Pepper Design Blog

Handmade Mother’s Day Gift Ideas: Perty & Painted

Liv and I spent some time this weekend working on a few handmade Mother’s Day gifts. I thought I’d share the first round with you today!

Our theme for this year’s gifts is clearly leaning towards all things paint now that I’m looking back… painted candles and candle holders, mugs and glasses, vases and framed pictures, you name it. It’s been fun to take everyday objects and spice them up with a little handmade love. Especially Liv’s handmade love.

This first project was easy peasy but I LOVE how the candle holders came out. We used Ikea TINDRA candles in vanilla – which I absolutely adore and constantly have a back up supply on hand – to transform into mini canvases. Actually these burn through really quickly (way to quickly) but keeping the heavy duty glass cup around is a great way to turn this project into a unique vase, whiskey glass (just don’t put it through the dish washer with acrylic paint on it) or flower pot (how pretty with a succulent!).

The label comes off so easily making this a pretty candle to keep out all of the time, and an easy one to decorate.

We focused on mint green, raspberry pink and white as our paint colors of choice, and then Liv got busy!

A bristled paintbrush helped to create the splotched effect.

While we had our paints out, Liv also painted white pieces of construction paper for framing.

Love my abstract painting! Good thing she made a few so I’ll have a couple to give away… I’m having trouble parting with any of her gifts.

Since we already owned the acrylic paint, these gifts came in at about $2 for each candle and $5 for each framed print (the walnut RIBBA frame is also from Ikea).

More handmade ideas to come, and here’s a link to last week’s line up of store bought or *purchased* gift ideas.

All gift idea boards can be found right here and all posts tagged with ‘Mother’s Day’ right here!

Nursery Craft: DIY Art Containers

Liv is collecting little art supplies and toys by the bucket full. The big bins that we initially added to her bookcase are great for storing bigger toys, but little cars, wooden blocks, doll clothing and so on is quickly swallowed up – and finding complete toy sets (like Liv’s wooden train) is impossible these days! So we’re working on adding small container storage to the room little by little.

One of the first organizing projects I tackled included Liv’s art supplies in her little reading nook.

Rather than collect colored pencils, markers and paint into one central storage location (as we had previously done for a while), separating out supplies makes it easier to focus on one specific art activity, put that craft away, and then move on to the next. I first attempted this with open buckets but soon everything was mixed together and crazy again. What is it about organized spaces with a home for each little item that is so darn appealing? It makes my world feel right.

When I spotted these clear containers at Michaels I thought that they might work well just for Liv’s art supplies. I love that they’re plastic paint cans .

After bringing them home I discovered that cheap was too good to be true – the tops are impossible to pop off! Just like a real paint can, to open and retrieve anything inside requires some prying from a really strong object (like a screwdriver) which is not ideal for kids. Poor design.

I thought it would be fun to come up with a DIY handle that would help Liv open up the cans whenever she wants to play, and I kind of like that I can press the lids in extra tightly for art supplies that I don’t want her to have easy access to (like real tubes of paint) so that even with a makeshift handle the lid sticks really well.

I thought about gluing little plastic animals or some other little toy to the top of the paint cans and then remembered that we have a very cute wooden Melissa & Doug flower puzzle that has received quite a bit of wear and tear since Liv began assembling and disassembling two years ago.

I love the shapes and use them all of the time as decoration for her floating tree bookshelves so the entire puzzle really doesn’t stay assembled nor is it really used anymore.

I picked out three of the shapes and hot glued them to the top of each of the paint cans.

But after a night of drying quickly found out that even with strong hot glue the wooden shapes popped right off of the lids if the lids were really well planted onto the container. Boo.

Thankfully the puzzle pieces were wooden and not plastic, so plan b was to drive a little tack nail or two into each shape through the bottom of the lid (with my favorite floral desk hammer – perfect size to keep inside). Now the wooden pieces are stuck stuck.

I used three paint spray colors that I thought worked well in Liv’s nursery today, and would also match her new nursery for two.

The colors turned out a bit chalky rather than pretty and polished, I’m actually really disappointed in the consistency of these particular primer + paint in one Valspar paint cans. I picked up a glossy varnish to cover all with at some point in the future that I’m hoping will fix that.

For the paint can itself I wanted just the edge painted out so I carefully taped off all exposed clear areas inside and out. Learned that lesson the hard way with a slightly careless first round of taping. Thanks goodness for Goo Gone.

If spray paint still makes it through onto the clear plastic, Goo Gone to the rescue.

Finished! You can see the chalky consistency if you look closely…

But for now they’re a cute new addition to the nursery.

Love that the colors work well with the artwork hanging above the little table and chairs and with the painted tree and owl on the wall.

Now onto all of the other little toys (like bubble wands and figurines and musical instruments…) that are filling up Liv’s room! Time for a spring cleaning.

PS all Project Nursery posts are sorted right here.

New Nursery: The Wallpaper Has Arrived

Well sort of. The wallpaper samples for the nursery remodel have arrived. I’ve been staring at them for a couple of days now and am trying to imagine how each might look covering an entire 10×15′ ish wall – and I have to be honest – I love them all. I’m pretty sure that any one of these designs would be so perfect in here. Which oh which to choose?

Here they all are up close if it’s hard to see the above at an angle.

Most of these I shared here when I was debating on what direction to take my solo statement wall. Clearly I’m still debating, even when I was sure that ordering my favorites and hanging them up would help settle that nursery quandary!

All of these wallpaper samples are from Spoonflower, an awesome site that lets you design and print your own fabric and wallpaper (oh search thousands of predesigned options by different artists, sort of like Etsy). I’ve used them a ton and they are reasonably priced compared to purchasing something manufactured (though boy does it take a long time to process and ship your order… I have too little patience these days).

I designed the two starry prints (top left, bottom right) which were inspired by this Osborne & Little wallpaper. I spotted the pretty night sky in House Beautiful a while ago and the image sits in the back of my mind. Not happy with any of the colors offered through Osborne & Little, I recreated from scratch and used both a peach (top left) and light pink (bottom right) as the background, while also softening up the stars and playing with the frequency in pattern. The rest of the prints are handmade on Spoonflower by various artists. Clockwise you can find the links here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8.

The pinks are not exact, the fabric examples are still undecided (and will depend largely on the wallpaper) and this is in general a pretty crude photoshop markup, but here’s how I think the bookshelves will work with the space once they’re installed:

Amazing for storage, right? Oh man I can’t wait.

Update: Fabric Warehouse Direct is offering that beautiful Kravet window covering fabric that I photoshopped into the above pic at a steal of a rate right now. 

Ignore the random throw pillows and the other pieces of photo I didn’t get a chance to photoshop out. I’m imagining a dark pink painted backing in those top shelves, hence the awkward block of color at the moment. If you squint you can begin to see it all come together…

Ahhh, it’s all becoming so real!