PSA: Roman Shades at Lowes

I found some really inexpensive white cotton roman shades at Lowes over the summer that we used in our playroom. The 48x72" size was a steal at about $30 each.

My mom and I went to Lowe's yesterday to pick up a few for her bedroom refresh and, SURPRISE! Yellow stickers everywhere. They were on crazy clearance. Every size is between $2.50 and $13!!!!

We picked up some really soft, gauzey white ones for my mom's room (which is turning out so pretty, btw!). We were really tempted by this cute stripe though.

I just got back home last night and first thing this morning I went and filled up a cart with shades. We have a bunch of random windows that need shades and I can't believe I was able to buy everything I needed for less than $50! Insane.

It looks like they are on sale online, but I think the real deals are in-store, so get thee to Lowes!

The Playroom Bookshelves

I've always been drawn to shots of bright, clear sky blue in kid's spaces.  Here are a few of my favorite rooms:

Velvet and Linen

Martha Stewart Living

House Beautiful

Cottage Living

We really needed some good bookshelves for the kids books in the playroom (and a great shot of sky blue color!). I found these at a local antique market called Merchant Square on sale for something pretty inexpensive like $100 or $150 for the pair. The barn red color was not working for me, but the shape of the shelves, with the angled corners was seriously calling my name!

I had a left over quart of Farrow and Ball's Blue Ground, which is a great color of bright sky blue. We brushed on a coat or two and added some of these super-cheap acrylic IKEA pulls to the cabinet doors and we were in business!

We color coordinated the books right before the Domino shoot, and I've been surprised that the kids have been pretty diligent since then about replacing the books to their right shelf after reading. I think easy organization (especially a simple system like this one - by color) helps kids want to keep spaces tidy.

And of course I love the sky blue color in the space! It's a pretty close match to the color of the clouds in the Hygge & West wallpaper print on the ceiling.

DIY: Monochromatic Photo Print

I love putting up old family photos in my home. They're fun reminders for us of people we love and have been inspired by. The challenge has been figuring out interesting ways to display the photos.

I've always thought this image from Elle Decor of a child's room with giant pink print of Elizabeth Taylor was so cool:

The image (and this idea too) came to mind when I was printing out a photo of my great grandma in front of her home in Sweden for our playroom.

It's easy to change a photo's color in Photoshop, and I'm sure other programs. Also, there's probably better ways to change hue, but here's what I did. In the Image menu, under Adjustments, select the Color Balance option.

I turned up the Red, Magenta and Yellow all the way on both the midtones and the highlights.

And then I played with the Curves tool a bit to brighten the whites in the photo.

When I was finished, I cropped the photo and saved it to be the right size for printing and emailed the file to my local Kinkos. It cost about $60 to have it printed to 30x35, which was the size I needed it to be for a pretty brass frame I found at a thrift store.

The existing matting in the frame had been dark brown, so I painted it orange with a couple light coats of acrylic craft paint, and then I mounted the photo print right on top of the mat with permanent double-sided tape.

I think it's a really fun part of our playroom and I love how it looks with the other art we have hanging in the space!

Here are a few other posts and links on the things in these photos:

Chalkboard-painted kids table

Kid chairs here and here 

Red storage stool

Concrete-topped vintage credenza

Favor poster

Vintage gouache paintings

Butterflies

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. :)