Here's a great tutorial at make it and love it transforming t-shirts into braided headbands. All those concert t-shirts from the '80s can finally be repurposed ...
Upcycled Pillow Headboard
Check out the tutorial over at Flippin' Factory for this upcycled pillow headboard. Oh, and the buttons on the pillows are fabric-covered baby food jar lids! Blogger Tumaini sums up her philosophy as "Minimizing waste by maximizing creativity."
Be sure to check out the sidebar on the right side of the blog. There's an excellent list of upcycled furniture retailers listed by state.
DIY Cocktail Umbrella Lantern
The video team at Etsy contacted me about this great DIY cocktail umbrella lantern by Allison Patrick of Zipper 8 Lighting. You may remember a previous post about Allison featuring her upcycled book pages lantern. Allison is the queen of upcycled paper lighting solutions and this step-by-step video will show you how to create your own colorful creation.
Quilt Kit from Ink & Spindle
Ink & Spindle has a new offering, The Allsorts Quilt kit for kiddies. It's made of 100% organic materials and each of the 8 fabrics is hand printed. The lovely ladies behind ink & spindle are committed to the creation of ethical, sustainable and organic textiles.
Curiosity Calendar of the Month Club
Happy July! Check out this free DIY camper calendar set from the Curiosity Group. They offer a new calendar every month to download, print and assemble here.
| via how about orange
Emergency DIY window treatment
So we have what's called an "eyebrow window with legs" in our home. 'Tis a lovely thing and I adore shapes and spaces that aren't plain old squares. This lovely window however is in our bedroom and lets in way too much light to get a full night's sleep. So we think we'll just get some shutters or blinds like the other houses we saw while shopping for ours. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH. Sticker shock. It's around $700. My first car only cost $800 so I of course freaked the heck out and started thinking how we could make a temporary, but attractive solution. Our folks are coming to stay for the holiday so pressure was on. I've been keeping a stash of paper grocery bags and was seized by inspiration. I'd like to introduce the DIY cardboard and grocery bag rose window shade.
Here's the window in question. It has half a window treatment and now we know why. The previous owners probably said to heck with $700 for one stinking shade. This made the task easier as all I needed to fill was the topmost part of the arch.
First step was piecing together some cardboard in the shape of the opening of the window. I spray-painted the back so the house doesn't look ghetto when viewing from the exterior. I don't think my neighbors would appreciate the tape and moving box view.
Now for the steps to create the three-demensional roses:
1. Draw spirals of various sizes on grocery bags. Don't worry about being too precise.
2. Cut out your spiral by simply following the lines you've drawn.
3. Start twisting the spiral from the outside end of the sprial and continue rolling the paper til finished.
4. Add a little dollop of glue to the back to secure the rose.
Next cut out some leaf shapes and get an idea of your arrangement before you start gluing things down. If your cardboard is plain you don't have to do anything to it, but mine required painting so I threw on a coat of acrylic craft paint. Next I glued down all the pieces and let it dry for a couple of hours before installing.
Voila! The finished treatment. Let me know if you like or if you think my significant other's folks are going to think I'm crazy.
Silhouette Studio Cutting Machine
I've always wanted to try out one of the Silhouettestudio cutting machine that connects to your computer (works with Macs and PCs) allowing you to cut complex designs, from paper, adhesive vinyl and more. Jones Design Company is offering a coupon code good through June 29th to get a huge discount ($120 off a machine plus 2 packs of temporary tattoo paper) by entering JONES at checkout.