So. Pastels. I generally don’t prefer them unless it’s nail polish. For me, pastels have always been strictly associated with things like Easter and baby showers and I never thought twice about the potential to decorate the home with them. I found myself curious lately about this dilemma with Spring-time being the season of pastels, and as per usual, I’ve been proven wrong by all the amazing inspiration out there. In their essence, pastels are pretty feminine, but they can also add a surprisingly modern edge! Take a look and see what I mean.
Had to throw this next one in here because the message is too good. Who’s excited for a weekend of staying in???
I’m finding I like pastels with black and white. Really though, you can make me like anything by pairing it with black and white ;). I tend to prefer the mint, green, and blue pastels, although I am warming up to soft pinks. Still unsure if I’d incorporate these colors into my own home, but I do have a new-found appreciation for their comforting and calming quality.
How do you feel about pastels? Do you decorate with them at all?
Spring is THE time to experiment with color and I felt like letting my inner garden party goddess come out on this one. Inspired by the milk glass vases in my previous post, I wanted to try my hand at creating some beaded glass with color. I came across this amazing tutorial for beaded glass at Damask Love and had to try it myself. Of course, I went with creating two of my favorite things- candle holders and a vase.
I started by dotting on clear transparent paint onto plain glass candle holders. The paint goes on white but it dries clear.
I set this candle holder upside down on top of a candle jar so that I could rotate it by turning the candle jar and then leave it there to dry. I used random odd objects from around my apartment for propping up each candle holder like this.
After letting the dots dry for 24 hours, I painted the candle holders with colored transparent glass paint.
Now this part is really cool. I used the Martha Stewart Glass Spray Paint Kit to turn the glass paint into spray paint. Pretty neat, right? It comes with glass medium, an aerosol can, and a bottle. All it required was mixing the glass medium with transparent glass paint in a 1:1 ratio then attaching the aerosol can to the bottle. Unlike regular spray paint, this stuff doesn’t need to be shaken throughout use, so I just sprayed each candle holder straight on through.
The paint looks cloudy when first sprayed, but turns transparent after it dries. I sprayed on two coats of paint for each candle holder before letting them all dry for a day.
I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to go with teal or more of a true blue, so I went with both! For once I’m glad I was indecisive because I’m loving how both colors look together.
And as for the vase…
I dotted this round vase the same way with the clear paint but spray painted it gold instead of going with the glass paint. Yup, it’s hard for me to resist adding gold to anything.
A bit of a different project for me, but I’m excited to be dipping my decorating feet into color this Spring, especially with flowers. I’m loving the flowers in this arrangement and how they pop next to the blue and teal. Seriously, makes me want to have a garden party.
So there’s more… some other talented bloggers have posted Spring decorating projects as well and we’ve all come together for a blog hop!
We‘re also hosting a Spring giveaway for a $150 Target gift card! Enter below in the Rafflecopter widget and make sure to hop around to all the other blogs linked at the end of this post to see what everyone created! Good luck and happy Spring :).
I’m really excited about today’s post, guys. Artisan Books so kindly sent me a copy of The Plant Recipe Book for review, and I jumped at the opportunity because I was already a fan of its predecessor, The Flower Recipe Book. If you aren’t familiar with that book, let me tell you… it’s gorgeous and inspiring, and this one’s just the same.
Just like The Flower Recipe Book, The Plant Recipe book provides concise and clear step-by-step “recipes” on how to create beautiful arrangements, this time with plants. It’s easy to follow and the beautiful photos make it an especially excellent coffee table book. I know there are a lot of you looking for coffee table books you actually want to read, right??
The contents are organized by plant type, and what I love is that each plant has a few different recipes ranging in complexity. This one for instance is a recipe for a succulent garden involving several varieties considering size and arrangement.
This is definitely something I’d want to try making myself, and sure I’ve put together my own mini succulent gardens, but not nearly as sophisticated as this! You might be able to guess that I especially love the copper bowl.
There’s always one recipe for each plant that highlights the plant on its own, which happens to be the ones I like the most in the book. Take for example this simple recipe for Tillandsia, also known as an air plant.
It’s simply an air plant in a hedgehog container, but the neat thing about it is that the Tillandsia is meant to abstractly mimic the spikes of a hedgehog. Just like this example, the book regularly addresses how to be mindful and purposeful about the container you use. I love that since getting creative with containers and planters happens to be something I already enjoy!
So I was inspired to create my own plant arrangement, and I considered doing either of these two options, but I decided to go with this one.
Excerpted from The Plant Recipe Book by Baylor Chapman (Artisan Books). Copyright (c) 2014. Photographs by Paige Green.
These are topiaries made from mini Euonymous shrubs. It would have been really cool if I could have found similar wooden containers, but I shopped the house instead and went with something more simple. I had some milk glass vases that needed some love and all it took was planting a couple Euonymous shrubs I found at Home Depot in them and then pruning the branches so that each shrub looked round like a ball. For the finishing touch, instead of covering the soil with moss, I covered it with white rocks.
How simple is that? I never would have thought on my own to create something like this and it’s so different from any plants I’ve had before. Topiaries are very appropriate for Spring, too, and it’s especially unique to have living ones like this!
Feeling inspired? The book is available starting TODAY so pick one up and take a look! It is a must for any plant obsessed maniac (raising my hand).
For more information on the book, check out the product page at Artisan Books.
You may have caught a glimpse of this mirror in my previous post about my Spring centerpiece and I’m here today to tell you that it didn’t always look this way! I loved the gray color before and was sure it was perfect the way it was, but when disaster struck, I seized the opportunity to change it up.
The mirror fell off the wall in the middle of the night and I didn’t hear it at all. I’m a very deep sleeper, guys. I found the ruins almost 16 hours after it happened when my boyfriend asked if I saw the mirror and knew about it falling in the middle of the night. I was like hey no biggie I’ll just glue the broken frame pieces back on, and then he told me they shattered into a million pieces. I looked over a little further to the right of the scene and saw about a million shattered pieces of the broken frame.
So, I went with wood filler (affiliate link). I know, the frame isn’t made of wood, but the filler still worked just as needed- it filled in the huge hole! I used a butter knife (really) to scoop the filler in and smooth the outside edges as best as I could. After letting it dry for a couple days, I sanded down some of the rougher parts but I mostly left it the way it was.
Re-creating the same gray shade with the fake worn out look it previously had would have brought a lot of attention to the broken part of the frame since there was no way I could get it to be perfect. I felt like metal leaf would not only help me easily achieve even color all over the frame, but the texture and lines that the leaf would create might help hide the unevenness around where the frame broke.
I applied the adhesive to the frame with a paint brush and waited 20 minutes to let it set. Next, I took some tips from my girl Martha Stewart on how to gild without ripping apart the metal leaf, like I accidentally did with the one at the top of the booklet in the photo above. First, I wore a glove so that my fingers wouldn’t stick to and rip the metal leaf (don’t know why I never thought of that myself!). I pulled out a metal leaf sheet just a little bit out of the booklet and placed it on the edge of the frame so that it stuck to the glue. Then I pulled the booklet away so that the leaf would fall flat onto the rest of the frame surface. Apologies for only showing one hand. I was alone and needed my other hand to take the photos!
I tapped down on the entire surface of the metal leaf to make sure it was completely stuck onto the adhesive before brushing off the excess and repeated all over the frame, of course making sure to re-use the larger pieces of metal leaf that didn’t stick onto the frame on the previous application.
I went with copper leaf because I’ve been on a copper kick lately. Did you notice? Also, I probably liked the idea of it matching my copper dipped vases. Basically, it’s a lot more “me” now and I love it more than before.
You can still see where I applied the wood filler on the left of the frame, but I think it turned out WAY better than it would have if I tried to paint the filler gray, don’t you think? It’s far from perfect, a lot of spots aren’t completely covered in the copper leaf, and there are lots of lines and creases, but I’m telling you… that’s the beauty of it. I love the imperfections, and maybe even the fact that it fell and broke in the first place, because otherwise I never would have turned it copper!
What do you think of the copper transformation? Do you think I should have gone with trying to paint the filler gray?
This was a pretty spontaneous idea brought on by a HomeGoods find, which is how a lot of my decorating stories start. It was the marble Lazy Susan, and while initially I thought I’d turn it into some cool DIY, weeks went by without a light bulb going off for as to what, so instead of letting it continue collecting dust in the corner, I thought I’d put it to its intended use. Genius!
It hit me that this was the perfect opportunity to try out a trending color combo I’ve been really loving- copper and marble. I added on my DIY Copper Dipped Vases and in them arranged some yellow freesia. That little turquoise pot is a candle that not only perfectly compliments the yellow freesia and copper vases, but it smells DIVINE. The scent is agave tulip and I got it from Anthropologie aka heaven on earth. I was sold on its little feet.
S and P for salt and pepper. I’m always a fan of mixing metals and I’m so glad it worked out that our silver salt and pepper shakers fit in with this little vignette. And really, they’re the only things here that would make me turn the Lazy Susan. Yay for functionality!
Gorgeous Spring colors and perfectly suits our dining table, don’t you think? It’s something a little different for me, though still incorporates all my favorite things.
What colors are you adding or removing from your home this Spring? I’m planning on purging a lot of clutter soon and really get a better idea for how else I want to bring Spring into my apartment!
It’s done. I’ve hopped on the train for this trend. My ghost chair is on its way in the mail and I can’t WAIT. In my excitement and anticipation, I’ve been looking around at tons of ghost chair styling inspiration. It’s such a great small space solution since it looks like it takes up no room and it also works with so many different styles, which I wouldn’t have suspected on my own. It can be chic, eclectic, modern, whimsical, elegant, anything!
How about these painted ghost chairs from Oh Joy! So cute!
I love this black one and how it works so perfectly with the smokey glass top desk.
They’re so versatile, no? What do you think of ghost chairs? Which of these spaces inspires you the most?
