Paper Clay Barnacles

So I may have no clue what I'd do with these - but the paper clay barnacles from the folks at Design Sponge are amazing! Take a peek:

(source)

Ah! So cool! Just grab a roll of tp, some joint compound, and and some kitchen supplies and prepare yourself for one fun (and messy) afternoon of creating! I love the idea of using them as a centerpiece or mixing in some fun beach finds and clustering them together as living room decor! Heck, they would even look awesome all stuck together and hung on a wall! OoOo! Fun! What do you think? What would you use paper barnacles for?

Friday Find: Petit Beast

Today's find is the wonderful, whimsical, air plant wonders of Etsy's Petit Beast. I would certainly have never thought of using sea urchin remnants as a plant vessel to make one heck of a hanging pseudo jelly fish! Eek! Check it out:

(source)

Aren't they magnificent? I think a nice swarm of these would be just charming hanging in my living room! It certainly intrigues me into attempting to grow my own air plants and see what lovely decorative things you could do with them! Of course coming across sea urchin shells may be a tad on the difficult side so luckily Petit Beast sells little DIY kits for reasonable prices (link)! OoOo! So neat! I wonder what the laws are on shipping live plants to Canada...

circle punch art

I love bright simple projects - and this circle punch art one from Mer Mag looks so fun! It's even kid friendly! All you need to do is collect some neat looking papers, punch out circles galore, and then paste them on a poster and frame it up! Neato! Take a look at the finished product:

(source)

Ah! So cute! I love the bright dots they picked and think it would be neat to include meaningful circles to make it more memorable. Maybe some punches from concert tickets, event posters, or old letters? All I need to do is take a trip to Ikea for a sweet cheap frame and I think I can whip this baby up in no time! What do you think? Having a fun Saturday?

Mason Cacti!

As you may already know, I am a big fan of the mason jar.  Simple, useful, and inexpensive - you can do tons with those babies and the projects just keep popping up! You may recall a blog post I did a while back about turning mason jars into an herb wall (link) and although I never got around to it (nor do I have ample light for such things), someone else in Victoria did! Take a looksie:

Haha! Ok, so it's pretty obvious that those are very much not herbs, and instead are some hearty ol' cacti! What a splendid idea! I have been having very limited luck with my herbs so far (after 9 attempts I've got 2 sort of surviving ones left) but I somehow manage to not totally kill all my cacti so maybe this is the way to go! For now I will just enjoy how great these hanging jars look in this store front and dream about a day with ample natural light. *Sigh*

a home for my wooden mushrooms

If any of you out there are instagram followers of mine (I'm @scientific_culture) you may remember this picture I posted a while ago:

I bought these wooden squares back in February and (much like most house projects I have in the works) it took ages for me to get them up! After enjoying their nice shapes and shadows they cast in the hallway by the kitchen I decided to jazz them up with a little DIY project. Add in some wrapping paper pieces I bought at Easter - and voila - hallway transformed:

Yay! I can't believe it took me so long to get the paper up since I'm fairly certain it took me all of 10 minutes to finish.  Isn't it funny how silly procrastination feels once you finish a project? The little wooden boxes are also the new home for my homemade mushrooms I blogged about a few weeks back (link)! Hooray!

Aren't they fun? I also put an alligator wind up toy on there for good measure:

I actually have quite the expansive collection of wind up toys that are currently residing in my top desk drawer so I'm sure this gator feels extra special for making it on display. There's no natural light in the hallway (it's on the inside building) so please excuse the less than ideal pictures, but I assure you, they look awesome in person. I really love the mix of textures, colours, and pattern they bring to the space and I find them extra interesting since they have some depth to them too:

Yup, I don't think those wooden mushrooms will ever make their way into terrariums - they are just too happy on their shelves! What do you think of my display? Do you ever dabble in home decor?

Family Portraits

When Lindsay came to visit me this past fall (for Rifflandia), we did a fair bit of shopping around town. I was pretty set on finding budget art for the new walls of my apartment and picked up some funny animal portrait postcards from The Milkman's Daughter (sister shop to Smoking Lily). I instantly fell in love with the bizarre human bodied creatures and bought a few black frames from the dollar store. I added in a little scrap card for matting and hung them up in the hall:


Because there is no natural light source in the hallway (it's on the inside of the apartment building) the pictures I've taken aren't quite up to my standards, but it does conceal how cheap and plastic the frames are. Total cost for the project = $11.13, and took me all of 15 minutes to execute. Perfect!

I later happened to stumble across the original source of the postcards and discovered that I am far from the first person to consider these as wall art! Angela of Beat Up Creations is all about taking abandoned and unloved china and jazzing them up with her odd human bodied animal portraits! To my surprise, she has a whole selection of other picture day series postcards that I am dying to get my hands on! Looks like I need to buy another set of postcards and continue the family portrait art fun into another room in my home! Hooray! What do you think? Have you ever turned cards into inexpensive artwork?

Welcome back Soot Sprites!

Last April I made myself a happy little group of soot sprites! They were pretty simple to whip up (just some black yarn pom poms with felt circle eyes sewed on with a french knot and some embroidery floss) and are just darling:


Much like my felt squirrel Earl, I hung my new pals up in our cute little house in Kamloops and enjoyed their company for months! When we moved in the fall the sprite pom poms got lost in the boxes and it wasn't until a few weeks ago that they finally made it back up! Take a peek at my view when you walk in the front door:


They hide very sneakily in the dark corner of the front hall and since it has limited natural light - capturing a good shot of them wasn't very easy either. It may be blurry - but I figured a close up was necessary to see their cuteness:


I figures since soot sprites like dark corners (and not out in plain site like Earl) I'd put the second grouping in the empty space in the hallway:


Hoho! It is a bit brighter for you to see them, but since I don't walk around looking up all the time (does anyone do that?), I often forget they're there:


Welcome back soot sprites! I hope you are enjoying your new digs!

In other news - it's my sister's birthday today! While I am spending my day working, aquasizing, and attempting to soak up the wonderful spring day she is probably chasing after one cute little baby and living in the wintry north. Happy Bday Les! and happy first day of spring!

Welcome Back Earl!

If you're a long time reader of the blog, you may remember the trip to deep cove I made a few years ago (no? here's a link). It is a charming little area with the most amazing of stores - where I picked up a new felt friend Earl the squirrel as well as a few felt acorns (Earls loves acorns)! He spent a year happily hanging in the window above my kitchen sink in Kamloops and spend a few months hanging out on a shelf in my craft room since we moved to Victoria. It was a smidge too lonely in there for him so at long last he has joined me in the living room/kitchen! Take a peek:


I really wasn't sure where to hang him in the new pad, but I think the empty space that divides the main living area and the kitchen/dining room seems to work! He gets a good view of all the goings on of the house and gets to enjoy some day light (when it isn't raining here...)! Yay! Welcome back Earl - I missed you:


Any one else follow the ultra cool "hanging weird felt pets" decorating trend I've attempted? Do tell!

Wet Felted Billy Balls

As you may have spotted in one of my previous posts, I finally got around to making a bouquet of wet felted billy ball flowers! I've been in love with the look of these pom pom-esque groupings for quite some time and have had some mustard felting fiber for months now! A few weekends ago I got into one of those "I am determined to get lots done" moods and jumped right in! They were pretty simple to make (Design Sponge has a DIY you can follow) but are a little on the time consuming side. I was, however, thrilled with the results even if I am not motivated to ever try wet felting again. Take a peek at them in the living room:


I love how the colours pop on the bookshelf and the vase Fraser bought for me suits them perfectly!:


Even though I loved how they looked in the living room, my poor xmas cactus needed his spot back since there is limited natural light available in the apartment. With that the billy balls were moved to their new home on our kitchen table right below my beloved poster of Bret and Jemaine:


It makes eating at the table extra lovely and really brightens up the kitchen! Not sure how well it goes with our pink kitten place mats but I never boasted of being a professional designer. I think the new addition is warmly welcomed into our quirky little home and can't wait to keep enjoying the bouquet for years to come! What do you think? Are you raring to go on your own billy ball centerpiece?

DIY Paper Flowers

Nothing perks up a room quite like a bouquet of fresh flowers. Unfortunately, like most living things plucked from their nutrient source, they don't last forever - they wilt and die (and becoming less perky and more depressing...). My remedy? How about some lovely handmade fake flowers instead? Oh, and not the bad smelling plastic type either - the oversized and paper kind! Yay! Paper n Stitch has a wonderful round up of huge paper flower DIYs over on their blog and I am particularly taken with a few of them. Behold:

DIY 1 - Giant Tissue Flowers! This seems like the most difficult of the tutorials out there and requires quite the list of supplies (including cement, chicken wire, and a 5" stucco corner). Negating the difficulty of this project, they are, truly, very stunning.


DIY 2 - Crepe Paper Roses! A bit easier than the tissue flowers, these giant roses originated from a Martha Steward project (of course...). I really like the bold colour choices and although I am not an overly huge rose fan, I do think they are quite amazing. Plus the tutorial has links for where to buy the slices of brightly coloured crepe paper too!


DIY 3 - Napkin Wallflowers! At last! A giant paper flower that I can make with tools from home! These babies are made with napkins (from Ikea in this case) and are wonderfully reminiscent of pom poms (much like the tissue and tulle ones I posted about a few days ago)! I really love the colours they chose and the instructions are so simple I'm sure I could master this one easily. I am a little weary of how much dust these flowers would likely collect...but otherwise they seem awesome!


Oh just lovely! I really like all three of these flowers and think they would be wonderful as party or wedding decorations! Or maybe part of an elaborate costume? Heck, we even have a few empty spots in our apartment that are perfectly suited for a bouquet of paper flowers! Oh my! Now which to chose...what do you think? What would you use your paper flowers for?

Lion Doily Pillows

Even though my living room already has a bunny and two owl pillows, I'm pretty sure I need to make myself some of these doily lion pillows from flickr:

Aren't they adorable? What a brilliant use for doilies! I doubt I would ever have come up with this one on my own but now that I've seen it the intricate circle patterns doilies have make perfect lion manes! Plus march is the month of the lion and I'd much rather have these in my house than inclement weather! I'd be sure to throw my own little kate touches to my lion pillows though (with ears and, of course, little wide set eye smiles)! After all I do have quite the stash of doilies since I've been collecting them for so long now. What do you think? How do you think a doily lion would look on your living room couch?

Sliced wood is where it's at!

Remember how I blogged about that great sliced tree branch art piece um...yesterday!? Well here's a similar project that has my name written all over it:


Ah! So cute! I guess if you don't have enough wall space for some tree slices you can always resort to making a book case/side table out of them! Brilliant! And - just in case you didn't notice - this one also has billy balls on it! Haha! It's meant to be! Oh internet, you know me so well *swoon*! What do you think? Have I sold you on the sliced branches yet?

DIY Walls

Once again How about Orange wows me with an amazingly wonderful round up for tutorials! This time they're linking to budget friendly wall art tutorials and since moving last September, this is one subject area I am all about! Take a peek:


It may be that beautiful vintage hutch talking, but that one on the bottom right hand corner is to die for! Seriously - I could only dream of having a spot in my house that is that gorgeous and those slices of tree branch look spectacular! Did you spot that vase full of billy balls in there too? I blogged about making those ages ago (link) so clearly that DIY is calling to me! Ah! I'm in love! What is your favourite art piece of the four? What kind of stuff do you have hanging around your home? Any tips for some low cost art coverings?

Chevron Thread holder DIY

I do love myself some good chevron, so it is no surprise that when I saw this amazing DIY chevron spool holder from Craptastic Katie (great blog name!) I fell in love:


It love the simple graphic design of the chevron stripes and the wonderful organization usefulness as a thread holder! It would certainly make an awesome addition to my craft room wall if you ask me. In all honesty, when we moved to Victoria I contemplated buying a wooden spool holder to use in the craft room (since I actually have space to do sewing now) but was quickly off put by their ridiculously high price tag. Seriously? It's just a little pine and dowels - I don't see why they are so costly. Good thing I didn't give in to temptation, now I can make my own much trendier chevron addition! Hooray! What do you think? How do you organize your thread?

Wall Barnacles

When I come across something fun I want to blog about I often save a picture and a link to the article (or project, or image, or what have you) under my drafts in blogger. It is a great way for me to store extra blog ideas for when I need a little inspiration and has worked pretty well for me over these last few years of blogging. I do however, sometimes forget about saved drafts and when I search back in my archives get to rediscover forgotten ideas! Hooray! I'm not sure how this one got lost in the cracks, but these wall barnacles from the Knowhow Shop are priceless:


Sure barnacles aren't exactly the most loved of the ocean creatures (since you usually don't want them on your things), but their ceramic counterparts are just perfect! I would love to have a few of these up on the wall with perhaps some spider plants popping out? It would be an awesome way to add some greenery, interest, and oxygen production to a room don't you think? I particularly enjoy the white on brick contrast of the image above, but I'm sure they would be just as charming inside. Looks like I've got another decorating idea to add to the list (and am happy I rediscovered this link from many months back)! Hooray! What do you think? Are you craving your own wall barnacles?

Granny Love

The other day I showed you the progress I was making on a new granny square craft I was working on and I am happy to say it is finally finished! Even though I really enjoyed hearing your guesses on what it was going to be, no one pegged it. How about taking a closer look at the squares now and see if you can guess:


What's this? Glowing light coming from them? Yup! I made a granny square lamp shade cover! Finished project reveal!:


Hooray! I actually blogged about wanting to make one of these back in January (link) and unlike many of my dreamed about but never executed projects, I actually made this one! It was, however, much more difficult than I had ever expected and hope this little lamp lasts my lifetime so I never have to try to recreate it.

So how did I manage to make this one? Well it started with a lamp. I searched many a thrift store in hopes of finding a simple and inexpensive lamp base but sadly was unsuccessful. I figured I might be able to find one at Wal-Mart and yet again there were no lamps to be found! Finally Fraser and I decided to try out Zellers and behold - one beat up bright red suede table lamp:


Yay! It was even 30% off making it a reasonable price for my experimental crafting. When I got it home I carefully ripped the red suede off the lamp shade and recovered it with some off white cotton I had left over from my craft show table cloth. I really wanted the finished product to have a nice neutral backdrop behind the squares and since the red certainly would not d0, the off white cotton was perfect! The stretched cotton turned out pretty well and I figure if I ever need a new career I should consider lamp shade recovering!

Then it was time to figure out my gauge so I could make a strip of squares that would match the size of the shade. Then it was just a matter of crocheting those squares, sewing them together, and getting them on the shade to get the finished product:


Tada! It would have been a much less frustrating project if I hadn't run out of the white cotton yarn halfway through, but that is just the way things go sometimes. My least favourite (and most time consuming) step was definitely trying to attach the granny square cozy to the shade. What a picky finicky mess that turned out to be! I single crocheted two rows on either side of the squares in hopes to have it slightly fold over the top and bottom of the shade. I then attempted to thread a draw string on either edge to cinch the cozy on, but the threaded draw strings kept snapping and after many attempted I figured it was hopeless. The granny square cozy really needed to be tight against the shade to look nice so I ended up running string inside the shade at the edge of each square like so:


Then it was just a matter of sewing the ends in and putting it on the lamp! Hurrah! Take a peek at the lamp when the light is off:


Yay! I love how it turned out, but I am particularly fond of how it looks with the light on:


Yipee! Although I do enjoy how nice it looked on the bookshelf in the living room, I did make the lamp for use in my craft room but with the rainy (and mild) weather we've been having I decided the bright daylight from the patio window doors would give me the best light to photograph with. So I'm dying to know - what do you think? Are you ready to attempt your own granny square lamp cozy?

Hoop-tastic!

If you're a long time reader of the blog, you may remember me talking about making an embroidery hoop art wall. I first saw the idea on the purl bee back in September 2010 and after raving about the project to friends finally found some wooden hoops in October of that same year! Wendy found them for me at her neighbourhood thrift shop and we quickly made a trip there to pick some up in a variety of sizes:


All I had left to do was find some swoon worthy fabrics to stretch in my new frames and stick them on the wall! Sounds easy enough right? Apparently not. My extremely picky taste and frugality put fabric finding on the back burner and my lovely wooden hoops never made it up on the walls. *Sigh*

When I moved to Victoria this past September Lindsay and I spotted some craft packages of beautiful printed scraps from The Milkman's Daughter (the sister shop of Smoking Lily). I may have gone overboard (ok, definitely went over...) and bought five packs. It felt like christmas opening up each of the bags to see what bargain gems I had acquired and figured they would work perfectly for my embroidery hoop project. Unfortunately once again the project got put back in the closet as unpacking, organizing, and getting my health under control seemed to take priority. Well - good news! This weekend I finally decided to take the plunge and behold my embroidery hoop covered living room wall:


Oh my am I ever in love! I've spent countless hours humming and hawing over how to cover our mass amounts of bland walls in our condo and the long strip behind the couch was certainly the most difficult. Our extremely limited decorating budget certainly didn't make it any easier but since I already had all the craft supplies waiting in my craft room project, I figured there was no time like the present to get it finished! Hooray! Take another peek from side:


What fun! I didn't want the fabrics to be overly feminine since although I doubt Fraser would complain, I'm sure he'd appreciate a more gender neutral approach to our main living space. I also wanted to go with a slightly asymmetrical layout so it wouldn't feel like I was over thinking it, even though I did go through a few lay outs before I got a composition I was happy with. To top it all off I completed the whole thing while Fraser was out so I got to see his reaction to the embroidery hoop wall when he got home!

The majority of the hoops are the Smoking Lily pieces, although I did use a grey pussy willow print I bought from bookhou at home:


I really love how each hoop looks and the Smoking Lily prints have charming off center composition. This is balanced out with a few patterned and striped prints like the super fun blue mason jar fabric I bought from bespoke uprising!:


The grey maple seeds are probably my favourite of the bunch, but I do have a special place in my heart for horse printed on striped rose cotton. I wanted the largest hoop to have a large print on it to bring in some interest and I think it turned out quite well:


I still have a few large hoops left and loads of scraps so as soon as I find some more smaller wooden hoops I think I'll do a similar spread above our headboard! My weekend thrift shopping trip was pretty unsuccessful (since all the thrift shops here are pretty looked over and ridiculously over priced) so I may have to wait until I head back to Kamloops so I can buy out Cost Savers! Oh well, it took me over a year to complete this first project so I'm sure I can be patient. So what do you think? How do you decorate your walls? Ever tried embroidery hoop art? Any hoops you think I should switch out?

Playin' on the Heart String

Well you may be tired of hearing about crochet cotton hearts...but I'm still smitten with them so I've got one more day of them! After some lovely responses to my last two posts, I thought I'd take some reader advice and make a garland out of my excitedly overproduced crafts! I really liked the cute granny triangle heart garland Michelle made (link) but since I was looking for a project using the hearts without spending a ton of time making new parts I just braided together some coral yarn and sewed them on. Take a peek at the finished product:


Not too shabby eh? I am quite pleased with how it turned out and like the look of the different colours of hearts strung together. Plus the heart string turned out to be the perfect size for my new bulletin board board. Let's check it out from another angle:


Ah! I love it! In attempt to spruce up the blank walls of my craft room I think the cork board is a great place to start. So far it just has a few cards on it, some kitten pins, a moon screen print I won, and an experimental teal flower pin I crocheted (oh and the heart garland of course)! What do you think?


I'm excited to fill it up with inspiring snips of papers and things, but am really pleased with how it looks so far. What do you use for inspiration? Any cork board users? What would you pin on there?

Tape = January's Fresh Flowers?

I always love a nice bouquet of fresh flowers to really liven up the apartment with a touch of colour. Of course, I'm not Martha Stewart, and I don't have a farm yard full of blooming wonders to chose from, nor do I have an unlimited flower budget (especially in the off season of January). I do however have a selection of washi tape and some plain vases to decorate. Not sold? Take a peek at these:


Okay, so they're not exactly flowers (well...not at all really...) but they are a nice centerpiece and they do add a pop of colour during the winter blues months! I love the rainbow effect they created and think some little tea lights would look amazing shining through the translucent washi tape! How fun! In fact, the ladies over at Santa Barbara Chic have an entire post about decorating your table with tape you must check out (link). Oh, and clearly I need to buy myself some more washi tape now right?

It's hip to be square

As part of my eternal search for fun and inexpensive art for my home I fell in love with Elycia's poster art DIY! It's sort of like a grown up version of the collages Leslie and I made in highschool and gives you great results with limited artistic talent (always a bonus if you ask me)! Just take a peek:


Isn't it marvelous? I totally love the textures, colours, and way it pops with that white frame and teal wall! All you need to do is find some fun magazine pictures (or old posters like Elycia used) and then get cutting and pasting! Hooray!

If you're looking for a similar square look with a bit more of a challenge how about making your own pixel painting like this one from Wit and Whistle:


Okay, so maybe it is a lot more challenging (since you need to pixelate a source image and experiment with loads of colour mixing and matching) but I totally love the result. Plus it is still just painting a bunch of squares so those of you not oozing artistic talent can still score on this one. Yay!

So what are your thoughts? Anyone up for some square art with me?