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Wardrobe Style Boards: New Years Eve

December 22, 2011 by Morgan

Happy Thursday! Maryam and I have added four new inspiration boards over to the Wardrobe Style Board gallery, you can check ’em all out (as well as sourcing info) over here. Today’s post is sort of a part 2 to last week’s part 1 for winter fashion.

New Years Eve is just over a week away! There’s nothing like a little bit of sparkle and this adorable navy mini would pair perfectly with a comfy, slouchy top tucked in. Match black booties with lace tights for a fun, night-out-on-the-town look.

Here’s a nontraditional winter outfit that pulls together both the comfy cozy of a soft flannel and sweater with capri slacks and a cute fedora. Swap out pumps for flats to run errands or pair with dressy jewelry and heels for a date night.

Maryam shares two of her favorite winter looks:

“I love the idea of this sweater tunic. It is a beautiful blend of a print and a little pizazz. I would wear an outfit like this for a family party, parade or Christmas light viewing.”

“More formal holiday parties and/or New Years Eve celebrations are the time to go all out. Asos has a fabulous variety of glam dresses to chose from. Decide quick, so you can get your treasures in time to par-tay!”

There’s our wrap-up to the Style Board Gallery for 2011 – whether you have a night in with friends or a big date night out planned for your New Years, hope that this provides a bit of fun inspiration!

- posted on December 22, 2011 Filed Under: Wardrobe Tagged With: Fashion, New Years, Wardrobe - Fall, Wardrobe - Winter

Project Nursery: Personalized Growth Chart + a Petite Lemon *Giveaway*

December 20, 2011 by Morgan

Tis’ the season for giving and I have a really great giveaway for everyone today.  Petite Lemon recently asked if they could partner with me to share their line of kid’s personalized growth charts, alphabet posters and photo posters.

Today they’re offering a $50 gift certificate towards any of these, and they were kind enough to send one personalized product my way to check out:

 

I love their contemporary style and I was immediately smitten with several of their personalized alphabet prints:

But because we have an adorable vintage-esq alphabet poster (which actually served as the inspiration for our nursery), I checked out their growth charts as well.

So cute! This Color Me chart below was my favorite and I thought it would fit right into the colors of the nursery:

It’s as adorable in person as it is online!

While I had ‘Spenla Family’ printed at the top, what I really mean is ‘Spenla Kids’ (since Kevin and I long ago passed up that 60″ mark – wait, does it say 60″? Actually I might still be able to put myself just above that mark on this chart at 5′ 3″…) anyhow, we wanted one chart that would serve the purpose of all Spenla Kids rather than just Liv (so we don’t one day have 2, 3 or even 4 charts up) but I chose Spenla Family because, well, if we are blessed with just Liv then that’s okay too :0).

The canvas growth chart is great on its own, but I wanted to really fill in this corner (between the door to the new bathroom and her dresser) and so I mounted the chart on a handmade fabric lined frame:

And hung the chart with a mustard yellow ribbon from the two top grommets.

I made the fabric frame from molding I had lying around the garage (leftover pieces that I didn’t use in this project), pretty primary colored fabric I found marked down to $4.99/yard, a couple of nails and a staple gun.

The process was fairly easy – similar to stretching a canvas for art. First, cut molding to the desired rectangle sizes (I wanted about a foot on top and bottom of the chart plus 8 or so inches on each side) and secure the pieces of wood together with a nail and hammer (you could do a fancy version of this with a pilot hole but I was going basic here and just tapped the nail right through one end of the molding and into the other).

Next, cut fabric to the same size + 5″ or so on each edge for folding over the back. Lay the frame upside down on your fabric and ‘stretch the fabric up and over each edge, securing the fabric to the frame on the back side with a staple gun (I went a little crazy with the staples for this example but you get the idea :)).

 The chart and fabric tie in really well with the rest of the primary colors in the nursery:

Modern, Contemporary, DIY, Makeover Nursery, Do It Yourself

In fact, it almost pulls all of the colors together!

Back to that giveaway… Petite Lemon is giving away a $50 credit to their entire store! Find fun and contemporary ideas for a kids or teen room. Makes a great gift.

******************************************************************************************

Giveaway: A $50 credit to Petite Lemon towards a personalized growth chart, alphabet poster or photo poster

To Enter: Leave a comment here with your plans for giving this season! (Could be a gift, time, resources, charity…)

For Additional Entries: Become a Facebook fan of Petite Lemon and/or Pepper Design Blog. Be sure to leave a separate comment for each additional entry.

Giveaway ends Friday, December 23 at midnight PST, winner will be chosen randomly and announced the following Monday. Good luck!

*****************************************************************************************

In other news, I’m honored that Goo Gone has made me the Gooru of the week! Come check it out over here. Goo Gone is one of those must-haves for messy projects and I’m a huge fan.

- posted on December 20, 2011 Filed Under: Crafty Solutions, DIY, Home, Liv's Nursery, Projects, Renovating Adventures, Sponsored Post, Tutorial Tagged With: Accessories, Blue, By Color, Crafty Solutions, Decorating, DIY, Fabric, Green, Home, Nursery, Patterns & Color, Red, Tutorial, Yellow

Office Makeover: New DIY Spoonflower Curtains

December 19, 2011 by Morgan

The guest bedroom portion of the office is full of unwrapped presents, tissue paper, empty Amazon boxes, raffia, wrapping paper, scissors, tape… gift boxes, gift bags, gift everything. But I cleared it out to snap a few pics because there are officially four new curtains in the space!

You might remember that I had initially attempted to hunt down store bought curtains or fabric (not-too-heavy because of the dark walls, not-too-airy so that they would still ‘ground’ the space) but none was to be found.

Then I decided to make my own design and my own fabric using Spoonflower. I designed a Suzani print in Illustrator and then pulled colors out of other spaces in the room – the turquoise in the new fabric bulletin boards, the browns in the grasscloth wallpaper and chocolate walls, and then a soft sage green to pull the two together. You can find the fabric here in Spoonflowers’ gallery (plus all of the different color variations I tried out).

It took so long to finally get the fabric because Spoonflower and I were playing send-the-swatch. They would send me three swatches and the colors would be all wrong, I’d adjust in photoshop and resubmit. Repeat that for about four more times and finally the ideal color showed up on my doorstep. Spoonflower has plenty of helpful color matching tools but really screen resolution can be so subjective – it’s hard to not end up with some crazy bright greens and marine blues when all you’re really looking for is subtle aqua. Spoonflower was great though, they even credited me for a crazy batch or two of samples (betcha can’t spot which ones below).

Remember this post? Who would have thought that I would have a complete change of heart just as I was clicking the ‘order now’ button and would end up choosing the lightest (color-wise) of the bunch?

Here’s the funny mock-ups I made in Photoshop to test out the different colors.

You might notice that I have just a plain white comforter on the bed now and not that pretty pin-tuck version (above) that I found at HomeGoods for a lot cheaper than the one that I love at West Elm — only problem was that it’s a king (the last size left)! and I tried to make it work (even considered cutting it and hemming it to a smaller size) but after whipping up my own version of the pin-tuck to cover a body pillow (leaning up against the headboard) I realized that I could make my own duvet cover for MUCH cheaper. That’s in the works.

So back to those curtains… the fabric from Spoonflower arrived! And I love it! To me it’s just perfect in the space. The sheen allows just enough light through and it matches so well with the dark brown walls, grasscloth, tan bedding and even wood furniture in the room.

Here’s a close up of how the light easily passes through the curtains to help brighten the dark walls.

After sewing up the curtains I love, love, love how they turned out.

But there is one small problem… I guessed (from the little swatch) that the new fabric would work swimmingly with the current headboard fabric. And I really guessed wrong on that one. :(

Here’s a close up of how the fabrics don’t play well together:

I guess maybe the headboard is too silvery grey with its cool undertone and the curtains are too warm with their bronze and tan colors.

SO the big decision is do I scrap the curtains for the headboard and put them in a different room (our dining room, perhaps?) or do I cover up my headboard (which I equally love!) in favor of the new curtains?

That’s going to be a tough one.

When it came to sewing the curtains I  made an easy pocket at the top for hanging.

Good thing Liv is such a solid sleeper at night. My sewing hours these days are somewhere between midnight and 2am. That’s probably Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in the background.

To make a quick pocket curtain out of fabric, I cut my fabric into four panels that were each the length of the curtain rod to floor + 5″ for top hem + 4″ for bottom hem. I pinned the hems into place (1″ for each length-wise side, 4″ for the bottom and then 1″ for the top) and then folded the top of the panel over to create a 4″ pocket (so that initial 1″ hem + new 4″ pocket is how I got my 5″ top hem).

Here’s a shot at one side plus the pinned pocket:

I then pressed those hems into place and pulled out the pins:

And then I sewed, sewed, sewed!

But here’s a tip that I’m sure you all know… and that I didn’t pick up on until three curtains in. To make a cleaner hem, fold your fabric once:

Press:

Fold a second time:

Press:

And sew the double fold. So much prettier!

To compliment all of those night shots of sewing ;), here’s a later-in-the-evening shot of the curtains where you can see the colors a bit better:

I love how my Spoonflower curtains turned out, but now we have to solve the problem of whether they’ll stay or go… or if the headboard gets an update.

Happy Monday! Just six days until Christmas :).

For more Office Makeover posts, check out: diy fabric bulletin board panels, handmade capiz pendant light, organizing the bookshelves, wall collage part 1, part 2, fabric bulletin board inspiration, (new) inspiration board, new lamps, wallpapering open shelves, finding the perfect credenza, new trim, dining table-to-desk, a new desk & bookshelves, installing remnant carpeting, grasscloth wallpaper, painting the office nook, finding carpet for the office, chocolate brown wall ideas, plastering progress,  inspiration for a diy desk, back in action!, desking hunting for under $300, bookcases under $300,inspirational rooms, room layout options, demo part 1 & demo part 2.

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- posted on December 19, 2011 Filed Under: Crafty Solutions, DIY, Home, Our Guestroom/Office, Projects, Renovating Adventures Tagged With: Sewing

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