Craft Room Chair Re-vamp

LINK TO MY PINSPIRATION

MY OWN PINSPIRED CREATION

I love the look of the room in my Pinspiration, with the pastel walls and dramatic black and white damask curtains. However, I don't want curtains in my Craft Room, as they would block too much light, and when I started to look at the price of damask fabric I was shocked at how expensive it was! I did want to add a touch of black and white damask somewhere though without it costing me a fortune. I decided to recover the seat of the chair I'd bought for the room (second hand) as it wouldn't take up too much fabric, it would be quick and simple to do and I don't like the dirty looking pink toile that's on there at the moment!

This project took less than 20 mins to complete! The longest part was removing the staples holding the toile fabric in place! Once I'd done that I used the toile as a template to cut my damask, carefully positioning the fabric so the pattern had a pleasing placement :-) Then I cut it out and used a heavy duty stapler to staple it to the chair seat. I stapled opposing sides, making sure the fabric was pulled tight and then finished the rest of each side, again taking care to pull the fabric taut and keep the tension even across the whole seat. It was a bit of a faff doing the corners, but after a bit of folding and tweaking I got them finished to my satisfaction and I was done :-)

MY VERDICT

Super easy project, which makes an instant and dramatic change to my Craft Room chair - much more to my taste now :-)

WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME

I'd ask Mr Messy for some pliers sooner, rather than ruin a pair of scissors by trying to use them to first lever out one side of the original staples and then pull out the second!

Medicine Cabinet Re-organised

LINK TO PINSPIRATION

MY PINSPIRED CREATION

I regularly browse Pinterest looking at various cleaning and organising tips, and this one grabbed my attention, probably due to the number of health problems in our family at the moment! Our Medicine Cabinet has always been a largish white shoe box with a Red Cross drawn on the side, and everything shoved inside higgeldy piggeldy, making it almost impossible to find anything quickly or easily. The picture above looked so well organised and inspiring :-) So when me and Mr Messy went to the Supermarket that evening we bought some cheap plastic food storage tubs, I hadn't measured the space so we only bought four. I started off by completely emptying the Medicine Cabinet and getting rid of everything that had expired, I was surprised at how much there was to throw out as I regularly go through this cupboard!! I found that I could fit 6 boxes in the space, rather than the 4 I'd bought and definitely need the extra two, as we have way more medicines etc than will fit in the four! I also needed to revise my original "categories" as I had way more than six! I went out to buy the extra two boxes and reorganised again and now my Medicine Cabinet is much more user friendly :-)

MY VERDICT

Great idea from Pinterest. Great result at minimum costs (£1.75/box = £10.50). Thrilled with my new organised Medicine Cabinet :-)

WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME

I'd measure the space before buying the boxes, so I'd know how many I needed first time!

Introducing My (future) Craft Room

This will probably be a series of posts for quite some time, as its going to take me a long while to sort the whole room out! I can only work on it when Princess Lollipop is at Tiny School (her name for the childminders) and she's only there for two mornings a week! And I have plenty of other projects that I'm working on too!!

Anyway my Craft Room started off as Mr Messy's Office, and you can see from the photos why he got that nickname!! Since he opened OUR shop he has spent less and less time in the office and it has gradually become a dumping ground for even more mess!! So at Christmas I asked Mr Messy if I could have an extra present - his office!! He agreed pretty quickly, but getting him to move his "stuff" wasn't quite so quick!! I don't mind as he is working his socks off at OUR shop and his asthma has been bad since we returned from our Disney holiday last November.

However, in the last week or so we've made some more progress :-) And here is a photo from today - can you "Spot the Differences" :-) I love spending time in there and tidying and rearranging things a little bit more each time.

Curly Ribbon Hair Pretties

LINK TO MY PINSPIRATION

MY OWN PINSPIRED CREATION

I decided to make Princess Lollipop curly ribbons for school, in school colours. I used some 10mm green gingham ribbon, 5mm plain white ribbon and 5mm plain green ribbon. As instructed in the above pin, I wrapped all my ribbon tightly round my dowelling rods and cooked it in the oven at 135 degrees C, for 25 minutes. Princess Lollipop looked at me very strangely when I told her I was cooking ribbons "Can I eat it?" was her eventual puzzled response lol.

I took them out of the oven after 25 mins, and let them cool for about an hour before checking if they were cool enough to work with. Then there was the "oh my gosh will it have worked?" moment when I started to take the ribbon off the dowels!! And it DID :-) I showed off my ribbon worms to Mr Messy, and played boinging them too :-) I couldn't believe it had worked so well :-)

I cut the curly ribbon into roughly 3 inch lengths and then split them into two equal groups. I centred the groups of ribbon one at a time, on a long piece of dental floss and gathered them up and tied a knot. I then got Mr Messy to hold the bunches of ribbons at either side of the knot and wound the dental floss round and round, tying knots every now and again to secure it and finishing with a tightly tied knot. I cut a circle of felt and covered it in hot glue, then put it between the teeth of the hair clip, added a bit more hot glue and pressed the bows onto the felt. The glue holds really securely and I don't think even my rambuctious 3 year old will pull it apart easily :-)

MY VERDICT

I think they are great for a first try, and aren't too overwhelming to wear to school.

PRINCESS LOLLIPOP'S VERDICT

At first she didn't want to wear them, but now she won't take them off :-)

WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME

The length of the ribbons is right (for school clips), but they aren't as full as I'd like, so I think I'll have to make one clip at a time, or double my number of dowel rods to make two at once. And for clips to wear out of school I think I'd make the ribbon lengths longer too, so I'd definitely only be able to make one at once.

UPDATE
After wearing for a few months the ribbon wasn't holding its curl very well, and one of the clips was very loose and almost falling apart.  I've checked on craft forums and found people recommending using starch. 

Method One:  Soak in liquid starch, or spray with starch then bake.
Method Two:  Bake and then spray when still hot from the oven.
Method Three:  Either of the above, but use hairspray instead of starch.
Method Four:  Soak the ribbon with water, then spray with starch

I've also read various different time/temperature variations:
100 degrees C for 45 minutes
120 degrees C for 30 minutes
135 degrees C for 15 minutes

The other tip I've found is to use very strong thread and sew the ribbons together in the centre with a single stitch, before gluing the ribbons to the clip.

Magnetic Dolls

LINK TO MY INSPIRATION

This was an idea that has been brewing for a loooong time, well before I got addicted to Pinterest. On a Disney holiday planning board there were LOTS of fun ideas to keep children entertained and busy on the long journey to get to WDW and I managed to complete quite a few for Little Prince and Princess Lollipop. One that I didn't get round to was making a Magnetic Doll for Princess Lollipop, so I intended to make it for her birthday instead and that didn't happen either! So I am finally getting round to it "just because..."

MY OWN CREATION
I bought two prettily shaped metal trays from a Car Boot Sale for 50p each! I didn't take a photo of them before I spray painted them, but trust me they were very gaudy and not pretty at all. They needed 4-5 layers of spray paint to completely cover up the horrible pictures, but that went pretty quickly as the paint I used (Rustoleum Painter's Touch Satin in Green Apple) only needed an hours drying time between coats. I then left them for 24 hours to make sure they were completely dry. I had printed out a doll ready to Mod Podge to the tray, and lots of clothes and accessories to stick onto magnetic paper.

Then I decided to have a look on Pinterest and see if anyone on there had any good ideas. BIG mistake lol!! I found one Pin which used an actual picture of the child as the Doll! I loved the idea, but the idea of then photographing Princess Lollipop in all sorts of different outfits was daunting to say the least. So as much as I loved the idea I put it to the back of my mind. I did carry on looking and found ANOTHER personalised Doll, however this Pin suggested turning the cut out photograph over and using it as a template to draw outfits on scrapbooking paper and gluing those to magnetic paper! GENIUS :-) A totally perfect idea :-) So that is now what I'm going to do!!

So I'm going to finish this post here and start a new one for the ACTUAL magnetic dolls I am making. And what happens to the trays you say? I'm thinking of using one to Mod Podge a saying or picture on to hang in my Craft Room and the other as an actual tray for Princess Lollipop to use in her Pink House :-)

WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME

I think I should completely research what I'm going to do and come to a final decision BEFORE starting something lol :-)