DIY - Transform Old Shoeboxes

Before: my weak attempt at a storage solution                    After: much more appealing and put together

It's the little things that really bring a room together. Having coordinating colors and themes while playing with different patterns also helps. I don't really have much room in my bathroom, the only storage areas are under the sink and behind the mirror. I use the space under the sink to store cleaning supplies, and keep products I use on a more day to day basis on my shelving unit above the toilet. I decided last year to start storing some of my things like nail polish, make up, medicine, etc. in old shoe boxes I had laying around to cut back on having all of my knickknacks everywhere. You can see how even though things are in boxes in the before picture it's still pretty messy, and none of the boxes match each other or the grey/black/white/pink theme of the room. I've seen plenty of pictures of cute little boxes or baskets people have bought to hide clutter while keeping things pretty and I decided to just cover the boxes I already had.

Before: my weak attempt at a storage solution                    After: much more appealing and put together

It's the little things that really bring a room together. Having coordinating colors and themes while playing with different patterns also helps. I don't really have much room in my bathroom, the only storage areas are under the sink and behind the mirror. I use the space under the sink to store cleaning supplies, and keep products I use on a more day to day basis on my shelving unit above the toilet. I decided last year to start storing some of my things like nail polish, make up, medicine, etc. in old shoe boxes I had laying around to cut back on having all of my knickknacks everywhere. You can see how even though things are in boxes in the before picture it's still pretty messy, and none of the boxes match each other or the grey/black/white/pink theme of the room. I've seen plenty of pictures of cute little boxes or baskets people have bought to hide clutter while keeping things pretty and I decided to just cover the boxes I already had.

Bathroom Theme

Check out the individual ideas on my Bathroom Pinterest Board From Top Left Clockwise: Poppytalk DIY:Custom Fabric Boxes Apartment Therapy's Renters Solutions for pink bathrooms Chevron Wall Inspiration Real Simple's 15 min. DIY centerpieces Mt. Casa Washi Tape      

The main bathroom in the new house is pretty ugly as far as bathrooms go. There's pink tile, a pink sink, and old frosted over bathtub sliding doors. I googled something along the lines of pink bathrooms, and a link for apartment therapy popped up, that had some really great inspirations for pink bathrooms. I really fell in love with the one I have pictured above with the black and white wall paper. It distracts your eye from the pink while making the room look classic. So i've decided on a grey, black, and white theme for in there. I recently discovered Washi Tape, it's a Japanese tape similar in many ways to masking tape although it's much more delicate. People use it for everything, check out this Buzzfeed article to see what i'm talking about. I'm planning on using grey and black Washi tape to make a chevron pattern on my white walls. I'd really like to hang some black and white pictures up in the bathroom as well and I'm thinking about doing city skylines from places I've lived and visited. Check back sooner rather than later for a quick organizing fix I did last night (hint: it involves shoeboxes) and later for updates on the room overall!

Check out the individual ideas on my Bathroom Pinterest Board From Top Left Clockwise: Poppytalk DIY:Custom Fabric Boxes Apartment Therapy's Renters Solutions for pink bathrooms Chevron Wall Inspiration Real Simple's 15 min. DIY centerpieces Mt. Casa Washi Tape      

The main bathroom in the new house is pretty ugly as far as bathrooms go. There's pink tile, a pink sink, and old frosted over bathtub sliding doors. I googled something along the lines of pink bathrooms, and a link for apartment therapy popped up, that had some really great inspirations for pink bathrooms. I really fell in love with the one I have pictured above with the black and white wall paper. It distracts your eye from the pink while making the room look classic. So i've decided on a grey, black, and white theme for in there. I recently discovered Washi Tape, it's a Japanese tape similar in many ways to masking tape although it's much more delicate. People use it for everything, check out this Buzzfeed article to see what i'm talking about. I'm planning on using grey and black Washi tape to make a chevron pattern on my white walls. I'd really like to hang some black and white pictures up in the bathroom as well and I'm thinking about doing city skylines from places I've lived and visited. Check back sooner rather than later for a quick organizing fix I did last night (hint: it involves shoeboxes) and later for updates on the room overall!

Spare Bedroom Theme

My theme board - check out the individual ideas on my Pinterest Spare Bedroom Ideas Board

Way back in April I had posted about doing a bedroom makeover for the spare bedroom since I had just finished with my dresser redo. I had a theme board going then, but now that I've completed some of the projects from it I decided to refocus what I wanted to do with the spare/guest bedroom. I was also waiting until I got the duvet cover finished since that was a major piece to the room, but now that's wrapped up I'm really motivated to get this room looking like something out of an interior design magazine. Plus my mom is coming to visit in a month, and she'll be staying in this room.

I'm planning on buying some pillows tonight, and i'm still sticking with my green, gold, cream, and coral theme. I want the majority of the pillows to be cream and emerald, with a few gold and coral ones for accent. I really love the gold and white polka dot one, and the gold octopus one. From what I saw online, the octopus pillow is pretty expensive, so I'm going to try and find something similar on Etsy. Even if I do end up dyeing my duvet cover emerald, the pillows will still fit. Additional purchases I'm planning on making are a few things from Nate Berkus's Target Fall Collection which I found out about courtesy of a post on Design*sponge today. He has some really cute items and accessories at a wide range of prices that I think will really fit the room without breaking my budget.

The last thing that I think will really tie this room together, in addition to hanging up some art is putting a little color on the walls. With rentals it's always hard to decide whether to paint, if your landlord will even allow that, or to spend money on removal wall paper. Adding color or wall paper can really help tie in the designs of your rooms, and make them feel more personalized and homey. I looked into removal wall paper and it was all really expensive. But then I saw a post of a nursery that had used contact paper cut out in circles and placed on the wall as polka dots. Sold! So i'm going to buy some gold contact paper and put up some little polka dots across the walls. The nice thing with the polka dots is that they can be any size and don't necessarily need to be lined up or in any specific order. All in all I'm really excited about this space, and can't wait to order and get stuff in so I can post some pictures of the whole finalized room!

My theme board - check out the individual ideas on my Pinterest Spare Bedroom Ideas Board

Way back in April I had posted about doing a bedroom makeover for the spare bedroom since I had just finished with my dresser redo. I had a theme board going then, but now that I've completed some of the projects from it I decided to refocus what I wanted to do with the spare/guest bedroom. I was also waiting until I got the duvet cover finished since that was a major piece to the room, but now that's wrapped up I'm really motivated to get this room looking like something out of an interior design magazine. Plus my mom is coming to visit in a month, and she'll be staying in this room.

I'm planning on buying some pillows tonight, and i'm still sticking with my green, gold, cream, and coral theme. I want the majority of the pillows to be cream and emerald, with a few gold and coral ones for accent. I really love the gold and white polka dot one, and the gold octopus one. From what I saw online, the octopus pillow is pretty expensive, so I'm going to try and find something similar on Etsy. Even if I do end up dyeing my duvet cover emerald, the pillows will still fit. Additional purchases I'm planning on making are a few things from Nate Berkus's Target Fall Collection which I found out about courtesy of a post on Design*sponge today. He has some really cute items and accessories at a wide range of prices that I think will really fit the room without breaking my budget.

The last thing that I think will really tie this room together, in addition to hanging up some art is putting a little color on the walls. With rentals it's always hard to decide whether to paint, if your landlord will even allow that, or to spend money on removal wall paper. Adding color or wall paper can really help tie in the designs of your rooms, and make them feel more personalized and homey. I looked into removal wall paper and it was all really expensive. But then I saw a post of a nursery that had used contact paper cut out in circles and placed on the wall as polka dots. Sold! So i'm going to buy some gold contact paper and put up some little polka dots across the walls. The nice thing with the polka dots is that they can be any size and don't necessarily need to be lined up or in any specific order. All in all I'm really excited about this space, and can't wait to order and get stuff in so I can post some pictures of the whole finalized room!

DIY Ruffled Duvet Cover

Anthropologie's Nimbus Duvet Cover - $130                                 My Copycat Version - $60

It's been quite awhile since I've had time to do a craft project, let alone post one. Seeing as how labor intensive this duvet cover was to make I feel like it makes up for all the projects I didn't get around to over the summer. Now that the seasons are changing and it's getting chillier here I end up spending more time inside which means more projects get finished. We also moved into a new house, and I have plenty of ideas for projects and things I want to do. I plan on posting some of my ideas and room inspirations from my Pinterest boards later on this week.

 I originally wanted to make a duvet cover because the comforter I have is years and years old and is dirty and flat, and should probably be thrown away. Seeing as how I'm into using things until they disintegrate in my hands I figured I could probably just make a simple duvet cover to pretty it up a bit, and extend the lifespan of the comforter. While looking around online I originally found a number of beautiful duvet covers on Anthropogie's website . If you click that link you'll be taken to images of some of gloriest looking bedspreads you can imagine, the downside is that they all cost between $150-$399! Even a pillow/sham is around $80-$90.  Gag, right? Lucky for me, there are a lot of other bloggers out there who had the same idea as me and just decided to make their own versions and had step by step tutorials to follow.

I originally based the version I wanted to make off of the Cirrus Duvet cover, but I can't find a link from the Anthropologie website of that, however they have a very similar version called the Nimbus Duvet cover, which is the picture up top on the left. I followed Mari Makes tutorial, which was fantastic and easy to follow. I did some things differently: I didn't add a border to mine, and instead of having the strips of fabric that hold the ruffles in place show I chose to keep those on the inside. I felt that they really broke up the look of the ruffles. I used really small pieces of fabric for my strips, so maybe the size and the fact that I kind of rushed through it made it unaesthetically pleasing to my eye.

I originally wanted the duvet cover to be emerald green, the theme for the spare room is based around the dresser I redid, and I thought an emerald cover would really tie that in while being dark enough to make it less obvious if it got stained/dirty. I wasn't able to find emerald flat sheets anywhere though which is why I put this project off for awhile. I finally just settled on white, however I did see a cute pair of coral colored flat sheets at Target. I bought 3 queen sized flat sheets, 2 for the front and 1 for the back. I won't go through the step by step, you can check out the Mari's tutorial for that, but this was pretty easy to make if not time consuming. The most frustrating part to me was the amount of fabric you were working with, a lot, and the space you need to lay everything out when measuring, etc.

I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to buy some new pillows and continue decorating this room, check back soon for a post dedicated to my spare bedroom decorating ideas and updates on the room itself!

Anthropologie's Nimbus Duvet Cover - $130                                 My Copycat Version - $60

It's been quite awhile since I've had time to do a craft project, let alone post one. Seeing as how labor intensive this duvet cover was to make I feel like it makes up for all the projects I didn't get around to over the summer. Now that the seasons are changing and it's getting chillier here I end up spending more time inside which means more projects get finished. We also moved into a new house, and I have plenty of ideas for projects and things I want to do. I plan on posting some of my ideas and room inspirations from my Pinterest boards later on this week.

 I originally wanted to make a duvet cover because the comforter I have is years and years old and is dirty and flat, and should probably be thrown away. Seeing as how I'm into using things until they disintegrate in my hands I figured I could probably just make a simple duvet cover to pretty it up a bit, and extend the lifespan of the comforter. While looking around online I originally found a number of beautiful duvet covers on Anthropogie's website . If you click that link you'll be taken to images of some of gloriest looking bedspreads you can imagine, the downside is that they all cost between $150-$399! Even a pillow/sham is around $80-$90.  Gag, right? Lucky for me, there are a lot of other bloggers out there who had the same idea as me and just decided to make their own versions and had step by step tutorials to follow.

I originally based the version I wanted to make off of the Cirrus Duvet cover, but I can't find a link from the Anthropologie website of that, however they have a very similar version called the Nimbus Duvet cover, which is the picture up top on the left. I followed Mari Makes tutorial, which was fantastic and easy to follow. I did some things differently: I didn't add a border to mine, and instead of having the strips of fabric that hold the ruffles in place show I chose to keep those on the inside. I felt that they really broke up the look of the ruffles. I used really small pieces of fabric for my strips, so maybe the size and the fact that I kind of rushed through it made it unaesthetically pleasing to my eye.

I originally wanted the duvet cover to be emerald green, the theme for the spare room is based around the dresser I redid, and I thought an emerald cover would really tie that in while being dark enough to make it less obvious if it got stained/dirty. I wasn't able to find emerald flat sheets anywhere though which is why I put this project off for awhile. I finally just settled on white, however I did see a cute pair of coral colored flat sheets at Target. I bought 3 queen sized flat sheets, 2 for the front and 1 for the back. I won't go through the step by step, you can check out the Mari's tutorial for that, but this was pretty easy to make if not time consuming. The most frustrating part to me was the amount of fabric you were working with, a lot, and the space you need to lay everything out when measuring, etc.

I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to buy some new pillows and continue decorating this room, check back soon for a post dedicated to my spare bedroom decorating ideas and updates on the room itself!