Studio Updates and a Holiday Give Away from Poppin

Remember when I got that really beat up desk at Goodwill and made it over? That spurred a whole series of updates to our studio space. We're getting really organized and I think everything looks so clean and pretty now!

I'll be sharing some tutorials soon, but I'm sure a few of you long-time readers will be able to spot a few of the big changes off the bat!

We wanted to both add and take away color from the room. This new inspiration board is probably my favorite colorful addition.

I had a piece of homasote board cut down to fit the wall space between the window and the wall and then (just like in this project) I upholstered it in pale mint linen.

We're also working to streamline our filing system and to declutter our office supplies. I am a big believer in making the every day stuff as pretty as possible, if only to help mundane chores feel exciting. :)

Poppin sent us a few new office supplies this month to help with the makeover. I love everything Poppin makes - and have for a long time! Everything is modern and beautiful, and it all works so well! Their pens are my very favorite (with their all-white scissors being a close second place!).

They also make a new heavier-weight pen (mine's in chrome, below) and it's beautiful. They make it in a really pretty gold too!!

Poppin has generously offered to give away two $100 gift certificates today! Their products make the perfect stocking stuffers or gifts for office mates!

Their new line of metallic notebooks are perfectly classic, but so holiday-worthy!

Entering to win one of the $100 gift certificates is super easy - just visit Poppin's site and browse their beautiful offerings and then leave a comment here. Contest runs for one week and the winner will be selected at random and emailed.

PS Poppin is running a promotion through the 6th, where you get a free tote when you spend $50 or more. Check it out here, and don't forget to enter the give away too by commenting here! Good luck!

DIY: Fabric Decoupaged Office Chair

For our little homework station project, I wanted to find a really inexpensive option for the girls' desk chair. I bought the vintage wood desk at a store called Another Man's Junk here in Phoenix and I love it's simple lines, but I wanted the chair to feel a little more fun and youthful. I poked around online trying to find a cheap upholstered office chair to recover in a pretty fabric when I stumbled on these $20 chairs at IKEA. I thought they would be a good candidate for a decoupage project (this one has really stuck in my brain!).

I pulled out some pretty, lightweight cotton fabric from my stash. I had bought several yards of this gauzy cotton Nani Iro for Kokka Fabrics at Purl Soho for a client project a few years ago. We ended up choosing another fabric, so I kept the yardage and I'm so glad I did! It worked perfectly here.

Before we started with the decoupage, we sprayed the chair legs gold with Design Master's Gold Metal and the chair back with a coral spray paint from Krylon which is supposed to work on plastics (and seems to be doing a good job of holding up).  

I started by brushing on a pretty generous coat of matte Mod Podge on just the front of the chair back. I left the edges of the seat alone for this part and just worried about the front face.

I had figured out the pattern placement and cut out a section of fabric before I started glueing that was several inches bigger than the chair on all sides. I carefully placed the fabric on top of the Mod Podge layer and used my hands to smooth out all the bumps and wrinkles. It takes some work and time, but it's really not all that hard to get a taut, smooth surface with the fabric.

When the upper chair back was smooth, I repeated the same process on the chair seat. Again, I left the edges dry at this point and worried just about the big surfaces.

If you do this project using the same IKEA chair, you'll want to leave just a bit of fabric bunched around the curve of the seat (where the little hole in the back is).

Once the seat and the seat back were all smooth, I trimmed the excess fabric a bit more, just to make things more manageable, and then I brushed Mod Podge onto the face of the edges and started the same process of smoothing.

The corners and curves are really the only tricky part. I cut out some of the extra fabric in a triangle shape until the fabric sat perfectly smooth around the corner edge and then I glued it down with Mod Podge.

A damp cloth really helps smooth everything down and was a big help with the edges especially.

I cut away more fabric for the curve and the hole in the back of the chair before gluing the fabric down. Mod Podge is so easy to work with. It is so forgiving and can be repositioned for a long time.

Once the Mod Podge had dried (about an hour or two later), I ran an X-acto knife down the inside edge of the back. And then I brush on another little bit of Mod Podge along the edge to help seal the fabric and prevent fraying.

Once the whole chair was done and dry, I brushed on two thick coats of satin Polycrylic sealer on top of the fabric. This changed the look and feel of the fabric a bit - it sort of looks like laminated fabric now, or like the chair is made from a textured, printed plastic maybe? But the surface is solid and waterproof and easy to clean now, so I'm cool with it.

Still pretty cute, right? I love how it looks from the back especially, with the pop of coral!

It feels pretty indestructible and my girls love it. Win-win. :)

Plans

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of projects and house guests, which I have so loved doing and having, but now I'm in the clear a little more and am able to get focused back on work. I'm so excited about a big change I have in the works!

As we were organizing the house in anticipation for these house guests we've been hosting this month, Michael and I have been talking a lot about the way we use our house and about how to best use the spaces we have.

The big room above the garage that we've been calling the play room has been largely unused by the kids (these photos are from before we moved into the house). The space is sort of far away and removed from the rest of the house, so it makes sense they wouldn't really want to be up there all alone. Over time, the toys started migrating over to the bedrooms and the play room was beginning to feel like a big waste of space.

And you guys all know that I've been really thinking a lot about work and this blog and sort of trying to figure out what I want my future to look like. One of my New Years resolutions is to work smarter not harder. I don't even pretend to have a balanced life - some week's are allllllll work with family squished in there. Other weeks (like this one) have been all about friends and loved ones. I'm finally getting used to the fact that this is just how it's going to be and that there's power in embracing the imbalance of the balancing act. :)

(Sidebar: speaking of family, my friends over at Small Fry blog interviewed me about some of my thoughts on motherhood and Evie's crazy birth story. Hop on over if you're in for a read and a little TMI from me.)

It's been so nice to get to work from home for all these years, especially while my girls were so young. But I think it's time. I think I'll always share my personal home projects with you guys here on LGN, but I also want to focus on creating more editorial content and shoot the projects and ideas in a separate space. Also I've been trying to get the ball rolling on a book for about three years now, but we just keep moving and things get pushed back. I would love to finally start (and finish) my book this year.

So I thought for about two seconds about renting a commercial office space, and then I realized the play room makes the perfect studio. It was a total 'duh' moment. Why hadn't we thought of this before? The space is removed from the rest of the house, though easily accessible, so maybe I could get the best of both worlds with privacy and convenience?
My beautiful sister, Heather, who used to live with us in Brooklyn, moved back in about a week ago so she could go back to school to get her teaching certificate (so excited for her!). She'll be living in the the guest bedroom, which is right next to the new studio space. In her off-hours, she'll be pitching in with projects and I'm so excited to have her around again. She makes even the most grueling, labor-intensive projects hilariously fun. And there will always be music and dancing.

I've also hired someone to help with coordinating and shooting mostly the book. Her name is Kate and she deserves a whole post dedicated to her awesomeness. She's really great and I'm so excited to have her around starting the beginning of March. More on the amazing Kate later!

We've been working like crazy to transform the studio since deciding to turn my old office (the space with the dry erase boards) into the playroom. The new playroom space is pretty much in full swing now and the kids and their friends use the room so much more! Success.

Pulling up the carpet in the studio was, surprisingly, the easiest part of the mini reno we're doing. I had lots of practice in the brownstone, but this carpet was a breeze compared to that nasty old stuff! You just sort of pick at a corner until the carpet pulls away from the tack strip and then just pull and roll while you go. The only tricky part is getting up the tack strips, but it's not too bad with a hammer and crow bar. We got down to subfloor in just a couple hours. (Special thanks to my sister, Ali, who is a carpet-removing machine!!)

We're almost done with the new floors and I'm so excited to share the tutorial. I just need to finish baseboards and I'll take some photos. I wanted a bright white space. Here were some of my inspiration photos.

Things ended up evolving a little though and what we ended up with is a good blend of the above photos and the two below. Cryptic, I know. These all look pretty different. :) 

Anyway, I am just SO excited about how everything is turning out. I'm not really talking about the floors even, though they are spectacular! But, I'm feeling like I have a plan and a the foundation is laid for a really great 2014. Thanks for all your continued support, friends. I have felt you cheering me on and it has meant the world to me. xoxo

(all inspiration photos via Houzz here)

DIY White Board Wall

I've always heard that it's really important to have your goals written in a place where you'll see them often. I thought it would be great to have a big wall in my office dedicated to ideas and goals and to-do's. I thought of a chalkboard wall first, but I liked the idea of a big and bright white board. White boards are a little easier to write on and clean up anyway.

You can make any flat surface (including walls) a white board, but I wanted a magnetic surface and I wanted to be able to customize the size of the board. I brought a magnet with me to the sheet metal section of my hardware store and figured out it's important to get galvanized sheet metal or zinc. Aluminum is not magnetic.

I decided on these 12x18" sheets for my project. I think they were about $5 or $6 each.

It helps the dry erase/white board paint to stick if you use a good primer on the sheet metal first. I love this spray primer from Rustoleum that's formulated especially for metal (Kilz has an all-purpose spray primer that's great for metal too, but it goes on a little thicker).

I let the spray primer dry over night and the next day I gave everything a really light sanding and a good wipe down.

The Dry Erase paint comes in a little box with two parts to mix together.

You'll want a new foam roller to apply the paint too, so everything's as smooth as possible.

I did two or maybe even three coats of the paint to make sure everything was really covered and smooth. There might be little air bubbles at first, but just leave them alone and they'll smooth out.

It takes a little work to get a nail through sheet metal, and it's much easier to do that while the sheet metal is laying flat on the ground. So after the little white boards were dry, I made holes in the corners of the sheet metal pieces using the sharpest nails I had on hand and a scrap piece of wood.

Having the holes done beforehand made all the difference and it was so easy to just hold up the sheets in the right place with one hand while tapping in my brass upholstery nails with the other. 

The boards are super smooth and are easy to write on and erase, just like any white board you'd buy at the store. I will say that colorful dry erase markers usually need a cleaning solution to completely erase, but I think that's the case with store-bought white boards too. Those markers are just a bit stubborn.

I keep all of my markers in this pretty little gilded soup tureen I got at a flea market in Brussels.

It was so worth it to go the extra mile to make my white boards magnetic. I have my Sticky Gram collection on the boards (which I think helps break up the sea of white) as well as a few other rogue magnets. The girls love to come in and hang up their latest masterpieces for me. Sweet kids.

So I think we spent about $80 for this project, between the six sheets of zinc, primer, dry erase paint, new roller and upholstery tacks. More than a typical 16x20 board from Target or whatever, but I love how much visual space the series of boards takes up in my big office. It fits the scale of the room much beeter this way. And of course functionally, I really love having a place to keep ideas that won't get buried on my computer or accidentally thrown away on a sheet of paper. Having big plans written up here helps me at least feel a lot more organized, which I'm learning is half the battle. :)