Create Neon Terracotta Pots

Sometimes, you need a "Just for fun" project to keep the creative juices flowing. I've been seeing a ton of neon flower pots on Pinterest and Home Design books recently and wanted to create one that was super easy (and cheap). Our bedroom is very blank. White walls, black and white furniture pieces, currently white and gray bedding. Even the brick in our upstairs is painted white (and I'm not sure why?), so I wanted to add some paints and a pop of color up there.

I bought a couple terracotta pots and houseplants and some white and neon acrylic paints. Using a foam brush, I painted the whole pot white. I needed to use several coats to get a clean look. I then painted the bottom half neon pink. I was going to use painter's tape to get a straight line, but ended up just freehanding it. Again, I did several coats to make sure it covered completely. And that's it!

I'm in love with this little project and I can't wait to buy more pots and plants to make more!

Best of August

August is a bitter-sweet month. As lovely as the the summer has been, I'm excited for the changing of the seasons into fall. Fall is one of my favorite times of year, and I have big plans for the blog during the next month. Here are some of my favorite posts from last month:

With so many photos to frame and tons of wall space to fill up in our new home, it was a busy month for photos. I'm still loving these three different ways to display photos.

A couple trips to thrift stores and one to the flea market means more goodies. T has been racking up quite a few records recently, and we are so happy with our record player purchase this month! 

August featured these two DIYs, one for making paper flowers out of coffee filters and the other spotlighting our black and white striped rug we painted.

And finally, a simple post about list making!

Take on any good projects during August? Love to hear about them! I've got my scarves and boots ready in hand for September!

Creating Coffee Filter Flowers

Isn't Pinterest the most glorious thing the Internet has to offer? I think so. I found this little walk through on making peonies from coffee filters, thought it was neato and pinned it away for a rainy day when I was looking for a DIY project to fill my time with. Then, when we were moving, T found a pack of like 200 coffee filters he threw into a box when he moved out of his old apartment. I remembered this pin and BAM, a cute little project happened.

These are amazingly easy, like if Abbey had opposable thumbs, she might have been able to make them. 

So this is what you do: grab some coffee filters, floral tape, covered floral wire, scissors, and some glue (you can probably use any kind, I used ModPodge). You need five coffee filters that are bigger, and five smaller. I cut about a 1/4 inch all the way around five of my filters.

Now the folding. With two or three of the filters, four in half four times.

Cut the main folded corner off, then open once and round out the tops so you have a little heart.

Repeat the folding and cutting with all 10 of the filters.

With your floral wire, make a little loop on one end and dip in some glue. Take one of the smaller filters, push through the non-looped end of the wire and shimmy all the way up to the loop. Start pinching and twisting the filter around the wire loop. Work your way around it wire until the whole thing is tight around the loop. Tight is good.

Repeat this with all the smaller filters. Pinch, twist. (Yes, this picture is fantastic!)

Now, maybe you're like me and didn't know that floral tape is icky sticky and googled "why is this floral tape so sticky?" Maybe you now think I'm an idiot. But if you don't know floral tape is sticky everywhere and will make your fingers very sticky and slimy, don't panic.

Take said floral tape and tape the pinched filter part by wrapping it around and around, working down a bit onto the wire. The trick is to wrap it really really tight and overlapping itself so it sticks to itself. It takes a bit of practice. Some of mine were lumpier than others but your are going to cover it up anyway.

Now you're going to do the same thing with the larger filters. Poke through, twist and pinch, one at a time.

Now it's probably starting to look like a flower, exciting right?

You're going to have to manhandle that flower by grabbing it, wire to the right, and wrapping it again in the floral tape. This time, work you're way all the way down the wire. I had really long wire so I wrapped until I wanted to stop and cut the wire.

Now you have a flower! Ruffle it up a bit to fan it out and you're done! Just make 4-5-6 more... You get better with practice.

I would to try dying this to get some colored one too. But for right now, I'm pretty obsessed with how simple and pretty they look.

Happy Tuesday!

Making Some Pillow Covers

When I lived in my last apartment, I found these green satin pillows at my old job that I used the year I lived there. Switching gears to this new apartment, I knew that I didn't want to use them, but throw pillows are always so pricey these days. So I decided to just make new covers for them all. I have six all together and I'm going to use three different fabrics.

There are millions of tutorials out there, but it didn't seem to hard to figure it out myself, so this is what I did. I used one yard of fabric all together for two pillows.

 

I measured my pillow, which was 16 inches, and made a pattern out of some newspaper. For one pillow, I needed three pieces, a 17x17 front and two 17x10 back pieces. I then pinned and cut.

I pressed a half-inch insteam on one of the 17-inch sides of the two back pieces and hemmed for a clean flap in the back. I wanted the flaps to overlap, covering the back of the pillow, so that's why they are each 10 inches.

Then pinned the two back pieces to the front piece, patterned sides together, and stiched all the way around with a half-inch insteam. 

Flip right side up...

 

And you have yourself a pillow cover! I am by no means a great seamstress, probably not even a decent one, I usually just make it up as I go. But I am pretty darn happy with the results!

**I was making two pillow covers, so that's why the one photo above shows six pieces, not just three.

***Fabric was from a $3 bin at J&O Fabrics in Pennsauken, NJ. It might be my new favorite place to buy fabric.