DIY: Natural Gallery Walls

Last spring I scored a lot of wood pieces from a friend in Corpus Christi. They were slices of mesquite left over from some wedding centerpieces. I thought I could do something neat like group them together on the wall or paint little paintings on their faces. I shall do both!

I decided that we need some nice focal points over each of our dressers, so I grabbed the mesquite wood, some art, and a few pictures and started laying it all out on the floor. Here is what I came up with for Stephen’s dresser: 

The two big pieces are hand painted Star Wars guys I commissioned from Brad at Against the Woodgrain on Etsy. Great artist. I got these for Stephen a while back because he likes Star Wars, I like handmade, and we both like art. Win! I will probably be hand painting my own things on a few of the mesquite pieces. But just a couple. 

After I achieved a layout I liked, I laid down some wax paper and placed the pieces on the wax paper. I traced out each one and then numbered each piece on the back and it’s corresponding shape on the paper. 

After numbering and tracing I added brackets to the back of each piece of wood so I could hang them on the wall.

Next, I taped the wax paper on to the wall above Stephen’s dresser. After I eyeballed it, straightened, moved it a little to the left, I started measuring where the bracket was on the wood and where it would line up on the wax paper layout. To do that I grabbed my toothpaste and dabbed a dot to the center of the bracket, just above where it would hang on the nail. Then I turned it around to line it up in the wax paper tracing and pressed it to the wall. This left a toothpaste mark which I then nailed right through. My wall looked like this:

I was now ready to hang everything up! I pulled the wax paper away from a few nails and hung those pieces up, and repeated until the paper was gone. That helped me keep track better since pulling the paper completely off removed my number system. 

Stephen’s dresser wall before:

After:

I followed the same steps for my dresser wall.  Here is my before:

After:

I love all of the texture!

sas

What’s Up

You guys, it’s been a really long time since Stephen or I have blogged. I’m SO sorry that there have been no new posts popping up in your feeds since April! What have we been up to? Let’s see… 

We’ve broken in the kitchen and dining room with some great friends around the table. Stephen has a mower and an edger and has been taking care of the yard every weekend.  All of this rain has been making the grass grow really fast. As you can see below (look at him go!), the grass looks like its a few different kinds. But I’m happy that we have full coverage, even though it is a little thin in some places.

And as of last week, all but one room has been painted! That’s including halls and the stairwell. I feel more at home all ready since the colors are now in line with, well, us. I think I’ll be able to tackle the last room this week.

So since the walls in the master are the beautiful light grey they will be for a while, I was able to hang some pieces up. That leads me to my next post. Stick around!

sas

We Are In

Well, we are in our new house! The whole process was rough, from the seller accepting our offer until basically last week. Yep. It took that long. Maybe we will write out that story after we’ve healed a bit more from all of the drama, trauma, and dirtiness. For now though, I have our first house post about a change we made!

So the house was a flip. It was built in 1982 and the man we bought it from did a total overhaul on it. He did tons of great things, don’t get me wrong, but there were a few choices that we’ve questioned. Like lighting. All of the light bulbs were shining bright blue and hurting our retinas. And to totally contradict that, each light fixture has that opaque, yellow/tan glass. Let me show you what I mean with a picture of the master bathroom vanity light:

BLECH! The color! The shape! The harsh light bulbs exposed from below as you are standing at the sink! The curly cue stems from which these light flowers seem to be growing! Alright, you know I hate it. So since this is totally low on the “Must Change” list, the curly cues need to stay with us for a while. What I can do now is change the bulbs to a soft white and exchange the glass shades for something cleaner and less hideous. I went to Lowes and found some clear shades that were the perfect amount of simple.

Right? I know. Better. I don’t notice the curls now and the light glows as it should in a bathroom. Clean. Not unflattering, sicky yellow. I’ll save money on concealer under my eyes.

sas

Making Biscuits

Five Friday Favorites

1. Sloth Crossing the Street

2. Civilian Expander Pack

3. Brooklyn Towest

4. The New Basecamp

5. Table-Top Book Rack that I (Sarah) found at an antique store this week

Happy weekend to you.

sas & shs

Scrabble

Squetches: Sock Rocking

Alright, this isn’t the same kind of squetch you’re used too. It’s a digital one that I slammed out in a few minutes for a party invitation.

I had a friend coming into town and used that as an excuse to get my team at work together for a surprise game of bowling, hence the socks. Nothing like a little team-boosting turkey competition!

shs

DIY: Repurposed Leather Messenger Bag

I saw this post on Pinterest a while back and pinned it because knew I wanted to make my own oversized, leather pouch. I decided to repurpose my old leather messenger bag from college. The zippers were shot and I don’t use messenger bags anymore.

I took the front pockets off and cut the two main sides of the clutch out of the front and back panels of the bag and then followed the instructions from the Style Scrapbook post. Next, I used this DIY to make my own leather tassel zipper pull. The adjustment I made was sewing instead of gluing. 

Since this was a repurpose job, I was able to use the existing lining with pockets and a zipper pouch inside. I’m already brainstorming on a use for the rest of the scraps and hardware left over from the messenger bag.

Here is my end result! 

Happy Monday!

sas

Five Friday Favorites

1. Bar Keepers Friend We got Emeril stainless steel cookware from our wedding registry. I chose these as my pots and pans because they are super light, they have pouring spouts, copper lining, and measuring markings inside. The only downfall is they aren’t non-stick. Enter this faithful cleaner. This stuff cleans the pots and pans and polishes the steel and copper at the same time! I’ve also used this cleaner on grout and the stove top. 

2. Martha Stewart Living Paint I’ve narrowed things down to these 10 colors: Nimbus Cloud, Bone Folder, Pebble, Toasted Marshmallow, Chinchilla, Potter’s Clay, Sea Anemone, Pure White, Enamelware, and Flagstone.

3. Natural Nail Brightener Totally works. From this book.

4. See’s Raspberry Creams Stephen and I got a box of these on Valentine’s Day at the See’s inside Rice Epicurean Markets in River Oaks.

5. Pinterest Recipe for Crockpot Chicken Tacos These were very good and so, so easy!

Happy Friday :)

sas