Playground Love

Finally- after how many months? I’ve pulled my finger out and finally finished A’s bedroom. Ah- as part of the purging process we’ve been going through since the new year (15 bags donated and counting, + countless items posted on Craigslist and at work, 3+ bags for consignment and several bags of trash) I felt ready to finish A’s room. And all it took was hanging up a magnetic board (repurposed from my sewing nook).

And cleaning her room.

And sorting her toys.

And wiping the walls of some funny foot gunk.

While it doesn’t quite look as finished as if a real designer had taken over, I am really pleased at how it turned out. And the irony is that A will probably only have about 10+ months to enjoy it on her own before we meld her and her brother into the same miniscule space. That will be a challenge. So anyhow- guess how much this whole endevour cost, even with second hand bed and new comforter? Supplies cost $184 plus tax (mostly fabric and electrical stuff) + $60 for the comforter set + $100 for the bed. Less than $350 for a whole new room. Fantastic. I long ago lost track of the stuff I sold to conteract any costs I had to incur to complete the projects, but I’m faily certain that I broke even.

Enjoy!

Our fabric tree complete with roosting owl (made by me), a birds nest (made by A) and several fairies (made by S+E) made of fabric flowers

The green book shelves- love these!

While it's true that the tree has seen better days, it's kind of nice that A is interacting with it so much- pulling leaves off here and there and re-sticking them.

All boxes repainted with orange paint (from the master bedroom) and rehung with fun little objects tucked inside

The closet that was a reading nook.

Some vintage treasures from my childhood

More treasures from my childhood (turtle bank) and from M's (lamb night light)

Another vintage treasure hand-made by an aunt and the multi-purpose magnet board for hanging art, etc.

The repurposed/ re-used list:

Pennants:

• felt, twine

Owls

• fabric scraps, batting

Patchwork blanket

• fabric scraps, interfacing, wool blanket

Doll crib + highchair

• repainted crib, recovered dolly mattress, made cushion for highchair out of fabric scraps and left over batting

Book shelves

• re-used paint, wall plugs, screws

Pouf for reading nook

• reused fabric scraps

Fabric wall decal

• fabric scraps, used old box shelves from bath/living room and repainted with paint from master bedroom

Reading Nook:

• repainted shelves with old paint, re-used rope light, mesh curtains, felt, curtain rod and cup hooks

Magnetic board

• repurposed from my sewing nook

The tree with some leaves

This wasn’t nearly so difficult as I thought it might be. It was incredibly time consuming though, or perhaps could be done over the course of a weekend. Lot’s of little tasks and a lot of cutting involved.

Cutting many leaves

But both A and I are super excited with how the tree has turned out. Really pretty and so feminine. I will be looking to ad a few more things to wall over the coming weeks, but am in no hurry to get started on those backburner items.

A posing by the finished tree

The big expenses for this project was the Steam A Seam 2- @ $6/ metre x 4 metres it ran upwards of $24. You could do this project with a lot smaller of a decal, but I wanted this quite big and close to scale. Fabric cost $0 as it was all stuff I had on hand. Still less expensive than many wall decals I have seen in stores and much larger. I ended up selling some of A’s old toys and spent the money on the SAS2 and some strawberry plants I bought for the planter I made (more in the next post).

I was looking back recently to when my first blog post was posted and this week celebrates my one year anniversary. Unbelievable- I cannot understand where the time has gone. I’ve met some really inspiring people over this past year and have jumped into the crafty mama blogosphere head first. I’m in love with so many blogs and projects, that it’s hard to figure out which I love most. To celebrate this past year of crafting,  I have made this cute little wine cozy and I’ll do a random draw for it. To enter the contest, leave a comment in the comments section below (e-mails do not count!). My handy random number picker will choose the winner. Contest closes on Sunday, June 27 at midnight. Thank you and good luck!

Project 6 of the Zero Cost Challenge in A’s room is the start of creating a reading nook inside A’s closet. Our home is pretty small so I wanted to make the most out of this project and tried to give Amina a nice little private space where she could read books or just hang out.

I’ve been coveting the pouf’s (just a really fancy way of saying pillow) at  The Cross.  The how-to is quite lengthy, but if you are interested in making one for yourself check out the tutorial for the  morrocan pouffe.

I had done the closet up but am not happy with the way it turned out. I’m going to need to spend a bit more time thinking this one out before I post any pics, but I think it will be pretty neat once it’s finished!

I’ve been busy starting projects and only half completing them, so maybe I’ll get the chance to finish some up this weekend. A has chicken pox so we’ve been pretty low key lately. She’s great- hasn’t complained one bit and is not itchy at all. Seems to be a very mild case so we have been really lucky!

Here’s what we’ve been up to during our quarantine:

Playing with playdough: We’ve used the recipe from Mary Ann Kohl’s “Young at Art” and it’s super. I made this recipe about 2 weeks ago and A is still going strong with it:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• food colouring
• 2 TB vegetable oil
• 1 cup flour

Combine water, salt cream of tartar and food colouring in a pot over the stove on low heat. Stir. As the mix heats up, add in the oil and the flour slowly. Keep stirring until the mix looks dry and starts to pull away from the side of the pan. If it’s not sticky, it’s done! We did this with pink and blue (A’s choice).

We’ve also been busy with colouring pasta and incorporating this into our playdough and just transfering it back and forth into different containers for fun.

And lastly, A’s been making wonderful art: We started with oil pastels, added some tempera and water colour paints (water colours will resist where the oil pastels are giving a really neat picture) and then started adding tissue paper, printer paper and other fun mixed media. Voila- a mixed media collage!

A’s process is pretty interesting. She typically starts out with mommy, daddy or A faces and builds from there. There is a sun I helped her with in the corner. She’s been adding swings and slides and other things that we do in our daily routine. So fun and interesting to hear her verbalizing this and incorporating this into her art. Enjoy!

PS- Total cost for the pouf was $16 for the felt.

I had been coveting book shelves that display books for a while. I had been hoping to stumble into something at a thrift store, but the golden rule of thrifting is if you are actively looking for something, you will not find it.

So- I began looking around on-line and found some nice ones at Pottery Barn, but they were too expensive and a bit too vintage looking for the modern take I wanted to do with A’s room. Then I found display shelves just like these ones and came up with the brilliant idea of making them myself as part of this challenge! My father-in-law is a fantastic woodworker and I knew if I asked nicely he’d show me around his workshop and help me design and make these.

The dimensions of each display shelf are 30” long x 5” tall x 4” deep. The inside dimensions are: 29 x 4.5 tall x 3 deep. We went with a sheet of ½ thick plywood and made all the pieces with this.

I won’t go into a tutorial today about the shelves because I really don’t feel like I know what I’m talking about. Wood is not my medium, fabric is. I am really happy how these shelves turned out and was pumped to learn to use the table saw (very scary) and the mitre saw (fun!). R has fun tools like nail guns and an automatic sanding machine that made this a really easy process. It took about 2 hours to build and then many days to paint. There is limited space to paint in our house and it’s tough setting up and taking down each day, but the final result is great.

As A gets older, we can change the colour, the configuration and change up what gets displayed inside so great investment (of time) pieces!

Here are some pics with my father-in-law and me in his workshop/ garage:

Here are the completed shelves with A’s books proudly displayed:

Here’s some other pictures of other shelving I’ve put up on A’s walls and a big picture frame to highlight her art. The glass for the frame broke in the hanging process, which is actually probably a good thing. With my new-found paranoia of earthquakes, the last thing I want jiggling around on the walls is something with glass above A’s head while she sleeps! The frame is mounted to a hook and anchor, so it’s not going anywhere!

I also installed a reading light and a new lighting socket with cord. Unfortunately, we don’t have ceiling lights in our place, which makes installing ceiling lights really annoying as all we can use are plug in lights that are rigged to the light switches. There’s no way I can hide the cords, so I was excited to see that the cords come in green to match the décor of the room.

Book shelves:

$nice bottle of wine for the plywood, nails, screws, and hangers

$0- reused paint from kitchen and added white primer to make the colour limier

White book shelves:

$12 for wood

$0 for paint, anchors and brackets which I already had

Other:

$20- picture frame (well worth the splurge as this can highlight all the fun paintings that A will make)

$6- lamp cord

$19- reading light (also well worth the splurge)

It’s funny, I think this little triangle of space in A’s room is where I have spent the most money. Well- it needed to be done as the lighting is her room at night is pretty dismal. This will help and she likes being able to turn off the light herself now.

A’s room is really coming along now. I love how it’s turning out!

This week’s ZCC projects were quite simple- they mostly consisted of repainting and recovering.

My grandfather made this crib for his twin girls (my aunts). This got passed along to me (yay!) and when A was little, she actually spent a few naps in it while we visited in Winnipeg. All I did was repaint with some primer and white paint. My grandmother had made a crib mat and blanket to go with the doll crib and all I did was recover these in my favourite fabric. I saved the old stuff for a pillowcase dress or something else that will look lovely in vintagy fabric.

The highchair I scored from Craigslist ($10- the only cost for this project). The previous owners had already primed this  so I got away with one coat of the same paint I used on the crib. I made a cushion with tie backs on it with the same fabric as above and left over batting.

If you know how to sew a pillowcase, these are all essentially what I did. Instead of leaving room for the pillow to slip in and out, I sewed this part up.

Nice and cosy and looks great in the room. These two items get a lot of use. A has become especially involved  in feeding, shopping for groceries, pottying and napping her  ”babies” (of which she has about 7 popular babies in rotation- animals, hand-me-down and new dolls included).

This picture shows the seat cover for the highchair

crib + crib bedding: $0

Paint $0

Highchair $10