Home Tour (Part 7) : The Family Room

  Wow, it's been several months since I shared the next instalment in my Home Tour. It's about time I showed you another room! 

  I must admit to you that the reason I haven't showed you this room is because I'm not in love with some of the furniture. We are hoping to be able to replace some of it soon, but for now it is what it is. 

  So here's the family room as of last week...

  Sorry about the bad lighting. This room is hard to photograph since it's in our basement & there's no natural light.

Here's what this room looked like when we bought the house. 

Pretty much a blank, boring, & somewhat dirty slate.

(And look how little my daughter is! That was almost 5 years ago now...)

 
  So, as you can see, we ripped up the old, dirty carpet & laid laminate flooring. We painted the walls & trim (No more periwinkle door!) and we updated the lighting.

My Ikea Expedit Bookshelf which I love!

Here are my ideas of how to spruce up the space while we wait for some new furniture:

• New artwork above the couch (I'm in the middle of working on this one & should be able to show it to you next week.)
• New artwork for T.V. wall
• Makeover the little table my map lamp sits on
• Paint the dress-up box (to the right of the couch)

And because we all enjoy before & after shots...

Ta-da!

So, be sure to come back next week for the art project I'm working on for this room.

Here's a little sneak peek:

Haha! Can you guess what it is?? :)

Have a great weekend! See you next week!

Boy's Bedroom Inspiration

  If you've had a look through my Grand Tour Page, you'll have seen most of the rooms in our house. There are a few I haven't blogged about though. Mostly because I'm not 100% satisfied with the results of a couple of the rooms. One of those rooms is my son's bedroom. Last summer, we gave his room a fresh coat of paint & he was blessed with a cool loft bed. It's a start.

  But I've at last come up with a plan. Here it is!

 I'm wanting to repaint his old dresser into something like this, using the numbers of his birthdate:

Via

Create some wall art like this... using his name & maybe some of his interests:

Via

He needs some cushions for his reading chair as well. I'm looking at creating some like this. Maybe one with a letter & one with a number? 

Via

  Now that I have some kind of a plan, I feel like I can tackle this room. Here we go!

Enjoy your day!

Lamp Revamp

   In these cold winter months, one thing that gets me through the dreary days is the expectation of Spring, Summer, & fun things to come. Right now, we're planning a big road trip for this coming summer and we've started talking about a trip next winter... somewhere warm. :) 

  Last week I posted some ideas using maps. With all this talk of traveling & maps, I was itching to get to this project I've been planning since last fall. I present to you my latest makeover, the travelling lamp!

It started out with this 80's brass lamp with a dusty rose little highlight in the middle. It would have gone perfectly in my bedroom when I was 12 years old. I'm not sure about you, but I'm so over that colour scheme. :) 

I paid $4 for it at a local thrift store. 

I also paid $4 for the lamp shade, which wasn't so bad to begin with. It was just a bit dirty. 

I got out my favourite glossy white spray paint...

Then I wrapped the cord & the light socket with aluminum foil before starting to spray.

I gave the base 3 light coats of spray paint. The first two I was able to do outside in the garage because we were enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures. Then it got cold & I had to bring it inside to do the last coat. 

The house smelled for days! Ya, not one of my most brilliant moments. :)

After cutting the map into sections, I used Mod Podge to decoupage the map to the lamp shade, 

being careful to push out the bubbles with my fingers. 

After it had dried, I trimmed the edges & hot glued some white grosgrain ribbon to the edges to finish it off. 

Oh, by the way, I paid $2 for 2 vintage maps at an antique store here in town. 

The colours are slightly more muted than a brand new map.

We're enjoying our new lamp in our family room & it reminds me of our fun travels to come. 

I would like to thank all of you, my wonderful readers, for stopping by. 

In these last several months, I've been so excited to see Silver Boxes grow & see my friend count rise bit by bit. 

I really appreciate all of my new friends in the blogosphere. Thank you for your kind words & support.

I hope you stop in again soon. And don't forget to join the party on facebook! :) See you there!

Enjoy your day!

I'm amazed by all these features! WOW! Thank you!

This project featured at:

Industrial Style Letter Tutorial

  Last week, when I posted about my grey & yellow vignette, I gave you a peek at the wooden letter that I recently finished. Today, I'm going to show you how I did it!

Here's what I started with:

~Wooden Letter

~Aluminum Foil

~Craft Knife

~Mod Podge

~Foam Brushes

~Black Craft Paint (not shown)

1) Trace & cut out the letter shape as well as strips for the sides on the letter.

2) Mod Podge the aluminum foil edges first. Shiny side down. Be careful to smooth out any bubbles.

3) Now, Mod Podge the front & back. Again, shiny side down. Let dry.

4) Once it's dry, apply a thin coat of Mod Podge over the whole thing. Let dry.

5) Working in small sections, brush on a small amount of black craft paint. Wipe off with an old rag or paper towel. Work quickly because the paint dries fast! A bit of paint with stick in the crinkles & corners, giving it an industrial look. Let dry.

Incorporate it into your decor & enjoy!

On a completely different subject, what do you think of the new chevron background on Silver Boxes? 

I'm likin' it. I'm trying to learn some new blogging skills so I can change up the look a bit. 

You may see more changes soon. Thanks for your patience as I learn.  :)

Thanks so much for stopping by. Make it a great Monday!

Grey & Yellow Vignette

  I refashioned a little nook in our front entry way today. Grey & yellow have been calling my name lately, so I decided to see what I could come up with in those colours. 

  After "shopping" around our house, this is what I came up with. 

I love the name of that middle book! I got it for Christmas, but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

  I had some old embroidery hoops in my craft bin as well as some fabric squares in grey & yellow. The two combined = cuteness! (Is that a word? Well, it is now.) :) 

  I propped them up in the back (one leaning on a little stand & the other in front of it), stacked some grey & yellow books to the side, added a few other silver items & it all came together rather quickly. 

Some grey rocks added in the bowl bring a bit of nature to the vignette.

Vignettes can be a challenge. But when you remember a few guidelines, they can make it easier. 

• Different heights. If everything is the same or similar in height, it won't work. Bring in stacks of books or boxes & top them with another item of interest. Think of a city skyline - all the buildings are different heights & it draws the eye to different focal points. Your vignette is like a mini skyline.

• Repetition. In the vignette I've showed you here, I have repetition in the colours - grey & yellow - as well as the circles in the embroidery hoops & the silver bowl. An added bonus - my circular mirror echos the circle theme!

• Odd numbers. It's visually pleasing to have odd numbers in design elements. If you'll notice that I paired 3 yellow items & 5 grey/silver items. I didn't do that on purpose, but it works.

Click here to see the post on this table's makeover

  The silver "R" in this grouping is a project that I just finished. I'll be featuring a tutorial on how I made it next week. Be sure to come back for that! 

  I'm also on the hunt for something to put in my empty lantern for these winter months. For Christmas, I had it filled with vintage Christmas ornaments that I scored on my last thrifting trip.

  Well, I'm off to clean up my craft table so I can start my next project! Thanks for reading!

Enjoy your day!

Office/Craft room/Guest Room Makeover

  Before I start today's post I have to tell you that I'm so excited to be able to add a new "I was featured on" button to my small collection. Yesterday, my Christmas Banner was featured on Mommy By Day...Crafter By Night. I totally did a happy dance when I found out! I feel like Sally Field - "You like me! You really like me!" (I have to be honest though. I didn't actually know who said that until I googled it.)

  Anyway, onto today's topic - our office/guest room.

  When we moved into this house, this room (in the basement) was actually divided into 2 smaller rooms, but you had to go through one room to get into the next one. Also, the wall connecting the two rooms was just a temporary wall. So we took down the wall to open up the space. The side that is now the office was decorated as an 80's diner or something. Kinda fun, but so not my thing.

  If you've looked through my Home Tour page, you know that I love colour on the walls! I am not afraid to paint... like, at all. I guess growing up in a decorator's home, some of my mom's courage rubbed off on me.

  My colour inspiration came from the turquoise chair. I love the colour turquoise & wanted to incorporate it into the house somewhere.

  I chose a scrapbook paper line that I loved that had turquoise, pink, & brown in it. It was the Urban Prairie line from Basic Grey. Those were the colours I matched my paint up with.

My craft table

    This table is made of two small book shelves & a glass table top we found in the as-is section at Ikea. It has a small chip out of one corner & didn't have a base. It works perfectly & even has a bit of an aqua tinge to the glass.

  A few weeks ago, my mom (an interior decorator) came over & helped me reconfigure the furniture in this space. I love how it looks now! 

  After mom & I reconfigured the furniture, I set to work cleaning up my desk a bit. I added some decorative scrapbook papers to my pen jars & the front if my little box of drawers. I'm so happy with the results!

What do you think? I'm loving crafting in this space. It's my happy place. And hopefully a pleasant place for our guests to stay.

Oh, before I go, I want to keep things real & show you the pile of stuff I had to remove from the office before I took the photos. Just so you know that my office is not always never that neat & tidy. 

I almost always have some projects on the go on the desk.

Enjoy your day!

Linkin' Up:

Let Birds Fly

Turquoise Lovin'

Update

This was featured on: