack of nice staged photos. They'll be coming eventually!
This thing was still wet when I drove back to school.



Overall, NEXT TIME, we're going HAM.
More balloons, more paint, more like The Princess Diaries, and actual darts!



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