A Room For Hazel, Bargain Style

 

Well, with the exception of her bed (the crib is still there), Hazel's room is pretty much finished!  I sewed the drapes and made some accessories this past week, so now I can finally show you what I've been working on in bits and pieces for the last few months.

Here is a sweet little chair that was part of the 8-piece set I found on Craigslist, I think I told you about that earlier.  I still need to paint the bed, and some of the other pieces will be kept in the basement for now or sold. 

I painted the chair white and recovered the seat.  It's part of a darling little desk set, but the desk needs to have a new top cut for it, which I haven't done yet.

This is what the chair used to look like.  It was cute, but obviously the wrong color.  The paint was all chipped and beat up on it anyway, so now it has a new life!

 

The square birdie pictures are 2 of many monotypes that I created last year and tried to find a company to reproduce them into posters/prints, with no success.  I printed all the different textures and images onto paper, then cut out the birdie shapes to create collages.  I didn't have any matboard on hand that was the right color, so I just wrapped foam board with fabric (recognize the Bijoux fabric by Heather Bailey?) and used that as a background. 

I have hesitated to post images of my birdies (due to piracy concerns) for a very long time because I really wanted to design a line of fabric with them, but can't find the time to figure out Photoshop/Illustrator well enough to even submit ideas in the proper format for consideration (not to mention the fact that our old computer is maxed out and we haven't purchased a new one yet).  I truly hope people will have the decency to not copy these images (they are copyrighted) and beat me to the punch, so to speak.  While I'm on the subject, is there anyone out there with photoshop/illustrator skills who would consider being business partners with me?  I have piles of drawings and collages like these that I'm just dying to submit to fabric companies, I just don't have the technical knowledge to get them from Point A to Point C.

Anyway, I found these cute little birdies on clearance at Michaels, and the dotted plates were lucky finds at HomeGoods.  Man, I love that store.  It is SO much fun to wander the aisles - you never know what treasure you'll find.

Whoops!  The color's all goofy in this one, but I wanted to show you the plate/picture frame idea I borrowed from my sister.  I just cut out photos of the kids in a circle and taped them to the plate.  The white plate with Hyrum's face has a green circle cut out of cardstock behind the photo.

The other things were decorations from Easter, do you recognize them?  They were the perfect color and theme, so why store them away when they work so well in Hazel's room?  She loves birdies and bunnies.

 

Here's a closer look at the plate.  The cute little shelves were bargains that I found at a thrift store for $2 each.  They were in pretty good shape, so I just gave them a fresh coat of spray paint and painted the dots and dashes on them.  I think they were donated to the thrift store because the mounting hardware on the backs of the shelves was too small to accommodate a normal size screw head, and most screws with a small, #4 size head were too tiny to be used in sheetrock effectively.  I solved the problem by putting plastic sheetrock anchors into the wall, then screwing the tiny #4 size screws into the anchors.  The anchors held the screws much better than just the sheetrock would have.

I love mirrors that are hung from the wall with ribbon, so when I found this one at TJMaxx for a good price I couldn't resist.

 

There's my giant Easter egg on the nightstand.  Hazel loves to gently touch the bunnies and feel the texture of everything.  The picture frame used to be a tacky gold color, I painted it white and then put a few glazes over the top to accentuate the molding.

 

Remember this dresser?  I now have hardware on it, hooray! 

These were orignally just the standard 70's bronze finish, but I painted them white and then green, rubbing off the paint on the high points after each color application.  I tried painting it green first, without the white undercoat, and it was dull and dark.  Painting it white first enabled the green glaze to look more fresh.

This is how the knobs looked when I first bought them.  Both pieces together amounted to about $3.50, which is much more affordable than many options I was considering!

I had splurged and ordered ornate, french provincial handles from an online company in cooperation with a site called InterStore, but they never arrived and they never return my emails inquiring where they are (don't shop at InterStore!).  At almost $8 each, that was a bitter pill to swallow, but at least I had only ordered the 3 handles for the center of the dresser.  I ended up switching the hardware from the taller white dresser to the long dresser, and replacing the handles on the tall white dresser with handles that I took from the yellow dresser that I don't need.  (How's that for confusing?)

For the encouragement of all you bargain hunters out there, I'll tell you that the furniture in this room, plus the drapes and accessories, cost a grand total of about $170 (edit:  I underestimated the cost of the accessories...when I stopped and tallied every single thing, it was closer to $190).  Pretty amazing, but true!  The furniture was $90, the hardware cost about $30, the drapes amounted to $15 (I bought the canvas fabric on clearance at Fabric.com for $2.50/yard and cut the 3-yard lengths in half parallel to the selvedge so that I made 4 panels out of 6 yards), and the accessories, including the faux flowers and picture frames, made up the rest of the cost. 

 

These little ditties were fun to make.  I found the square pots at Target in their bargain bins, then pushed floral foam down inside to insert the painted sticks into.  The balls are from Pier1, but I dipped them into a can of white paint (boy, was that messy!  The paint kept dripping and dripping forever.  After dipping a ball in the paint, I held it over the can for a few minutes, then placed in on newpaper.  When a puddle of paint collected beneath the ball, I moved the ball to a dry spot on the newspaper.  It took hours for it to stop dripping). 

When they were dry, I brushed white glue over them and sprinkled them with clear glitter.  When that was dry, I pushed them down onto the sticks and tied ribbon around the stem.

 

These delicate little snowflake plates, purchased from Pier1 after Christmas, were the inspiration for Hazel's whole room.  I loved the intricate detail and lacey scallops, the clean white color and the vintage feel they have.  I decided to decorate Hazel's room in a way that would emulate the style of these plates, but not in a strict traditional sense.  I wanted to have some contemporary whimsy and little-girl-appeal in the room as well.

Here is how I made it look like the ribbon is holding up the plates.  Using a tiny little nail, I tacked an upside-down V of ribbon onto the wall, then taped the bow on top of that using double-sided foam tape.  The brass hook is the hardware included in the plate hanging kit that actually does the work of holding the plate up.   You can buy the plate hangers in the craft section at Walmart, among other places.

Just to clarify any confusion, the walls in Hazel's room are not painted a dozen shades of lavender...my camera just interepreted the color differently in different parts of the room, and until we get a new computer I am stuck with the most basic of basic photo editing tools.  I can crop and use an auto correction tool, which seems to do more harm than good, as it makes the photos all grainy and blurry.  Steve's been computer shopping for months now, hopefully he can find something he feels confident in soon! :-)

My darling little niece turned 4 yesterday, this is a fun little twirly skirt and coordinating headband/belt/whatever that I made for her.  Recognize the fabric?  The stripes are from Sandy Henderson's Farmer's Market collection (one of my favorites) and the pink and orange dots are from Amy Butler.

 

Here's a sweet little cherry skirt I made for my neighbor's daughter, also turning 4 this weekend.  This fabric is from Joanne's.

I hope this post was enouraging to you!  I know not everyone lives near a large population that seems to move all the time (hence the remarkable deals I have found on Craigslist here in the DC area) but with persistence and creativity I'm confident that anyone can find great fixer-upper projects to transform their living spaces for a very low cost.  I'm planning on posting some tips on searching for things on CL soon, so stay tuned!

Comments

[Joy]

Well Hazel will feel like a princess in that room! I just don't make rooms come together like you can.

Love the skirts. Especially the cherry one. Can I copy for Anne and the baby (if it is a girl that is)?

[Sona Jacob]

Hi!

I have been following your blog for a long time and love the colours that you use as well as the really wonderful things that you do around your house, to make it a home.

My husband and I run a design and illustration studio. You can check us out at www.sonaandjacob.com. We have over 15 years of design and illustration experience. Besides I am an avid fabric enthusiast...

Having said all that, I would like to offer my technical expertise in Illustrator and Photoshop to help you put your designs into fabric-company-friendly format.

Would you like to explore this?

Regards and much admiration,

Sona Jacob