New Year-New Look

Happy New Year from Emery! I am sure you have been thinking of your New Years' resolutions and what you're going to change to make this year a good one. Emery is busy thinking of new ideas and ways to help you do this too. While you may be thinking you want to lose ten pounds, we're thinking wouldn't it be easier to just give something in your home a crafty makeover? We have a couple of ideas to get you started.

One of our friends recently found out she is having not one but TWO babies. Twins! This mean her due date has been bumped up a month and she is working hard to get the nursery ready. She asked Emery to help her brainstorm something she could do for the closet doors in the girl's room. The current doors are just the standard wood, accordian syle closet doors that many of us have had.

We're still scheming for this project, but wanted to share with everyone what we've thought of so far. Initially I was thinking the main problem is that she sees the doors as an eye sore so maybe just paint them and problem solved. A boring, but simple solution :) Or she has been thinking of cute designs for the walls so why not stencil some of these onto some painted doors? Our friend, Hillary, is pretty crafy but painting designs can be tough because it is hard to get the results you imagine. There are so many cool papers out there now with the scrapbooking craze that I kept thinking there must be a cute way to cover the doors or a portion of the doors with this. That's when I cam across this interesting DIY project on designspongeonline.com. Casey took an old filing cabinet and covered teh drawer fronts with wallpaper. She also added new hardware and spray painted the rest of the cabinet. She basically just took her decorative paper and used mod podge to smooth and adhere the paper to the cabinet. This can be done with a fun wallpaper (believe it or not they do still exist) or use a collage of smaller papers, designs, and pictures. The collage might be cuter just to do on half the door and paint the other half or even just do the middle section. From my experience with mod podge, the thick texture of the wallpaper might make for a less frustrating project with wrinkles and tearing. If you're interested on full directions you can see the link below:

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/09/diy-project-caseys-wallpaper-file-cabinet.html/cablast

Casey also posted a picture of her full office with the cabinet in it. This inspired another idea for the closet doors. As you can see in the picture below, there is a magentic bulletin board above the desk. This is very similar to the one that Emily used for her holiday cards in one of our earlier blogs (Fabric Covered Magnets and Thumbtacks-11/30/09). The one Emily found was an old ceiling tile while the one Casey used was an old door. She painted the door with magnetic paint, followed by a layer of brown paint and sealed it. This could be a really good project for Hillary's closet doors. This would allow her to incorporate some fabric covered magnets (from 11/30/09 blog) and hang photographs or cute designs on the doors and change them out as the girls' get older. When they're old enough to color, it could serve as their own little art gallery to display their work. These are ideas that can be used in more then just a nursery so hopefully they've got you thinking for your own home. We'll keep you posted on the results of Hillary's doors!