Altered Tea Towels

Remember a while back when I stenciled a red anchor on to a set of tea towels for my One Room Challenge Room? It was one of the quickest and rewarding craft projects I've done in a long time.

They are still my favorite towels and have washed up nicely over the year, with the paint and stencil still as vibrant today as when I made them.

Today I made tea towels for my kitchen using an image from The Graphics Fairy and an Avery Light Fabric Transfer. Karen at the Graphics Fairy has done all the work on these images by reversing them for you. All you have to do is hit PRINT.  Print it directly on to the transfer paper.

I found both the Fabric Transfers and the cotton tea towels at Walmart so the supplies for this project are very inexpensive.

Here's how I transferred the image on to the tea towel:

Select image and print directly on to the Transfer Paper and trim if desired. I didn't trim mine because I like the rectangle it creates. Circular or small images should be trimmed so that you have less of the transfer paper left on the towel. Pre-wash your tea towels, then iron them. Turn iron to Cotton Setting with NO Steam. (Be sure to read the directions that come with your transfer paper.)

You have to press really firmly and consistently for about 3 minutes to make the transfer happen. Making sure to get the edges really well, as they tend to peal up over time.

After pressing, I hung it over the back of a chair to cool for about 5 minutes while I ironed the second one. 

Once cooled, you can carefully peal off the backing to reveal your design.

 This was an under 30 minute project. I have a few more ideas for altering tea towels that
 I will be sharing next week.

I took a little time off last week to celebrate my Grandson, Cylas' First Birthday.

My daughters and I had lots of fun making the decorations and baking cupcakes and his little Monster cake for the party, in which we hosted 55 people.  I'll be sharing our Little Monster themed decorations and cupcakes soon.

I will be gone the rest of the week because my our little guy here is getting surgery to correct his strabismus in both of his eyes on Wednesday. To be honest, I am more than a little worried about him. If you are a believer in prayer, could you say one for Cylas? I'll keep everyone up to date on Cy via Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks my friends! Have a GREAT week!

The One Room Challenge Reveal 2

Tangerine Tom Boy Room Reveal 2

(See Reveal 1 HERE)

I have been working on redecorating my youngest daughter Sophie's room for months. I was motivated to get started by my friend Linda at My Crafty Home Life. She created this challenge for us: 15 bloggers (Designers and DIYers) complete 1 room in their house in 6 weeks. I have gotten the bones of the room complete: built a custom bed to fit Sophie's tiny room, painted twice, no actually 3 times because I added a tangerine racing stripe to the walls. I dealt with an unusual door problem because her room has an arched doorway and no standard door would fit it. We have added storage, art and fixed up an old dresser, night stand and lamp along the way. This post will take you through my drapery and door solutions:

Remember my inspiration fabric? I decided to use it to make a roman type shade.

I lined the fabric with a cotton muslin.

Sewed tangerine grosgrain ribbon to both sides. It is about 4 inches longer than the curtain.

That way I can roll the curtain up and tie the ribbon in bows to let the light in.

(Notice the snow? I took this photo today! March 22. No spring weather for Idaho.)

Here's what it looks like when the curtain is down.

This was the old door, but it lacked privacy.

 This was our solution. We used closet door hardware. It is meant for 2 sliding doors but works perfectly for our situation. Since our ceilings on our upper floor are only 82 inches in height, we were able to use a standard door, molly screws and mount this directly to the ceiling. I like the industrial look of it but you could frame it in with some molding, as you would a standard closet door. The track and all the parts cost only $14.99.

When door is closed you have no idea there is a cute little room behind it.

The door slides right over our stairway and out of the way. It doesn't take up any space and the best part is, no more slamming of the door. Whenever Sophie would leave her little half door open, her older (teenagers) siblings would slam it shut. I don't know why... They are teens, that is the best explanation I have. Now they really can't slam it. I think I will install these all over the house! LOL!

This is the view from the inside. No one peaking in at her. She loves the privacy!

Here's the handle we put on the outside. Just simple galvanized looking door pull. I think it was around $2. This room is still a work in progress. My next reveal will hopefully be my last but who knows? I am a little crazy like that :) That post will be about the dresser and storage solutions we found. I hope you'll come back for it.

The One Room Challenge:

Saved by Suzy

Dutch.British.Love

Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)

One Room Challenge Reveal Part 1

Welcome Back to The One Room Challenge!

It may be a little late but it's finally here! Reveal Day! I wish I had filmed Sophie's reaction to it. Honestly she has not set foot in this construction zone for a week! She was so excited! Now I can't wait to show it to you. But first let's take a look at the BEFORE...

This is what her bedroom looked like when we started this project. Hot pink and a Hot Mess. It had a tiny toddler bed and no room to play.

Nothing about this room was Sophie's style.

But Now....

It's 100% Sophie. She LOVES her Tangerine Tom Boy Room. Her favorite part of the room is the racing stripe. I think it is mine too.

We added privacy curtains to the sides of the bed using a long tension rod. They also make a pretty cool tent.  

I painted our custom made bed white and added all new bedding. You cannot imagine how hard it is to find a comforter in tangerine. I ended up using a tangerine sheet set, a lovely fuzzy aqua throw and a thick white cotton blanket.

Behind that wooden crate below the bed is her secret hiding spot that Joe built into the bed. Read about it HERE.

Her once pink shelves got covered in tangerine ribbon. I'll be posting about this and a few other craft projects that I did for the room in the next 2 posts. I hope you will come back next Wednesday, I want to show you her new barn style door that we created using closet door track. And the other side of the room that includes my dragon inspiration fabric roman shade.

Please take the time to check out these amazing design blogs all participating in
The One Room Challenge:

Saved by Suzy

Dutch.British.Love

Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)



Linking to: Thrifty Decor Chick

One Room Challenge Week 5 Accessories

Welcome back to The One Room Challenge! I've been enjoying this challenge so much that I want to take the time to send a heartfelt Thank You! To my friend, Linda of My Crafty Home Life. Linda is responsible for coming up with this idea of transforming 1 room in our house in just 6 weeks. She brought all 15 of us together and has encouraged us all along the way.  There are some seriously talented ladies participating in this challenge, I hope you will take the time to visit their blogs and check out their fantastic rooms. There is a list of links to their blogs at the bottom of this post.

Tangerine Tom Boy Room

This week for Sophie's bedroom, I concentrated on touch up paint and loaded in furniture. I have also been creating and repurposing some accessories and working on the barn style door.

You might remember my repurposed lamp (see post here). It was originally dark wood stain. (That orange "crystal" was original from the 70s.) I took it apart, spray painted it and added the cute little girly lampshade, which Sophie hated. She said, (and I quote.) "I do not like flowers." So we switched the lamp shade for this zebra one. "Ya, that's what I'm talking about," Sophie's reaction to it. I guess I did good on my $4.96 Walmart purchase.

This summer in my spray painting furniture frenzy (read about it here), I painted this little side table that was also an ugly dark wood stained from the 70s. Sophie painted the wooden knob tangerine with craft paint and I added a little Minwax to it so it would hold up. It's kind of a girly table with it's scallops but I'm not tell her. :)

For art, above the bed I hung this collage of white wooden circles. They came in a package with "Command" stickies on the back, so I can remove them easily. I found them at my local drug store for $2.99. With that bright stripe on the wall, I'm keeping art at a minimum.

For Sophie to display her own art work, I found these HUGE clothes pins at Michael's for $3 each. They were all ready this crazy color, all I did was add some picture hanging hardware on the back. I measured, pre-drilled the holes and attached the hangers.

We will have pops of Tangerine everywhere. I am so glad I went with the Aqua walls to tone all of this down. 

Since my friend, Linda hates surprises, I thought I'd let you in on the secret of what I used for my "barn door" for Sophie's bedroom. Have you seen this hardware before? It's only $14.98 at Home Depot.

Hint: look at your closet... It's sliding closet door track. We have incredibly low ceilings on our second floor only 81 inches high. So this hardware plus a standard 36 x 80 hallow core door (painted and fussed with, of course) will make up her barn style door. Come back next week for the big reveal. I can't wait to show you the rest of the room.

Stop by and visit these incredible bloggers who all are taking part in The One Room Challenge.

Saved by Suzy
Dutch.British.Love
Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)

One Room Challenge Week 4 Tangerine Tom Boy Room

Tangerine Tom Boy Room

One Room Challenge Week 4

{To read all of my posts on The One Room Challenge click HERE.}

"Racing Stripes"

Remember my plan to paint this room Tangerine, then I ended up painting it this Aqua color? Sophie was pretty disappointed in that decision. So in order to liven things up, we decided to paint some "Racing Stripes" on the walls. I did quite a bit of measuring on this and ended up with a 6 inch wide stripe. I measured from the ceiling down to were I thought the top of the stripe should be and marked it in pencil with small dots every 8 inches along the walls. Using the pencil marks as a guide, I then added the tape.

For the bottom of the stripe I measured 6 inches below the top line and repeated the same marking, taping process. I taped and retaped a few of these lines several times to make sure they were straight. It took some time but the outcome is so worth it. {Can you see how tiny this room is? That's Sophie in the picture above, on top of her new bed. }

I rechecked that my tape was securely in place by rubbing it with the back of my paint brush. Then used some of my original wall color (Aqua) and painted over the tape (above). This is to insure that the Tangerine paint does not bleed under the tape. This trick really works. I highly recommend this step.

While waiting for my Aqua paint to dry, I decided to mix my paint. Yes, mix my own paint. I am a firm believer in "use what you got." I just happen to have 2 gallons of different orange paint. {I am a paint addict, can you tell??} The one on the right is the original wall color I purchased for this room and the one on the left was used as a base for my red wall in my living room. I got a large jelly jar and poured it 3/4 full of the lighter color then added the 1/8 of darker one. Stir, Stir, Stir... couldn't be easier!

Ta.. Da.. Tangerine...

Whoa! Brightness!

Here's Miss Sophie helping me remove the tape. She was so excited about this part! She loved making a huge ball out of the tape after we pulled it all off. It took 3 coats of Tangerine paint to get this solid color. Wait until the walls are completely dry before you remove the tape. It's hard to be patient (especially if you are 6 years old) but it will guarantee no mistakes.

Here is what we ended up with, no paint bleeds. Not too shabby, right?

And best of all Sophie is LOVING it!

It sure is bright. I can't wait to show you the finished room, I have found some amazing accessories. And still have fabrics and furniture to add over the next 2 weeks. I hope you will come back next week for the fun!

Please take the time to visit these amazing design bloggers all participating in The One Room Challenge:



Saved by Suzy
Dutch.British.Love
Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)