DIY Wrapping Paper/Craft Paper Station

The last detail I wanted to share about was the wrapping paper/craft paper station.

Previously, my wrapping paper was in the corner of a closet, jumbled in a trashcan. I wanted it to be out, and easily accessible, so I went to the home improvement store, and started thinking.

Here is what I came up with:

Supplies:

-Pack of cup hooks $1.99

- Desired number of dowel rods .88 each (10 @ $8.80)

 - 1 1x2 .92

Total: $11.71

1) Paint cut the wood to desired length: I did 4 two foot sections, and paint them white (if desired).

2) Pre-drill holes, and screw in the cup hooks:

3) Cut dowel rods to desired length (I just measured slightly longer than the wrapping paper) Tip: You want to have enough for it to go past the hook a few inches, otherwise it will be hard to balance.

4) Use a nail gun to attach the wood pieces to the wall, and add the dowel rods and paper!

I added the curtain rod from Ikea (for $1.99) to hold my ribbon and craft paper (also purchased at Ikea, it's meant to go on an easel, and it's a steal in the children's area for only $3.50).

I also grabbed the awesome hanging cups from Ikea for only .99 each! They hold my scissors, tape, and gift tags perfectly!

So, there you have it! My craft room!

 I must admit, I kind of feel pressure to be crafty and wrap awesome presents now, ha!

I'm thinking about having a pinterest party to get some creativity flowing.

Happy Crafting! :)

Creative and Cheap Craft Room Decor

If there are two words to describe my plan for decorating this room (and most rooms in my house for that matter), those words would be creative and cheap. Since we did have to buy all the materials to finish the space, I didn't want to spend a lot decorating.

This wall I did for free including three frames I already owned, two printables I found on pinterest, and the paint chip art!

The paint chip art is easy to make. I just used double sided tape to secure the strips directly to the backing of the frame. The most fun part is reading the crazy color names like musical spring promenade and joyful yellow tulip.

The shelf is one of my favorite parts of the room! It was necessary due to building a wall over the concrete, but I love it! I knew I wanted to store some supplies up there, and I started looking for containers, but then the perfect solution dawned on me: the mason jars in my parents' attic. Yes, parents' attic to the rescue again! I love that they are clear so you can see all of the colors!

The fabric for the window treatment was actually the color inspiration for the entire room!

My mother-in-law actually made the window treatment for me. I wish I could sew, but having a mother-in-law that can and will do it happily for you is the next best thing!

In the far right corner, I knew I wanted something tall and orange, so off to the craft store I went! I found the orange daisies on sale for just .50 a flower. I was looking for a tall vase, but didn't want to pay the price that was being asked for most of them. But, when I came upon the wine bottle holders on the clearance aisle, my wheels began to turn. One quick addition of a piece of scapbook paper later, and the addition of a Target Privet House candle on clearance too, I did this little set-up for just a few dollars!

In the other corner I updated a shelf that Jason had before we were married to hold more supplies. Here is what it looked like before:

With the simple addition of some scrapbook paper and double sided tape, I had a whole new shelf!

With the addition of some navy blue canvas bins from Target (also on sale...hey!), I had some room to organize:

The top bins hold various wires all organized by type. The square bins hold  craft supplies like fabric. The brown basket actually holds all my gift bags and tissue paper (organized by type in reusable shopping bags). And, the bottom shelf has all our photo albums and old journals.

The last two additions were the two pieces of art on the wall we built:

I made the initials art at my sister's bachelorette party, and the chalkboard was another old frame I had. I just painted chalkboard paint on the cardboard and painted over the frame a bit. 

One last thing is that door. It was the biggest happy accident of all! When Jason built the walls he didn't really think much about the size of the opening. He just built each wall over as far as he could, and then built the box to cover the duct work above.

The first plan was just to hang a curtain in the space. I found a tablecloth I was going to turn into a curtain, and had already given it to my mother-in-law to sew:

But then I had the idea of closet doors! I went down and measured the opening, and it was exactly the right size (!!). I hopped on craigslist and found some doors in excellent condition for only $25 (these retail for about $50 for each door).  They are a little snug, but when they went in without having to be cut, I was thrilled!

I'll be back tomorrow with the last bit of info on this room: the wrapping paper station!

Free Stenciling and Painting the Furniture

My main labor of love/ crazy idea for the room was to stencil the room. I originally looked into buying a stencil, but those babies are  over $50 for a good stencil, and that was more than I wanted to spend. 

So off to blog land I went, and I found this great tutorial:

I downloaded her stencil template, traced it on some cardboard, and got to work!

She does hers a little differently with a double line around each, but I just went with the single:

At first I was only going to stencil the half wall above the shelf, but after I saw how much I liked it, I went crazy and did the rest of the room.

This is a LONG process, and my hands looked like this on and off for weeks!

I was even a big dork and made a video showing the process I used. Unfortunately the whole video is too big to post, so here is a portion of it:

My other nutso idea for this room was the decision to paint the desk blue! We actually got this desk for (along with the office chair and rolling white desk) for f-r-e-e (my favorite price). It was scuffed up in several places so it needed to be painted. Plus, I just wanted it to be a fun color! We went with Isle of Capri (a happy blue):

Our sweet niece Madison was spending the weekend with us when we painted the desk. She was actually a great help, and really more of a perfectionist than me! She rocks, and she is super proud that she helped paint the blue desk! :)

I'll admit, immediately after painting the desk, I had second thoughts, and who knows, it may still end up being white or a deeper blue one day, but for now, I dig it.

Craft Room/ Office Reveal

Directly next to the big room in the basement (see previous post), was a smaller framed in space. Part of it contains the furnace, water heater, breaker, etc, but the other side was a cute little room complete with a window. As Jason was salivating over the full basement when we were looking at the house, he told me that I could have that small room as my craft/office nook. (Giving up what could have been part of his man cave....what a guy!)

As I was imagining this room, I mainly just wanted it to be happy, happy, happy. I wanted this room to scream, "Hey, come on in and be creative"! I wanted it to be an explosion of the school supply aisle right in my basement. I wanted it to be a place to hold years of memories of fun and creativity.

After much dreaming and hard work by my awesome husband, my craft room dreams came true....

I didn't take many progress pictures, but that makes the before and after that much crazier!

I can barely remember when we started working on this room, ha! Perhaps the most amazing part is that all of his was done by Jason and (the easy stuff) by me. He built the wall to enclose the room, hung and mudded the sheetrock, added the drop ceiling (probably the most frustrating project), installed lighting, added molding, put in the laminate floor, hung the door, and many more small projects in between.

That is why, as you may have seen above, that I am shouting it from the rooftops:

I'm going to give details of some of the things I did in separate posts  through out the week on projects like...

the stenciled wall:

 The free art and other decor:

 & the wrapping paper station!

So, come on back by for some details and how-tos! 

Basement Renovation: Man Cave

Ok, I have a confession. I've been holding out on something that has been going down around here.

Back towards the end of April, we embarked on our biggest home improvement I hope to ever undertake; we decided to finish the basement.

I may have mentioned it before, but the basement was the absolute selling point for us for the house. We both loved the upstairs, but once Jason saw the full basement with no poles and the already installed projector and theatre wall, he was ready to sign!!

Here is the before (pictures from the day we moved in).

We lived in the unfinished space quite happily for the first year, but then we decided that if we were going to do it, the sooner we did, the longer we could enjoy it. Here was the set-up before we finished it:

We decided to hire someone to do the drop ceiling and sheet rock in the big room. We are definite DIY people, but Jason had never done either thing and he really wanted this room to be perfect. Looking back, I don't know if we would hire this out or not. The pro was that they did this huge room in just a few days, the con was the added cost and figuring out later that we could do just about as good a job as the "pros" did. Overall, I think I'm glad we hired someone because putting the ceiling in the small room we did do, just about did us in (more on that later). :)

I did not do a good job of taking progress pictures. If I had, you would see the sheet rock and ceiling put up, hours of trying to scrub away sheet rock dust (arg), having to have a pipe moved, a trying trip to Dalton to buy carpet (including having to return the next day with a trailer to pick it up), installing said carpet (by Jason and his Dad), choosing the perfect paint color (the original color scheme was red with black trim), choosing and installing lights, painting, adding baseboards, and much more to f.i.n.a.l.l.y get to this:

Are you ready?

Ta-Da!

Jason hasn't totally settled in, and we hope to buy some leather sofas for down there eventually, but he has already added a lot of his flair.

And just for fun:

Before & After

Believe it or not, this is just phase one. 
We are finishing up phase two of the basement renovation as we speak...details to come!