DIY: Decorate Easter Egg

Decorating Easter eggs has transformed into an art form. With Easter around the corner, we decided to give you a peak at how we plan to decorate our eggs. Here is our take on decorating, we tried to keep it simple with minimal tools. Here is a look at our Silver and Blue Easter Eggs and Leslie's Ombre Easter Eggs (they turned out really neat).

How do you decorate your eggs? Also, when do you decorate your eggs? We always decorated them on Saturday, so the Easter Bunny could hide them Sunday morning.

For more ideas, check out this great article in Good Housekeeping.

Best,

Marion + Leslie

DIY: Colorful Shells

Over the past few months, my shell collection has grown. Since January, I have filled two ziploc bags full of shells. What to do? Get crafty! We painted the shells to give them a funky, uniform look and take them from ordinary to stand out home accents. This is what we did:

Materials:
Shells
Acrylic paint
Paint brushes
kraft paper or newspaper (for covering your work surface)

1. Clean off the shells and scrub off any sand. You want to make sure that the shells are as clean as possible so that the paint adheres smoothly.

2. Get painting. Choose a color palate and some design ideas and get creative.

3. Let the shells dry and find a fun place to display your creations.

DIY: Easy Valentine's Day Gifts

This is an easy DIY project that we think is an inexpensive update to the usual "go-to" Valentine's Day gifts. It is healthier then a cookie, lasts longer then 12 dozen roses and looks prettier then a card. Small potted plants is our "go-to" gift for our girl friends this year.

We started out by gathering several empty pots that I had lying around my house and porch. Leslie picked up a twelve pack of Dianthus plants (you can grab any potted plant, but we thought the color of the flowers was appropriate for the holiday).

Since the pots were so small, we didn't need any additional soil. We placed each plant into a terracotta pot, patted down the soil and gave it some water.

We topped off our plants with a heart attached to a skewer…just to make sure it looked it's part! Voila!

I am proud to report that we worked on this blog post over a week ago and the plants are still going to strong…they will be delivered this week!

Best,

Marion + Leslie

DIY: Baked Cinnamon Ornaments

It has been way too long since our last DIY post. So we decided to make this one extra easy. This is a great DIY activity for the holiday season because it will literally make your entire house smell like Christmas.

What you need:
1 1/2 Cups Cinnamon (grab it at the dollar store)
1 Cup Apple Sauce
2 Tablespoons Ground Cloves
Twine (to hang the finished product)
Toothpick
Cookie Cutters

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Mix 1 cup of the cinnamon and 1 cup of the apple sauce together in a medium bowl. Really mix it…you might have to get in there with your hands. If the mixture seems too dry, add more apple sauce or more cinnamon if it seems to wet. You want the whole mixture to clump together in one big dough ball.
• Add the ground cloves and continue to mix it all together.
• Sprinkle some cinnamon on the counter (like if you were rolling out cookies on flour) and roll out your mixture to a 1/4 inch thickness. If the dough is too wet, it will make a huge mess and stick to the rolling pin (just add more cinnamon to take care of this problem).
• Use your star cookie cutter to cut out shapes (I used stars, but you could do hearts, trees, etc).
• Place the stars on a cookie sheet with a silpat. The stars can be really close together; they won't rise in the oven.
• Using a toothpick, carefully make a hole in each star. 
• Stick the ornaments in the oven for 1.5 hours or more allowing the juice from the applause to evaporate. The range in cooking time depends on the humidity in your house, humidity and climate. They should be rock hard!
• Take ornaments out of the oven and loop a string through each of the holes to hang on a tree, attach to a package or string together to make garland. Enjoy!

DIYing: Everyday into Art

We had to share with you our most recent DIY project...turning ordinary things into pieces of art. This DIY project is simple, it just requires you to do a little scavenging around your house, antique store or thrift store. For example we found some wonderful agate coasters and prints from an antique book. We took them to our local framer and were thrilled with the results.

agate coasters

The Finished Pieces

DIY Success!

Here are the Robin's Egg Prints from the antique books. They turned out so handsome! Actually, exceeded our expectations, so we are going to sell them in the shop.

purchase here 

purchase here 

purchase here

I think all three prints would make a nice statement in a living room or hallway. A friend of ours hung similar egg prints in her nursery...cute idea, right?

What are you going to frame?

Best,

Marion + Leslie

Party Recap

Good Morning! This weekend was full of celebrations, friends and family, which made Brandon's birthday party a huge success! Thought I would share some more photos from the party.

We didn't want to leave you hanging, so here is another great DIY project by M.K. Quinlan on the Garden and Gun blog. I love these DIY fabric pumpkins. What do you think?

Fabric Pumpkins via G and G

Fab Friday: Party Time

Hey readers! Marion here. I apologize for the somewhat brief post, but it is my husband's birthday today (the big 3-0). I have been busy setting up and planning for his birthday bash. Here are few snapshots of what we have been working on.

Floral arrangements ready to go!

Have  a great Friday!

Best,

Marion + Leslie

DIY: IKEA Bedside Table

So this might be our biggest DIY project yet...

I have been looking for a set of bedside tables for quite sometime. I have done an exhaustive search for tables that meet the following criteria: storage, at least 24 inches wide, silver accents and wood. Well, the only thing I kept coming back to were the Rast dressers at IKEA. I had never done a DIY furniture piece, so I was a bit hesitant. However, I was coming back from a friends wedding in North Carolina and needed an excuse to get out of the car...so I decided to bite the bullet, stop at IKEA and give this whole DIY furniture thing a try. I am glad I did!

Here is what you will need:
Rast 3 Drawer Chest
Fine Sand Paper or Sand blocks
Rust-Oleum
Face Mask (protect yourself from fumes and dust)
Cardboard (to protect surfaces from spray paint)
Decorative Drawer Knobs

What you need!

Step One: I chose to only spray paint the visible pieces...it actually ended up being a cleaner look. The three front drawer panels, two exterior side panels, top panel and bottom inset panel were the only pieces that needed to be spray painted.

Step One

Step Two: After I spray painted the panels and they had completely dried (about 2-3 hours), I sanded them using the fine sandpaper. I wiped down the sanded pieces with a damp rag.

Step Three: Next, I decided to assemble the dresser to make sure I had spray painted all of the exposed areas. Assembling the furniture prior to its final coat of paint makes it look more cohesive too!

Step Three

Step Four: Take out the drawers and spray paint each one, then spray paint the exterior of the dresser (you can use some painters tape for cleaner lines, but I didn't think it was necessary).

Step Four

Step Five: Choose the knobs for the drawers and attach them to the drawers...this was my favorite part.

Step Five

Step Six: Finished! Style your bedside table with decor from Open Door Shop!

Finished Product

Horn Tray, Carafe and Calligraphy Brush

Well...what do you think? What should our next DIY project be? We are open to ideas!

Best,

Marion + Leslie

DIY: Gold Dipped Vases

Alright readers! It is time for our favorite DIY project. It might look familiar because we featured it here. This is a budget friendly project that will elevate any tablescape, mantel, entryway, etc.

You will need: 

• Empty, clean, glass jars/bottles
• Liquid Leaf 
• Painter's tape
• Foam paintbrush
• Newspaper

Cut a strip of painter's tape and wrap it around your glass jar. If you want your vases to have various heights of gold leaf on each vase, then wrap the tape at various heights on each jar. 

Take you foam paintbrush and begin to paint your jar. You may want to use two coats to eliminate brush strokes. Be sure to paint the bottom of your jar.

Once the liquid leaf is completely dry, slowly peal off your tape. Look at that clean edge! Eek, look at those nails...someone needs a manicure!

I like to do this project in batches.  It works best when you set up an assembly line. The gold paint dries so quickly that by the time you finish painting a dozen jars, you can start to peel off the tape. My husband and I collected glass jars and bottles for several months. One Sunday afternoon, we lined everything up and cranked out about 30 glasses. This project has limitless possibilities and the more you do, the better it looks. 

DIY: The PPF (Painted Plastic Figurine)

Many of you loved our last DIY post. Today, we want to bring you the deets on a popular DIY project that is trending on pinterest, the Painted Plastic Figurines or PPF, as we like to call it. The PPFs have been popping up everywhere (on desks, on top of jars, at place settings, etc.). We decided it was our turn to try this DIY craft out. 

Here is what you need:

-plastic toy animals (you can find them at a local craft store)

-newspaper or butcher paper

-spray paint (color of your choice)

***In the past, I have had problems using spray paint on plastic, so I asked the kind person at Lowes for a suggestion and he recommended the Krylon Fusion spray paint. It worked out great! The only drawback is it takes a little longer to dry, but I loved the glossy finish.

Lay out your butcher paper or newspaper on a porch or outside area (you want ventilation). Place your animals on the paper. Shake your can of spray paint vigorously (this is the only part that seems to be time consuming). Holding the can 12 to 18 inches away from your animals, begin to spray. Let animals dry and flip or rotate them before spraying another coat. Let animals dry. That is it...really! You can spray paint your animals in any color (metallic, neon, etc). I chose white because it matched the table setting.

Here are some other ways to use your PPFs.

source

source

source