Fixing things.

I have an antique mahogany table. I bought it at an auction when I was 19 years old. I love it. It has a beautiful veneer on it that just sparkles when it's polished. Though like all old pieces of furniture this one has accumulated a few love marks. By that I mean me being incredibly stupid and putting a a few hot cookies on the table. It scorched the wood and left white cookie marks in my beautiful veneer. I also had a friend leave a damp towel on one side and that two left a mark.  So the past few years I've tried everything to remove those marks. Numerous polishes and stain removers, but to no avail. My beautiful table was marred. I hated it. I also really hated the fact that my stupid cookie fiasco is what did it. I totally know better.
So that's when today I thought about it again and googled my problem.

this came up on a message board:
"Remove white water/heat stains from wood by using an hot iron on a smooth dry/lint-free cloth placed over the stain, iron very briefly (seconds) with medium heat, lift the cloth, and repeat until stain is gone. This works better than anything else!"

On my lunch break today I went home and tried it. What do you know it worked! If only I had known this 3 years ago  I wouldn't have been hiding that corner of my table.  Now to break out the polish when I get home and make it shine. :)

Secret stuff

When I was a kid I desperately wanted a secret room, ah-hem, a secret library that I could read all day in and have all my books. I still somewhere would love a secret library room. So hiding things in plain site or very cleverly has always been fun for me. While I was repainting our bedroom furniture I didn't want to put back all the junk and jewelry boxes that were on our dresser. Side note: most of them were stolen so I didn't have them anymore to begin with but that is another story. So I decided to try and come up with a way to get my jewelry off my dresser for a more clean look.  Which is when I found these jewelery boxes. I just happened upon them in a random ad for the store. I never look at the adverts so it was very serendipitous.  You can see them in the picture this post.  Here is a close up.

 

closed.

 

open

I removed the collage picture and re matted some of our vacation pictures and viola. Besides the boxes being slightly thicker than an average frame you wouldn't really notice. I love it.

$137.49

That is the amount I spent on paint and supplies to repaint my bedroom furniture.  I think I made out like a bandit. I really wanted new furniture but with trying to save for a house, and not knowing where we are going to live in a few months it seemed silly to buy new stuff. I also like refinishing and redoing stuff. (Thanks Mom and Dad for that inherited hyper active syndrome.) Regardless I am pretty stoked by my hard work. I think It really did come out like my picture inspiration.

 

  

All in all I think It came out pretty well. I now want to hang out in my room instead of escaping it. :) Just in case you are curious here is a close up of what the furniture used to look like. I have one piece left to paint and wardrobe that is in my office since we don't have space in our bedroom for it.

 

It is a pretty big difference. 

A new room.

 

This weekend I decided to finally take a chance. To remake our bedroom furniture.  I made a list of the things I needed, sand paper, primer, paint, polycrylic sealer, plastic tarps, brushes and finally new hardware.  I made my way to Home Depot in search of all those things.  I ended up finding everything I needed and headed home to begin my Friday night.  I figured I would start with my nightstand and if I absolutely failed. It wouldn't be the end of the world. So after some moving and shifting around of my dining room. I set to work.  Sand, vacuum, prime, wait, paint, wait to dry, second coat, wait, polycrylic sealer, wait, second coat of the sealer and wait. My weekend was filled with a lot of work and a lot of downtime waiting. But my patience paid off. Saturday morning I awoke to a very lovely nightstand. So I began to work on our dresser and our headboard. This is the only picture I took this while my living/dining room was covered in drawers. (excuse the terrible picture it was from my phone.) So by Tuesday everything should be back in our bedroom and our house will be back in order and we will have 'new' furniture.

Before and after pictures of my nightstand and pictures of my finished room to come. :)

Hair flower

 

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I struggled with if I wanted a veil. Orginally I said NO WAY not me. Then I went back on what I said and said.. maybe a little one. I bought a bird cage veil. I still wasn't feeling it. It just wasn't me.  So I though maybe if I made a hair flower I'd like my veil better.  So I headed over to my local Michael's bought a silk rose and a silk peony. Came home deconstructed them on the sly. Eric didn't want to know what my wedding day wardrobe was.  I made my flower with some tulle and some swarovski crystals I had lying about. I thought it came out perfect. Except It didn't work as I originally intended. I didn't like it at all with the birdcage veil. I like it just as it was. So I went back and forth on a veil, on just a crystal comb and finally settled on a flower. I think it was perfect.

What made it even better is it didn't cost me a fortune. That little flower cost me a whopping $3.00. I'm a natural born deal hunter I couldn't bear to spend 20 bucks on something I could easily make. :) It also is pretty sweet because when I do wear it now. (On special date nights) It reminds me of my wedding day.

Invitations

If you have stumbled across my blog, then you probably realize that I have a slight obsession with paper. I love fine quality paper, paper weight, texture, color. If it's metallic, linen finished or embossed. I truly love letterpress. Sigh. So a few months back when my lovely bridesmaid asked If I could design the paper goods for her wedding. I was thigh deep in designing my own and said hell yeah I'll do yours. I quickly came up with what I thought was 4 good ideas. I brought them over to her and let her pick one. She loved the one pictured above and, from there I designed the rest of her invitation ensemble. Since many of her guests are from out of town she wanted to make sure they had all the information they needed. So besides the RSVP card I included a map of the area, things to do while in town, and she wanted to include some history of the beautiful antebellum house they are getting married in. I was very happy to be of service. I think the end product came out really well. It seemed to be well received. I have to say I enjoyed seeing the blue and white envelope in my own mail box.

I thought I would share her invitations since this weekend is her wedding weekend and I am so very happy for her and her groom. I wish them all the happiness in the world and I can't wait to celebrate with them on one of the happiest days of their life.

I will also share the her ceremony programs that I made for her. I drew a sketch of the garden where she will be getting married for the cover in pen and ink. To match with the antique etching that came with the invitation.

Guest Book

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Our wedding is approaching fast, really fast. I have a lot of DIY projects and other wedding related things that I still need to check off of my list. More on those ever growing lists later. For now I want to talk about my current project. Our guest book. By our wedding day Eric and I will be shy of 6 years by two weeks. That being said I wanted to share with our families and friends some of the things that we have done together, notes we've written each other. First date ticket stubs and pictures of places we've traveled together. I have saved tons of this stuff. I'm a pack rat, and for the last few months I have tracked a lot of it down. I've scanned all of them and have started importing it into a Blurb book.

It has been a fun journey reflecting on our first dates, vacations, Game days and costume parties that we've done over the years. I was inspired ages ago by Deanna and Jesse's guest book as seen above. I still have a few more years to go before I send my book to print but so far so good. I also don't know where this summer will take us so I'll wait a while until I send it.

Invitation fiasco

So-o a few weeks ago I wrote that I finally hit the print button for my invitations. I talked about it here, and you can see the outside of them here. While I did press print and made all of the invitations I did have a few hiccups. 1st one was typo, that lovely Eric noticed after I had printed them all out and trimmed them down. Send to reprint. Oiy. It was a terrible night. I wanted to cry I had been working for hours and after a while you just don't see mistakes. I had had him read over them but I guess he missed it the first go around. Oh well. Reprint, retrim. Luckily I had bought more than enough paper. (I know myself.) So Take 2. They are done and assembled. Everything is looking good. I go to bed. I wake up Monday morning. Read one of my blog staples weddingbee and realize through a fellow wedding bloggers oops, that I did the same oops. I didn't put the address of my ceremony location anywhere. How did I not catch this, I pondered. What the hell. So a little redesigning, a little easy adjustment and a little more reprinting. I did figure having the ceremony address would be very beneficial. So after a few mistakes, some extra paper. They are all finished. I figured I'd right this short story to fess up to my DIY that has taken over my life, but is perfect now and almost out the door.
Moral of the story: don't print late at night.

Invitations

So I went to art school, I am an interior designer for a living, and I have an unhealthy obsession with good quality paper. So I designed my own invitations. I blogged about them here. So months have passed since I made my mock up trial run. Some things have changed. Due to the large quantity of paper I wanted I went with a nicer linen finish paper instead of the expensive metallic paper and changed my envelopes to match. Which I actually like better. It seems to make the color pop a bit more as well as more legible. (which is important because we'd like people to attend this big shindig.) But tonight's the night I'm going to commit, stop redesigning and changing things and hit the "print" button.

Something To DIY in the future...

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I love this idea instead of place cards. I hope once I get a list of guests that are going to attend Eric's and I's shindig. That I can make one of these with the same fonts and designs that I have created for my wedding invitations, programs, menus etc. But if you don't have the time, or the energy to expend on such a undertaking. I think Documents and Designs offer beautiful things.