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2013 Holiday Gift Guide: UncommonGoods

December 13, 2013 by Morgan

Each year I include products from Uncommon Goods in my annual gift guides. They have such cool stuff – you won’t find a lot of their artisan and small-shop gifts anywhere else. Products are creatively designed, thoughtful, clever and are available at affordable prices. I love the little history & description of each product that they provide on the website as well (it feels as though you’re purchasing from the carpenter or artist who designed your gift).

This year UncommonGoods has asked me to put together a post of my very favorites and has sent me some of the below to check out for myself.

Giraffe Bookend | Bucky the Deer & Unicorn cardboard heads
Storybook Puppets | Fox Pillow | Kinetic Sand

1. Cardboard animal heads are so great! We actually have Bucky (the deer head above) living on our mantel at the moment for Christmas and he’s perfect. The unicorn is a nice twist on the original. 2. Kids get a lot of gifts at Christmas, these bookends are a really cute solution to an influx of books (always a good thing!). 3. Livy and her nana have been experimenting with sock puppet play, storybook puppets are great interactive gifts and allows kids to ‘put on a show’. 4. How adorable is this knitted fox pillow? 5. Sand that magnetically sticks? No mess? Sign me up. And perfect sandcastles sound awesome.

More gift ideas for the kids here.

1. I love the look of these faceted wooden planters, the little air plants inside make these so pretty next to a window. 2. For the wine lover? This guy is awesome. 3. My PhD candidate brother would totally dig these glasses. 4. I love the wooden design and the amplification of this iPhone alarm dock. 5. Men rarely think to transfer their favorite product to smaller versions, I think that this pack is great for the traveler. 6. This water bottle was one of the products that UncommonGoods sent my way – it doesn’t roll, the water tastes amazing (as opposed to stale or metal-y) and I’ve finally found THE reusable bottle for me. 7. My mom would love these musical wine glasses! She loves a good party trick ;).

Check out all of their clever gifts for women here and for the guys, here!

We are especially loving the wooden alarm clock dock and Bucky the deer head at our house right now. Bucky fits right in with the mantel decor.

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This roundup is a sponsored post by UncommonGoods. I have been compensated with some of the products mentioned here but my opinions are always my own.

$.13 Christmas Cards {and Downloads)

December 12, 2013 by Morgan

We’ve been slow to get our Christmas cards in the mail. Even though we did something really out of the ordinary this year and, on a whim, worked with a professional photographer to capture some family shots – back in early November – I still haven’t gotten it all together card-wise. We might order cards to mail out, I might work with a local print shop… I have no idea at the moment.

But until then, I’ve been playing with diy Christmas cards. Because they’re super cost-effective and super easy to make. I’ll share the process today so that if you’d like to create your own $.13 Christmas cards you can.

Costco in our neighborhood prints photos for $.13, but they might be $.09 or $.15 depending on your local Walgreens/Target/Sam’s Club. And if you mount them on paper like I did for my samples they’ll be just a bit more.

So here’s how these easy diy Christmas cards work. I’ve created five holiday overlays to download – these are .png files that you can download to your computer and then ‘overlay’ on top of your family photos following these steps through the totally awesome and free online photo editor program, Pixlr.

Here are my five overlays:

They can be adjusted for horizontal or vertical photos, I’ll show you how I did that as well.

First things first, here’s what the photo looks like with the overlay on top:

But here’s what you’ll be downloading:

This is so easy. No editing programs to download, nothing to buy. Pixlr is a free tool that you use right on the internet.

Once you’ve saved the overlay to your computer, open Pixlr in a new tab in your browser. Go to File | Open and select your family photo (I’m using my ‘Merry Christmas Holly’ overlay as the example). You’re using the full size photo straight out of your camera (don’t resize to a 4×6 or 5×7, your printing company of choice will do that for you).

Then go to File | Open and select the downloaded overlay off of your computer. See the grey and white boxes in the background? That means that the background is transparent with the exception of the white lettering.

Now go to Edit | Select all to select the entire canvas of your overlay.

Then Edit | Copy to copy the white lettering.

And moving back to your family photo, Edit | Paste.

Now the overlay might be an odd size for your picture, so you can ‘transform’ it by going to Edit | Free transform.

Note: These overlays are big – you’ll want to downsize most of them to fit your photo but not upsize (or make them any bigger) or they’ll be pixelated. If the overlay is too small for your photo, first resize your photo to an 8×10 (or something still larger than 4×6) and then try pasting the overlay again.

Resize, rotate, move the overlay around until it looks just right (this is why these overlays can be used on vertical photos easily as well).

You could also use the built in text tool to customize your card with your names.

Now it’s time to save. Go to File | Save.

Select the very highest quality (default is .jpg and that’s just fine for our purposes).

And upload to your favorite printing store (I chose Costco and printed with a white trim – which is an option with most photo printing companies). You might want to run a batch of one or two before printing all just to make sure they turn out okay. I went back to Costco twice before they were just right – but it’s totally worth saving $100.

Here are the overlays to download (download by right clicking the link that says HERE and not the photo with the example).

Christmas Confetti overlay download HERE.

Merry Christmas Garland overlay download HERE.

Joy Lettering download HERE.

Christmas Badge download HERE.

Merry Christmas Holly overlay download HERE.

If you want to go above and beyond basic printing, you could mount your photos on pretty paper. Here are a few of my favorites:

Glittery blue for our Joy photos (to attach the photo to the cardstock I made two little slits in the corners).

For a fun glitter background, I dotted brown cardstock with a glue stick and shook glitter over the wet glue.

Or a basic washi tape is fun!

The black polka dot (from Michaels) might be my favorite.

There you have it! $.13 Christmas cards for the whole fam. Shoot me an email (morgan at pepperdesignblog dot com) or leave a message in the comments if you have any questions. I’ll make updates to this tutorial as I hear feedback.

Now, back to my Christmas cards I go :).

PS That photographer I mentioned? That’s Stefanie of Joie de Vivre Photography. She’s amazing and does very reasonably priced ‘mini sessions’ for the whole family. We’ll definitely be working with her again!

Girls’ Room Update: Swing Arm Wall Sconces

December 10, 2013 by Morgan

I know it’s been a very long, long while since I’ve updated you on the nursery (and, history is repeating itself, this room might actually be finished when Taylor is six months old just like Liv’s nursery). The three pieces of the puzzle that have been holding me up are: roman shades for the three windows, fabric for the window seat and light fixtures for the bookcases. I’ve struggled with these decisions (because all three are investment pieces) for months and months, and finally let it go. I decided that when the timing was right, the solutions would be found.

I’m happy to report that I’m almost there :).

I found great fabrics for the roman shades and the window cushion, and I’m working on our lighting fix now.

What I would really love to do is to put swing arm wall sconces inside the bookshelves as reading lights for the new window seat nook, and as additional lighting in a space that has only one over head light (and no can lights just yet).

Swing arm sconces? lovely.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

My thought is that I’ll mount them just inside of the bookshelves, like this:

1 | 2

But finding those lights has been tricky. Here are a few of my favorites (picture them all in brass):

But most are in the price range of $200-350 each, with the only exception really begin the eyeball sconce from Urban Outfitters. I actually ordered two to give them a try, but they are too stubby for the bookcases (and the wide window in between). The space really needs a light with a swing arm to help span a bit of that gap. PS if you are interested in those UO sconces – I’m past my return date! Make me an offer via email.

So for the last six months or so I’ve been deal scanning, flea market scanning, craigslist & ebay scanning…

And then look what I found!

The Angelo Cooper Contemporary Wall Lamp (say that three times). For $68 each. It’s a swing arm sconce, it has an eyeball-style head, it fits the bill.

White is okay, but for these lights to show up against an all white bookshelf and all white window trim, they’re going gold.

Rust-oleum Metallic did the job perfectly. Not too brassy, not too shiny, not too dull.

To get a clean, non-dripping finish, I taped every little piece of this guy that wasn’t going gold (the front and back of the glass, black cord and electrical cords at the base) and then slowly sprayed the lights about 10″ above them with smooth, even arm movements in very thin layers. To coat everything, I probably applied five-six layers in total. The key for me with spray paint is go very light, and then to reapply.

Now I hand it over to the electrician! The installation of these guys is just past my willing diy level (since they have to be mounted just right on wooden bookshelves that I love so dearly). Will keep you posted.

PS all girls’ room transformation posts right here. It’s all coming together!

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