Just Add Glitter

I am insane. Earlier in July I was invited to a joint baby shower for two of my pregnant coworkers. I decided it would be no big deal to throw together two baby quilts for them. :|

I started by asking each of them what colours they have in their nurseries

One of them knows she is having a boy, and her colours are yellow, grey, with pops of bright green

The other momma has not found out the gender, but her colours are turquoise, yellow, and brown

I spent some time cutting 60 degree triangles and this was the result:

Now time to place all of the triangles!

So after a couple late late nights and some stress I managed to get both quits done JUST in time!

My 4th quilt was something I kind of created as I went. I found these metallic fabrics at Michaels when I was there looking for something else not too long ago. They were on sale for approximately $2 per piece, so I couldn't leave them there! 

I recently bought some new rulers from amazon, and I was very eager to try out my 60 degree triangle ruler. 

Once I had all of my 60 degree triangles cut I started laying them out. I wasn`t sure if I would have enough fabric for a whole quilt, or if I would need to buy some more fabric to add in. 

Lucky for me it worked out perfectly for a throw blanket sized quilt! (around 45 inches x 60 Inches)

I then stacked all of the triangles in rows and clipped them together

As I was sewing the rows my dog Chloe ws again VERY helpful

Once I finished the quilt top I had to pick out a backing and binding fabric

Then it was time to move on to my most hated part...... pin basting :(

Then I finished things off with quilting and binding

I am so happy with how this one turned out!

It has already been enjoyed by one of my best friends

.... and of course Chloe!

The My third quilt was another simple patchwork square quilt. My sister has been going through some rough times and she lives pretty far away from me, so I wanted to send her something that would bring her comfort. I picked out three patterns that I loved and thought she would love too, then I found three coordinating solids. 

I then laid out my squares and decided on a pattern.

The top finished:

I then picked a back fabric, and a coordinating solid for the binding. 

And here is the finished product:

I bought WAY too much fabric for my first quilt (see below) so I started messing around with the extra and came up with a design I really like!

The top of the quilt is made up entirely of half-square triangles, which was much more time consuming than the squares in my first quilt. 

Here is how it started:

Here is my dog Chloe “helping”

Near the end I thought it might be cool to add in one turquoise zig zag and see how it looked:

I hadn’t sewn the bottom strips together yet, but I realized I didn’t like the direction of the middle zig zags. I was able to just flip the turquoise one, but I had to rip the stitches on the top section so that I could flip that one. 

Here is what it looked like once I flipped it and sewed it all together:

Here is the final quilt top (I added more grey to the top and bottom):

Here is the fabric I picked for the backing and for the binding:

Here is how it turned out!

For this quilt I attempted hand binding and I ended up loving how clean this ended up looking. 

I promise I am 29, not 75. 

Seriously, I am really enjoying quilting and I find it kind of relaxing!

My first project was a baby/crib quilt for my best friend’s baby’s first birthday. I love that little guy and I wanted to do something special for him. 

Here is the fabric I chose:

My original plan was to do a patchwork front, with a striped back.

That was my planned layout, which is not bad, but I later decided to ditch the yellow and turquoise. 

Here was the front and back after I finished sewing. (Please note how horribly crooked some of this is.....)

At this point I realized that many of the vertical lines within the patchwork side did not line up and were not straight. I also realized that there was no way I would be able to line up the backing’s horizontal lines with the horizontal lines of the front. I also didn’t know that I should have had an excess of about 4 inches all around the back so that you can pin baste properly. This is when I decided to scrap both sides (I saved the fabric to use for future projects though) and I restarted. 

This was my second attempt at the top. I felt much better about the lines this time and I liked the new layout! 

A friend of mine who is a more experienced quilter told me that she often uses flannel for the backing on baby quilts because it makes it a little warmer. I decided that this would be the best plan also because then I didn’t have to worry about lining anything up. 

Here is me lining up the binding fabric to make sure I have enough:

And here is the front, back, and the label after I finished:

For this quilt I attempted machine binding because I thought it would be faster, but I have since decided hand binding is the way to go. 

Ever since my winter wreath came down I have felt like my door is so sad and boring looking. So I started searching around pintrest and youtube for some ideas. This is the video that caught my interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSRRXLn6pvw

After watching the video I headed to Michael’s to see what they had for flowers. Turns out the fake flowers were on sale! (buy one get one free)

I bought 8 stems of the peachy/salmon coloured tulips, 2 stems of the white ones, 4 rolls of white ribbon (looking back, I probably should have gotten a wider ribbon, and I wouldn’t have needed so much), a box of floral picks, twine for hanging, and the foam wreath form. 

I followed the steps of the video pretty closely. I wrapped the wreath form in ribbon and used the floral picks to hold things in place. I trimmed the flower stems to shorter lengths and tucked each small bunch into the folds of the ribbon. I went in a pattern of doing 3 salmon bunches in one row, then 2 salmons and a white in the next row.

I continued this pattern until I was done. I then stepped back and made sure everything looked even, if any spots looked bare I moved a few bunches around. 

*TIP* when tucking the stems into the ribbon I pushed downwards a bit so that the stems would poke right into the foam and help secure them.

Once all the flowers were in I slipped some of the twine through the top of the ribbon and secured it with another floral pick. 

Here is the final product:

And here it is on my front door:

Oh of my friends from work has recently started some furniture face lifts and I thought I would feature them here too.

So this all started when she came to work one day and stated that she had found some old furniture in an alley by her house....... my first thought was OMG NO! BEDBUGS!

To be fair, Julie did keep the furniture in her garage for a while and gave it a thorough once over. She also did all of the painting and other work in the garage, so she is probably safe. 

Here is the before:

She painted with a chalk paint, which she said requires no sanding, stripping, or priming. (awesome)

She also decided to change out the hardware on the drawer. This posed a bit of a challenge because the original handle had two screws and the new one only has one. The lovely fellow at Home Depot suggested a paintable, sandable wood filler. 

Julie spent several days working on this piece and I think it turned out really well!

Here is the final product:

Please note the dresser sitting in the background as that guy is up next!

Here is the final product in her bedroom:

Tuesday night I decided to do some baking to bring to work with me the next day. (My coworkers are basically vultures and will eat anything you bring in within 30 seconds)

Stacey and I have previously made cookies that called for this special flaked salt on top called malden salt. 

The cookies turned out so delicious and I loved the malden salt so much, so I decided to just add malden salt to another recipe. 

This was the recipe I used: https://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/30357/old-fashioned-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies/

The cookie dough is very fluffy and light because you use an electric mixer all the way up until you add the chocolate chips.

I followed the recipe very closely up until the end when I just sprinkled the malden salt on top before baking. 

I did make one attempt at making a nutella stuffed cookie, as Stacey and I saw another recipe that did this. Turns out this recipe was a bit too fluffy for this and I had to make the worlds hugest cookie ever to keep the nutella inside. 

Last Sunday I had a really fun day with one of my best pals (you can follow her loveliness here: http://sdvik.tumblr.com/). 

We started out with a little shopping and lunch at the cafe in Nordstrom which was pretty delish.

We then headed downtown to pick up a pretty significant haul of macarons. (our favourite treat)

We first went to our favourite place which is Yann Haute Patisserie (http://yannboutique.com/) they have the most amazing flavours and the perfect texture. Here are our Yann’s macarons:

The purple ones with the beige insides are peanut butter and jelly. SO GOOD. 

After Yann’s we went to a newer place here in Calgary called Ollia (http://www.byollia.com/). 

Stacey went buck wild here and even got some of their weirder options like blue cheese and pear, and balsamic vinegar and fig.I opted for just two: white peach and something and maple bacon. 

The peach one was delicious, but the bacon one was AWFUL. It tasted like cream cheese and huge pieces of bacon mashed in sugar. It was too weird. 

The one strange thing we noticed about the Ollia macarons is that they compressed in those tubes pretty badly and all got a little smushed. Yann’s is still the absolute reigning champion of macarons!

After our macaron adventure we headed home to relax and watch some sort of trashy reality television show. We decided on RuPaul’s Drag Race, which is one of my favourite shows. Stacey is trying to catch up now so I am re-watching all the older seasons with her. We are currently on season 4. 

I LOVE Sharon Needles and Chad Michaels so much!

We then decided to attempt some baking! We settled on making some soft pretzels. This is the recipe that we used: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/12/25/30-minute-whole-wheat-pretzels/

We did mostly regular ones with coarse salt, but we did a few with cinnamon sugar and some with a garlic spice mix.

Overall, these turned out pretty well, but next time we will try a different recipe and see if we like it better. 

So this was our delightful Sunday! 

After I got those chevrons up on the wall the other side of my room looked even more bare! I had to come up with something to balance it out without making my room look too busy. I went back to the ol’ idea machine known as pintrest for inspiration and I found three ideas that I liked and decided to mash them into one!

I started by purchasing two canvases at Michael’s, one smaller than the other, but with one dimension that is exactly the same so they can be lined up. I then bought all the letters I would need to spell out the phrase. 

I then used a pale grey chalk paint to cover both canvases and all the letters.

Next step was to glitterfy the larger letters (I used glitter mod podge and the same silver glitter from my mirror)

While I waited for those letters to fully dry I started on the smaller canvas:

I used various sizes of foam circle stamps purchased from Michael’s for the polka dots. I started with white and did a wide variety of sizes in white, then I did my medium grey dots and I still used a variety of sizes of stamps, just not the largest one that I had used for the white. I then did metallic silver using again all but the largest and second largest. Lastly I added a few yellow using just the smallest and the second smallest foam stampers. 

Once all the letters were dry I glued them to the canvas and allowed the glue to dry. After everything was done drying and setting I had my finished products, but I couldn't decide on the orientation!

After consultation with several friends and my mom I decided on having the dots on the left. This is how they look on my wall:

First I have to say that for the past 6-8 months I have been flip-flopping trying to decide what to do with the large bare walls in my bedroom on either side of my bed. Then about a month ago I came across a pin for a project I knew I had to attempt!

The pin led me to this blog post with very detailed instructions: http://blog.sparkliving.com/2013/06/20/diy-chevron-wall-art-as-seen-at-j-crew/

The only note I would add to this is an exacto knife is total garbage when trying to cut the balsa wood against the grain. The first attempt I basically just hacked the crap out of the wood. I later discovered that the exacto knife is fantastic for the long cuts along the grain, but I ended up using just a large kitchen knife to make the cuts against the grain and the diagonal cuts. 

This is the brand and exact dimensions of the Balsa I used:

I cut each board into 6 - 6 inch pieces, each of these was cut lengthwise into 4 - 1 inch wide pieces. I cut diagonally on the end of each of these 6 x 1 inch pieces using the guide on my self-healing mat. (Each board yields 24 pieces)

I then started the painting process, which I found kind of relaxing. Here are the paint colours I used: (All from Michael’s)

You can use any colours and paint texture that you like. I personally like a lot of vibrant colour, neons, metallics, and some sparkle (of course). 

Here is some of the pieces drying: 

Once the pieces started drying I started laying them out and planning how I was going to place them. 

The original blog post had them in several different lengths and not really symmetrical on the wall. I am more of a fan of symmetry so I made a few different lengths, but kept it pretty even. I did see that the original poster also made them varying depths from the wall by stacking up additional wood behind some pieces. I decided against this because I am putting mine on a side wall in my bedroom and I think some of the depth is lost when you are sing it from the angle when you come into my room. 

Here is the final project up on my wall! 

And here is a photo to show more of the room:

After the success I had with the mirrors I decided to graduate to small furniture. I found these very inexpensive bedside tables at Ikea. I actually thought they were going to be made out of wood when I bought them. (We just grabbed them from the warehouse area without looking at one set up)

http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/80227014/

I was planning on painting the table and then drilling a hole for a drawer pull; plans changed once I discovered it was a flimsy painted metal. I ended up using the same spray paint that I used for the yellow mirror to spray the two tables yellow. I got creative with the drawer pulls and used a super strong glue that I found at Michael’s which is supposed to bond almost anything. 

The knobs I found at Lowe’s I believe? Maybe Home Depot.....

Anyway, Here is the finished product:

Last July I bought my very first place. It was the best feeling ever to be fully independent and not giving all of my money to some stranger to pay their mortgage. I feel like I am almost a real grown up now!

I wanted to make sure my condo was going to look like it belonged to me, so I started searching around pintrest and brainstorming some easy DIYs. 

The first project was just painting and UNG DRILL mirror from Ikea. If you are not familiar with these guys, here is a photo from the website:

If you would like to purchase one of these for yourself they can be found here: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/40213759/

I spray painted the first mirror yellow.

And this is what it looks like in my photo wall where I hung it:

I was really happy with how that mirror turned out, so I got more ambitious and decided to cover my second one entirely in glitter. (I chose the name of my blog for a reason!) I am sure there must be an easier way to do this than the way that I chose, but it worked. I used the sparkly mod podge and silver glitter, both purchased at Michael’s.The tricky part for this process was getting the mod podge into the little cracks and crevices using the foam brush I was using. It took a lot of time, patience, and multiple coats. 

After the mod podge dried for a day or so I sprayed it with the mod podge brand acrylic sealer so that it would not be shedding glitter endlessly.

This is the finished project hanging in my bedroom: