nav bar

about metutorialsmy housecontact me

Monday, October 29, 2012

{before and after} master bedroom

My master bedroom has been on my home "to do" list for quite some time... 3 years later, I got to it! At the end of the summer during my amazing 3 week break from grad school, the hubs and I finally painted the bedroom.  Unfortunately by before picture wasn't taken until I had already sampled by possible colors on the far wall...
This room is basically in it's original state from the time we bought it, the curtains were even the previous owners'.  I didn't mind the wall color but I really didn't like how the curtains matched the walls.  Then of course we already had dark furniture, making a very brown on brown room.  The room also only gets decent natural light due to large shady trees on this corner of the house.  I also didn't like that the small portion of wall on the tray ceiling was never painted to match the wall color.


Dark on dark on dark.

I do love my West Elm bedding though - it is staying!




And here's the after...
Paint color is SW Canvas Tan


I definitely need to add so art or pictures above our bed.  You may also notice that I have several lamps in the room, I'm in the process of weeding some of them out.  What I would really love to do is find two matching ones {preferably for a very cheap price, like from a thrift store} and spray paint them matching colors to have one on each nightstand.  Then I would definitely move the crystal one on the dresser and most likely the wooden base one would find a home in a different room as well.

Branch jewelry holder from Urban Outfitters.

 Different pillow options I've tried...
Red pillow is from Ikea.

Mustard pillow is a matching Euro sham to my other West Elm duvet cover.

 I'd like to get some shelving for between the windows and move our wedding signed picture mat somewhere else.  The white curtains are from Ikea and the bamboo shades are from Lowe's. 


This antique aqua wire basket was sitting empty in my craft room, so I decided it should relocate to hold Caleb's books.
A Pottery Barn basket I got on clearance to hold extra linens.


The black nightstands came from Rivermarket Antiques in downtown KC, MO.  They were a matching set for $45 dollars and they were a dark stained wood and in rough shape.  I sanded them down and spray painted them in flat black.  I like the detailing of the wood that gives them a feminine look.


The black nightstands compliment the small black antique dresser that was hidden in my closet.  It is way to cute to hide in a closet so I brought it out into the room.  Its holding a deer antler, a manzanita branch, some old books and an old lamp that was thrifted and spray painted in a brass color.  I had every intention of actually using the lamp and finding a shade, but for now I'm OK with the unfinished look of it.


This is the current set up on my chest of drawers at the moment.  Currently displaying a fake fern and some art, made by me.  I'm not terribly impressed with my lyrics on canvas art {its the song "The Way You Look Tonight" minus one verse} so I may eventually go over the letters with a paint pen to make them look a little more chunky.  I was inspired by one I had seen that had very chunky lettering but it was also on a much bigger canvas, so I may have to consider a larger canvas if it doesn't turn out how I want after tweaking it.

Hope you've enjoyed the before and after! {is it creepy that on Wheel of Fortune right now the category is "Before & After"?!?}  :)

Monday, October 1, 2012

Autumn prints {download}

Lately I've done lots of playing around with new fonts and graphics in Photoshop.  I love finding interesting and unique fonts for free from all over the wonderful interweb!  I've also found some great turtorials for Photoshop.  My favorite thus far, is one that shows you how to make your font look like letterpress.  You can find that video tutorial here.
Then I came across this print on Etsy...
 I really liked it, but it was $10, and I was pretty sure I could make something similar {hers is more snazzy than what I made, and comes already beautifully printed, so I would encourage the purchase of hers if you aren't into printing them yourself}.  I like the idea of switching out cute prints like this one throughout the year.  I recently purchased several Ikea frames during our trip to Colorado, and I still need to fill some of them.  Instead of using photos in all my frames, I wanted to integrate some art as well... so I thought this could be a really cheap way to achieve that!

So I started messing around with graphics in Photoshop and I also downloaded some neat fonts.  When searching for fonts, I searched "free carnival font," which gave me lots of options to choose from.  The one I used in this sign is called "JF Ringmaster". I already had some digital frames that I had purchased from Etsy in the past.  Here's what I came up with...
8x10 Boo sign

Then I decided to try another Halloween saying... this font is called "Monbijoux".
8x10 Spooky sign

And I tried one with a Thanksgiving theme... in this one I use book covers textures as the background.  I found these textures for free on this website.  This font is called "A font with serifs". I did however, purchase the fall leaves, along with some other fall graphics, on Etsy for $5.00 here.
8x10 Give Thanks sign

 I really enjoyed making all of these and in the future I might expand to some other holidays or bible verses.  I also think a set of several signs could be a great budget friendly gift! I've uploaded these three signs to google docs and I have the links to download them below if you'd like to display them in your own home. Enjoy!


DOWNLOAD HERE
Boo sign

Spooky sign

Give Thanks sign - this file is large so it won't show a preview, but you should still be able to download it.