Decorating can be difficult when you don’t have a large budget. Where do you start? How do you make all those pieces you’ve collected along the way work together? Here’s how I took a bunch of mismatched second-hand furniture and pulled the decor together to give myself a brand new, stylish dining room.
home decor
How to Add Graphic Designs to Furniture
Graphic designs are hot! They can be used to dress up furniture using a fairly simple technique. In this case, I added a vintage wine crate design to the top of a stepladder. It’s super easy to do all you need is a print out of the design, pencils and permanent markers. Check it out!
Materials
- Graphic design of your choice
- Paint
- Pencils
- Permanent markers
- Paste wax or polycrylic protective finish (optional)
DIY Paint by Number Mural
Paint by number art is iconic in its own kitschy way, but it’s also a tool that we can use to paint large images to large art boards or directly to walls to create a mural. We have a thing for vintage Volkswagens, so we found an image online that we liked, changed it up to our satisfaction, and then created a large piece of art for our daughter’s bedroom.
Find Your Donor Image
Search the internet, or elsewhere, for an image that you’d like to reproduce, or at least use as your starting point. Paint by number works best with fairly simple images that don’t have huge variations in color, or shading. Be respectful of other artist’s work and request permission to reproduce if you select a piece of copyrighted art.
Art Board or Wall?
We chose to use 1/8” tempered hardboard for our paint by number art piece rather than painting directly on the wall. We made this decision not because we were squeamish of painting on the wall, but because the hardboard panel is portable. If we decide we want to move the painting, we simply take it off of the wall and move it to its new location. Plus we can paint anywhere we want versus having to stand in our daughter’s bedroom to finish the piece. Hardboard is inexpensive and easily accessible at most hardware stores and home centers.
Building a Home Office, Part 1
Choosing the Right Bookshelves
The three styles pictured represent the basics found in most online or brick and mortar stores.
- The budget friendly flat packed particle board units found in department stores. Take note that these do not hold much weight. Watch for an upcoming article on how to dress them up.
- Real wood bookcases. Most are constructed of a combination of solid and real wood veneer over plywood. The quarter inch thick plywood can hold the most weight per shelf. You can also find this style unfinished.
- Modern Industrial. These have a combination of metal and wood or wood products. Most shelves are real wood veneer over MDF, so they will not hold as much per shelf as the plywood, but more than particle board units.
Star Wars Decor For The Home
Upcycled Record Clock
Records are a perfect compliment to the timeless movies as they create their own nostalgic effect. ReSpinIt has made it their mission breathe life back into records in several different forms, including this silhouette clock.
How-to: Make a Self-Welted Envelope Pillow Cover
My first client was a Grandma-to-be for the first time. Her daughter was expecting twin girls. I was sewing everything for their nursery except the sheets. Included was two decorative pillows. Grandma wanted each pillow cover to be washable and have large welting. For easy removal I made them in the popular envelope style where the back opens via overlapped sections.
Follow along and you’ll see my version of making welted pillows. They are easy to make and save you time too.