Photoshop Fun

I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop a few days ago, and have had fun playing around with it since. I've used Photoshop before for college classes and have downloaded trials of older versions in the past, but I feel like I'm finally getting bold enough to try out some more exciting projects this time around.

I stumbled upon some great tutorials over at Pugly Pixel that I've really had fun with so far. The other day I posted some craft inspiration using the collage tutorial, and here are some pictures I made using Pugly Pixel's Blending Modes tutorial.

For this image I created my own stripes layer, and used a glitter tutorial for the texture layer. The photo is one of my favorite wedding pictures of ours. The floral layer is from The Graphics Fairy.

This next image uses my same stripes layer (just modified slightly) and a built-in texture from Photoshop. The floral background is once again from The Graphics Fairy.

Instead of using a separate image on top of the embellishments, I used a layer mask to bring parts of the original floral background to the forefront.

Can you tell I have plenty of free time right now? Haha. Neither of the images I created are perfect, but I think they're pretty fun! It's going to be a sad day when my free trial runs out.

Inspired by Anthropologie

It's been awhile since I've posted a craft/DIY project, mostly because my craft supplies (and most of our other belongings) are in storage right now. But I have been cultivating ideas for projects I'd like to complete once I have the resources I need so I thought I'd share them with you.

I have a lot of free time for perusing Pinterest and doing some online window shopping, and Anthropologie is one of my favorite stores to look to for fun ideas to turn into DIYs. Here's what I'm loving right now and will hopefully recreate on my own soon enough.

Right now I'm leaning towards tackling the jewelry box first, but we'll see how I feel when I actually get around to starting!

New Couch & DIY Pillows

Our apartment finally has a new couch!

About a month ago we finally bit the bullet and decided to finance a new sofa to replace the old, dingy couch I inherited from my parents when I first moved to Michigan. So when an awesome sale was taking place at Art Van (like, every week), we picked out a new couch to have a nicer, newer and more comfortable couch to lounge on.

The downside? We had to special order our new couch (the only color they had available immediately was some weird green-khaki shade), which meant waiting up to eight weeks for it to arrive in-store and be delivered. Bummer.

Lucky us, though, our new couch arrived in about half the estimated time! So now our living room looks like this:

So much better than it looked with the old couch. (By the way, I explained the mirrors earlier this week).

As for the old couch, we opted not to get rid of it immediately and moved it into our second bedroom/office. Plus, we didn't have to lug the old couch out to the dumpster or figure out how to get it to Goodwill (there's no way that beast could fit in a normal car).

But back to our new couch. We love gray, but not that much, so we needed something to bring some life into the color palate. I had some extra fabric lying around that I had picked up from the clearance aisle at Jo-Ann's awhile back, so I used that to whip up some pillows.

This was my first attempt at sewing my own pillows, and it was so incredibly easy. I didn't use any tutorial or a pattern - I just measured out 4 equal pieces of my remaining fabric to make two small pillows. Pretty simple!

I used this tutorial to sew an "invisible" seam to close up the pillows.

The pillows aren't perfect looking, but they're pretty comfortable and add a nice pop of color to our giant gray couch.

Making these pillows gave me more confidence in my ability to sew in a straight line, so now I feel like I'm ready to tackle a more involved project. I definitely have plenty of ideas floating around on my Pinterest boards right now, so I just need to get started!

Mirror(s), Mirror(s)

Drew and I have been busy redecorating our living room lately: new couch, DIY pillows and a fun mirror project. I'll get to the couch and pillows later this week, but for now let's talk about the mirrors.

Of course I found inspiration for this project on Pinterest. I found this pin a few months ago, and we've been hoping to implement something similar in our apartment ever since.

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Kristy on Pinterest

We loved that the project used simple back-of-the-door mirrors and would be super cheap, especially compared to a larger mirror that would take up the same amount of space.

Hanging up three mirrors on a wall seems pretty simple, so why did it take us somewhere around 4 months to finally get this project accomplished? Well, we didn't want to hang up plain mirrors. Sure, they look great in the picture and would look great on our walls as well, but we wanted to add a personal touch.

Our second inspiration for our project came from quite a few sources, but the one that helped us out the most was (of course) Bower Power. Katie added a stenciled pattern around a window, and we loved the idea enough to try it on our mirror project.

We like the look of frosted glass stencils, and Katie had nice, thorough instructions for us to follow. We basically did the exact same thing she did with her window with almost the exact same products.

Frost effect paint and stencil sponge brushes by Martha Stewart, purchased at Michaels.

Originally we planned to put the mirrors above the dresser in our bedroom, so we picked up a floral stencil from Michael's that coordinated really well with our bedding. By the time we got around to actually tackling this project, though, we changed our minds and decided to put the mirrors in our living room instead. So the floral stencil had to be replaced.

Drew came up with the awesome idea to use a skyline as our pattern, so he printed out a picture of the London skyline and cut out the image with an exacto knife to create a stencil. (Why London? No real reason, but it is the only foreign city we've both been to - although not at the same time).

The project was super straight-forward after that. We taped the stencil in place and used our stencil brush to lightly layer on the frosted paint (we ended up doing two layers of paint). After the paint dried we peeled off the tape, and were finished!

Well, except for actually hanging up the mirrors, which was a little tougher. A little piece of advice: when using 3M velro strips to hang up a mirror, do not put all of your body weight into the back of the mirror. It will crack, and it will be tragic. Plus, you'll have to delay finishing your project so you can pick up a new mirror at Target. Not that I'd know any of this from experience or anything...

Anyway, we relied on good old trial and error to map out where we wanted our mirrors to hang and where to place the velcro strips. There is probably a simpler way to hang up mirrors in an evenly spaced pattern than using pencil marks, rulers and guessing, but eventually we figured everything out and now have three mirrors hanging next to our brand new couch in the living room.

We still have a lot of rearranging/redecorating to do in our living room (and our apartment in general), but we think things are coming together pretty well so far. Our mirrors make the room feel bigger and brighter, and we love how they turned out.

Don't forget to check back later this week for a recap in my adventures in pillow-making.

Pinterest Challenge: Felt Coasters

Young House Love and Bower Power issued another Pinterest Challenge last week, and I couldn't resist the chance to tackle another project on my ever-growing DIY inspiration board. (For my previous Pinterest Challenge project entry, click here. Or check out my Pinterest boards for more ideas).

My contribution to this season's challenge: modular felt coasters.

Originally Drew and I planned to tackle a mirror project we've been considering for months, but we opted to spend our weekend loafing about instead of stenciling mirrors, so I'll have to share that project another day.

Getting back to the felt coasters, though, I ran across this tutorial on How About Orange yesterday morning, and knew this was the perfect project. I've been considering making some felt coasters anyway, and these are a quick, no-sew project. Perfect!

The best part about this project is that the finished product looks so much more complicated than it really is, and everything comes together so quickly. Start to finish, I probably spent about 10 minutes making 4 coasters. These would be a great little gift or stocking stuffer since they're easy, quick and cheap to make but still look cute.

For this project, I only needed two sheets of felt to make four coasters. I chose hot pink and gray since we don't plan on using these coasters in our living room and I wanted something fun.

Using the template available on How About Orange, I used my new rotary cutter to cut out eight slotted pieces per coaster.

The pieces all interlock (similar to how you fold the sides of a box over to keep it shut), leaving this:

The final step is to cut each "arrow" at an angle for a cute finished product. See, I said this project was insanely simple!

Of course I can't end this post without a big thanks to How About Orange for the excellent tutorial and template (she also has a template for a larger version here).

So that's my Pinterest challenge project! Hopefully Drew and I will get around to those stenciled mirrors soon so I can have another fun DIY project to post.

Anyone else participate in the Pinterest challenge? What projects are on your to-do list?

Sew Nice

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my Christmas gifts was a sewing machine from my parents. I had seen so many sewing projects I wanted to try on Pinterest that I absolutely needed to get my own machine.

About a month ago I finally broke that bad boy out of its box and spent the weekend whipping up a couple of projects. I started simply with a coffee cup sleeve, just to get a feel for my machine, then graduated to making an infinity scarf.

My fleece coffee cup sleeve in action at Tim Horton's.

I made two versions of the infinity scarf: one with a fleece lining to keep me warm and another lightweight one for spring and summer.

The coffee cup sleeve tutorial is available via Purl Bee, and the infinity scarf tutorial is from Sweet Verbena. Thank goodness for sewing blogs!

The next project I have lined up is a fleece ear warmer headband using a tutorial from Six Sisters' Stuff. This winter has been pretty crazy weather-wise, so I need to make this headband soon if there's going to be any hope of me getting to wear it before November or December. I'll keep you posted on my future sewing projects. Now that I'm starting to get used to my machine, I'll hopefully be able to try some more advanced/interesting projects!

Anyone else out there getting crafty lately? Do any of my fellow sewers have project websites they can recommend?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I hope you're celebrating today by eating lots of chocolate, going on a date or doing whatever you do to celebrate (or avoid) today.

I have a quick art project to share with you in honor of, well, our marriage, but we'll just pretend it's for Valentine's Day instead.

This year Drew and I decided not to give each other Valentine's Day gifts. We spent a little too much on Christmas gifts for each other (hello, XBox and Nook) and didn't see the need to get each other anything for a fake holiday.

But that didn't stop me from making a little something for our apartment when I saw this posted on Pinterest:

via

Cute idea for a Valentine's/anniversary/wedding gift, right? Luckily I still have a free trial of Adobe Fireworks on my computer right now, so I was able to take a Michigan map and recreate this for Drew and me to commemorate our Saginaw wedding.

Pin It

All I had to do was find a map of Michigan online, then erase all the lines and fill in the colors I wanted with Fireworks. Then I found a heart image (I changed the color on that, too), and I was done!

I'm sure a more knowledgeable person would have some really easy way to recreate this, but I took the tedious route by using the eraser tool and then zooming in to fill in any stray colored pixels. There has to be an easier/quicker way than that, right?

Anyway...

I originally had our names and wedding date on the picture, just like my inspiration artwork, but after showing it to Drew we decided we liked it better with no text. It's a bit more subtle this way, but still sentimental since it points out the location of our wedding on the map.

Now all I have to do is get the image printed somewhere like Kinko's and buy a frame. This should make a nice addition to the frame wall we're planning in our dining room.

Anyone else get crafty for Valentine's Day? Are you doing anything special today, or just having yourself a regular old Tuesday?

Quick Apartment Update

So, long time no post, huh? I haven't blogged in over month partly because work has dominated my life, partly because I haven't felt like it and didn't want to force out a boring post and partly because I just didn't have much to write about.

Even though I haven't been writing lately, I have made a few changes to the look of this blog. You may notice the header is now one of our wedding pictures, and I also added buttons linking you to my Pinterest boards and my Twitter feed. I'm so social-media minded.

Anyway, today Drew and I made some progress with our apartment with a quick kitchen update. The kitchen in our current apartment is so, so much better and bigger than our old apartment, but we still need a bit more storage than the kitchen offers (blame it on the wedding gifts).

About a month ago we purchased a cabinet to put in an unused corner of our kitchen to use as sort of a "beverage station." We liked how it cleared up extra counter space for us, but we didn't like the cluttered look on the counter or the empty wall space surrounding it.

This morning we finally did something about it and put up some shelves to make the space look a little nicer.

The "before" shot, plus the templates for our soon-to-be-installed shelves.

Even though our shelves came with templates to make the installation process "easier," it still took us a good 30 minutes or so to get the screws in place and everything lined up properly. Thank goodness Drew is more patient than me and was able to power through the minor setbacks to finish the job!

The finished product isn't a huge change from what we had before, but we like how it looks and the small amount of additional storage the shelves provide.

All filled up - we may change some of the items out, but this was the best we have for now! 

Now if only we could do something about the electrical box/eyesore on the wall, we'd be all set!

And just for fun, here's some shots I took of our little bar area:

P.S. Yes, that is a SodaStream machine on the cabinet. We purchased it with some of our Macy's store credit (another wedding gift perk), and have been using it like it's our job ever since. Which probably means we drink too much soda, but it's actually kind of fun to use and we don't have any soda bottles to take back to the store anymore. I highly recommend it.

Ten for Tuesday: How to Have a Perfect Weekend

This past weekend was so excellent for so many reasons. I feel like it was the first "real" weekend I've had in a long time, and it was much needed.

My job requires me to work weekends a lot without time off during the week to make up for it, and the weekend before this one was one of those times. That means that Friday was my 12th day of work in a row without a day off. It's rough, but it made this weekend seem even more special because instead of working I got to spend the entire weekend with Drew and had plenty of time to enjoy myself and relax.

This weekend was so good, in fact, that I think it may qualify as a perfect weekend. In case you're looking forward to the weekend already (I know I am) and need some suggestions for what to do, I offer you my steps for the perfect weekend.

Ten Steps to a Perfect Weekend

1. Have the weekend off of work. This is key, seeing as you'll need plenty of time to devote to everything on this list. If you're working you won't have much, if any, time to complete any of the following steps, which is a major bummer.

2. Spend lots of time with your significant other. Or your family or pet or best friend. Whoever you wish you could spend more time with, see that person this weekend and have fun together. Our activities of choice over the weekend included running errands, renting "Bridesmaids" and sleeping in late on Saturday. All excellent choices for quality time with the husband.

3. Run 5 miles. Spend the rest of the day feeling like a badass. Also feel sore and starving. But mostly feel like a badass.

4. Make delicious s'mores cookies. I have an "official" review of the recipe for these cookies planned for tomorrow, but for now you'll have to take my word that these cookies are awesome. So awesome that I ate about 15 of them within two days.

5. Enjoy dinner with friends. On Saturday night Drew and I went out to dinner in Owosso with our friends John and Carolyn. We ate at the always-delicious Wrought Iron Grill which was, naturally, delicious.

I enjoyed a beer whose name I've already forgotten and dominated my crab-stuffed fish entree (remember, running five miles makes you super hungry). We all had an awesome time catching up and are already planning our next "grill" night for the Red Cedar Grill in Williamston.

6. Attempt, and totally fail, the Pinterest Challenge. You may remember that I participated in Round 1 of the Pinterest Challenge a few months ago to make a belt for my wedding shower.

This belt is all squashed and weird looking now, but I totally wear it all the time anyways. Whatever.

Well, Sherry posted a new challenge to Young House Love last week, and I gladly accepted the challenge.

My attempt to create something along the lines of this cookie sheet magnet board, however, backfired horribly.

From Pinterest, via.

I'm going to attempt to salvage my monstrosity sometime this week, but for now I just have a plain & ugly cookie sheet sitting in our living room to remind me of my failure. Sigh...

7. Stay in your pajamas as much as possible. Seriously, is there any clothing more comfortable than pajamas? If I could wear leggings and a sweatshirt all day, every day I totally I would. Jeans are so overrated.

8. Make a tasty breakfast. After sleeping in til almost noon on Saturday, Drew and I had an excellent big breakfast together. I got up first and got to work on preparing bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese, peppers and onion. Delicious.

9. Clean your apartment. Okay, cleaning isn't really all that fun, but I love having a nice-looking apartment as a result. Especially when we know we're going to have company.

Our apartment is small-ish and has basically no storage space, so organizing our apartment requires some creativity.

But, luckily for us, our lease is up at the end of November, and yesterday we signed an application for a new apartment with two bedrooms and extra storage space in the building's basement. The trade off? A much smaller bathroom and no laundry in our unit, but it will totally be worth it for cheaper rent, more space AND the ability to paint the walls!

Our new apartment will be in Swartz Creek, about 20 minutes from where we live now and much closer to civilization (the mall, Target, other retail establishments that make me happy...). It's going to be awesome!

10. Relax. Take it easy (Mika, anyone? No? Okay.).

Seriously, getting to sleep in and take my time changing into real clothes and just be able to sit around is amazing. I love weekends like this where Drew and I can just lounge around together. Except for our honeymoon, I don't know when the last time we had a couple days to just sit around together happened.

Wedding planning pretty much consumed all of our free time the last few months, so it was nice to just be able to enjoy each other's company without having to worry about getting a crazy to-do list completed. We definitely accomplished a lot this weekend, but I never felt rushed or busy. It was glorious.

What are your steps to a perfect weekend? What are your plans for this weekend?

Feeling Ruffled

My Michigan wedding shower is quickly approaching, which means another occasion calling for a new dress. Earlier this summer I went shopping with Drew to find enough dresses to last me through all of the weddings (read my recaps here and here), showers, and rehearsals on the calendar for May through October.

Luckily I had a few dresses on hand already, but a few weeks ago I realized I needed one more dress to wear to my wedding shower (because heaven forbid I wear the same thing more than once!). I had a coupon for Old Navy, so I picked up a cute little yellow sundress that will be perfect for the August heat.

But I wanted to add a little something extra so my dress wasn't just ho-hum, and I've been feeling especially crafty lately, so I decided to make a ruffled belt using these instructions from Heart of Light (via 100 Layer Cake). Plus, I can't say no to the Pinterest Challenge!

On Monday I headed to Joann Fabrics after work to purchase the necessary supplies. I decided to go with darker fabrics to stand out against the yellow dress. I picked up two different shades of navy fabric, plus a gray tulle for extra texture and contrast. The use of University of Michigan colors was completely unintentional, by the way (go Illini!).

Making the belt was super simple, and the entire project took me about 1.5 episodes of "Friends" from start to finish. Then I tried on the belt with my dress to look at the end result.

And another look at the entire outfit (plus my unmade bed):

Super simple and super cute, right? And as excited as I am to wear my new handmade ruffled belt to my wedding shower, I'm even more excited to see everyone who's attending (especially everyone from out of state)! Plus, you know, presents and stuff.