creative little daisy

A plethora of plates. And doors.

 On a whim, I covered this little wall in my kitchen with plates.

Just a random pattern. I got my hammer and nails and just started hanging. No pre-planning, just haphazardly slapping some plates on the wall.

For this wall, in the dining room, I laid out and measured and got things just so.

In the kitchen, it was a spur of the moment decision followed by willy-nilly craziness.

 
That ugly ceiling fixture's days are numbered. It's outta here, as soon as I can paint the replacement.

The door with the ugly brass knob is to the master bedroom.

The doorway (I removed the door) to the left of that is to the laundry room. The door in the foreground is the pantry. Lots of doors huh?

Well that aint all folks.

Lets back up a bit, look from a different angle.

 
Count em. That's five doors. Well, four doors and one door way.

Now that you've seen my plethora of doors, give me your opinion.

Before I painted, (you know I means Mitch) the exterior leading doors had dark bamboo roman shades.  I haven't put them back up because I don't like the look of them against the black door. Any suggestions for what to replace them with?

Remember I have these curtains on the bay windows.

They are from IKEA. I guess I could get another panel and make roman shades, but I worry that it would be a bit too much.

Thoughts?? I'd love to see some examples of treatments on black doors. I've searched around the net, but not really found anything.

I wanted to share how I was able to hang all those plates without going out and buying plate hangers. I first saw this at the Nesting place.

Glue a ribbon hanger right on the back. First put two globs of glue on the plate. Place the ends of the ribbon in the glue, then put another glob on top of the ribbon. Let it cool completely before hanging. 

I've done this all over my house and never had one fall, but please don't do this with your grandmother's wedding china or on a plate you plan to hang over your bed.

 

E A T

Have you seen the EAT sign in Courteney Cox's kitchen on Cougar Town?

 
 I've seen many great versions and wanted to try my own. At first my plan was a mod podge treatment, with either fabric or pretty paper. Here's a great tutorial I found using mod-podge and paper.

After I saw this, I knew I wanted a metal look instead.

Flea Market Trixie

Click that link to see how she made that great light. That table? A lamp and an old coffee table. Genius!

Then I saw this amazing kitchen,

Me Oh My

That's the name of the blog and what I said when I saw her kitchen!

Subway tile to the ceiling folks! Love. It. I think her letters are the real thing. Mine are paper mache, so I had to go about making them look like zinc.

Here's a great tutorial on recreating Anthroploogie's (very pricey)  Zinc letters.

That is pretty much exactly what I did and came up with this 
 
 

 

Anthropologie's comparable sized letters are $18.00 a piece. Mine were $2.47 a piece at Hobby Lobby + a little paint I already had.

Interested in putting some piping on a pillow?

I have a little how-to over at Sew Mama Sew. Check it out!

The design for the machine embroidery pillow came from Meringue Designs. It is actually a combination of three different designs. The lady fern, technicolor vine, and poppies.

The white tucked pillow was really easy to do, I found the tutorial for the tucks here.

You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray

You'll never know dear

how much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away.

 

Being a nana is simply the greatest!

I am truly blessed.

 

 

 

They make it look so easy!

I've been pinning photos of lovely kitchens with open shelving. Ones like this beauty

Jones Design company

Artfully arranged dishes. Simple stacks of plates and bowls arranged in a way that pleases the eye and complements the surrounding decor. Nothing about it contrived or complicated. Like it just happened.

Well, for me it didn't just happen.

I spent two hours Friday night, (yea, I need to get a life) arranging these two shelves.

I climbed up and down from a stool so much my legs were sore the next day. (I need to get a life that involves more exercise apparently)

I'd move a piece,  get down, step back and look.

It was too busy, too stark, too blue, too, too, too...

It finally came around, or else I just got tired of fooling with it, once I took all the blue dishes out. Either they looked to arranged or too haphazard. If I tried balancing equal amounts of blue on top and bottom, left and right it looked like I was trying to hard, if I didn't balance them it looked, well, unbalanced.

I really wish I had photographed each step along the way so I can share how exciting my Friday nights are. Kid you not, two hours arranging dishes, so that they wouldn't look arranged.

I didn't want the shelf to be full of stuff that isn't used to just collect dust and in the end, there are lots of things there as fillers.  Now that I really look, it's mostly fillers. I do use those coffee cups and the white dish on the bottom shelf is new but I will use it.

I need to quit looking at these pictures, it only makes me want to go change things.

The stuff in the cabinet, we do use that. No fillers here.

For a little Valentine love, the pretty felted heart from my sweet {former blogger} friend LLA. Former blogger, not former friend.

And a bird. Oh my! Have you seen this?

 

I got a new sink, but that's a story all its own.

Oh what the heck, as long as I brought it up.

When we built the house, we had a white cast iron sink. I don't remember why, but at some point I decided I wanted to change it. I think it was losing some of it's shine and was hard to clean. Anyway, I got a composite sink that closely matched the lovely dark gray formica counter tops. Blackish gray composite sink with darkish gray formica, not bad. Darkish gray with butcher block, not so good.

I told my loving husband that I wanted the white sink back. It was still here, behind his barn. Yea, it looks like hoarders back there. Not really. Maybe a little.  We live in the country.

I'm rambling. It used to look sort of like hoarders. Before Mitch, the loving husband took a huge truck load of junk to the metal salvage yard (he collects cars and car parts like I collect furniture and lamps) and since the sink was cast iron, it went too.  That was after I told him I wanted it back in the house. After he told me there was no way he was putting that thing back in. It nearly broke his back taking it out. He said I'll buy you a new one, an acrylic one. He said that to put me off, hoping I'd just get over it. I didn't.

Long story short I have a new sink and it's big enough to bathe in. I don't know how, it is in the same hole, but this baby is HUGE.  I love it.

So there you go, I walk on the wild side arranging shelves and putting birds on them and my husband buys me gifts in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Don't you wish you lived such a glamorous life?

Buyer or DIYer?

Of course, I'd love to be a more financially secure, who wouldn't? But I think even if I had plenty of extra cash in my bank account, I'd still choose to do it myself when possible. For me, I get more satisfaction from  having something pretty, and knowing I had a hand in making it or making it beautiful than if I had just purchased it.

I love looking at the Pottery Barn catalog, even though I know I will likely never make a purchase. The fun in it for me, is the challenge of furnishing and decorating my home to look like it could have come from a catalog, by shopping at Goodwill.

That's why I couldn't be more pleased to be featured today at Knock Off Decor. A website entirely dedicated to getting the look for less. Definitely my kinda place.

What about you? Are you a buyer or a DIYer?

A pillow post

I'm contributing a tutorial for Pillow Month at Sew Mama Sew. Two tutorials, actually. The first will be published tomorrow and shows how to finish a pillow back with a zipper hidden behind a flap. 

{Sneakity Peakity}

I made three pillows in the process of trying to photograph each step. The method is very easy, getting good photos of the process was not as easy. On the positive side, I did get three new pillows for my couch and not a moment too soon. My pillows were looking so tired.

In the planning process of Pillow Month, I looked at a lot of pillows on the internet. I started a pillow board on pinterest to save some of my favorites. Some I felt like I could recreate, like this one from Dwell Studio available at Target. 

 

It's very pretty, but it's currently unavailable. No problem. Here's what I came up with.

And since I was already writing a tutorial, I happen to have some photos of the process.

If you've looked at more than a blog or two in the past few months, it's very likely you've seen a fabric rosette tutorial, or ten. I'm not going to add another to that long list, but I will show you a few steps along the way to go from rosette to rosette pillow.

If you've never made a pillow, it's perhaps the easiest beginner sewing project. It takes no time to master and perfect for those with little patience. Those who want instant gratification, me included.  Go check out Sew Mama Sew for a tutorial on the basics. While you are there, check out the contest they have going on. There are some great prizes to be won!

OK, for the rosette pillow. I started with a 16" square of dark gray fabric. To get the spacing even, I folded the pillows into thirds, pressed, then repeated for the other way. Not rocket science, I just eyeballed it.

 

 Based on the spacing, I decided I wanted my rosettes to measure about 4". I cut some lightweight interfacing into 4" squares.  If you don't have interfacing, you could use a very light weight fabric. I didn't want to add much weight or bulk to my flowers, but wanted something strong enough to hold up to hot glue. 

Most of the tutorials I've seen are for a smallish flower and recommend using strips of fabric that are around 1" x 22".  Since I needed larger flowers I cut my strips 2" x the whole width of fabric or 44"

Fold in half, the long way and press. For the beginning of the rosette, fold one end in half again and begin rolling tightly- several rolls then twist and roll a couple of times.

Put a small glob of hot glue in the center of your interfacing square and place the rolled end of the fabric in the glue

 Then just keep twisting, wrapping and gluing until you are down to about 1/2 " of fabric. 

Cut the excess interfacing away from the flower and glue the fabric tail around to the back.

Repeat 8 more times. Yes, it's a little time consuming, but it's mindless work you can do while watching TV.

Arrange your rosettes on your pillow front.

Be sure to allow room for your pillow seams. Initially I wanted to use fabric glue, hot glue can be so heavy. Once the fabric glue dried, there were a few places not adhered completely so I just went around each one with a dab of hot glue here and there to make sure they were all secure.

Check out Sew Mama Sew tomorrow (Feb 4th) for that tutorial on how to finish the back with a hidden zipper.