Ubercrafty

vagabond book

Kibbutz guest rooms

We are starting our third winter at the country house, better known as the Kibbutz of the North. Last year, I had my very handy handy-man of a brother banish the burgundy and forest green from the main floor, and I painted the girl's room a cheery green apple color (with lots of pink accents thanks to bright IKEA furniture). I even painted fabulous colors in the basement playroom.

But alas, our two guest rooms were still untouched.... and by untouched, I mean, builders-primer, yucky, dirty, and FULL of pin holes from letting 2 teenage girls go hog-wild with posters and push-pins.... SO! it was time to make our guests feel welcomed! I bookmark a thousand things when I read craft/decorating/design blogs, but two ideas had really been stuck in my head every since I had seen them, namely:

The ethnic-inspired circle patters of Oorbee Roy, a local textile designer (see the cabinet, not the ceiling) who was featured on a ton of blogs and both Style at Home and Canadian House and Home, and the wonderful vintage wallpaper animals of Inke Heiland, which I discovered through Daddy*Drama waaaay back when.

The first one was easy. Since I have a thing for orange (see old blog, and guest room at home,  and color of my stores, and store logos, and wedding color.... yeah, I like orange!) and I have been doodle-ing repetitive circle patterns in my school books since I was a kid, I decided to paint the "main" guest room using an adaptation of her technique.... I quickly sketched out my pattern and then Dumpling and I cut some shapes out of sticky shelf liner, which I then applied to the wall in the patterns I wanted to achieve. I covered the entire wall with 3/4 coats of the orange and then we peeled the vinyl back... I present to you, the main guest room:

the bedspread is terrible and doesn't match, but I actually have a really cool orange and white city-scrape print bedspread that I bought in Argentina a few years ago. It's usually on that bed but was being washed and I was too lazy to put it back on for pictures! I  promise I'll update next week!

The second room was more of a challenge. I really wanted to do some sort of animal silhouette, but not safari animals. And a while back, while picking a white for the wood we are about to paint over at the city house (shame on me!), I took Dumpling to the paint store and she picked a dark, bright magenta and made me PROMISE to use it somewhere, someday. So I have been surfing Ebay looking for a roll of vintage wallpaper that would work with the color palette, to no avail. Then a few weeks ago, I bought my daughter a Joe Fresh shirt (I'll have to blog about my love of Joe Fresh one day) and it had birds on a wire on it. I didn't even think about it, but I totally dreamed up the room with birds on a wire. I could "SEE" it in my head, and I could not find the paper I wanted. But I happen to sell really great wrapping paper at the store, so I grabbed a few pieces of paper that were in the right scale and colors......

As you can see, we did the reverse in the play nook. I painted the rest of the walls with a fresh coat of bright white, which did so much for brightening up the room. In the last picture, you can see how much nicer it's going to look with a brighter bedspread and some colorful pillows, but I have to hunt those down.... For the record, Dumpling selected the location of each of the Mama birds and the Baby birds.... She was a great help!

And for the record, this is what it looked like before. I don't have a pic of the other room before, but it was exactly the same..... both of the feature walls are actually recessed 4 inches, which makes a little ledge that goes around the beds, like a built-in nightstand, so it made it easy to pick where the color was going to go.

Wishing you a crafty new year

So, I am holed up at the cottage, and the kids are already growing restless. The ski hill and new holiday toys aren't enough to keep them buzy, and with no school and no babysitter, it is entirely up to us to entertain them.... ALL THE TIME!

A few months back, I came across the recycled cardboard kitchen on several crafty blogs...... so I ordered up the plans on Etsy a few days ago. I couldn't search the country side for enough large cardboard boxes to make this, but 2 pieces of 4 x 8 corroplast from the building store, 1 exacto knife and a tube of No More Nails, and voila!

Mine is a little wonky in places. I didn't have a straight-edge or a proper ruler, but it works, and the kids are overjoyed, especially Beach Ball, who is very very much into imaginative play these days. So she promptly started serving lunch to Baby.

Baby had her first meals propped up on a small rubbermaid drawer, with a stepstool as a table..... So today, I grabbed some of the scraps from my corroplast and using the same principles of slots and tabs, I made Baby a high chair..... it's not very elegant, and my measurments need some work, but Baby is happy and Beach Ball is simply over the moon.

I know I could have easily driven to Walmart and bought a play kitchen for a little more than what the supplies cost, but it kept me busy for several hours, and it just seems more fitting to have a homemade one. I would seriously like to take another stab at it, with discarded carboard and the proper measuring/cutting tools. Or maybe I'll stick to plastic corroplast and make an otherone for outside this summer.