Kitchen Subway Art

A shout out to Yvonne Lawrence who was one of the winners of the first ever {pineplace} blog give away. She was a winner of a $10 gift certificate towards the subway art sign of her choice. She came up with a fun idea to use kitchen words and I thought the design we came up with for it turned out pretty darn cute. Thought I would share in case you would like one for your kitchen!

Color Options for Kitchen Subway Art

Black Back/White Letters $39.99 Red Back/White Letters $39.99 White Back/Tan Letters $39.99 Other $39.99

Valued Customers-Love 'em!

I have had some customers over the years who have really made me feel great. Why? They keep coming back to me time and time again to help them with their projects! One of those is Scheris who has ordered several items from me over the years and graciously invited me over to take a peek at what it all looks like. She orders it, I create it exactly to her specifications and she picks it up, so I have not seen it in its context...until now. It was fun to actually see it on the walls. I love how she uses the written word to inspire and motivate her family.

Thanks Scheris for your business over the years and for inviting me into your home!

Canvas Covered Books Tutorial

Wandered around Restoration Hardware several months back, and got inspired! (Wish I could say I bought something but, wow...no). I love their amazing decorating sense, so simple and classic. Earthly, woody, and booky. Yeah, booky...several of their staged sitting areas made me feel smarter just sitting in them with atlases, globes, maps, and books.They have been doing 'vintage' way longer and way better than the lot of us (albeit not as cheaply).

And I just love what they do with books! You can't see it very well in this picture but there is a stack of books, covers ripped off and secured with rope or jute. I put my used paperbacks that I don't plan to read again to good use to create the same effect, but I used more of a gross grain ribbon I had saved off of Pottery Barn packaging from a recent purchase.

 Covering the books in canvas, or duck cloth, has got to be my favorite though and so I gave it a go.

 I really liked how they turned out.

I was about to create a tutorial to share with you how I did this...but then I thought, I bet someone has beat me to it, so why reinvent the wheel, right? Sure enough I found it, at a site I happen to love already and suggest you bookmark it to. Click here to watch the tutorial.

As always, if you are not having a, 'heck yeah, I'll give that a try' kind of day, I offer them up already done for you.

Amount of Books You Would Like

One Book $5.00 Two Books $10.00 Three Books $15.00 Four Books $18.00 Five Books $20.00

Centralia

What is a Centralia you ask? It is actually a place, I believe it got its name for being the 'center or central' point between Seattle and Portland, as it is almost exactly half way between the two, but I could just be making that up. Do you ever do that? Something makes sense to you and so you make it reality? Anyway, posting today about Centralia because I think it might be my all time favorite junkin' spot. I touched on it very briefly in one of my first posts which you can view here. They have some great shops and I have been dying to go back and got my chance last week as we made our way on a family vacation to Multnomah Falls, Oregon, which turned out to be a great trip and wonderful hiking with the hubby and kiddos! But I digress...I was talking about great junkin' shops. There are several shops all located on one quaint little street downtown.

 They had some great items for sale for those looking to add some vintage flare to their home.

 I think by far, my favorite is the The Shady Lady Boutique. A SMALL sampling of what she offered:

 

And I LOVED her vintage photo wall that led up a SPIRAL stairway to the second story vintage clothing boutique.

I also adored the great outdoor spaces the shops created that added that amazing special touch that wraps it all together and makes you want to spend the whole afternoon with your besties doing some junk shoppin', grabbing an ice cream cone at The Centralia Perk and maybe grabbin' some grub at the Berry Fields Cafe.

Today, my besties were my kids (making a silly face).

They do not offer a complete list of all the shops but for great directions on how to get to this little piece of heaven visit here.  Oh, I almost forgot to share my little treasure I picked up. A rusty bucket. Yep, that was my little find for the day. Just $12 I am going to make it into a garden hose holder by bolting it to the house. I'll get ya a pic when that actually occurs!

Happy Cen'trails' to you!

TAMCO Foundation

I recently received an online order out of Florida for one of my 4th of July Subway Art signs. As a refresher they look like this:

I thought it was a little odd that someone would order one after the 4th of July holiday...maybe they would just hold onto it until it was time to decorate for next year? I looked up the address of where I was shipping to and found the TAMCO Foundation. I realized this was much more than a one day a year holiday for these folks. This foundation raises money to help those who sacrifice everything to defend our country. One of the many things they do is fund surprise trips home for service men and women to see their families. Grab the tissues and watch this video that is posted on their website. I am not sure what they plan to do with the subway art but I am honored to be a part of anything they are doing. I thank them for what they do and hope you will take a few minutes to check out their website.

Yellow

Have you noticed the yellow trend? It is popping up everywhere.

Yellow Doors

Yellow Walls

Even Yellow Ceilings

So it put me in the mood to create something yellow and I whipped this up.

Which was inspired by this video

Five Years 

If you feel inspired by it, I would love to create one for your wall (doesn't have to be yellow!)
24x30 inch Live Your Life on Purpose Canvas

Colors

Yellow $35.00 Black $35.00 Barn Red $35.00 Seabreeze Blue $35.00 Navy Blue $35.00 Avacado Green $35.00 Pink $35.00 Brown $35.00 Other $35.00

Robin Accent Pillow-Tutorial

I recently designed and made this very simple accent pillow so I wanted to share how I did it in case you get a hankering to add just that right touch but still KISS. You know...Keep It Simple Sister! I LOVE the simplicity of things and this surely fits the bill, not just in the look of it, but also how simple it is to make!

To start you will pick your fabrics. You might remember my post awhile back about fabric that I love. I drew on those again of course. I used muslin for the front of the pillow and an ivory broadcloth I got at IKEA. 

Here is the broadcloth on top of the muslin. I lined them up on top of each other so I could cut them at the same time so they were exactly the same.

 I used a ruler to mark where I wanted to cut the fabric with a pencil. The measurements I used for my pillow were 9 inches by 13 inches, but you can make yours any size and dimension you want! Once I had it cut (remember I kept both fabrics on top of each other and cut them at the same time) I ironed it so I had a nice, flat piece of material to work with. I took just the muslin piece and applied the stencil to it, placing it approx 1 3/4 inches above the bottom of the fabric and approx 2 1/2 inches in from the right side. You can use your own stencil or you can buy this robin one below for $4.

Once I was sure I had it where I wanted it, I pulled off the masking cover to expose the stencil.

 

Then I painted. I used simple acrylic craft paint. You can add a fabric medium to the paint if you want, but I did not find this necessary since I will never do more than spot clean this pillow. I used Delta Ceramcoat #02650 Tahiti Blue. (No, I did not spell that wrong, it is Ceramcoat, I have always read it Creamcoat! Ya learn something new every stinkin' day!) Make sure you put a paper plate or other protective covering over your work space (my husband wishes I heeded my own advice all the time!)

Once it was dry I pulled the stencil off and then let it sit and dry some more. You don't want to work with this until it is TOTALLY dry!

Now comes the sewing! You will want to use a sewing machine for this, if you can thread your machine you have done the hardest part. You are just going to sew straight lines. You will now place fabric pieces together, wrong sides out. Using a 1/4 seam I sewed all four sides of the pillow, stopping about 1 1/2 inches short of closing it up. I used this hole to turn the right side out and I used scissors to push out the corners. 

Next, using polyester fill you want to start stuffing the pillow as full as you can until you get a shape you like. I again use scissors in the hole to push filling into the corners. I stuff it until it is a shape I like. Here it is almost full with a little fill coming out the hole so you can see what it looks like. This fill is available at every craft/fabric shop and also Walmart and Target type stores.

Once you get it stuffed to your liking, thread a regular needle and hand stitch the hole closed. Use the exact same color thread as fabric so you cannot see the stitching.

Tie a knot at the end and trim strings.

There you have it! As you can see, I have made a few extras! I promised at the beginning of this blog I would help you do it yourself when you were having one of those confident, 'I can do this' days! If that day is today for you, have at it. If you would like to purchase the stencil, see below. Just $4 with FREE SHIPPING! 
BUT, if today is one of those 'I have been searching design blogs all day and I am overwhelmed and just want someone to do it for me' days I promised I would help with that too...so complete pillows are also available for purchase below.
Robin Accent Pillow

Robin Stencil in Vinyl