when your home is your canvas
Would you please pour me a cup of tea?
Oh wait. Something’s off. Looks like someone put Sharpies in the teapot.
Oh yeah. That was me. Because I love to use things for purposes other than their original intent. Like Sharpies in a funky Midsummer Night’s Dream teapot.
Clever, too, since I wasn’t serving up tea very often.
It’s cute, don’t you think?
If you have kids or ever were a kid, I’m betting that you have an old recorder lying around. Didn’t everyone play recorder in school? I know I did, my sister did, and both of my kids did.
And I’m guessing that you also have some weird little strip of wall that is too small for just about anything decorative. Well, guess again, people!
Dig up that old recorder make it sing again!
No, you don’t have to play Lightly Row…just find an awkward spot and hang that recorder up, just like this…
It’s just a tiny little speck of wall between two door frames. Perfect for a recorder! Don’t you think?
How much did it cost? $0, since I had not one but two recorders hanging around. And if you want to get all funky and colorful, you could spend about $5 and get one of these…
Now go play Lightly Row while you’re looking for a place to hang your recorder!
For those of us who work full time outside the home, we spend more waking hours there than in the homes we love with the family we love.
OK, now that I’ve depressed you, let me at least encourage you to do something to spruce up your cubicle space.
Nothing as extravagant as you’ll find here…
Maybe something a little more subtle…
One of the ways to soften the harsh edges of a cubicle and give your workspace some life is with a plant. Here’s a plant that I’ve had at my desk…
Just your basic succulent. (I can’t handle plants that need any more care than very infrequent watering, hence the succulent.)
Then one day we were cleaning out our supply of old versions of dictionaries and style manuals. I work as an editor, so we need to work with the most up-to-date versions. The books were going to be tossed in the recycle bin, so I decided to give them new life and add some height to my plant…
Use what you have decorating at its finest! Now it’s just a little thing, but it’s really spruced up my plant and my desk! You can add a little design just about anywhere with a stack of books. And no need to pay lots of cash for this one…check out the dumpster, the recycle bin, your bookshelf, or the library book sale.
Here are a couple of other tchotchkes that I use to personalize my cubicle space…
Because I love me some letters and numbers, I *had* to own this lamp when I saw it on clearance at Kohl’s a couple years back.
And this sweet thing from my monkey collection…
Just a couple of things to make my cubicle to seem less sterile and more fun!
Have you done anything fun to brighten up your workplace? Share your pics on the Homage Style Facebook page.
And don’t forget to enter the Spring Cleaning Giveaway for a chance to win this adorable sterling silver charm bracelet!
Click here for contest entry details.
Showing off at…
In the midst of my craft armoire declutter yesterday, inspiration struck, so I decided to go with the flow and create a little something.
I started with a canvas that I had painted in black & white stripes for a previously failed project.
In my decluttering, I came across an old atlas that I was saving for a moment like this. My son has an collection of letter As, since his name starts with A, so I had the idea of making a letter A with the map of Ohio, since we live in suburban Columbus, Ohio.
Here’s the Ohio page…
The Columbus area is a lighter color, which will make the perfect center of a lower case A.
A lesser person might actually print out a letter A in their font of choice and trace it onto the map. I decided to create a more imperfect freehand version…
Then I adhered the letter to the painted canvas using rubber cement, which will create a good hold and will allow both the paper and the canvas to remain smooth.
All that was left was to add it to my son’s collection…
Done deal! Perfect addition to his collection, and since the canvas had already been painted, the project only took about 20 minutes.
And don’t forget to enter the Spring Cleaning Giveaway for a chance to win this adorable sterling silver charm bracelet!
Click here for contest entry details.
Showing off at these link parties…
Sounds kind of scandalous! But when you see this, you’ll realize how completely scandalous it really is…
Messy-licious! And there’s more…
Nothing like watching an episode of Hoarders to jump start the spring cleaning bug.
And that, my friends, is my bedroom. Let’s just say it’s gotten out of hand. So I started with a big cleanup. Which took a surprisingly long time. I’m sure that had nothing to do with treating myself to occasional trips to Pinterest.
While it’s not quite ready for the full reveal, here’s a little something…
Nothing wrong with this vignette, but I’ve been trying to add a touch of mod around the house, so I want to mix it up a bit.
I found a terrific iridescent vase at Target, and it looks pretty good…
…but it could use a little more height. Something along these lines…
These are pieces of wood that my son broke when he was in tae kwon do. But the raw wood looks too, well, raw, so I painted it with a gray craft paint, not worrying about priming or if the woodgrain showed through the paint. Call it character and texture.
There, that’s better. The painted wood adds height and texture. Plus the wood pieces have special meaning to me, and now I’m using them instead of having them stuck in a cabinet. My son even wrote his name on one pieces, making it extra special.
Plus it looks great, don’t you think?
Don’t forget to enter the Spring Cleaning Giveaway!
Showing off at these link parties…
A while back I bought 3 vintage gym baskets from EveryEskimo a seller on Etsy, who has great vintage treasures.
I’ve always liked the cool look of vintage gym baskets, even though I wasn’t much of an athlete back in school…I class-clowned my way through gym class!
They weren’t particularly inexpensive – in fact they were costly – but I was very attached to these because they were from Republic Steel in Canton, Ohio.
I come from a long line of steelworkers, several of whom worked for Republic Steel in the Massillon-Canton area, and I didn’t know if I’d ever come across gym baskets with a personal connection again, so I sprang for them.
This project cured for at least a year, but I knew what I wanted to do with these the whole time. My goal was to hang these in the kids’ bathroom to store towels & toilet paper.
So I drilled a couple of holes in my newly painted bathroom wall…a risk for sure, just in case this project didn’t work as planned, since I was ruining a perfectly painted wall. (In case you’re not familiar with various literary devices, this, my friends, is foreshadowing.)
Apparently there are absolutely no studs in my bathroom wall, or at least none where I needed them, so I used anchors to attach the screws and washers that would attach the basket to the wall.
FAIL.
Every time I’d tighten the screw close enough to hold the basket to the wall, the anchor would pull out from the wall. Plus, if I left enough room between the baskets to actually reach in & get the towels or TP out of the basket, the top basket would be at average adult eye level. Perfect for hitting heads and knocking already not secured baskets out of the wall.
PROJECT FAIL.
Yeah, so that was a disappointment after curing and planning for a solid year.
Back to the drawing board. I patched the newly painted wall (so sad) and I brainstormed.
Since the baskets are just shy of 12″ x 12″, I realized that what I needed was a stackable cube-type system, and I could use the baskets as the drawers. So I ran out to Target and bought this ClosetMaid 3-shelf stackable organizer…
I put it together & voila! A viable solution…
It’s not an ideal solution for a couple of reasons, but it will do the trick for now. First, the middle shelves are adjustable, so they move when I pull the drawers out. And the baskets fit pretty tightly and will eventually mark up the white laminate. But for $20, I solved the problem and got the vintage gym baskets out of curing mode and into action.
Maybe someday I’ll go all Ana White on you guys and make my own cube shelving system. But until then, this works.
(Keeping it real with the toilet brush in the pic!)
Showing off at Funky Junk Interiors Saturday Night Special and Remodelaholic link parties and…
and…
Lookee what I found on Craigslist for 30 clams!
A beautiful chandelier that I’m going to paint and put in my bedroom. (That is after it “cures” for a while in my garage with my other projects-in-waiting.)
Can’t decide…white, black or other?
Don’t want it to be too shabby chic. We’ll see…
Edited to add: My friend Claire says silver. BRILLIANT! Silver shall be. (After adequate curing time, of course.)
A while back, I found this in the trash in my neighborhood…
It was a sweet gift from the decorating gods, because I had recently seen what Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors had done with a mattress spring, and I wanted to try my hand at decorating with one.
Well, don’t know if you know this about me yet, but usually I allow my finds to “cure” for a while. The mattress spring was no different. It sat in my garage awaiting inspiration for a solid 6 months!
Then this weekend, inspiration struck, when I found this fun piece at Bed, Bath & Beyond…
I love vintage advertising style and I have a standard poodle, so there was no walking away from this one. Plus I had a $5 off coupon, so it was a done deal for about $15.
But before I bought it, I did ask myself where I would put it, because I don’t buy anything new for the house if I don’t think I have a place for it.
Then I remembered this section of the wall…
…that has been begging for something for a long time. I had thought about putting the mattress spring there, but it needed a little something.
A little something like the poodle print.
So I hung the mattress spring, making sure it was level…
…with a couple of screws in anchors.
To make the shiny silver screws less obvious against the rusty mattress spring, I just colored them with a brown Sharpie marker.
Then I placed the canvas where I wanted it, hung it with a nail in the wall, through the open area in the spring, and voila!
The perfect frame for a fun print!
I just love it! Isn’t it adorable? Decorating with found objects is great fun!
Linking up here…
Update…exciting news! This project was featured on Whisperwood Cottage!
Recently, a dear friend who lives in New York came to visit me in Ohio.
After his visit, because I have a collection of masks like this…
And this…
He sent me these…
He suggested that I frame them, which I thought was a wonderful idea. So I purchased this framed painting from a second hand store…
I paid $7.50 for it, which is more than I usually pay for something like this. Free is usually more my price range, but I was motivated and had an idea of exactly what I wanted to do, and this was the perfect frame. And although the painting was cute in a kitschy kind of way and very tempting to keep, I popped the painting out of the frame and began prepping to paint the frame.
So, it went from this…
To this, which resembles something from a bloody horror flick…
To this, which turned out to be cute & funky, adding a pop of color & fun to a classic office…
A close up of the detail on the frame…
What room in your home could use a shot of color & fun?
Showing off this project at Funky Junk Interiors…
