Tutorial - Faux Marble Table DIY

The marble look has been having a major moment in interiors and fashion. It can get a bit pricey to invest in marble furniture or counter tops, so I've discovered a blogger secret-- everyone's been using faux marble! Here's how to get the look on a major budget (like $10!). Bonus: if you get sick of the look, it's removable! Follow along below to see how to get the marble interior look yourself and take your instagrams to the next lev.

on the table: sunglasses, happy plugs in-ear headphones, three hands antelope skull, diptyque candle, the collection candle, lady gaga x terry richardson, alexander mcqueen savage beauty


You'll need:
- Marble Contact Paper
- Scissors
- Small hand towel
- Ikea Vittsjo or any table or surface you would like to marbleize

Tutorial - Tea Advent Calendar

It's been a long time since I been around, it's been a long time but I'm back in town! haha, I'll stop now. Anyway, It's been forever since I've blogged but I've decided that I'd make my first comeback post a good one. I hope it lives up to my words...but I'm pretty excited about this project.

Most of my friends and family know that I'm a tea addict. I think there's also something that happens when Autumn rolls around, my obsession gets stronger. It must be that I feel the fall chill in the air and crave a warm drink in between my palms.

Maybe you understand how I feel? Do you start talking about tea and mention things that the average person cannot relate to? For me, my own sister doesn't get me...so I decided to make an awesome little handmade gift of tea for her to share my obsession. Then maybe by Christmas, she'll be hooked? One can hope so.

Today I'll be guiding you through the process of hand making a tea advent calendar

It's a cup of tea for 25 days counting down to Christmas!

Let's begin with discussing my inspiration:


24 days of tea from DAVIDsTEA: their yearly Advent Calendar that retails for $34.50.
I would say it's their most popular collection and usually sells out within a day of being released (both online and in-store). I was physically holding a box on the day it was released but I knew that my collection of teas was already too big. I've also tried the majority of the teas in the set already. So I talked myself out of it. Later that day, they were practically sold out everywhere. You can find yourself a set for about $70 - $100 on sites like eBay or Kijiji (a Canadian site like Craigslist)!

So why spend up to $100 on a box of 232 grams of tea when you can customize your own? I'm sure you or your giftee would much rather have a calendar that is filled with hand-picked flavours of tea. Plus, not only can you personalize the set to taste, you can customize it around allergies and dietary restrictions.

I think that's enough talking, how about we get started?


What you need:
-25 wooden Clothes Pins (plastic is fine too)
-Printed Napkins (or Wrapping Paper)
-1 sheet of Card Stock/thicker paper

-White String (25 pieces x 6 inches)
-Twine (approximately 40 inches)

-25 miniature Adhesive Labels
-25 miniature Zip Lock Bags
-Black Permanent Marker

-25 different types of Tea

-Gift Box or Bag

-Scrap Paper
-Scissors
-Stapler
-Ruler
-Pen
Optional:
-Chisel-Tipped Permanent Maker or Paint (Colour of your Choice)
-(Tag-Shaped) Paper Puncher
-Colourful Pens

210: branching out

There's been this branch sitting in our backyard for weeks. It fell off of our oak tree with no leaves on it or anything... I've been ignoring it for a while but it hasn't gone away.

Today, after throwing my shoe at a squirrel, I had to go retrieve it & I decided to grab the branch too. For some strange reason I felt like it would look nice nailed to our studio wall.


...it didn't. It's kind of a naked branch and it looks a bit awkward.


So I decided to just make it sorta cherry blossom branch inspired & started glue-gunning on some random silk flowers we had laying around. It's a bit strange cause they're rose buds, but whatever.


and when I ran out of roses, I expanded to carnations and others. hahah


& now.... I'm happy with our studio wall decor.
It's a bit random but it's 3 dimensional and sits far off the wall & looks pretty fab.

xoxo

151: in the studio

As promised, here's a peek into part of our new studio :)



We've got a bit of a lengthy room, so we kinda divided it by "purpose". In the foreground is our 'sitting area' with a couple of couches to chill out on. In the back (starting at the 'lipgloss & black' banner) is our work area with a bunch of desks, all our sewing machines & shelves for our materials and tools!

In general, we have things pretty together now & there's a place for everything but I'm struggling with adding more decor so that the space is pulled together better. Right now, you might notice that we just have a random Ikea photo frame resting on top of the couch... That's not permanent! Promise! It's a huge space over the couch that I see a lot of potential in but I'm not really sure what should go up there. I'm thinking of painting something on a massive canvas I have, but I'm undecided as of yet. WE'LL SEE.

We're pretty happy in this space cause it's well-lit and roomy enough for us both to work in! And we even have a separate room for our shipments & office things. Being happy in your workspace can make a huge difference in productivity & we're loving it here so far.... so that should mean more clothes for YOU soon. :)

xoxo

147: very superstitious

I promised to show you a look into our new studio, so I figured I would do it little by little. We're still organizing things, tidying up & figuring out where what should go so that it's all efficient and everything... So I'm starting with something small.

When we were moving our entire studio, our mom wanted to make sure that we had a proper lucky cat. It's a popular asian sculpture that is associated with good feng shui for businesses. You might recognize these cats from Chinese or Japanese restaurants or shops & basically the cat "waves" customers towards you. Our family isn't overly concerned in general with feng shui or anything, but we still hang up lucky symbols & signs. So when my mom was going out on her mission to buy us a kitty, my only request was that it would have a really cute face, hahaha.



She ended up buying us this cutie!
Aside from being really adorable & happy, there is apparently a lot of meaning behind why he looks this way:
- calico cat colouring: traditionally it's the luckiest cat
- crystal ball in hand: indicates wisdom & good career path
- mallet in hand: brings wealth to those who shake it
- coin slot: the cat is actually a bank & you have to feed it coins for good luck!

I'm not that superstitious but so far since having our lucky cat, we've had a really successful clothing show, so that was a great start! We fed him some more coins after that weekend for sure :) Thanks mom!

Have you guys seen these kitties before? Do you have any lucky symbols or traditions?

xox

120: paint it black

Lately, I've been really obsessed with a blog called design*sponge & I've been watching home decorating shows like crazy. The combination of the two & the fact that it's finally feeling like spring outside has made me into this insanely motivated home-project-doer. I've been spraypainting everything in sight & staple gunning and hammering a LOT lately. It's ridiculous really. I've continued with making more DIY jewelry display frames & just made one with framed glass instead of chicken wire so it can act as a white board :)

and most recently, I helped out my mom! She had been thinking about getting a new chandelier in her dining room, but I decided to just revamp her 27 year old one for her, haha.



With my dad's help in dismantling & unwiring the light, I just spraypainted the frame & all the metal findings in an 'oil rubbed bronze' colour. I ran out of spraypaint, but had meant to paint the "candles" the same colour. oops. later days, I suppose.

Because of my DIY frenzy, I'm looking like a total wreck. I've got my arms covered in spots of black and purple spraypaint & accidentally sprayed my arm today like this:

and I also accidentally slashed all of my fingers open on my left hand while handling a sheet of glass. yikes.

What kind of spring projects are you up to? I'm gonna be planting the outdoor veggie garden pretty soon & can't wait for that!

xoxo

111: diy jewelry display frames

So I've been trying my best to amp up a bit of our "presentation' at The Clothing Show because we've got a full 10x10 booth to fill this year. Other than a standard clothing rack & a 6 foot long banner, we've got NOTHING else. So I decided to throw together some frames to hang & display some of our jewelry at the show & hopefully we can also use these pieces in the future by hanging them as decor in our studio.

I'll show you how I threw together these frames from some ornate thrifted frames.


so I picked up this uglay piece of art from the thrift store


I pulled out the "art" part & extracted two gold frames!


Here's what I used:
Chicken wire, wire cutters, a staple gun & some plum spraypaint


Then I took the frames outside & sprayed them with a couple of coats of paint. (sorry grass)


ta-da!


then I cut down some of the chicken wire to the size of the frames. You can use a finer chicken wire if you're using smaller frames too, but this is what we had lying around in the garage.


& then I staple-gunned it into place, making sure to use some pliers to twist the wire ends towards the frame (so it doesn't cut us or catch onto our clothes during transport.)


DONE!


I sprayed a couple more small frames in matching purple...


and here's how the frames look laid out & holding a few pieces of merch :) We're hoping to add a few more frames to this for our display, but we'll see what we can find! (yeah, the hanging wire is showing at the left side of the large frame... I just set this up to show you our vision, haha)

These are super easy to make and an awesome way to display your own jewelry too!


Pretty right? Now to figure out how to hang these up on some pipe&drape at the clothing show ;)



& check out these gorgeous blue hydrangeas! Hope everyone has a good Easter weekend!

xoxo

066: tutorial - inspired by glitter litas

So I've definitely been spying on Glitter Litas by Jeffrey Campbell on Solestruck.com and I've been seriously been thinking about getting myself a pair. I've added it to my cart and entered all my billing information but just forced myself to close the browser. Unfortunately, I couldn't justify $159.95 + $15 shipping and potential taxes + duties to Canada. Here are some photos of my glitter covered Jeffrey Campbells that I've been drooling over:

Lita, Foxy, & 99 Tie

I was in a conversation with one of my friends and I realized that it would be a really fun project to cover an old pair of shoes with glitter. I'm just going to share the process and the final result, so I guess this post will be a how I did it post.

Materials I used:

• Newspaper or just large pieces of paper - to keep the glitter from coating the desk or floor
• Scissors/Exacto knife - I used them to cut off an unwanted design detail and removing the masking tape
• Sandpaper - to rough up the surface of faux leather...my shoes of choice were very smooth
• Plastic bags - to stuff in the shoes to keep the glitter from piling up inside
• Masking tape - to tape off the soles and to help clean up glitter
• Vaseline - to help keep glue off of the metal notions on shoes (e.g. grommets)
• Q-Tips - to spread the glue & Vaseline in smaller areas 
• Latex gloves - I used one glove: for making sure that I was able to press down the glitter into the glue
• Amazing Goop craft glue: 60mL  - I ended up using it all up
• Make-up sponge - to help spread the glue over the surface of the shoes
• 2 bottles of glitter - I bought 4 because I'm not the best at estimating. I mixed 2 shades of blue
• Pair of shoes - I bought brand new ones that resembled Litas. I couldn't find old ones in my closet
• Vacuum - for the clean up (of course!)

I tested Tacky glue as well as Goop. Goop works a lot better because Tacky glue peeled right off the shoe. I ended up using 1.5 bottles of glitter.

Mixing the two shades of blue.

These are the shoes I bought from Urban Planet. They cost $15 but I used my SPC card and got 10% off. So the math is: $15 - $1.50 = $13.50 + 13% tax = $15.26  Not bad eh? I love the gum soles and I like them even without the glitter!

Removed the shoe laces in preparation.

I cut off the sherling flaps but made sure to analyze the stitching before doing so. I didn't want to cause noticeable damage to the rest of the shoe.

Using a small piece of sand paper I sanded down the whole shoe to roughen up the surface.

I stuffed about 3 small produce plastic bags into each shoe to reduce the amount of glitter that end up inside.

Using masking tape...

I made sure to line the sole around so that I wouldn't get glue on it.

Using Vaseline...

I coated all the metal notions to ensure that the glue doesn't get stuck on any of them.

Using a small piece of a make-up sponge...

I spread the glue in small sections at a time....

then sprinkled glitter on. I pressed the glitter on with a little pressure with my fingers. This was to ensure that it was all stuck on before shaking of the excess glitter onto the paper/newspaper.

I did some touch ups in spots that I missed in the process.

It's a messy project but very rewarding.

Wait 24 hours for the glue to dry before peeling off the tape.

After 24 hours, I looked for spots that I missed. I touched them up and waited another 24 hours.

Next day - remove masking tape.

Cutting off the bits of masking tape that were slightly glued down.

Removing Vaseline & excess glitter

Lacing them back up

After 7 hours of glittering labour and a full 48 hours of waiting they're completed!

Lipgloss & Black cat eye sunglasses, Stitches zippered dress

XXI faux fur shrug

Stitches tights & shoes decorated by me :)

Before!

AFTER! (pictures don't show the sparkle)

Showing off the glitter

Total cost:

• Amazing Goop craft glue: 60mL  - ~$4
• 4 bottles of glitter - $4.52
• Pair of shoes - $15.26

Approximately $23.78

Hope you enjoyed that! xoxo