Some more IIDA Fashion Show Inspiration!

One of my teammates had taken pictures of the other entries in the IIDA Fashion Show. We were not allowed to take pictures during the actual event and I've been waiting for them to be posted on the IIDA website but they are taking forever! As I said before each team was randomly paired with a product manufacturer and had to make a couture fashion item using those products and keep with a certain color scheme. All money raised goes to scholarships!

So here are the behind the scene shots of the other gals in the show:

Tile and Rubber Base

A Halloween Quickie

I know I said I'd be light on projects but I can't help myself. I'd rather be painting and making a mess in the garage than packing. I can't stand packing! Especially since now I have to pack for not only myself but for the 2 boys, our dog and cat (and occasionally the Hubs but don't tell him I told you that.)

Anyway- Happy Halloween!! I thought I could take down my Fall Wreath for one night to celebrate the evening. I saw this idea on Curbly and knew I had everything on hand to make it. 

Cutting Up- DIY Style

Did everyone have a fantastic weekend? We had some rain and hail here in OK but luckily it didn't last long and we were able to get outside and enjoy the Fall weather. And my LSU Tigers won so it was good times all around.

I was also able to get some rare wood shop time in. If you remember I posted a few weeks ago about scoring some scrap wood from the shop. 

Scrap-Tastic!

This past weekend I finally made it back to the wood shop after a several week absence. It's been tough getting over there with a new baby and their new limited hours. But this weekend the Hubs volunteered his time and I took advantage.

I mainly went to continue work on our dining table. It's been slow going but I finally made some visible progress. If you follow me on Twitter you would have seen this picture:

That my friends would be a nails removed, sanded down, glued up panel basketball flooring that will soon be one section of my future dining table! Yay!!

While I was at the wood shop I noticed in the scrap pile some pieces of wood that were of interest to me.

I liked how the wood is already cut down into strips and thought I could glue it up in a similar fashion to my dining table top. My specific idea is to make a cutting board. Similar to this one:

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And while I was digging through the scrap pile I decided that there is no such thing as scrap wood. You can pretty much always use leftover pieces to create something. So here's a little round up of fun scrap wood projects:

Make some fun and unique napkin rings:

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IPhone Holder anyone?

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The ever popular and easy Tea Light Holder:

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And you may need to save up your scraps for a while or score a really big haul for this one but wow- this bed would be cool to make!

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Again can we say "Wow!"? This would be one awesome dining table.

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And this is an interesting application for scrap wood. Here is it used on a desk front but it would be cool on a wall as well!

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So now that your wheels are turning with all the cool stuff you can do with leftover wood let's get scrappin!!

DIY Play Kitchen

There are lots of fantastic play kitchens floating around Blog-land these days. I never thought I'd have to make one since I have a son and all. I thought if I'd have to make anything it would be a tool bench.


But lately the Con-Man has been "cooking" a lot. We'll be sitting outside and he takes his shovel, fills it with rocks and tells me he's cooking hot dogs. Then proceeds to give me some and tells me to eat it. And he has been really interesting in my cooking dinner and such.


I'm glad he's using his imagination but how can I deny my poor little guy a play kitchen? And since his birthday is coming up I thought it would make a great present.


So for the past few weeks I've been keeping my eyes peeling for a piece of furniture I can use for a play kitchen. It's not like there are tons of "boy friendly"play kitchens on the market; especially where we live. About a week ago I finally found what I was looking for!

It has several shelves and wheels for easy mobility. I painted it white with a primer/ paint combo and thought about leaving it that color. I didn't want anything to girly looking. But in the end I went with some leftover blue spray paint I had on hand.

I added a back to it by cutting down some extra plywood I had lying around. Something heavier and smoother like MDF might have been better but the plywood works well.

I used cup hooks to hang the utensils and leftover handles I bought from Ikea for Con-Man's bed for the towel bars. 

I bought some inexpensive towels from Wal-Mart and used Stitch Witchery to add the fabric; the same fabric I used to recover the pot holder that came with the play kitchen set.  

Before

We gave it to him early and he has been excited about it. He's been cooking me hot dogs and hamburgers all day!

A few more detail shots:

And one more before and after:

I'd still like to find some baskets to put the play food and plates in- attempt to keep everything organized. But for now he's having fun with it. 

In fact when I tried setting up his pots and pans for the pictures he waved me away telling my I was messing everything up. Oops- guess I should mess around in his kitchen anymore!!

Modern Wood Veneer Wall Art

You know those projects that you think might be pretty easy to do? So you go for it thinking you'll be done with it at the end of the day, have an awesome project to show off on your blog, only to have it be more difficult than you thought and anything that could go wrong does?


Ya, that was me yesterday. Hence this very late almost didn't happen because I was going to throw this project out the window blog post. Why am I sharing this with you? Well I while back I made a commitment to share more of the truth of what happens with some of my projects; they don't all go smoothly.


So here we go; with some persistence I was successful with this project in particular!!

I had ordered some wood veneer wall covering samples a while back; thinking I could do something pretty cool with them with my Silhouette. 

If you want to try and order some of your own I ordered mine from www.koroseal.com. They came quickly and were free, I just had to fill out an order form. An excited Rep may call you about your upcoming "project" your choosing samples for- I just thanked her and told her we were still deciding and would let her know....


After I received my sample inspiration struck. Last week I was talking about Mid Century furniture designers; and how I wish I could own some fabulous pieces. Since I don't see myself purchasing any in the near future I thought some miniature versions would suffice in the meantime.


I downloaded images of a few of my favorite Eames chairs:

Then resized and cut them out them in Photoshop so I could import them into the Silhouette program.

After importing into Silhouette I used the "Trace" Tool cut out the shape. Otherwise the machine was only recognizing a square instead of the chair image I wanted. Then I set my print settings to cut the veneer. This took some trial and error to get the right cut depth and speed as you can see:

I wasted two sheets of my veneer with cutting problems which really irritated me. This was probably more of a user error than a Silhouette issue though.

Finally I found the right cut settings. I discovered that using the Card Stock thickness option, a slow cut speed of 3, and setting the depth of the needle to 9, and choosing the double cut option worked best.

Finally success!! It popped out pretty easily but I had to use a nail file to sand down a few of the edges that didn't cut perfectly.

Next for my wood panel I used a piece of scrap pine board I cut down to size, then sanded and painted white.

I used all purpose Gorilla Glue to adhere my veneer chair to the wood panel. I set a book on top to hold the veneer chair down. 

I thought I had used hardly any glue, but when I lift my book up later I discovered that glue had seeped out everywhere! My panel was ruined! Ugh I was so upset. I didn't want to start all over cutting and painting a whole new piece of wood. And I didn't want to waste even more veneer.

Instead I was lucky enough to be able to peel the veneer off the painted wood. Thank goodness!! See where the glue had seeped out? What a mess!

SInce the veneer came off cleanly I flipped my wood panel over and tried again. This time I barely used any glue at all. 

I was hoping to have a whole Eames Veneer Chair Collection to show you today but after all that trial and error I'm glad to have one for now. I like the way it came out. You could even do different color paint for the background depending on the look your going for.

Have a great rest of your Monday!!

MIA: A Sad Story

So I've been missing in action- I'm sorry. I left without a "Hello." or "Goodbye." 


Where have I been? The Hubs had a conference in Seattle so I decided to tag along (free hotel!). It was a lot of fun and I took lots of picture to show you when I got back; but more sad news. My Camera totally crapped out!!!


The only proof I have of our trip is the one picture The Hubs took of me with his IPhone in front of the Fish Market.

All my other photos look like this!!!

Rows and rows of black boxes! Darn you technology! I even had a post about Con-Man's new curtains I was going to share. But since the real camera is no longer working this is the best my IPhone could come up with:

Really disappointing. So in the meantime while I try to figure out what we're going to do (a new camera would be nice since we do have a new baby on the way!) here are some sneak peaks of projects I've been working on for Con-Man's new room. (Disclaimer- none of these photos have been retouched; just my IPhone in all it's glory.)

I've also started going to my Upholstery Class! My lovely camera deleted the whole tearing apart process (you know, the important part so you can remember how the chair was put together...) But here's my progress so far:

I've even started tearing apart and fixing up the gym flooring that I found.

So as you can see I've been busy, to busy maybe. Yipes! I have 10 projects started but none finished! And now I only have crummy IPhone pics to show for it. :P I guess I feel under the gun to get a lot of big stuff done before Tiny Falcon #2 shows up in July.

Have you ever gotten in over your head with to many projects? How do you divide up your time?