My Obsession with Throw Pillows...

I don't know when it happened, but I am OBSESSED with throw pillows now. My mom mentioned today "there you go with another pillow" and it's true! One of the most important parts of my room makeover is the pillows! The window seat is the most expensive project out of all of them and I want it to look nice. The pillows are all going to be DIY and there will be a lot of them. I may not be able to actually sit on the window seat!

I'll end this post with my mockup of one of the pillows I saw on Walmart's website that I want. The colors are going to be totally different, I just didn't want to mess with the actual ribbon I am going to use. Yes, it is pinned onto a big pillow folded in half! The scrap is the same fabric I used for my DIY Pants post.

{DIY} Pants

Above is the pair of pants I started out with. They were ridiculously long on me as jeans, so I cut them down with the intentions of finishing the hem. A year later, that still had not happened. I finally fixed that this weekend.

I started by going through my fat quarters and trying to find one I liked cuffed around the pants leg. I ended up going with a tan remnant that possibly came from a curtain, I'm not 100% sure.

I cut each cuff on the fold, as well as two lining pieces from a white cotton fat quarter. I cut each white piece in half along the fold and set it aside. Then I opened up each tan piece on my table.

I then centered the lining inside the cuff piece and ironed it as one piece of fabric. I didn't use any interfacing, I just wanted to iron everything this way. It works for me, okay? :(

Measure down 1/2 inch and pin across for your hem. I did both edges of both pieces but realized while sewing that I didn't need to.

But as you can see, I left them in while I did the hem anyway.

After pressing from the right side, I wrapped one of my cuff pieces around the bottom of the pants leg and pinned to mark where I needed to cut it. Then I used the cut cuff to mark and cut the other strip.

I stitched this with a zigzag stitch to make sure it would be secure.

 Then I pinned and stitched on the cuffs right sides together.

 

I flipped down the cuffs and ironed across and I was done! Then I went to try them on...

 

And tada! They look great! Please ignore my ugly feet. And no, that is not my stomach at the top. Oops...! Thanks for reading and I hope this encourages you to tackle a DIY clothing project you have waiting, because if I can do it, you definitely can too!

2013 {The Year of DIY}

I have a board on Pinterest called "Possible DIY Projects". I'm hoping to make some of them this year. It's kinda late to do a once a month thing for the whole year, but that won't stop me from doing some of these projects. There are a lot I have not pinned but they are written down in some form. Hopefully I can start working on the projects in my room soon!

{Room Makeover} My Ugly Dresser

I thought I posted this a while back, but since I don't see it anywhere on here, I will post it today.

I wanted a dresser in my closet. Though it is unseen when the door is closed, the ugliness has got to go! I got the idea for the contrasting drawer color from a pin on Pinterest. That dresser definitely got a new breath of life just with sanding and PAINT. It looks so much cuter and I just love it! It works so well in my closet!

 I used this tutorial to redo my dresser:

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/04/how-to-paint-furniture/

 Here is a shot of the dresser with just the sides of the drawers painted. I totally forgot to take a before picture, so just picture them being bare wood colored.

                        This is a drawer front after one coat of paint…

…and the same drawer with a second coat. I didn't bother sanding down the whole design because I like how it looks under the black paint. Please ignore my toe at the bottom...

And the finished product in my closet! I finished it off with spray gloss on the black parts and left the purple alone. I want it to weather over time, so I did not seal the drawer sides. The insides of the drawers are also painted. You can see a little black smudge of paint on the top drawer, but it doesn't bother me so I didn't bother trying to fix it. That shoe rack is LONG gone. I have an over the door organizer ($5 at WalMart!) for all of them.

{TGIF}: My Closet Wishlist

*Brown TOMS

*F21 Pleated Shorts

*Cute Rain Boots from Amazon!

These are just a few of the things I WANT for my closet!

Thanks for reading and have a FANTASTIC Friday!

So This Happened...

I made some delicious orange-lemon cream 2 days ago, and froze it. I stuck it in the fridge last night to eat this morning, and this is what I found :(

I am putting the Etsy Shop Critique on Hold

Yes, it's true. I will not have the post up this week as I had planned/promised. I FINALLY got inspiration for my room! I wasn't feeling my last idea, and it finally came to me today and I LOVE it. It feels way more me and it will utilize way more DIY to keep it as low-cost as possible. I honestly think the most expensive thing will be getting all of the paint I need. 

Therefore, since I am putting my focus on my room this week, I haven't planned out time for taking new product photos, PLUS I am still trying to find my white background pieces I usually use. I'm not sure where they are at the moment. so the photography post is postponed until further notice. I may skip to another section to keep the "workshop" going, but I am not sure right now.

Thank you as always for reading!

{Critique Your Own Etsy Shop} - Part One

A Guided Etsy Shop Critique

Hello, Everyone! Have you ever watched a shop critique on the Etsy Labs? I've only seen a few done, and I know I need to work on my own shop -- as in, a major overhaul of photos and descriptions completely! But I am finally going to fix that. I hope you will follow along as I go through my own shop critique, and I hope you get several ideas for your own shop as well! Let's begin!!

First, take a good look at your shop. Take a few notes on what you immediately see that needs to be fixed or improved. What do you like about your shop? What could be different? What's one thing you wish you could change, but you feel like you can't?

As you can see in the screenshot below, I have a very ugly banner. I have been making my own banners since I started having any kind of online presence, be it a website, Etsy shop, or a blog. I want to browse for some ideas online, and make a graphic set that really says “Something interesting is sold in this shop!” I also need new photos of certain products, and I need to get new photos for the listings I deactivated for that purpose!



 I picked 10 of my favorite shops to gather ideas from during my shop critique. They are:

1)    Elegant Rose Boutique

2)    Bed Buggs Boutique

3)    Sol Bijou

4)    Truche

5)    Sweet N Savory Trinkets

6)    So What Sherlock?

7)    ModFox

8)    The Tiny Fig

9)    Adelaide’s Boutique

10) The Caramel Jar

 For the remainder of this critique, I will either say “Shop Numbers X, Y, Z” or “Shop Name”, depending on the section of the critique.

First of all, let's get rid of that ugly banner and so-so avatar! I played around a little more with my graphics program, and I like it so far! The gift boxes weren't as scary as I thought, or even the ribbon. It was the bow that was a nightmare! Trying to recolor that was a JOKE. The whole image kept getting filled in, so I had to use the paintbrush tool to color it in. THEN, two of the gift boxes were fine with me using the Magic Wand tool to erase the background to turn them into .gif images. Some slight hiccups, but nothing major to derail me.



And that, dear reader, is where I will end this first post. See you next week for my photography revamp!