Thrifty Dining Room Update

Our new apartment is awesome.  It has lots of vintage charm, beautiful architectural details, and it's spacious (and yes, the dining room even came with that awesome chandelier!).  We are loving finding the perfect spots for all of our furniture and art, but still have a few areas that are looking a little sparse.  On a med school student's budget, we've had to resort to Ikea, thriftiness, and lots of DIY-ing to get our place looking the way we want it.

This weekend, we gave our dining room a little makeover with some inexpensive DIY wall art. The problem with our dining room is that it's huge with lots of wall space.  We hung a large mirror at one end of the room, but still had a huge expanse of wall space that needed something (or some things) big.  We have some large pieces of art, but already hung them elsewhere in our apartment.  

We didn't want to spend money on more art or frames, so we tried this simple DIY that we found on Little Green Notebook: Huge prints for only $4.  Jenny Komenda has amazing ideas, and I love her style!  I was so excited to finally have the chance to try one of her projects.

How to make it happen:

1. Find some photos.  
2. Make them black and white.  
3. Save them on a flash drive and print them as large format architectural prints at FedEx Kinkos (around $4 each).  (You can call or check out the website before you go for info on sizing and how to save your files.  We saved them as grayscale images and converted them to PDFs.) 
4. Buy some large pieces of foam core. (We found huge pieces at Dollar Tree.)
5. You will probably need to cut the foam core to the size of your images.  Our photos ended up being 20"x26" and the foam core was 20"x28."  Use an exacto knife and a straight edge. 
6. You can paint the sides of the foam core first (I painted ours peach).  
7. After we cut the board and painted the sides, we trimmed the white borders off the photos (the easiest thing to do is to trim them using the large paper cutters at Kinkos after you have your photos printed).
8. Use double stick tape to mount your photos to the foam core.  So easy.  
9. Use 3M sticky velcro picture hangers to attach the foam core mounted photos to the wall.  

This was seriously so cheap and so easy! The entire project cost around $30, and we love the way that it brought some life to our dining room!

We have so many amazing photos from our adventures in the Caribbean over the past few years, and we were so excited to find a great way to put some of them on display.  I am pretty proud of the fact that we took all of these photos ourselves! 

1. Kaieteur Falls, Guyana, South America
2. Valley of Desolation, Dominica, West Indies
3. Snake Steps, Dominica, West Indies
4. Aba Wavine, Dominica, West Indies

*Advice for the Kinko's printing part:  

Print one image first to make sure it looks good. The photos came out really dark and streaky the first time (I think the printer needed new ink?). The guy who was helping me was really nice and lightened the photos and printed them on the extra large paper, which got rid of the streaks on the edges. I think he was supposed to charge me $7/each for the larger paper, but he was nice and didn't). Asking the guy if he could lighten the images and get rid of the streaks made such a difference, so definitely print one copy first to see what you think, and ask if they can help you make any adjustments if you aren't happy with the first print. This made all the difference! 

Also, these prints are not the highest quality and the paper is thin copy paper (not photo paper), but it is a great option if you want something inexpensive and dramatic. All this being said, we really do love how they turned out!

Font used: Amatic | Typekeys 
Arrow Photoshop Brushes from Creature Comforts
Inspiration for this project from Little Green Notebook

Images by Clare Wilkinson for C Squared W

Enjoying the adventures? Like us on Facebook!

Make 'em: Ikat Knobs

I always swoon over the gorgeous knobs and drawer pulls from Anthropologie, but at up $10 a pop, they can quickly become an expensive, little update.  We recently acquired a cabinet for our TV on craigslist, and I wanted an inexpensive way to give it a fresh look that didn't require purchasing knobs that cost nearly as much as the cabinet itself.  

My solution? DIY ikat knobs made with wooden knobs that cost less than a dollar each and some bright paint.

Hand-painted Ikat Knobs

Materials:

• unfinished wooden cabinet knobs
• scrap paper
• pen or pencil
• paint (I used leftover house paint samples from Lowes)
• a small, thin, pointy ended paint brush (for the details)
• a larger paint brush (to paint the background)
• polyurethane 
• cup of water and a paper towel (to clean your brush)

Method: 

a: champagne culture // b: madeline weinrib // c: shumacher // d: greenwithglamor

(a lighter color is better to begin with)

I found that the best way to achieve the ikat squiggly look was to paint diagonal line-like strokes extending across the width of each diamond section, filling in the diamond shape one brush stroke at a time.  

As you begin adding colors the paint may be transparent, so you will probably need to do a few coats.  I painted my design one color and one coat at a time.  (First all the teal, then all the yellow, then all the coral.)  I allowed each coat to dry completely and then went back in and touched up my top coats (just the yellow and coral).  During the touch ups you can try to better define the ikat-look with your short, diagonal brush strokes. 

Allow your knobs to dry overnight before coating them with a thin layer of polyurethane (apply according to the instructions on your can of poly).

Let me know if you make these, I'd love to see how they turn out!  Not into crafting, but want some hand painted knobs? Send me an email, I'd love to work with you to make some! 

Fonts used: Rochester, Type Keys 

Tutorial Images by Clare Wilkinson for C Squared W.
Ikat patterns: a: champagne culture // b: madeline weinrib // c: shumacher // d: greenwithglamor

Enjoying the adventures? Like us on Facebook!

Getting Crafty with Artsy Anthropology

Remember last week when I posted my favorite things about life in Dominica over on Artsy Anthropology?  Well, today I'm lucky enough to have Paige here sharing a fun tutorial!

Hey there C Squared W readers, my name is Paige and I have a little blog called Artsy Anthropology - on which I have fantastic people like Clare guest post, or where I share recipes, tutorials, shop coupons and other such things.

This tutorial is for fun craft storage - the squishy top mason jar with a chalkboard label...

Supplies:

• Mason Jar (for larger label, get one without writing)
• Chalkboard paint, paint brush
• Masking/painter's tape
• Fabric (about 10 sq. inches)
• Stuffing (I took apart an old pillow...)
• Hot glue gun and scissors

(You will need to do about 3 layers... for prepping the paint, read the directions for your particular paint)

You need a large circle about 2 times larger than the pop-out section of your jar's lid

You also need a small circle just smaller than the pop-out section

You need to glue the large piece almost all the way around (see below) and then stuff in the stuffing... then finish gluing.

Then you glue the smaller piece on to finish up...

Stuff the pop-off part back into the jar lid and that part is finished!

Then fill your jar, label it with the contents and be happy with your next project... Clearly I have a few of these... in which I store: glue sticks, "Bitty Bow" pieces, buttons, bobby-pins and feathers.

Hope you all have fun trying this at home! I'd love to see what you come up with!

Thanks so much, Paige, for sharing this fun tutorial.  I can't wait to try this out myself!

Be sure to check out Paige over at Artsy Anthropology.  You can also visit her cute Etsy shop and find her on Twitter. 

Favorite Wine & How to Root Basil

When Charlie and I were first married and living in our apartment back in Richmond, we had a small, overgrown backyard that we turned into a sweet little garden.  We lived there for two years and had so much fun taking care of our plants, a variety of herbs and vegetables.  We even had a compost pile!

Here in Dominica, we live in a little apartment on the edge of a small farm, and although there are tons of beautiful fruit trees and plants all around, we don't really have a spot to grow anything of our own.  We do have some basil plants that grow in a junk-yard sort of spot in the yard (seriously, hilarious).  We asked our landlord if she would plant our little basil plants in the yard when we first moved in and she planted them right beside some tires, cinder blocks, and old electric wires... So weird.

1. My all time favorite wine, Broadbent Vinho Verde.  It's really light and refreshing, and it's inexpensive, too!  It was also a top pick in the San Francisco Chronicle, which described it as "deliciously lively and food friendly" and it was one of Bon Appetit's top picks of 2008.  Plus the bottle is pretty.
2. Basil rooting in our kitchen - details and instructions below.
3. A rose I bought mainly for the cool bottle. Available in Dominica, and not bad.
4. Junk yard herb garden.
5. Our basil plants, in fancy pots, and complete with a lizard.

Did you know that if you keep basil clippings in a jar or vase with water for a week or two, they will begin to root?  And then you can plant the basil plants in a pot or in your garden!

How to Root Basil 

• Take some basil and clip off any tough, thick stems (just trim them a little so they aren't too thick and are more like twigs).  

• Fill a vase or jar with enough water so that an inch or two of the basil stems are submerged.  

• Keep it in a cool place, out of direct sunlight (but not in the fridge).  

• Change the water daily, and pinch off any dead leaves from the plant.  

• After a week or two, your basil will start to grow some roots and once it does it's ready to plant! 

Have a great Monday!