home decor

Super Easy! Decorating Plain Boxes

October 29, 2014

I found these 3 plain brown boxes at my local supermarket and wanted to transform them into cute storage boxes for my office. I had seen lots of Pinterest posts on dupes of the Kate Spade ones and wanted to recreate my own.

Here is what it looked like before. It was really plain, and really brown. I wanted to paint one with black and white stripes, one with black polka dots, and one wrapped in cute pattern wrapping paper.

It’s really simple and easy to do. First, I did 2 coats of white paint over the boxes. Leave these to dry. If you want to skip this step just buy white boxes already. These Ikea ones are pretty good!

For the stripes – measure the length and divide it evenly depending on the size of the box. I went for around 4cm, but you want to measure it evenly so you don’t even up with an uneven bit at the end. Then just tape every second stripe with painters tape. I really recommend painters tape as they peel off quite easily and don’t rip the cardboard underneath. I learnt the hard way when I used regular maskng or sticky tape! Paint the sections black with 2 coats. Let it dry then peel the tape off.

For the polka dots – I was going for a irregular free-hand sort of look. Using a brush I just painted circles on the box and filled them in making black dots. Eyeball the spacing between dots. If you are going for this look, don’t worry about making mistakes!

For the wrapping – I used cute food patterned wrapping from Frankie Magazine. Before starting, make sure you’ve got enough paper to wrap the entire box, and the lid! Using modge podge, paint one side of the box at a time. Stick the paper on the side, then fold in the edges and tape down (just like you are wrapping a present). Overlap with wrapping on the other sides. And that’s a wrap! (Get it?) heehee.

Super easy ways to decorate your boxes and have beautiful looking storage boxes on your shelves. I am storing spare notebooks, craft supplies and paint in mine!

Home Office Makeover

October 17, 2014

WOOHOO! My office is finally ready to be revealed!

A couple of months ago I did this post on the wall colour of my home office. This was the start of the makeover and now, I present to you the final assembly and decor of my new office! The major change of this room was the newly painted walls so if you have a couple more minutes, go back to that post and check it out first!

Let’s start with the Ikea Alex Drawer units which I added gold diagonal stripes to the front of the drawers. Similar to when I did the walls, I just used painters tape and super gold spray paint (which by the way is the best gold paint ever! When I first bought it I had this urge to spray paint anything I could put my hands on – you will see from a few things in this very post). So easy!

Of course this isn’t what my desk usually looks like when I’m working. Usually there’s papers, sketchbooks, coffee mugs and other bits and bobs strewn all over. I try and keep it as neat and organized as I can. At the end of the day, I tidy it up ready to be messed again the next day! Can’t go anywhere without my Lilac Kikki.K Leather Planner. All my printable planners I’ve designed is in there including my Daily Planner, Blog Schedule and Budget Planner printables. I am SO ready for 2015!

The desk organizer in Shagreen is from Martha Stewart and matches my walls perfectly. I keep all my notepads, sticker books, post-it notes and planner pads in there. The pen holder is actually a used up Bath and Body works candle I cleaned up and added gold leaf stripes to (DIY project of this coming soon!).

A have a few of my favourite books and magazines sits beside me. These books inspire me the most and I like to flick through them every once in a while when my head gets overwhelmed by ideas. My top faves are Happy Handmade Home by the ladies at A Beautiful Mess, and Home by Beci Orpin (Beci’s got a new craft book called Make & Do which I am dying to get my hands on!).

You can probably see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots better with this ‘after’ photo. I removed those wooden venetian blinds and replaced it with a nice white roller blind and a sheer curtain. This has definitely brought more light into the room especially with the new white trims.

I plan on putting up a couple more pictures on the walls though I haven’t got around to going through my millions of photos and printing them out yet. Putting pictures up is actually tricky business! And yes, I did spray paint those frames.

My favourite part of my office at the moment are those honeycomb shelves! They’re just so beautiful and I am really into geometric shapes at the moment (do you like my collection of Pop! Vinyl characters? I actually have more but they all couldn’t fit in here. My favourite is The Iron Giant). Again, those toy dinosaurs were also spray painted!

This is what you see behind me. I painted the backboard of the Ikea Billy Bookcase yellow for a pop of colour. Styling book shelves is a new thing for me and I am still learning from it. I put inspirational items on the floating wall shelf like a gold ‘M’ (yep! Spray painted), quote prints, candles and fragrances. The Magazine rack is used to organize various paperwork like bills, tax receipts, for filing, to do etc.

Those 3 boxes I painted and wrapped. They were originally brown cardboard boxes (DIY craft project of this coming soon too!).

I will most likely change up a lot of the things on these book shelves. I work in the publishing industry so a lot of the shelves hold magazines and books that are related to my work. But I do have a lot of fun items on there too!

And that’s about it! Loving my new room, and still have a few DIY craft projects to add (like gold leafing my desk lamp… doable right?). Stay tuned…

Make Your Own Gold Leaf Quote

October 4, 2014

I love decorating my home with quote prints mixed in amongst photos and artwork. There’s something quite chic about the letters being in gold. Create a stunning gold word or short phrase to add a bit of shimmer to your walls or shelves.

SUPPLIES
// watercolour paper
// gold leafing sheets
// brush
// pencil
// small cloth or extra brush
// adhesive for gilding (for gold leaf)
// clear varnish sealer
// black ink (to practice with)

1. Decide on the word or phrase you want. Start writing it on paper in different ways and layouts, practicing the lettering until you are happy with how you want it. Use a brush with black ink to practice the strokes and get a feel of the brush as that’s how you’ll be applying the adhesive on the paper. It’s best to have the letters quite bold and not too thin.

2. When you are ready, take your sheet of watercolour paper and write your phrase down using your pencil. Erase mistakes and do over until you are happy.

3. Use a brush dipped into the adhesive gilding and paint over your pencil sketch. It’s hard to see the glue as it’s clear but if you turn the paper towards the light you’ll be able to see where you’ve painted. Really make sure you’ve got enough of the adhesive down on the paper, not a super thin coat and not a thick glob but something in between.

4. Wait a little bit for the adhesive to get tacky and lay your gold leaf sheet over the top. It’s okay if your sheet isn’t big enough, just take another and patch up where it didn’t reach. Pat the leafing down with a cloth or separate brush very gently making sure it adheres to the glue.

5. The gold leaf will work quite fast on the paper but you’ll need to wait 10-15min for it to dry. Then slowly start ripping the excess gold leaf off around the letters. Using a brush, or your finger with a soft cloth, start removing the gold leaf closer to the edge of the letters. If you’ve applied enough of the gilding adhesive it should come off quick cleanly. But if you haven’t (like me) then some of the gold leaf will actually come off the letters (see that V?). Don’t worry! We can fix this!

6. All you need to do is apply more of the gilding adhesive with the brush and gold leaf again. Patch up all the little areas that the gold leaf didn’t stick to the first time.

7. Brush off all the excess gold leaf. If you have a frame to put this in, then you are done! If you want to protect the quote, paint or spray a clear varnish sealer over the top. Wait for it to dry and voila!

Striped Walls – painting my office

August 7, 2014

My husband and I bought our house in December last year. We have slowly (very slowly) been doing changes to it to make it our own. We (more like me) have so many plans we want to do, and it feels a lot better when we can do it ourselves. After browsing the internet, mainly Pinterest, I knew what I wanted to do to my office. First, was definitely going to be a fresh coat of paint… and colour! It took quite a few trips to Bunnings to figure out the best mint colour. I decided on Dulux Wash & Wear Low Sheen in Chalk Blue. It’s bright but I think it’s perfect for brightening up the room. I’m really into mint and gold right now too.

This is the before shot of the room. This post is only going to be about the walls but it is a work in progress and I will be updating my progress of the new office later on. As you can see, the trims/architraves are all stained and varnished with a dark brown colour. The walls are slightly off-white, and everything is a bit dated. These dark architraves are throughout the whole house and we want to paint them all white. It really does brighten up the place just by doing this small change! But boy, does it take a fair few coats to get it to white. First a sanded them and then did a quick wash with sugar soap. To paint, I did one undercoat using the Dulux Acrylic Primer Sealer Undercoat. Then it was around 3-4 coats of the Dulux Aquanamel White Semi Gloss Enamel. It might’ve been better doing 2 undercoats though. Either way, it’s a few coats to get the dark brown to white. I also chose the water based paint because it dries faster and also doesn’t yellow over time. But it takes a few weeks before the paint is fully cured.

We also painted the ceiling white, and then did 3 sides of the room Chalk Blue. For the front wall I wanted to do these mint and white stripes. It’s super easy to do and turned out great! First we painted it all white. Then I marked out the striped measurements with a pencil and used painters tape to line it up. I read on another blog to paint a coat of the ‘base’ colour (in my case it’s white) over the tape to ‘seal’ that colour in before painting the ‘stripe’ colour. This way when you peel the tape off you’ll get a nice straight crisp line. Believe me it works! Then it’s just 2 coats of the mint colour and voila!

I’m absolutely in love! I think the fresh colours make the room look a lot brighter and happier! And the striped wall looks like wallpaper, but it’s not! It’s SO easy to do! Definitely will be doing more striped walls in other rooms around the house.

I’ll give you guys updates on my office in future posts. I plan on moving my desk away from the window – I don’t like how it blocked the window. Anyway I’ll let you know what I do with my space!