Watermelon (colored) Birthday Chair

 

You’ll notice that I’ve (yet again) updated the look of the blog. To be honest, it’s still probably not done – gosh, I feel like no project is ever really finished with me. There is always room for improvement. But loving this layout for now.

On to another project. For the past few birthdays my mother has had Allie sit in a chair to open her presents while having the gift giver sit next to her. I’ve found this little tradition to be so adorable – this way everyone knows who the gift is from and it allows the giver to feel special sitting up there with the b-day girl. Well, seeing as we were decking out this event belovely style, after passing by a chair on the curb, I couldn’t pass up making Allie her very own birthday chair!

And here’s what I started with:

With the help of my work gloves (I can’t stand the feel of sandpaper so I wear them quite often!) I got to sanding down the chair to get any extra finish off along with old sticky stuff, and/or dirt.

After I quick wipe down and dry off with my amazing microfiber cloth she was ready for color!

Boom. Watermelon. Perfect with our color scheme for the party. Miss Pinkalicious loves her some pink.

After the first coat I had some time to kill while it dried, luckily I had this guy keeping me company out back. Such a cutie.

After my second coat on the chair was all dried up I flipped it over to make sure every angle got covered…

After the chair was perfectly pink watermelon it was all ready for some pizzazz. Oh, yea…lots of ribbons! I picked up some ribbon from Michaels – specifically 3 different rolls of 3 different pink prints.

…and tied the first print on one side of the chair. I just tied the ribbon into a knot and faced the excess off to the one side filling in the void.
And I did the same for the opposite side..

Voila! Now for the center…

I got more of a shear ribbon in a more purpley-pink color to stand out in the center more. These ribbons I cut longer than the sides since I was putting less ties and needed the length to tie them into bows.

 

Just love the way it turned out! And the best part is now she has a chair that is clearly Allie’s! I planned for her to keep it to have as a special chair to use for every birthday, or for a tea party or pretend Barbie playhouse… haha – the kid has quite an imagination and anything pink she can find a place for.

 

The Lovely Life: an Etsy Shop

 

I know that I just posted about me finally opening an Etsy shop, and didn’t even add a link. Well that was kind of on purpose. So I could dedicate an entire post just to unveiling it! Whoopee!!

I’ve been quite obsessed with Etsy for quite some time now, and have thought about opening up a shop since basically day 1 of discovering the fantastical site. And the more projects I do, the more I think to myself “maybe other people would like this too”.

But it wasn’t until my wedding that I really decided to take the plunge. SO many people were interlay too kind and constantly paid me compliments during my wedding of all my DIY items that made my day special.  Enter confidence booster from left stage please. So I did it. I made a store. It still needs a lot of editing (as in header – I’m not 100% pleased with my quick design) – plus I kinda hate that I just used my purchasing Etsy login – not knowing that my shop name would come up as that name. But whatevs. It’s a start.

That being said my site is:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/laurenraus  and I’ve called my shop The Lovely Life (as the title to this blog post suggests haha). There’s still a lot of crafts and designs I’ve done that I should be adding (yes mom, I know that I should really put the custom abc book I made for Allie on there – it is quite amazing if I do say so myself) but admittedly it’s kind of hard figuring out how much the supplies cost + how much time it takes me to make it + an appropriate profit. But I’m getting the hang of it. Luckily, I’ve been doing watercolor paintings for realtors for years, so I already had my price lists for those. Anyway, keep checking back to my Etsy site to see what other items I’ve added. If I add anything really significant (maybe like that tease of an ‘abc book’ I just mentioned!) I’ll be sure to mention it here on the blog!

When I was still in school, my Grandma always would say I went to the “Savannah College of Arts and Crafts” …maybe she wasn’t too far off! haha!  Here’s a toast to me crafting!

 

 

A Flag Tutorial

 

Man oh man! Have I been busy! I’m going to try my darn hardest to post some of my projects I’ve been working on lately. Trust me when I say – there have been a lot of them. From house projects, to Belovely Events parties and photoshoots, to my very own Etsy shop (yup! finally…more on that later) and even setting up a Belovely Shop on Etsy. Phew! And that’s not even the start of it…

But first things first. On September 30th my sister turned 6 (see my birthday shout out post here), and of course Belovely had a hand in the decor! Allie asked for a ‘cat’ party, which we then adapted to a Pet Shop Party (with her blessing) to appease the other kids who may not have the same passion for cats as Allie does. (Yes, she even got a kitten from our parents for her birthday! She named her Pink Diamond – pictures to come!) And obviously this Pet Shop Party came with DIY projects! Today I’m going to share with you how I made flag banners out of felt and ribbon. A $6 project. Yes, 3 full strands of banners to span the width of a dining room all for just 6 buckaroos. The cheapest and biggest impact ever.

After being quite obsessed with flags (and even posting about the current trend on our Belovely Blog here) I wanted to add the lighthearted and festive decor element to this Pet Shop Party.  One trip to Michaels and I got some felt pieces and cheap ribbon and got to work:

First I cut the felt into triangles with this template (which I made in Photoshop – I wanted to be sure to have equal sized triangles and at the same time make them as large as possible. I was able to get 2 full triangles out of each sheet of felt (as well as smaller triangles which I evened out and made a strand of lots of small flags – unfortunately didn’t document this process, but once you get the leftovers, I’m sure your creative mind will catch on…)

I then took to my hole punch which you’ll notice that from my art school days I had at one point purchased this fancy dancy one (no idea what for!) but I loved the non traditional circle cut and figured ribbon would thread through much cleaner.

I punched two holes (about an inch and a half in from each end) and got to threading my ribbon. Note: I used an entire reel of ribbon (I believe 3 or 4 yards?) as to leave a bit on each end of the flags so I made sure it could span the room and I had something to tie off with

And here is a sneak peak of the party set up complete with flags! Unfortunately it was rainy on the day of the party (boo!) but we initially planned to hang them from a beautiful arbor on my parent’s back deck. But, as event planners we know that if there is one thing we can’t control it’s the weather. So we made the best of it and pulled our magic off indoors.

 

Can’t wait to share more details from this event! Not to mention the changes going on in the home! Hint: projects involve hammers, paint, lighting, and possibly a stencil…though not all at the same time!