NumberNineteen

A Room of My Own

One of my very favorite places in our new house is what I call my crafty-study room.  It houses all of my craft lovelies, my sewing goodies, my school materials, and basicly anything that makes my heart happy.  It also happens to be one of the only rooms that is already just about how I want it to be, so I'm going to share it with you.

First off is my little sewing space, with my new sewing/embroidery machine (sooo cool -- a subject for another post).  I just love having absolutely everything I need right there & being able to see my thread.  I only have my embroidery thread on the wall at the moment, but I'm planning on getting another rack for the regular sewing thread.

Beside the sewing table is a little bookshelf that holds my tiered basket of trims, glitter & crepe paper as well as vintage jars of buttons.  My inspiration boards hang above them, with my favorite quotes and poems, mementos from special events, small art pieces, and my number from the first 5K that I ran, to remind myself of what I can do.

A close up of my trims, just because I love them.

All of school binders & textbooks are below, within easy reach of my desk.  One of my classes this semester is 'Media for Adolescents', so you'll see a lot of young adult fiction on the shelf this spring.

On the other side of the desk is this little display case (in another life it was a medicine cabinet) with more mementos from special trips and memories.

Beside the cabinet, I have my Expedit bookcase, which is one of my favorite pieces of furniture, ever.  On top, I have my favorite vintage biscuit tins and other pretties including my wedding bouquet.  The cubbies hold all kinds of fun including my decorating and craft books, inspiration binders, collection of vintage children's books & primers, and a stack of vintage fabric.

When I get a block of time to putter around in here, I can be here for hours, creating and writing and researching and sewing.  I hope that you enjoyed my little tour.

DIY Library Book Container

I'm finally back!  After a crazy semester and a lot of soul searching as to whether I should keep up the blog.  When I started blogging, it was such a pleasure to discover other women my age who were interested in decorating and crafts, vintage and cooking, and all the little details that make life fun & warm.  Blogging has changed quite a bit and there is a lot of pressure to make your blog look perfect and your projects super creative and, for that matter, to be working on something at all times.  I'm not really up for that at this point.  However, I am up for continuing to share what I'm up to and to continue to connect with the amazing people that I've met & continue to meet!  Though, sometimes I wonder if you are still there...if ya are, could ya raise your hand in a comment, just so I know that you are still out there?

Having said that, I do have a project to share.  I actually finished this in the fall, but darned school got in the way of me blogging about it.  I saw this cute project on Pinterest:

(I'm sorry, I cannot find a link to the original creator, as my pinterest link says "Google".  If you know of the creator, please let me know & I will give appropriate credit.) We were always mixing up library books in our own books, so we definitely needed a special place for the library books.

Super cute, but I couldn't find one of those old magazine stands for less than $30 or $40.  Really???  But, walking through IKEA one day, I spied this:

$9.99. My little mind started going and thought "with a little paint and some lettering like she does, I might be able to work this out...."

What you need to do:

-take out the box pieces & spray paint the wood pieces whatever color you like.  Let the paint dry.

-print your desired text in a large font on a piece of paper & then rub colored chalk all over the back side of that paper.

-place the paper, chalk side down on the surface that you would like to letter & outline the letters with pencil (don't use a sharpie like I did at first -- it bleeds through -- whoops)

-pull off the paper & you will see the letter outlines in chalk.  Very carefully paint in the letters with craft paint & a small brush.  Let the paint dry. (for more detailed instructions on lettering, check out this link)

-put together the box as per IKEA's instructions & you have a box for your library books:

It's worked out really well -- we put all of our library books in the box, only keeping out the one that we are currently reading.  Before I go to the library, I ask her which ones she is done with and return those.  No more misplaced books!