The Bare Light Bulb

As a renter, I always seem to encounter this, it's just my luck. The Bare Light Bulb. Not sure which is worse; The Bare Lightbulb or The God-Awful Ugly Light Fixture (aka the fixture in the kitchen):

I know, the horror. Let us try to move on.

Anyways, when in need of a solution I turn to Pinterest. There were lots of neat, diy ideas easily adaptable to a light bulb in need. The best ideas for me are the ones that include mostly things I already have, or things I can purchase at the dollar store or at a thrift store.

This one caught my eye:

http://www.lisaroy.ca/2012/03/my-diy-capiz-chandelier.html

 

 

The capiz shells were imitable by cutting out circles of wax paper. However her chandelier involved an 'ornament hanger' and a sewing machine, neither of which I had on hand. Then I came across this:

http://www.designsponge.com/2010/08/diy-project-brennas-paper-capiz-shell-chandelier.html

She used a planter (much more accessible in June than an ornament hanger), and glued her wax paper circles to ribbon, rather than sewing them all together with a machine. I was excited to find a planter at the dollar store for... one dollar. I also picked up some wax paper, craft glue and ribbon there as well. However I would recommend Wal-Mart for the ribbon and craft glue. I quickly went through my dollar store supply and found it to be a much better buy at Wal-Mart... 10 yards of thin white ribbon for $.47 as opposed to 3 yards of white ribbon at the dollar store. I ended up using four rolls of the ribbon, so pick up several if you're going to give this a shot. I also bought a can of white spray paint to spray the black planter white and ceiling hooks to hang the planter from.

I cut lengths of wax paper and folded them into half, and half again and halves again... To minimize the amount of times I had to cut a circle. All of this would be made simpler and your circles more uniform if you had a circle cutter. However I did not, so hand cut circles it was.

For the record, you will cut one ga-zillion circles.

I figured out how long I wanted my circles to hang, then doubled that measurement and cut ribbon to size. I doubled the measurement because I draped my ribbon over the planter form and got twice the density for my trouble!

I draped my circles-glued-to-ribbons over the top part of the planter and also through the smaller, lower ring. I hot glued them to keep em in line, and then screwed the ceiling hooks in. I didn't want any of this to be a potential fire hazard so I tied some ribbon to the small eyes at the top of the planter and then tied the other ends of the ribbon to the ceiling hooks so that the planter was hanging a few inches underneath the lightbulb.

Finished product:

I did end up trimming it when I got a little further into the whole closet project. I took off the two bottom circles on each of the lower strands, and it definitely made the whole thing look a little sharper.

The Dr. Seuss Chevron

Most of my diy-ing has all been contained in one small area of our home. Namely the closet in the second bedroom, aka the nursery. Between two cribs and the dresser/changing table, I've had to be creative with the small room. Since baby clothes are so small, I decided the closet didn't need to be solely designated for clothing. So I went to work converting it from a plain ole closet to a closet/reading and rocking nook of fantastic-ness.

This is how it began (I am terrible at remembering to take a before picture, so a little pat on the back to me!):

My first step was to paint a fun pattern on the wall, and since chevron has been blowing up on my pinterest feed, and popping up on all the blogs I like to stalk, I figured it was only natural to add a little of the trend to my project.

Actually the original idea was a herringbone pattern, inspired by this tutorial: http://www.designsponge.com/2010/09/diy-project-lauries-herringbone-wall-design.html.

I liked the idea of having three colors, because I wanted to introduce pink somewhere since a little girl will be joining my 1 year-old son in the room at the beginning of August. In the end I chickened out, afraid that pink, blue, and white would come off as too busy or garish (I was also being considerate since this is a rental, I doubted the next renter would appreciate a pink closet). I decided to stick with the blue from the bedroom walls and white. The feminine influence would have to be provided in the details.

Easily the most daunting part of the scheme was the measuring. It was tedious, confusing and time-consuming. I first painted the whole closet white, since the last time these walls were painted is long in the past and they had acquired a yellowish tint that was not flattering in the least. Then I began the dreaded measuring/taping process. I wanted fairly quick gratification, so I went big and bold with only two V's to my pattern. I divided the wall into half, penciled a semi-straight line down the middle, and then divided the halves into halves and ended with three lines penciled on the wall. Then I ditched the pencil, grabbed the painter's tape and started winging it. Semi-kidding, I did play around with the first chevron to figure out how deep I wanted the diagonal lines to be (I started at the top after reading a tip that promised if your pattern got wonky towards the bottom it wouldn't be as noticeable), once I had that figured out I just tried my best to be consistent from one row to the next. 

Somewhere along the way, I screwed up. And the tip about it not being noticeable if it went wonky towards the bottom did not hold true for me:

Well it took a day or three, but I got around to fixing that not-so-little bloop, and it still ended up kinda wonky, but the kinda wonky I was willing to live with... I didn't end up taking a final picture of the wall until I had finished another addition to the whole project so here's a preview of what I did next:

It wasn't until I was looking through my photos of the wall, that I realized how truly wonky my paint job still is... Oh well, it looks cool in true Dr. Seuss style, and I did do all this without a level or even a ruler just a pencil and a tape measure. I just made do with what I had (and being a beginner diy-er, fancy tools like yard sticks and levelers do not reside at my abode quite yet), and am going to stop apologizing now...

Joining Blogland!

I've decided if the fourth of July was a good enough day for America to begin her awesomeness, it should be an adequate anniversary for myself to test the waters of blogland! So here I am, laying myself out to the world wide web, or at least my family and the one or two people who accidentally end up here. Hopefully everyone will be gracious enough to completely ignore me until I've acquired enough creativity to contribute some sort of landmark achievement to a worthy audience. I know, starting a blog before that far off date seems to be jumping the gun, but I needed to go ahead and lay claim to the incredibly clever blog name before some other genius thought it up. I plan on using this blog as a platform to share all my cheapskate, lazy methods of cutting corners on home decor ideas, usually found or inspired by pinterest and as a brag board to prove to my family that I've accomplished something in a day/week/month. So without further ado, here I am, Sarah, the not-so-creative force behind Thrift and Thriftability.