Engagement Coasters - DIY Photo to Tile Coasters

Tweet this!
**Don't Forget!  I'm giving FOUR winners a set of NuNaturals, calorie-free flavor and sweetener drops, so don't forget to enter the Giveaway! It ends tomorrow at noon, CST!**

Happy Thursday, friends! It's been a while since I posted something DIY (though most of it seems to relate to weddings, nowadays...), so I wanted to pop in on this wonderful, warm Thursday morning and show you something fun and fancy.

I wanted to share with you an awesome gift I got from my cousin, Clara. She gave this to me after I got engaged, and it has been such a fun and exciting thing to have in my home.

On the day of our engagement, we had a bunch of pictures taken. I gave Clara access to the images online, and she surprised me by transferring the images onto a set of coasters.

One of my favorite things about these coasters is that they are lined on the bottom with felt. My fiance and I have a few furniture pieces that are mid century modern (not just the style - they're actually vintage), so we try to be very careful about not scratching the wood.

Another tip from Clara: The "tile sealer" mentioned in the tutorial below is not cheap (it will run you around $30). Instead of buying that for one project, she just bought clear waterproof rustoleum, and they're holding up perfectly.

Ready to make your own? Here's the tutorial she used!

QUESTIONS:

• What was the cutest hand-made gift you've ever received?

GRATITUDE: 
Dear Chicago,
Thank you for finally being kind of warm. And thanks for doing it on a Thursday, so that Friday Eve can already feel like the beginning of the weekend. You're so sneaky, Chicago.
Love,
Carly

DIY | Photoshop Chalkboard

Tweet this!

I've seen a few tutorials online for creating pencil-like and chalk-like drawings, images, and words using various brushes and downloadable tools.

But then I was on the train for an hour, wanting to create a Wish List and draw arrows using a "pencil," and unable to get online and download anything.

Sometimes when we're sans-internet, we curse the internet gods. Sometimes, it makes us get creative and figure-sh*t-out.

How-Do-Ya-Do-It?

DIY | How To Make Silhouette Art (+ Umbrella and Rain)

Tweet this!

Like this post? Does it seem helpful? Show me some love...  Pin It

For those of you who stop by regularly, you might remember my Photoshopped Wall Art that I gave Justin for Valentine's Day. I used real photographs of us together to create silhouette art and graphic backgrounds. Check out the images of the photoshop art here.

Anyway, I've had a lot of questions and requests about how I made the art. Today's post is a step by step tutorial for how to cut out and create the silhouettes. It also includes a tutorial for adding the umbrella and rain found in this particular piece of art:

How To Cut Out A Silhouette For Photoshop Art

DIY | Photoshop Art

Tweet this!

The more time I spend in Photoshop, the more I learn how to do. I'm trying to share the knowledge here by showing you a few of my projects :)

A few weeks ago, for Valentines Day, I gave Justin four pieces of art. Each one includes a silhouette of us from actual photos against textured backgrounds. Here are the final pieces, which I just sent to the printer this week...


Pin It
You Can Stand Under My Umbrella...
The above image was the first in this series. I had to add the umbrella in Photoshop (I'll post a tutorial later this week). If you enlarge the image (click the image to enlarge), you'll notice the texture of the rain. My favorite part of the image? Underneath our umbrella, there is sunlight. Hmm. How would that ever happen in real life? I love the contrast. In college, I truly think I could have written an entire paper out of that right there (Liberal Arts students out there, can I gettan AAAmen?).

There are three more! :) Check them out!

DIY Decor | "On Air" Box Pt 2

Tweet this!

Remember the story about the old school recording studio? The studio. The lounge. The velvety voice inside the studio. The visitors waiting to see that she's "On Air" and ready to sing them into oblivion.

To get that vibe, we couldn't order an On Air box online (like this one). It just wouldn't be right. We needed it to feel authentic and have meaning. We needed it to not look like it was mass-produced in a factory and shipped off to Target or Urban Outfitters. We needed to make it ourselves!

And with a trip to Home Depot, we were supplied and ready to rumble!

Just for good measure, before we begin, please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Kinda like our buddy Claude:

 

Step 1: Cutting (Check out Part 1 for the tutorial)

Step 2: Staining (Check out Part 1 for the tutorial)

Step 3: Painting

After staining the wood, we painted the back of the Acrylic Sheet with a thin red layer, applied with a cloth (why cloth? forgot to get a brush, so we improvised, and it worked!).

DIY Decor | Ampersand & Art

Tweet this!

Remember when we gave Justin's living room a makeover? Well, more to come on that (after more than a few changes-and-re-arranges and a thrift store shelving adventure)... but, for now, I'd like to announce: the decor has spread. To the bedroom.

You might remember that the living room was full of bold colors, of which red somehow became the favored child. Well, this room will turn out to be the calmer, softer brother. We've only just begun...



I’ve wanted to make Ampersand art for a while now but was semi stumped on how to do it in a unique way.

I considered painting an ampersand onto a large scrap of wood or canvas, but it felt very “done before” and never came to fruition.

Then, while walking the halls of Ace Hardware (my personal “Eureka” location), Justin and I found a large sheets of Acrylic Transparency. They’re about 1/4 an inch thick and are pretty amazing. Without a fully formulated plan, we grabbed it.

We ended up spray painting around the Ampersand, so that the “background” of the piece is blue, and the ampersand, itself, is see-through. That means we can swap out what we place behind the art, to fill in the ampersand with any fabric, magazine clipping, or page from a book that we choose.

I'm still pretty obsessed with the idea. Why? Because it will always match. We can put anything behind it and instantly change its color and effect on the room.

How'd we do it?

Start with a transparent acrylic sheet...



Use painters tape (masking tape) to cover the sheet. I had almost covered the entire sheet when I realized I only needed to cover areas which would be used by the "&" we printed out (as that was the only tape we would be leaving on the board).

Choose an ampersand (&) in Microsoft Word, enlarge it to your preferred size, and print. We tried a variety of fonts (really, we had a few pages worth of samples) but ended up going with good old Times New Roman. I was, at first, stern on my sans-serif stance and convinced we would be going with something smooth... but, as we checked out various samples, we decided that Times New Roman had something really classic about it. It reminds me of newspapers and journalism. And, in the end, it just felt like the right thing to do. We made it as large as we could and printed it out.

Cut loosely around the edges (so that there is still white space, and enough room for tape) and then tape onto the sheet where you would like the ampersand to show up.

Use an exacto knife to cut out the ampersand.

Remove the tape surrounding the ampersand. Do this slowly and have an exacto knife handy to do extra cutting in places you may have not fully cut.

Spraypaint the art (leaving the tape on). You'll need to do a number of layers in order to get a solid coat, because the background is see through. We did a whopping 6 layers of blue spraypaint before stopping.

Once the spraypaint has dried, slowly remove the ampersand tape. Use an exacto knife to help lift up the tape.

Choose any fabric, magazine, etc to tape behind the acrylic sheet and show through.

To hang, we hot glued a piece of metal "teeth" we yoinked off of the back of a picture frame.

Here are two final product shots:

And a few shots up-close-and-personal:

So yes, we'll admit, there is much to be done in this room... I'm working on four wall art pieces using silhouettes and some additional shelving... Get excited!

DIY Decor | Re-Upholstering A Headboard (And finally a place to rest my head...)

Tweet this!

**Oh no! Looks like some images are disappearing from this post due to a bandwidth overload! Check back in a few hours for a fix!**

Once upon a time, I had a headboard problem.

First, it was pretty ugly.  The wooden frame, itself, is just fine... but the upholstered pad inside it was... not so pretty. It was a combination of off-white-matte with a regal silky pattern on top. Not horrible... but also not fitting of my decor.

Then, I was a klutz. I was sitting in my bed and totally spazzed (happens a lot) and jumped up. My leg knocked a cup of coffee and it fell, in slow motion, as I mooed "NOOOOOOOOO" and fumbled to catch it (but was unsuccessful in that pursuit). At this point, it had become an ugly and coffee stain covered upholstery.

Then, while watching a movie in bed, I leaned back on it... and it sort of... popped out. I think it had taken enough of my verbal and coffee staining abuse and just decided to give up.

So it got a makeover!



We bought this fake leather fabric from Joann's and ended up with almost two yards of it. I draped the fabric over my kitchen table and laid the headboard to rest on top of it. There was a moment of silence in its honor... and then we moved on.

  

Saving about 3 inches on all 4 sides, we trimmed the fabric and saved the rest (it has ended up in a bow bracelet, a cuff bracelet, and leather coasters so far!).

 

Next, we flipped the headboard over, centered the fabric on top, and started stapling the fabric. No, we didn't staple into that wood table (but you aren't the only one who was concerned, if that helps). The headboard has about an inch of hard wooden backing (which was covered by the fabulous cream-silk pattern in the first picture). We made sure to send the staples into that wood.

 

Here's some progress. Notice that the staples aren't all perfectly straight. Chalk that up to human error... and sore wrists. Seriously, that staple gun is labor intensive! I had to jump and wail on it and eventually needed a stronger, manlier individual to take over.

Here's what the headboard looked like once we had stapled around the front on all four sides. See that odd looking, 3-inch flap of fabric on the outside of the staples? Yeah, about that...

We flipped the headboard over and began folding the extra fabric around the back and stapling.

To keep things clean, we tried to fold cleanly on the corners... but there's no foolproof rhyme or reason to it. Just keep folding and pulling and stapling.

And here's the headboard after all the stapling was said and done. That poor thing sure took a beating... but it looks so beautiful now!

But then... for the final set up. This took us months. No, I'm not kidding. We initially just shoved the newly and proudly upholstered piece into the wooden frame... but, not only did it stick out, there was also another problem...

THE STAPLES WERE SHOWING! Dun dun dunnnnn! It's like having your underwear showing... or worse, your snowman socks! Gasp!

Whats-a-girl-ta-do? We considered adding a thin layer of fabric around all four sides... but decided that would be far too difficult to line up and would end up causing the sides to be too think to fit into the frame easily.

So, at my fabulous mother's suggestion, we busted out the cure-all: No, not duct tape. A sharpie! We went around all 4 sides with a brown sharpie.

Yay, sharpie land! Check out the hideous staples pre-sharpie. So... silver and obvious and totally highlighting all of our stapling mistakes (see that one staple that is sooo not in the right place?).

Action shot. Notice those manly digits? Why no, those are not my man-hands. They are the man-hands of a particularly good looking man-friend of mine. Why yes, he does have nice hands. Thank you for saying so. He will be delighted.

Here's the headboard staples post-brown-sharpie. I'll admit, it didn't completely eradicate the problem, but it certainly camouflaged it. You can still see the staples when looking closely, but from afar, there are no silvery staples to be found! Hallelujah. And it was good.

See? No staples. Even with a pretty close view. Overall, I think they're sufficiently camouflaged.

Here's a shot from slightly farther away. See how well the leather-esque fabric goes with the bedding? I also love the design... the angular feel of the braided pattern goes quite well with the pillow shams.

And the far away shot! The wallpaper looks so funky here. In real life, it's not quite as hypnotizing...

So there you have it! The project that took about 3 months to complete! Now, as I fall asleep, instead of leaning back and having my head fall backward, through an empty frame, and hit the wall (yes, it happened), there is some real support for this noggin!  Merry Headboards to all and to all a Goodnight! :)

Photoshop Glitter Masking Tutorial

Tweet this!

We're waiting for the sky to open up and cover Chicago with a layer of glittery snow.

I can't wait.

SPEAKING OF GLITTER, here's a tutorial for making ANYTHING glittery in photoshop. Last week, I showed you how to make glitter as a texture (also included in this tutorial). This week, take that texture and turn it into words, shapes, and objects! Don't forget to pin it :)

P.S. I'm covering a lot of real life objects with glitter this weekend. Stay tuned for some "Real-Life-Glitter-DIY" projects! :)

Pin It
 

Pin It

DIY Camera Bag

Tweet this!

This year, I was determined to get to work on a homemade-yet-extremely-useful gift for my mother. We both shoot with a Nikon D5000 and had been working with fairly standard Nikon camera bags.  At the end of the day, however, those bags pose two problems. First, they're not particularly glamorous. It felt like lugging around a huge, unattractive... diaper bag. Shouldn't it feel badass to be shooting in downtown Chicago? Not when you're carrying around a diaper bag! Second, the bags were total theft magnets. I can't even keep track of how many people I know whose cameras have been stolen. Why does that surprise me when we carry around bags with NIKON or CANON written across the top? 

From now on, I will carry a camera bag that screams neither "Steal me, I have $1,000 of equipment inside!" nor "Look, a diaper bag!"  No, sir. I pledge (ha!) to carry a bag that is attractive. Chic. Fabulous. 

Like this tutorial?     or         Pin It

          

               

 

(Click on images for larger version)

(Click on images for larger version)

(Click on images for larger version)

             

Like this tutorial?     or         Pin It