Vignettes 101

Remember when I took you on a tour of the home of Laura, my friend and decor mentor? I showed you just a few of the vignettes she has created in her home. Here's a picture of one of my faves...

As we began a complete overhaul of basically every decoration and color scheme in our house, I knew I had to call in my expert. Somehow, miraculously, Laura and I both found a kid-free afternoon and went on a 2 hour speedy shopping spree to find just the right accessories to create a wall vignette for the gigantic blank wall in my living room.

I came back with a minivan full of decor goodness, and a chest-full of fear knowing I would have no idea what to do with it all. The next few days, every time nap time for our little ones rolled around, I would set out different arrangements of all the accessories we accumulated and send Laura pictures through text message of my concoctions. You can see my feeble attempts below: 

Take 1: Mirror image look. Too bland.

Take 2: Adding sconces didn't help. Nice try.

 Take 3: Symmetry? A little better but still...swing and a miss.

Take 4: When I sent this to Laura she said, "Too lined up. It would be so much easier if I were there."

She tried sending me pictures of sketches she drew through text of what would work better, but it was pretty useless. Either you have an eye for this stuff, or you don't. And, apparently, I don't. But we were convinced we could make this work.

Since we live pretty far from each other, we decided that I would load up any and all decorations that might be useful and we would meet halfway, on the side of the road, and figure this out. Now we're sounding desperate, aren't we?! Between Laura's love of decorating, and my perfectionism, we were ready to solve this problem.

So one afternoon we met in a parking lot just off the interstate, spread out a sheet as our "wall" and began laying out our options. Within minutes the perfect layout became obvious. I took a million pictures from every possible angle, measured distances between shelving, accessories and art, and packed it all back up.

And the results... 

So much better! As my husband was hanging it all on the wall for me, he couldn't believe that I needed him to measure everything perfectly before hanging. He said, "You can't just eyeball it?" Hahaha. Days of trying to figure this out have proven to me that, no, I can't.

While I don't have the natural gift of "eyeballing" art placement, Laura did teach me a few essentials for creating beautiful vignettes:

1. Everything needs to be a little "off". Don't line up every shelf. Don't make every candle stick the same height. You can see in my after photo above that no shelf, frame, candle or piece of art lines up perfectly with anything else. Keeping things out of order magically makes the eye travel smoothly across the arrangement, instead of stopping at every obvious line.

2. Spread out your pops of color. My color scheme, if looked at in percentages, would probably read: 60% gray/white/black (neutrals), 30% blue, 10% pink. I didn't want pink on every shelf because it's my "pop" (and a man does have to live here), but I did want to make sure that each shelf carried out the blue scheme in some form.

3. Create a unifying theme. As we shopped for accessories, we realized that everything I picked up had a fleur-de-lis or scroll pattern to it. Before I even realized it, I gravitated towards a clear theme for our living room. You probably already do this without realizing it as well. Do you love chevron, paisley or stripes? Are you always attracted to yellow dresses? Or maybe you stock your kitchen with only red appliances. Your theme is probably already in your house. As you design vignettes, keep this theme in mind and carry it out evenly across your wall.

Creating eye-catching vignettes takes time and (a lot) of patience. One of the keys that my vignette is missing is layering. You can see in the first photo how Laura layered accessories, plants and frames on her shelves to create a much more cohesive and homey look. But the truth is, layering takes time - time to gather decorations and keepsakes to display. So while my vignette isn't quite finished (what project is??), I'm still very glad I took a leap and decorated that big, bad, blank wall that has been staring me down since the day we moved in.

Do you have any vignettes you want to show off? Did these tips help?

Transforming a Monogram Accent Piece (on the cheap)

We've been doing some major room -- make that entire house -- renovation this month. Wall colors, furniture placement - everything was up for grabs. It looks so much better and I'll share the after photos with you soon.

Until then, here's a quick and easy accent piece you can make for under $5.

I picked up a shiny metallic initial from Hobby Lobby (1/2 off, of course).

I sanded her down so she would take paint well. FYI - those letters, they don't like to be sanded. Gold glitter was everywhere. But a quick wipe down with a damp cloth, a few coats from a Behr sample that may or may not be my new favorite kitchen wall color ever (wait and see!) and...

She turned out so pretty, don't ya think? I didn't use a clear coat because I liked the matte finish of the flat sample paint. You can see a sneak peek of my new living room in this photo. Such a transformation; I'm so happy with the results!

Come back soon to see the after photos, paint names, and some vignette inspiration.

Have a great weekend!

Mystery Tutorial

Can you guess what I've been up to the last few days?...

Tutorial to follow. Stay tuned!

And there might be a giveaway in your future...now would be a good time to become a "follower" in the left-hand sidebar...wink*wink*

Baby Shower Week: Butterfly Collage

If you're just tuning in, it's baby shower week around here. Four of my friends are adding another bundle of joy to their lives and I wanted to make something special for each of them. This yellow and pink butterfly collage will be the centerpiece at a baby shower I'm throwing in two weeks. I also recently made a pink and brown version for one of my sweet friends and her BEAUTIFUL baby girl (Hi, Jill!).

I started with an average matted 11x14 frame I found on sale. I had plans to paint the wooden backing of the frame to create the backdrop, line it with card stock or even fabric, but I kid you not, all I did was flip over the paper that came with the frame. The backside ended up being a beautiful glossy white paper that looked prettier than anything I had on hand. Plus, it made adjusting the butterflies a little easier since it was glossy...it didn't tear every time I moved one.

Do remember to tape down the edges of your paper to the wooden backing. It will slide all over the place on you, and it gives it a little more reinforcement to handle the weight of the butterflies.

To hold the butterflies in place, I used foam squares that I cut into fourths. Their thickness added a lot of "oomph" to the project.

Using my butterfly punch (The Martha Stewart brand punch made this a cinch!) I cut out coordinating scrapbook paper we had on hand. This collage will go to a friend whose nursery is pastel yellows, pinks and creams so that was my main focus when choosing papers. I threw in two or three that included a light green as well to give the overall look a little extra punch.

Fold the wings out, using your fingernail to create a crease.

Then place a quartered foam square, sticky-side down onto the butterfly. Once you decide on positioning, peel off the backing and lightly set it in place. I recommend not pressing down until you're completely finished. I was surprised how many times I had to readjust my lines.

See the difference the foam and wing creases make?!

Finished product!

Have you seen Amy's butterfly collage yet? It's stunning!!


**I've had a lot of questions (including one text message, haha!) asking if the butterflies were under glass. Nope, no glass. The butterflies are too "3D" and will not fit. But now I have a free sheet of glass set aside for another project someday! :) **


Check out the rest of my Baby Shower Week projects:

Ruffle Baby Blanket

Ruffle Baby Burp Cloth

Linking to:

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

Sad Clearance Tray to Magazine Rack

Our magazine situation is out of control. Not that we buy a lot of magazines, it's just that the ones we do get tend to grow and reproduce when they live in our bathroom. The way our master bath is laid out, the toilet is in its own little room (think closet). It's nice, but because of that, there's really no room for anything else. So the three magazines that turned into 15 (not kidding) were really bugging us.

So I started dreaming up ways to decrease the magazine clutter because eliminating it all together just wasn't going to happen. I knew a wall-mount magazine rack was what we needed but I refused to pay full-price for a pre-made one...so you know what happens next...
I started looking for a cheap serving tray that I could turn into my own version of a magazine rack. Then I ran across this price tag the other day at one of my favorite decor dives. To be honest, I'm such a tightwad that I really didn't want to pay more than $3...but this tray was sturdy and well made and $6 isn't too crazy. Plus, those magazines had to go!

The before. First I primed it with Kilz spray paint and then gave it a good coat of Rustoleum's Heirloom White spray paint.

I did feel a little better knowing I had clearance paint at home to use on the project. 50 cents for paint!! I'm not an impulse buyer, but it's difficult to keep me from the "oops paint" section of Home Depot.

I didn't have any paint brushes small enough for the job I wanted to do so I swiped one from an old make up kit I had tucked away. A nice Merle Norman angled brush. I know, I know. Look away...

I picked out my stencil online and first tried tracing onto wax paper with the intention of cutting it out...but then soon realized that there was no way I could cut those rounded edges well. If you like this stencil you can find it here.

(I really do know how to trace...those black streaks were to show me where I had already traced...haha)

So then I remembered a tutorial I had seen from Infarrantly Creative where she used pencil to transfer stencil to a painted surface. See her really great idea and step-by-step here.

I followed her steps and the pencil transferred the stencil perfectly and quickly!

Then I just filled it all in using my oops paint and make up brush. After it was finished it still needed "something" so I added some fleurs using another (real) stencil I had on hand.

The tray was cute now, but it wasn't going to hold magazines to the wall very well as is. So using some wood glue, I added some leftover moulding we had in the garage to the front of the tray and let it dry overnight.

The finished product. The arrow is showing you the moulding in the background...that's the project that gave me some leftover moulding to work with. It's our breakfast room chair rail that is a work-in-progress.

And I'm not showing it to you mounted because, well, you don't want to see my toilet. But here she is hard at work holding the two publications you will always find in my house: the BIBLE and Texas Monthly.

The only thing I purchased was the tray for $6.80. Everything else - paint, primer, wood glue, moulding - I had on hand. Not too bad for a fun and easy project that will really help us organize a small space!

I'm linking to:

CSI Project (sorry girls, couldn't get the button to load)

Graduation Party

The graduation party was a hit! As promised, I'm sharing the links for the how-to's so you can copy-cat if you'd like. I didn't reinvent the wheel on this one but it still turned out cute.

And this has nothing to do with graduation, but aren't these cute?! I made these in the midst of frantically trying to complete all of the graduation party projects. I gave (most) of them to a friend at church who has a 2-year old, a newborn and strep. She needed mini-cupcakes. That makes it sound a little less frivolous, right?

Want to make them, too? Here's Bakerella's how-to:
http://www.bakerella.com/cupcake-bites-made-easy/

Back to graduation...

Any idea what these became?...

These were a labor of love, but worth it. As we were decorating, a precious 10-year old boy who attends the center was just bouncing from table to table because he was ecstatic that they were made of candy. Needless to say, that made it worth it!

Bakerella is the genius behind this idea and her tutorial is here:

http://www.bakerella.com/candy-cup-caps/

This picture was taken close to midnight... I'm tired just typing that.

I {love} tissue pom poms/tissue paper balls. They were easy and relatively cheap to make, but they made a big statement. So cute.

There are a lot of tutorials out there, but All Things Thrifty has my favorite one. Find it here:

http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2010/04/tutorial-making-tissue-paper-balls.html

The graduation party was held at a youth development center to honor four high school seniors who have attended the center through the years. The center is downtown, in a brick building with bars on the windows and big locks on the doors. To get in you have to ring a doorbell because it is locked at ALL times for safety reasons. A few years ago, before we moved closer, I volunteered on a mission trip where we spent the night in the center and overhauled the insides - painting, cleaning, etc. There was only one car among us and it was an old beat-up van. The most valuable thing inside it was a 4-year old bottle of sunscreen. We were told to take everything out of the van before dark, but we figured the very few items we had (of no value) in plain sight wouldn't be a problem. We were wrong. By 1 am the van had been broken into and the few contents inside (half a pack of Dr. Pepper, a few old textbooks, even the sunscreen) had been stolen. It's a rough neighborhood, and the kids who grow up in it deal with rough situations as a result.

The center is a bright spot for the teens and adolescents who attend tutoring and mentor sessions there. The building's history alone screams of how needed the center is. Before churches across Texas came together to revamp it, it was a crack house owned by a local drug dealer. The walls of this building have seen horrible things, but now it shelters troubled teens and elementary-aged kids who sometimes don't have food to eat, let alone help with homework.

The flags are a free download from Bird Crafts. Find it here:

http://birdcrafts.blogspot.com/2010/05/freebie-graduation-party-flags-by-bird.html

To graduate from high school is a big accomplishment regardless, but to do so in the environment these kids grow up in is incredible. And this youth development center is not only helping educate kids, it's saving their lives by giving them hope and a path to follow.

And that's why, even though I had a tiny budget to decorate 10 tables and an entire (huge!) room, it had to be special. When we left, my husband told me it was probably the fanciest that place has ever looked. I don't know about that, but I hope it looked formal, important...like it was a big deal. Because it is. And those four graduating seniors needed to be able to walk in that room and know it.

Congrats class of 2010!
Don't forget about the free graduation gift tags and labels download in the previous post!