Old to the New Navy

We are back from the Mile High City and let me tell you, traveling with toddlers is no easy undertaking!  We spent two hours on a bus and two and half hours on a plane, both ways.  I won’t go into details on the crazy but let’s just say we’ve sworn off major travel for severalllll months until there’s a little more independence amongst the toddlers in the fam and, therefore, a little more sanity amongst the adults.  ;)

So, moving on…

I’ve been drooling over these K & Elphy sandals for the girls:
 
[image via K & Elphy]

But, at $56 a pair, they’re way out of the park when it comes to our tiny budget.

So, armed with a gift card I’ve had since Christmas, I bought a couple of pairs of these from Old Navy:

[image via Old Navy] 
With a 30% discount code, I got them for about $11 each.  The thing about them though is that, while they’re cute with the fabric flowers, I feel like they’re a little too top heavy and being that the flowers are very notneutral colors, I’d have a hard time pairing them with every outfit I bedeck the girls in.  So, I bought them with the intention to change things up a little. 

And change them I did…


  A little bit different than how they came packaged, right?  Improvisation at it’s finest.  When I can’t have the ones I really want, I get them in a slightly different way. 

I was 90% sure I could take the flowers off the sandals when ordering them since I removed the bows off these shoes last year pretty easily and I was right.  All I had to do was remove the stitches holding the flowers on using a seam ripper.

See the stitches?

The stitching around the outside of the bottom of the felt piece holding the flower on was the same color as the stitching along the faux leather sides of the t-strap (does that make any sense?) so I had to be really careful that what I was ripping was the flower stitching and not the actual stitching holding the shoe together.

One down, one to go:
 
The flowers will make some cute headbands or clips sometime in the future.  :)

After I had both flowers off, I measured the t-strap into six even sections and painted those sections starting with white.  I didn’t paint the very top of the t-strap, where it meets the top strap, for no reason other than just because.  I just stuck to painting inside the stitching on the strap.

When the white was dry, I went in and painted on the black.  I used regular acrylic paint so the paint dried pretty fast and I was able to get both shoes done in about 20 minutes.  Originally I was going to use puff paint so you wouldn’t be able to see the tiny holes left behind from the stitching but the paint filled them in pretty well and I’m really loving the matte finish of the acrylic so we’ll see how it holds up in the long run.  So far, so good!

I love how they turned out!  Anthony isn’t the biggest fan of them but I’m hoping they’ll grow on him.  :) 


(Side note:  Old Navy also has these sandals which, if you painted the front strap, would imitate the K & Elphy’s even more but I wasn’t sure if paint would stick to the patent faux leather so I went with the t-straps instead.)

I took the girls outside in the rain this morning to grab the ‘after’ pictures and caught more than I needed so it’s only makes sense to share them.  I don’t like black and white stripes at all apparently…



My bribe of “I’ll let you hold my umbrella” was a winner and they leapt out the door to do so. 


 

Oh and their scarves!  I debuted them to Instagram a couple of weeks ago but I might as well give the low down here since this is supposedly a DIY blog or something…  I found this long-sleeved tee on clearance (I found it for 70% off in-store but click the link to find it 50% off online!) at Target last month and knew it’d make great infinity scarves for the girls.  I grabbed the biggest size they had.  To get the scarves out of it, I first cut off the top portion by cutting off the bottom of the tee right under each armpit.  Then I cut the big square that gave me down the middle so I had two halves of the bottom of the tee. 


Placing the right sides of fabric together for each piece, I sewed the two cut sides together and that’s it!  You could totally do this with no-sew tape too – see this tutorial.  Since it’s cotton, I didn’t hem the top (the bottom was already hemmed since it was the bottom of the tee) because it won’t fray.



I’m kinda wishing I’d have gotten another for myself!  :)

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I hope it’s nicer in your neck of the woods than it is in ours.  Our forecast shows nothing but rain and thunderstorms for the next five days and that just makes this moms cabin fever warning siren go off loud and clear.  The last time I took the kids out in the rain I lost my car keys so I’m going to pretend I learned from that mistake and stay inside the casa…until desperation plays devil’s advocate and I suddenly find myself and the kids wandering those dangerous-to-the-wallet aisles of Target…  ;)

Kisses to you and yours!  :*

Aye Aye Captain

Remember when I shared my friend Jesse’s amazing kitchen makeover? 

[before & after]

Well, I promised I’d be back with some tutorials involved and I’m making good on my promise by signing in today to tell you all about her captain’s mirror and how she made it.

 

    First, the supplies: 
An embroidery hoop
Two long belts
A round mirror
Spray Paint
Caulk
A thread spool (with no thread)
A long screw
Beads (to be used as a spacer)

You’ll need a round mirror.  Most craft stores sell pre-cut round mirrors so you could just go snatch up one of those.  If you’re wanting to make a larger mirror than any pre-cut mirror available, you may have to get a mirror cut-to-size like Jesse did.  She purchased a large rectangular mirror at a thrift store and had it cut into a circle that would eventually fit inside her embroidery hoop.  (Note:  One thing she told me to mention was that she had her mirror cut before she bought her hoop which she shouldn’t have done.  Because she couldn’t find an embroidery hoop that was the same diameter as her mirror, she had to do a little custom fitting.  The point being, buy your hoop first and have your mirror cut to the size of your hoop.)

There are lots of size options when it comes to embroidery hoops:

As mentioned above, Jesse couldn’t find an embroidery hoop that was the same size as her cut mirror (20”) so she bought one slightly smaller.
 
To get her mirror to fit seamlessly inside, she set the adjustable ring of the hoop around the mirror, cut off the joint at the top, and cut a section from the fixed ring to fill in the gap.  (You can see a better explanation in the spray-painting picture a little ways down.)

To hang/add the strap to her mirror, Jesse used two belts she found at a thrift store: 

So that the belt buckles were both facing the same direction, she cut the buckle off of one of the belts and sewed it onto the end of the other belt.  After she did that, she had one long belt with buckles at both ends that would go around the bottom of the mirror/hoop and one long belt without any buckles that would ‘buckle’ into the buckles and serve as the hanging piece.
 

In case you’re a stranger to sewing, you could also just buckle the belts to each other, giving you one long belted strap.  Basically, you’d take the bottom belt in the picture below, buckle it to the other belt along the right side, and send it up and over, buckling it on the left side.  Hopefully all that makes sense.  :) 

Once Jesse had her belts situated and sewn and all pieces of the hoops ready, she spray painted everything with gold spray paint.


Once the spray paint was dry, it was time to put everything together.  First, Jesse laid a string of beads down on the ground and laid the mirror on top of the beads.
[The beads were laid underneath the mirror, touching the reflective side.]

Then she put the hoop around the mirror.  The beads underneath the mirror served as a spacer so that the mirror didn’t sit flush with the front edge of the hoop.  Does that makes sense?  If you don’t have beads you can use any few things that are the same size and, being set under the mirror, would lift it – a few of the same sized magnets, a few of your kids small toy rings, a couple of thin books, etc… 

Next she tied a piece of elastic tightly around the whole mirror/hoop to hold the hoop together and the mirror inside (you can skip this step if your mirror fits inside your hoop perfectly).  She also ran some caulk (clear drying) around the back edge of the mirror.

After the caulk around the back edge was fully dry, she stood the mirror upright and ran some caulk around the front inside edge.  When the caulk around the inside edge was dry, she removed the elastic and hot glued the belt around the hoop, making sure that the area of the hoop where she had to insert a piece of the fixed hoop was along the bottom of the mirror when it hung.  That way all the pressure would always be against that spot, making it stronger and less likely to come undone.

To hang the mirror, Jesse used an old spool of thread (with no thread on it) that she spray painted gold. 

She stuck a screw through it to attach it to the wall and placed a gold painted sticker over the top to hide the screw.

Cost Breakdown:
Embroidery hoop:  $4 (with a coupon at Hobby Lobby)
Mirror:  $10 (a rectangular mirror found at a thrift store)
Getting the mirror cut into a circle:  $10
Belts:  $4 (thrift finds)
Spray paint:  already had
Caulk:  already had
Thread spool & screw:  already had
Total spent:  $28
Note:  If you had to buy the spray paint and caulk, it’d be closer to $34 or so.  Also, if you bought a mirror to fit your embroidery hoop, you could easily cut out $10 or more. 

Not so bad considering…

I’ll be back next week with a tutorial on her faux marble countertops!  I can’t wait to share that one…and use it!

DIY Light Kit Inspiration & How-To’s

There are lots of ways to update an old ceiling fan, spray paint being one of them.  Go on Pinterest and search “spray-painted ceiling fans” and I’m sure the inspiration will come flooding in.  If you’re not up to painting your fan though, you can always DIY/add to the light kit and make a big change, just like I did last week to the ceiling fan in our master.

Here’s how you could go about doing just that using a drum shade and/or it’s hardware.  First of all, let’s talk the type of light your fan has.  There are some fans that have multiple sources, like this one in our living room:

To add a shade to this kind of fan you’d need to unscrew the finial where you’ll just be left with the lights and a threaded rod. 

 

If you simply slip a shade that’s made to fit onto a lamp harp, like the one below, over the rod and screw the finial back on, you’ll have a drummed fan in no time.  Oh, but don’t forget to take off the glass light covers; you won’t need them anymore.  If they’re as ugly as ours, you’ll be glad to see ‘em gone.

 

If you’re not a huge fan of how the shade and fan look underneath, you could add a fabric diffuser just like John and Sherry @ Young House Love did here.

You might also have a fan that has just one hanging bulb, like this one in the twin’s room:

To add to this type of fan you’ll need a lamp shade with a larger ring in the center of it’s center bars (I’m totally making all these part names up…), like this one:
 

All you have to do is slip your bulb into the ring and screw it into the socket.
 
Easy.

Shades like the one below would also work.  Target and Walmart sell shades with this type of hardware so your color and pattern options without having to reupholster are many.
    

As far as customizing your added shade goes, there are endless options.  I soaked in some inspiration from West Elm and Anthropologie to give you ideas.  With these you’ll get a little glimpse of what goes on in this noggin’ of mine.  Look out, flying thoughts!

1)  Anthropologie's Two-Tiered Lamp Ensemble

This is the shade I was inspired by in making the kit that fits over the fan in our master, except I flipped it upside down.  Read all about how to make yourself one here (but make sure you skip on the vinyl in exchange for stiffer plastic).

2)  West Elm's Small Round Capiz Pendant

Since the shade in our master didn’t turn out exactly how I had hoped, thanks to the flimsy vinyl, I’m thinking of trying this next.  To get this look you’ll just need the frames of a few different sizes of shades (3 maybe 4 shades…oh, and did I mention that thrift stores are the PERFECT places to find lamp shades of all sizes?!).  Attach them so that you have a plane of concentric circles to which you’ll tie strings of capiz shells (which you can DIY using wax paper – see Brenna’s tutorial) in varying lengths (longer in the middle, shorter on the outside).  You can attach the rings by gluing skewers across them or anything else you can think of.  You can also skip the concentric circles and get the same effect using just one shade frame by tying several lines of fishing string from the outside ring to the inside ring (the part that fits over the light bulb), and then tying your shells on the string.  AND, you don’t have to use shells, you can use beads, strings of ribbon, and even washers strung together to get a shade that looks like this one:

3)  West Elm's Melissa Joy Manning Chandelier

Next up, 4)  Anthropologie's Turquoise Rivulets Chandelier
 
I love this one and think a dining room complete with a ceiling fan would be the perfect place to try it.  To get this look, you’d need the frames of two lamp shades, a larger one and a smaller one, strings of beads, and some small chain or string to attach the two frames.  To make it, attach the top frame of your larger shade to the bottom frame of your smaller shade with the chain or string…I’d say anywhere from 9 to 12 inches apart.  Then attach your strings of beads (make sure they’re longer than the distance between your two frames…I’d add six or so inches) to the larger frame and then to the smaller frame, getting that pretty curve at the bottom.

5)  Anthropologie's Feathered Chandelier

Last but definitely not least, you could imitate this look by cutting the above feathered shape out of some cardstock, painting it gold, and gluing it to the top frame of a lamp shade, letting each piece hang.  Think of it like drawing a heart.  You fold your paper in half, draw your heart, and open it.  Except with the above design, you’d fold your cardstock, draw half a feather and maybe make some cut-outs, paint it if you desire, and attach it while it’s still slightly folded to your ring.  You’ll make however many you’d need to go all around your ring.  Or, if you’re really good at paper crafting, you can make the whole design by accordion-folding one piece of cardstock and making some snips.  Make sense?  That one’s a little hard to get from brain to paper…

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One awesome thing about all of these ideas is that you can even create them if you’re renting!  All you have to do is keep the original light cover, slip it back on when you leave, and bang, it’s like you were never there.  Cost-wise, if you scout out thrift stores and get creative with supplies, you can definitely come in under the $20 mark when all is said and done!  :)

I’d love to know if anyone ever tries any of these ideas (snap a still and use hashtag #heybeanlook on Facebook or Instagram) or if you’ve come up with some of your own!  And if I’ve failed to explain a step well enough, shout it out and I’ll try and elaborate!

Have a great weekend!  I’ll be back Monday to show you what I’ve been painting!  :)

Anthro-Inspired Knobs

>>> DON’T FORGET TO ENTER OUR CRAFTING TOOL GIVEAWAY!  TODAY IS THE VERY LAST DAY!  THE LUCKY WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED TOMORROW!  <<<

We put knobs on the cabinets in our laundry room.  A boring woo-hoo, right? 
[Left was then; right is now…just to clarify in case the change is too teensy to notice.]

But hold up, they’re not just any knobs.  Nope.  They’re knock-offs inspired by Anthropologie that I spent a small sliver of everyday last week crafting.

 
Theirs are just to-die-for/swoon/can-I-marry-them gorgeous, aren’t they?  The $14 price tag, not so much.  Had we purchased these for our laundry room, our back account would’ve been set back a hefty $84 (six knobs) not including tax and shipping.  Mine cost me $3.  Bean for the win!

Here’s what they looked like before I got all snazzy on ‘em: 
I have actually been wanting to put some knobs on those cabinets for some time because they just get so finger-printed and dirty so I headed out to our local ReStore one day awhile ago and snatched up six of these shiny gold knobs.  I could’ve gone gold with them to get Anthropologie’s look even more, and boy did I want to, but I  just didn’t want the gold to clash with the big chrome rings on our washer and dryer.  I mean, I’m all about mixing metals but this is one time I went matching.  So, silver they became.  

My first step was covering up the gold and getting them all nice and prepped for paint with a few coats of white primer (Rustoleum).

I made sure to leave the screws in the back to keep the paint from getting in and clogging up the hole back there.

Once they were nice and dry, I flipped them onto their faces since I didn’t need silver paint there and sprayed the stems and backs with some Rustoleum silver metallic spray paint.
I used the chrome silver, not the brushed silver, but I’ve found that there’s really not that much of a difference between the two.  The chrome is unfortunately not as chrome as the cap of the can would have you believe.  :( 

So after the silver was even and dry, I taped off the faces of each knob and took them back outside where I sprayed them with some plain white spray paint (Rustoleum…again).

After I sprayed the faces white, I let them dry and made sure to leave the tape on (usually I’d take it off right away to prevent peeling but since the coat of white was so thin, I had no problem with it) because next up was…
 
Yep, nail polish!  After a search through the Martha Stewart specialty paint at Home Depot left me hanging for pearl paint, I did some brainstorming and dug through my polish where I found this pearl color by NailSlicks.  I’ve never used nail polish in DIY and I wasn’t sure if it’d work but there’s a first time for everything, right?

Well, it worked and it worked well.  Here are the knobs after I painted their faces with my pearl nail polish:
It’s a little hard to see in the above picture (I was lazy and used my iPhone for pictures) but they’re not perfect; the coat isn’t smooth and even.  But, that’s exactly what I needed considering the pearl on the Anthropologie knobs is laid in squares and not one smooth layer.  The nail polish was a little difficult to paint as it dried quick, making my desire for the imperfection in it all a little easier actually.  All I did was paint diagonal lines out from the center of each knob.  Here’s a closer look:

Also, I took the tape off each knob as I went because I was afraid, had I left all the tape on until I was done, it’d take the thicker nail polish layer off with it.

Next up, the design.  First I made myself a little stencil…I’m no good at drawing perfect shapes freehand.  Oh no, give me a roller and I’ll paint big Ws on a wall but perfect circles and squares you will not get.  Plus, from here on out there were to be no mess-ups or all would be lost.
  So, I actually just traced the design from the Anthro knob from computer screen to a small piece of wax paper, cut it out, centered it over my knob, and traced it on very lightly with a pencil. 

Then I used a silver sharpie (which I made sure matched the color of the spray paint before I started) to permanently draw on my design. 

Here they are, all designed!!

Last, I spray each knob with several coats of the same spray lacquer I used on the knobs in the girls’ room to give them a nice glossy finish.  This part was a little disappointing.  I found that the lacquer dulled the silver a little and really didn’t even make it that glossy.  The faces of each knob were a little glossier after finished but not what I had in mind.  Either way, the knobs had a nice coat of protection and were ready for use.

So pretty, no?
 

Back-tracking a little here…to figure out where I wanted the knobs placed on each door, I googled “where to install knobs on cabinets” and got my friend Lauren to send me a picture of the knobs in their kitchen.  The general consensus was that the edges should be 1/4 to 1/2 inch away from the edges of the door.  After I did some measuring and marking, I cut out some circles the same size as my knobs from a piece of paper and stuck them on the cabinets to see the placement before the holes were drilled.  Fake paper knobs:

Later, after all the knobs were ready to be up and functioning and I was happy with their future placement after staring at the fake paper knobs for a few days, my main man got out his drill and drilled six holes.  And that was that.

    

So, in the end I only shoveled picked out $3 for this entire project because I had everything on hand but the knobs.  If you had to buy everything for this project (somebody puh-lease make them in gold…pllllease!!), you’re looking at around $20+ (primer, silver, and white spray paint, tape, pearl nail polish or some sort of pearl paint, a silver sharpie, tape, and thrifted knobs) but you’ll have loads of supplies left over at the end to be used for other things.  So, when all is said and done, it’s a pretty cheap project…especially when you think about how much you’re saving by making your own version vs. buying the real things.  :)




So, anybody else DIY-ed some knobs out there?  What about knocked-off an Anthropologie or upscale object/design to save some cash but still get the look?  Or maybe you just save up/splurge for the real thing?  Either way, it’s fun to get some character up in herrr, no?

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Someone say party?!  Yep, I’m cruisin’ in from March 2014 and linking up with East Coast Creative for their week of knock-offs!  Click over to see some pretty amazing knock-offs!