Thursday 28 March 2013

Maskros-ing

Guess what! We finally put up the light we bought 3 months ago! Readers, meet Maskros. He enjoys hanging out, brightening up people's moods, and splashing fun patterns on the wall. 


But let's rewind a little bit. I am going to overshare this whole light switcheroo process with y'all (I'm not from the south, I just like to pretend I'm Britney sometimes. Especially when I scream and shout... and let it all out.)

Our house is 7 years old and I'm 99.9% sure that this boob light was part of the original design. Unless the previous owners had questionable taste and chose this themselves. Why boob? Because look at it.


Babies would salivate looking at that thing. Not cute for our staircase.


I knew I wanted to replace it the minute I saw it during our first walk-through but it took a while for me to pick a worthy replacement. YHL taught me to never settle. And of course, my favouritestoreintheworld delivered. Ikea has had Maskros on their shelves probably since I was in diapers, but I never really thought anything of it. Until I saw this pinterest post of him in a superduper cute nursery. It was kind of like a guy in the friend zone that comes back from summer vacation and is all-of-the-sudden-for-no-reason hunky. Ew did I just say hunky? To put in other words, I saw Maskros in a whole different light (ha!).



We brought him home sometime in January with big smiles on our faces and then realized we don't have a ladder tall enough to reach ceiling in the straircase. Also, neither me nor Hubs were brave enough to get up that high on a balcony-style landing.
 
 
See what I mean? Boomer is pretending to be the ladder. I should also mention that neither one of us have ANY electrical experience beyond changing a burnt-out lightbulb. Thus we enlisted the help of our favourite handyman cousin to help us out. And our friends were more than happy to lend out a suitable ladder.

Next comes assembly. I wanted to make sure that it was in a ready-to-hang state by the time our cousin came by. I love researching anything and everything beforehand and I found this trusty Ikea video that goes through the steps of putting Maskros together. Doesn't she make it look so easy? I was excited.
 


I hung the base from the shower curtain rod in our guest bathroom so that it was low enough for me to access all points and started attaching all the "stems."



After all the stems were on, it was time for the petals.
 
 
There were 84 of these paper snowflake-looking things and Ikea said they just "clicked" into place. This had papercut written all over it. I was nervous.
 
 
Ready for a time lapse photo party?
 




 
And we're done! It took me exactly 23 minutes and 43 seconds to click all the petals on. Subtract a couple minutes for picture taking. Oh, and papercut count: 0. Excuse me while I brush some dirt off my shoulder.
 
Ok back. Fast forward to the next day. Cousin came while I was at work and Maskros was waiting for me all lit and happy when I got home.
 
 
I love the way he looks alongside the gallery wall. Fun fact: maskros means dandelion in Swedish. Bet you didn't see that one coming! #captainobvious
 
 
 
 Meanwhile, boob light is crying.
 
 
Isn't that just the saddest picture you have ever seen? Not to worry though, we are looking for a loving new home for Boobie on Kijiji. Any takers?
 
So that's the story of how we adopted Maskros. I think he likes it here. And I love taking turns staring at him and his neighbour Mr. Gallery Wall.
 
xoxo, E
 
PS - Woop-aaaaaaaaa close up in your face.
 

Monday 25 March 2013

Frame Game: The Reveal

38 frames and 3 weeks later, our gallery wall is complete. Really, this project could all be done in a weekend but I dilly-dallied quite a bit. Between buying, painting, matting, and hanging the frames and selecting/editing/printing pictures for them, I wanted some down time. But I absolutely love how it turned out!


We mainly chose photos of our families, friends, and pets, along with some of our favourite photos from our wedding. I also threw in a few cute printables we made slash found online.



That too-cute-for-words baby is my 6 week old niece (check our her baby shower recap). I am so happy with how everything turned out. Now I am unable to walk past it without stopping and staring for a solid 15 minutes every time.


At first I thought I may want to add more to it but I kind of like the current size. If I was to expand at all, I think I would throw up some frames on the other side of the staircase.

xoxo, E

Monday 18 March 2013

Frame Game: Phase 3 -- Matting

This weekend Hubs and I took to making mats for the gallery wall frames. Seeing as I bought most of them from the thrift store, mats often not included. I bought a couple sheets of bristle board for $1.25 from the dollar store and cut them to size. So really, the whole project cost $1.25. I like. Borat.


Materials needed:
- matless picture frame
- bristle board (or cardstock for smaller frames)
- scrap piece of cardboard
- ruler
- pencil
- exacto knife
- scissors

I started out by placing the glass insert onto my bristle board and tracing around it. You can't tell too well in this picture, but that's what's going on. Be careful, sharp edges! I learned the hard way. Also, remember to work on the back of the bristleboard if the two sides are different.


Cut out the traced area and measure out the "hole" that your photo will show through. To ease the process, I centred a photo of the ideal size on the cutout and measured 0.5 inch smaller, made markings and connected the dots. It's important to make the hole smaller than the photo that will be displayed so that it can comfortably sit behind the mat.


Now the tricky part. Or at least the part that I thought would be the trickiest. Actually, it's pretty easy. First, stick the cardboard under your bristle board as to not slice open whatever is underneath. In my case, the dining room table. Line your ruler up with one of the inside lines and run your exacto knife along the side of the ruler. Don't press too hard. It's better to go over it a few times with gentler cuts than rip the paper with too much blade pressure. 


Repeat on the other 3 lines, giving you a pretty little cut out!  


 Next step is pretty obvious. Flip over your mat and stick it behind the glass. Here's a little before and after of the same frame.

The mat adds that extra oomph to the frame and highlights the picture very nicely. If you're in the same boat as me: 12345678 mats later and you're done! Hurray!


I stuck on post-its so I can easily see the new size of the frame when taking inventory.


Next up: actually getting the photos in there!!! Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally. I know.

xoxo, E

Friday 15 March 2013

Perks of Being A Wallflower

... No, not the movie.

We have a new flower friend in the house and he lives on the wall. We adopted him from Target for $35.99. I fell in love right when I saw it. And trust me, that NEVER HAPPENS. I hmmm and haaaa over every purchase.

We brought him home and hung him adjacent to our square arrangement of frames to fill out the mini hallway leading to the living room slash kitchen area. Perfect fit for that spot! The back has little hook loop thingies to slide on top of the nail. Easy peasy!



I especially like the 3 dimensional bit to the centre of the flower. It doesn't stick out too much to be a bother, just enough for interest.


Isn't he just the prettiest??? And you know what I was thinking? In the future if I get more adventurous with colour, he might even get a quick coat of spraypaint. But for now he is perfect in his natural state.

xoxo, E

Thursday 14 March 2013

4 Square

A while ago, Hubs and I put up 4 Ribba frames above the loveseat. I had 3 already from when I lived with my parents. You can sort of seem them here hanging crookedly in my old bedroom, above the bed. They contained pictures taken by a friend of my hometown in Poland. Man, was my room bright or what.


Since we moved, we picked up another Ribba and hung the frames in a square arrangement above the loveseat in the living room. 


And there they hung just like so for TWO months. Awful. We had people over and everything. It clearly took a while for me to figure out what I wanted in there. And then another while to execute it. But we did it. Finally. Yesterday.

After many crossed out ideas, we decided to stick the lyrics of our wedding song in them. Did you click on the link? Yup, Uncle Jesse sang our wedding song. I wrote them out in a publisher document and we took them to get printed on 12x18 photo paper.


I wanted the words to go into the matting and be more on the decorative side than legible. Hubs picked the font (Sunshine in my Soul) and i think it gives it the perfect romantic handwritten look!


We picked this song because we both loved watching Full House growing up and it was so cute and romantic. One of the easiest wedding choices we had to make, imo.



Each frame has the same printout in it, but each is moved slightly up or down to make them look less identical. I love the arrangement because it fills that space so well! Thank goodness for Ikea continuing to sell these Ribba frames long after I bought the first 3! Another job well done.

xoxo, E

Friday 8 March 2013

Frame Game: Phase 2 -- Hanging

The second portion of the gallery wall is complete! It took a while, but all the frames are hung and I heart them! Here's a little sneak peak before I jump into the process of Phase Two:


After all the frames were painted, I traced their outlines onto flyers. I didn't find any exciting deals, in case you're wondering.


I stuck the newspaper cutouts on the wall with masking tape and moved them around approximately 34,567 times. Then I went to bed and moved it some more the next day. I have to admit that I was very nervous about the placement prior to nailing them in for forever. Doesn't that sound so scary? I started off with a small grouping and it looked so weird.


I like it, just not for the staircase. Something like that would work for a non-sloped area like above the couch or bed. I thought the gallery wall should "move" with the flow of the stairs.


Better! I felt like I reached a eureka! moment. Sadly, the animals weren't quite as thrilled as I was.


They were even less thrilled when it was Hammer Time (breakitdown oooooooh!). I don't think our neighbours loved it either since we're attached on that wall. But anyway, we measured the spot where the nail goes in the frame and transferred those measurements directly onto our flyer templates.




We put the nail/screw right through the paper and didn't really bother to look for studs since most frames were super light. Level it out, and then on to the next one! Yup I sang it.


...and the next one. And the next one. I got a million ways to get it. And the next one. Choose one. And the next one. I think you get the idea.

So here they are. My babies are on the wall and I really think they look great! For now, we only have two frames filled. One is Hubs' parents' wedding photo and the other is my grandparents' wedding photo.




Next on the agenda is to make mat inserts and obvi stick some art/photos in there!! I'm excited.

xoxo, E