Hello friends! I hope all has been well with you! I know, I haven’t done a DIY post in an alarmingly long period of time. And I wish I had something super impressive to share with you. Like telling you that I’ve spent all this time building a house with my bare hands or something. Well, no. But if you want a quick way to jazz up an otherwise boring vase..keep reading!

I’m sure you’re all familiar with washi tape. And while I’ve scrolled through hundreds of washi tape tutorials on Pinterest, I’ve never really felt compelled to experiment with it.

That is, until I found myself wanting to decorate my new day planner (would you have guessed I went with the glittery gold option? probably..). Anyways, it has lots of sections and I wanted to add little tabs to be able to flip to them easily. Enter the classiest looking washi tape ever! And the tabs have worked perfectly! But there are only so many tabs you can add to a planner before the whole idea becomes counterproductive. Basically, I figured I should find some more uses for the stuff.

And as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing better to experiment with than the ever versatile cylindrical dollar store vase (also seen here and here).

All you need besides the tape and your decorative vessel of choice is a pair of scissors. And like 5 minutes. Literally.

I’m not even sure that this warrants a ‘tutorial’ as I’m sure you’ve already guessed how it came together..but humor me, won’t you?

Plus I really enjoyed taking pictures of the tape.

I generally struggle with very basic things like straight lines and even spacing,  so it was easiest for me to start by aligning the tape along the rim of the vase.

Continue along the rim until you’ve gone all the way around the vase. My favorite thing about washi tape is that you can un-tape and reposition it a few times without losing stickiness. So, if you go all the way around just to realize that the stripe is totally crooked, just peel off and try again!

Luckily, my first attempt at stripe #1 was not totally crooked. Likely due to the fact that I was taping along the rim.

Continue taping around the vase until desired pattern is achieved! I would recommend starting around the same point with each row. The tape isn’t 100% opaque and you can kind of see a little overlap where the edges meet. I’m just thinking that if all of the seams are on the same side, you can angle the vase in a way to make these less visible.

And once you have achieved your desired stripe pattern, that’s it! No drying time or anything required! Fill with water, flowers (or whatever else you’d like!) and enjoy!

What do you guys think? Not a bad way to spend 5-10 minutes, huh? As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this being paper tape and all, it’s probably not dishwasher safe or extremely durable..but it peels off without any residue so you can switch up the look as often as you’d like!

I’d love to hear from you! What are your favorite uses for washi tape?

~ Lusine

Hi friends! I hope you are all enjoying the spring-like weather we’ve been having over the last few days! Having returned from Ireland last week (pictures coming soon!), I was pleasantly surprised to come back to a mostly snow-less city!

And the sight of budding trees has got me all kinds of excited for spring! I have a whole bunch of projects around the house coming up. Oh, and I’ve taken up gardening. As of last weekend. Depending on how that goes, you may see some updates on the blog!

Anyways! Ever attempted a somewhat ambitious DIY canvas project you came across on Pinterest and been less than thrilled with the result? And wished there was some way you could salvage the canvas? Well, I had a few laying that I had attempted to paint over, without much luck.

On an unrelated trip to the fabric store, I came across this adorable Parisian inspired fabric! And since I remain obsessed with Paris, or anything French for that matter, I bought two yards with no project in mind.

And was dying to use it! Luckily, I thought of this before making more throw pillows. Not that there is anything wrong with more throw pillows.

But this was wayyyy faster and didn’t require me breaking out the sewing machine! All you need is some fabric, a ruler and pencil (to trace the outline of your canvas onto the fabric), scissors, and a glue gun (staple gun would work too!)

Just to note – I did zero measuring when tracing/cutting the fabric. I would estimate you  want your fabric to be about an inch larger than the canvas on each side (depending on the thickness of your canvas), but I was too impatient to get into all that. Basically, you need enough fabric around it to reach the back of the canvas.

Start by placing your canvas on the fabric and use the pencil and ruler to trace an outline about 1 inch outside of canvas border. Now, you can iron your fabric prior to this step, or once it is cut. For me, it was easier to iron the little piece for fabric after it had been cut. However, ironing the fabric prior to cutting will probably give you a more accurate measurement, and reduce wasted fabric.

Once fabric is cut & ironed, you can begin gluing it into place. If your fabric has a pattern which requires a specific alignment (i.e. stripes, chevron), use the ruler to ensure it is aligned properly. Once it is aligned properly, you may want to draw a line on the fabric along the edge of the canvas that you can use to ensure it stays aligned throughout the gluing process.  Use the glue gun to apply a small amount of glue to the center of the bottom edge of the canvas.

Pull fabric fabric over the edge of the canvas and glue into place. Continue applying glue along the edge of the canvas every 2 inches or so and gluing fabric into place, and stop when you are about an inch or from the corners.

Now, begin gluing the edge opposite to the one you just completed. Be sure to pull the fabric super tight over the canvas when gluing the second side! And leave a little room around the corners again.

You can then glue the remaining sides of the canvas, pulling the fabric tight as you go.

Now..for the corners. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very scientific way of describing what I did here. So I thought a picture might do the trick. Basically, I took the loose fabric at the corner and made a fold that would allow one edge of the fabric to remain flat against the canvas, glued it in place. And then I did the same for the other edge with the remaining loose fabric. Does that make sense? No?  Here is the picture..

This is what the back of my canvas looked like at the end. Not exactly a work of art, but I don’t think anyone is going to remove the canvas from the wall to examine the back of it..  You can always trim the edges with some scissors to clean it up if it bothers you!

I have to say, I do love the finished product! Well, I love the fabric..and any excuse to display it is a plus in my book!

And obviously it made sense to display it with my Eiffel tower souvenir on this (I like to think) French inspired end table. I made 3 in total and was planning on hanging them in the bedroom, but I guess this is a pretty good spot until I get around to that!

I’d love to hear from you! Have you found any ways to repurpose an old canvas? Harbor an obsession with Paris and want to talk about how magical of a city it is? I’m always down for that convo :).

– Lusine

Anyone else out there really craving a pop of brightness? I’m soooo done with wearing dark dreary colors, with matching dark dreary manicures. I’m ready for pastel and floral everything. Like immediately. I just keep telling myself that if I visualize spring, it will come. If you could be so kind as to visualize with me, maybe it will come sooner.

Even if that’s not as easily said as done in the outside world, that doesn’t stop me from making it feel as much like spring in my own home as possible. In addition to stocking up on spring scented hand soap and candles, it doesn’t hurt to have some fresh flowers around. And something pretty and pastel to display them in.

And here you probably thought I had exhausted the possibilities of decorating wine bottles in my previous posts. But don’t worry, we’ve only just scratched the surface. I’ll also note that the wine bottle posts continue to be some of the most popular on the blog…so clearly there is a demand there. Because who doesn’t love to recycle?

Anyways, this was actually way easier and less time consuming than I originally thought, and there is a good chance you already have all of the supplies on hand.

Supplies:

• Wine bottles (could be any type of glass bottle or container, really. Go nuts!)
• White spraypaint
• Craft paint in white and another color (or multiple colors, in my case!)
• Paper plate or something that can be used to mix colors, and something to mix with (I used  popsicle sticks)
• Small-ish paintbrush (I used the smallest one I saw at Home Depot,  .97 each).

Start by removing the labels and foil from your wine bottles (or glass container of choice) along with any glue (this is my go-to for removing those pesky labels). Once the bottles are clean and dry, give them a couple of coats of white spraypaint and let dry.

Next, squeeze a dollop of the paint color (not the white) that you plan to use for your ombre onto your paper plate. You don’t want to use a ton, since more paint means more white to dilute it, and this project doesn’t require a ton of paint so you’ll be wasting a bunch.

Using just the color, paint a ring of color along the base of your bottle. Try to make it as straight as possible, but it’s doesn’t have to be perfect.

Squirt a bit of white paint into your color and mix. I found it best to add small amounts of white and mix until you arrive at a color that is a tiny bit lighter than the last.  At this point, I’d also like to apologize for the quality of the next few pictures. My hands were covered in paint, and the sun was going down so I didn’t have the luxury of fiddling around with camera settings. I’m sure you’ll get the idea.

Once you have a color that looks a couple shades lighter than your last, paint another ring slightly overlapping the one you just made.

Continue adding white to your color and adding rings of paint onto the bottle until the shade of color is barely tinted.

After I finished with all 3, I went back and blended the edge of the ombre using white paint on a foam pouncer.

And that’s all folks! Allow to dry fully, and then place around your home to inject an ounce of spring where you can.

Better yet, fill them with fresh flowers and pretend that there isn’t 10 feet of snow on the ground.

I’d love to hear from you! What are you doing to get through the last few days of winter? PS – this is the last week of February!! Realizing that totally made my day.

Sharing at Work It Wednesday & That DIY Party

If you happen to travel outside of the country from time to time, I’m sure you can can relate to the situation here. You’re at the airport..heading home..and you still have a handful of Euro, Icelandic Krona, or whatever currency used in your destination of choice. Not enough to buy anything substantial or convert back into your native currency, so you’re stuck trying to find something useful at one of those airport shops. I found myself in this exact predicament when we were leaving Paris a few of months ago.

Postcards seem to be a consistently inexpensive, even at airports! And although these are more like prints than postcards, they were something like 1 Euro a piece. And can be a great base for some DIY glitter art!

And although you can certainly frame tastefully selected airport postcards and prints into a relatively chic art display, you can also take it up a notch with a handful of glitter.

Because I would really hate to waste an opportunity to use my glitter set. And while I used prints, this would be doable with any postcard! You’ll also need a glue pen. Also, don’t forget to cover your surface with kraft paper or something of the sort. I like to lay a large sheet of paper down to cover the entire surface and use a smaller piece directly under the glittering area that can be easily folded to pour excess glitter back into the jar.

This couldn’t be any easier! Simply pick an aspect of the postcard you’d like to accentuate (the Eiffel tower seemed like an obvious choice) and fill in the shape with the glue pen.

Sprinkle liberally with glitter!  Let it set for a couple of minutes, and then tap off the excess.

Depending on the size of the shape you wish to accentuate, you could also outline it in glitter rather than filling it in completely.

Which allows you to keep some of the detail within. In addition to the Eiffel tower, I added some sparkle to the fountains and lanterns in this print.

While I’m at it, why not add some sparkle to Pont Alexandre III (although no amount of glitter can ever do justice to how magical this bridge looks when it’s all lit up at night..sigh).

I added some bits of glitter to the water too, to try to recreate how the Seine shimmers at night (again, impossible to recreate..you just need to go there).

And some shimmering trees were in order on the last print. Seriously though, any project that allows me to use multiple shades of glitter in a non-tacky way are alright in my book.

Once you’re satisfied with the level of glitter on your postcard/print, simply let it dry for a couple of hours and lightly brush off excess glitter with a small paintbrush. I decided to frame the prints in  simple white document frames from Ikea, but removed the plastic frame cover (I felt it detracted from the glitter a bit).

I’d love to hear what you think! Ever been to this magical city? Or attempted a souvenir DIY?

– Lusine

With glitter season (as in Christmas) right around the corner, I thought it was about time to break out my trusty glitter set  for some festive, seasonal decorating! And as you might remember from last year, I love me some glittered pumpkins. I was originally planning to something similar to the pumpkins from last year, possibly adding some glitter polka dots but discovered that my Mod Podge had dried out.

Not willing to put off glittering for another day following a trip to the craft store, I tried to think of a plan B. I found this glue pen around the house, and decided to see how it worked.

For the first pumpkin, I decided to try out a swirly pattern in what I thought was a rosy gold glitter, but actually looked more like an amethyst out of the bottle. I probably should have planned the pattern out a bit better, but I began by drawing swirls from the stem down using the glue pen.

And sprinkled liberally with glitter! I just love sprinkling things liberally with glitter! It’s always so pretty! Some people think messy, I think magical.

Anyways! When the swirl pattern started to prove somewhat challenging to continue in a uniform fashion all across the pumpkin, I decided to go with a less-likely-to-go-wrong polka dot pattern for pumpkin #2. As expected, this moved a lot quicker than my swirly pumpkin.

After the the glue has dried (I left mine on the front porch for a couple of hours), you can remove the excess by lightly tapping he pumpkin and wiping the glitter out of the creases with a paper towel.

I paired them with a third pumpkin which I had decorated using rhinestones and a glue gun (sometimes referred to as bedazzling). I did attempt some pictures of this process, but since the bedazzling took place later in the evening, none are of blog-worthy quality. I’m really trying improve my nighttime photography skills, but am not so pleased with most of the results thus far. Please feel free to share any tips!

Well, photography rant aside, I’d love to hear what you think of the pumpkins! Did you decorate any this year?