Here’s an easy way to make something spectacular for your walls — paint-chip punch-out art! You need: paint chips, a hole punch, a glue stick, a large piece of heavy weight paper and lots of patience!

I made a picture of a mommy and baby giraffe for my daughter’s nursery.

Start by punching out a whole bunch of paint chips in the shades you want. My suggestion is to pick two complementary colors (in my case coral + grey) and punch from the spectrum of lighter/darker colors around each one — this way you get some great gradation in your artwork. To keep it simple, use one color for the main graphic, and then the other color for your background.

Once you have enough punched out, start moving the pieces around to form the graphic you want. If you don’t have a design in mind, find a picture online and trace the outlines onto your paper to give you some guidance. Here are my giraffes taking shape, just using shades of coral:

Once you have the main graphic looking like you want it, glue each little dot down (this is the tedious part. Do it while you’re watching reruns or something).

Now you can move on to the background. I ended up making silhouettes of trees behind the giraffe using shades of grey. Glue away!

And to tie everything together, scatter a couple little dots in the shade of your main graphic into the background. Here’s the final picture:

And here it is in our nursery. I think it turned out really great, and my daughter really loves staring at the dots so I think she likes it too!

Good luck!

I wanted Noelle to have a really sweet mobile to watch from her crib. This was a fairly time consuming project (hand stitching takes forever!) but uber fun - I made an animal mobile for the nursery using patterns I found for a giraffe, elephant and owl. I made a whale (no pattern, just eyeballed it) and some hearts, and tied them to grey painted dowels. It’s so light a little breeze sends all the animals bobbing and fascinates little Noelle.

I wasn’t actually planning to get a new glider for Noelle’s nursery but I was lucky enough to have someone in the office offer me hers. When it was new it probably looked something like this honey/oak glider with beige cushions, but it was a little more worn out and covered with cat hair when I dragged it home in my trunk (7 months pregnant!). Nothing a little paint and new fabric can’t fix!

I didn’t take detailed pictures of the refinishing process, but it involved sanding down the original oak stain, grey-washing the frame (i used watered down grey paint and applied it almost like a stain, wiping off the excess), reupholstering the ottoman and sewing new cushions for the glider. Fabric was an indoor/outdoor fabric from Dwell Studio.

Frame, post sanding:

close up of the frame with its grey wash:

the end product works so much better color-wise with our grey and coral theme nursery.

So one of the first projects for the nursery was figuring out wall decor — we painted the walls two shades of grey and I wanted a cool mural or motif on one feature wall. I really liked the idea of bare birch trees since she’s a winter baby and there are some really pretty ones out there but I didn’t want to fork out the $70 for them in case I put them on the wall and decided I hated them. Turns out that making them yourself was a) not terribly hard to do and b) very very inexpensive (like, six bucks)!

I have to admit I’m not the first person to have thought of this — there are some great tutorials out there (like here, and here). Here’s my stab at how to DIY birch tree decals.

Materials:

1 roll of adhesive contact paper/shelf liner (I went with basic white from Target, an 18” by 24’ roll was just $6)

Scissors

Masking tape / painters tape

How to do this yourself:

1. Measure the height of your room (mine was about 8 feet) and cut out two lengths of contact paper that are the height plus 3-4 inches — since your trees will be slightly slanted from the vertical.

2. On the back of your contact paper, sketch out your tree trunks roughly according to the pattern below, where for the first sheet, you have Trunk #1 that has a 6” wide base, and grows to have a fork in it that is 12” wide, and Trunk #2 which starts off 6” wide at the base and tapers to 4” wide at the top. And leave the section in the middle for later to cut out some extra branches. The second sheet just has 4 trunks, each has a 5” base tapering to 4” (but two are upside down, so they fit nicely on one sheet).

3. Cut out your 6 tree trunks, taking the liberty not to cut exact straight lines but curving them slightly to give your trees a more realistic and organic look.

4. Use masking tape to start laying them out on your wall and get a sense for how you’d like them to look. Trim the ends to be level with the ceiling and base. As you lay them out, cut out a couple extra branches from the leftover piece from the first sheet to add to the tree trunks. The extra branches don’t need to fit exactly at this point, you can experiment with how it looks and trim them to fit later.

5. Now we turn these regular tree trunks into birch trees by adding the little cut outs to the trunks. It’s probably easier to make these cuts before you have them up on the wall, but I liked seeing it up so I could decide the cuts looked best based on the overall layout. Make little V-shape cuts into the trunks (two side by side ones look more birch-like), alternating the left and right sides of the trunk, and use masking tape to prevent the contact paper from pulling the cuts wider.

6. Now the fun part — actually getting the trunks stuck onto the wall! Starting at the top, peel down the backing paper and slowly press the contact paper to the wall, being sure to smooth out any bubbles. Be extra careful around the v-cuts.

7. With the tree trunks stuck on the wall, adjust and trim the extra branches and then similarly peel off the backing paper to get them stuck onto the wall. I made the branches look as if they were completely connected to the tree trunks by trimming them in a straight line along the edge adjoining the trunks so you could barely see a gap.

8. All done! This project took me a couple of hours to pull off but it was extremely rewarding. I kept it spartan but you could also think about adding leaves, birds, owls.. have fun!

Time to create and hang the front door wreath! Each year I try to make something with materials around the house (here is last year’s and the year before). I’ve been loving a muted neutral palette lately, so I decided to use some scrap fabric in gold, beige and grey for this year’s wreath.

Materials you’ll need:

- cardboard pieces (cut up the boxes from all the gifts you’ve been ordering online!)

- brown packing paper or newspaper

- scrap fabric in the color of your choice

- tape

- ribbon

Easy steps:

- start with six cardboard pieces of the same size and tape them together to make a hexagon. This will be the frame of the wreath and it’ll all be covered so don’t worry if it looks messy.

- next scrunch up some of the packing paper that came in your boxes or use newspaper and tape it on top of the hexagon to give your wreath some depth.

- Then cut your fabrics into pieces wide enough to cover the front of your wreath. I used three panels, and attached them by taping the ends to the back-side of the wreath.

- Next add embellishments. I decided to make little ruffle flowers to decorate the wreath. I sewed them on but you could easily hot-glue them instead. Then add a ribbon which you can use to hang it with. It looks better if you make a perfect bow separately and glue/sew it on to the longer piece of ribbon that is holding up the wreath.

- and that’s it! It should take no more than an hour to put together and costs next to nothing. Here is the finished product on our front door. Welcome guests!

Sometimes I wonder if baby product designers make fabric choices by asking a psychic octopus to select a winner. We’re getting ready to welcome a new baby girl, and some friends gave us their little Bright Starts swing, which I was thrilled about — one less thing to purchase! However I was not thrilled by the baby blue cheesy printed seat cover, so dated and not in keeping with the modern neutral theme of her nursery. I decided to make my own, and it was surprisingly easy to do — I finished the entire thing in one evening!

Note: It’s actually more like a cover for the cover — rather than replace the original one I created a shell to go over it so it’s more aesthetically appealing. So here are some instructions in case you need to do this for your own swing..

Materials:

You just need the fabric of your choice - something pretty for the actual cover (I used some scrap designer upholstery fabric from Romo in a taupe/grey color to go with the neutral theme of the room) and then some basic plain fabric for the back crescent pieces.

Instructions:

- Use your current cover as a pattern for your new cover, take it off and flip it over. If it looks like mine below, you can use the same steps I did. (and if not, try to improvise!)

- Cut three pieces of your main fabric to match the three panels. I basically lined up my fabric against the cover and sort of loosely traced the shape. Note that the inner curves of the three pieces won’t exactly fit like a jigsaw, because the seat is three dimensional and the gap creates the curve in the seat cover.

- My swing had two little buckles on each side to secure the baby. Use a marker/chalk to note where those line up with your middle piece. You’ll need to leave a gap at that point when you sew the three pieces together.

- Now sew the three pieces together with two seams by putting the right sides together (wrong side facing outward) and sewing along the inner curved edges.

- At the point where the buckle straps come through, leave a gap and then fold over the raw edge and sew a little hem along the edge to prevent it from fraying.

- You should now have something that looks a little like a curved turtle shell.

- So far this has been pretty straightforward, now for the tricky part. The swing has a little harness to hold your infant secure and tucked inside the left and right of the “T” is the clasp for the safety straps. So you want to keep this entire thing intact, but cover it up with your fabric. I cut out two pieces of fabric the same size as the T and sold them together along the edge, right sides facing inwards, and then turned it inside out.

- Note that you need to leave the right and left sides of the “T” open so that the buckle still works. Again, fold those raw edges over and hem them.

- I don’t have pictures of this part, but you then need to cut a horizontal slit in the middle of your seat cover that is wide enough for the bottom of the “T”, and then sew around the hole made by the slit to attach the bottom of the “T” to the seat cover, sort of like attaching a sleeve to an open shoulder hole. The concept here is you’re creating a hollow space for the harness of the old cover to pop into so it’s forming the inside of the new harness.

- Finally cut out the two crescent pieces for the back that will be used to secure the cover to the swing frame. Only for the inner curve of each crescent, fold the raw edge over to make a little hem (the other outer edges will be sewn to the rest of the cover, so no hemming needed!)

- Now sew the outer edges of the crescents to your seat cover, with the right sides facing inward again, so you can flip it over and have the seams on the inside. The finished product should look something like this below, from the back

- and this from the front!

- Now the best part. Putting the new seat cover over the old. Push the old harness up into the new harness. Pull the side straps through the little gaps you created, and it should all line up to give you your modern, refreshed seat cover.

- And of course give it a test drive with an infant-sized teddy bear!

Pillows in chunky knits are pretty popular these days (Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom) and I wanted some of my own without having to splurge for them, or spend hours knitting! And this project was surprisingly easy to pull off — all you need is an old sweater and some creative manipulation..

Materials:

- 1 old sweater with a chunky knit pattern

- pillow forms

- tools: your sewing machine, scissors

How to do this:

- Lay out your sweater next to your pillow to see how best to make the pattern work with the size of the sweater. Here I find that my sweater will allow me to make two pillow covers, and I’m planning to cut up my sweater so that the fun cable pattern will run exactly down the middle of my finished pillow.

- Remove the sleeves from your sweater. Try not to cut the sleeves off with your scissor to prevent unnecessary fraying for your pillow, but rather, see if you can find that one stitch that holds the pieces together.

- Now the slightly scary part, actually cutting your sweater in half. In order for the cable pattern to be centered for my pillow, I ended up making one straight cut sort of one-thirds from the right front of the sweater (the long holes below are where the sleeves were). And then cutting that piece in half to have two pieces. Each of these pieces will make you one long pillow. Don’t worry that you have raw edges and yarn starting to fray as you cut, it’ll all get sewn together in the end.

- Next, cut each piece into half. You can probably get rid of the scraps around each arm hole. You’ll end up with one longer piece that has the center cable knit pattern, and a shorter piece that came from the section under the holes for the sleeve. Notice that each piece has one nice straight finished edge — which used to be the bottom hem of the sweater. These edges are going to be the ‘closure’ for your pillow, we’re going to sew them in such a way that they overlap and don’t require any buttons or zippers to close off your pillow.

- So now your pieces are cut and you can start sewing! Take the longer piece, place it right side facing up, and fold the ‘nice’ edge over until this piece is about the length of your pillow. Then take the shorter piece, place it right side down (i.e. the wrong side facing up) over the longer piece. You should now have the pieces placed such that all the wrong sides are facing out, with the ‘nice’ edges overlapping each other by at least an inch.

- Now sew the edges all the way around the outside of this rectangle. I tried using a zig-zag stitch to make it more secure, but I think a straight stitch would work just as well. Double check the edges where there are cable knits in case there are gaps there due to the way the cables overlap. Make sure you have a nice covered opening for your pillow. And don’t worry if it looks messy or out of shape, once you get the pillow in it’ll look great. Then flip it inside out!

- At this point, you should have a chunky knit pillow cover that will stretch over your pillow form pretty easily. Flip the ends over, pull it into shape and you’re done! New pillows for the fall/winter season!

In my opinion, the most exciting part of reupholstering starts when you get to put the new fabric back on and you get a first inkling of what your new chair is going to look like.

We left off the last post with our chair stripped down to the frame and padding, here’s what happens next:

- Use the old fabric you just took off the chair as a pattern to cut out all the pieces you need from your new fabric. If you have a print you may want to think about whether you want it to face a certain direction or have a certain element on the back of the chair for example.

- My original chair had some really nice welting on it so I wanted to replicate it. If you’re making some welting for your chair, you just need to cut out long 1.5” wide strips of material, fold them over your welting cord and sew straight down the strip (remember to use the zipper foot on your machine). There’s also a great tutorial here on a short cut to making welting.

- Once the welting is done you may want to sew it directly to the pieces of fabric as needed. You may also need to do some sewing for the nose of the chair (the bottom front piece). When your pieces are ready, this is my favorite part, you get to start putting them on your chair! I started first with the nose, and tucked the fabric in down around the edges of the seat and stapling them to the back of the frame. Then the inside arm panels, and the inside wing panels, again tucking the fabric through to the back of the frame and stapling them tight.

- Next pull the inside arm panel tightly over the roll of the arm rest, and staple it to the outside frame.

- Now staple the fabric from the inner wing panels over to the outside. Feel free to make little “V” snips in the fabric to get it to fit better.

- the chair is now starting to come together!

- Next we put the back cushion on the chair with the new fabric. Tuck the fabric through to the back of the frame and staple to the frame. Staple the top firmly over the top of the back of the chair.

- Now we put on the outer wing panels. I had to use a couple of small tacks to get the panel on firmly.

- Next the outer arm panels. My chair utilized metal tacking strips for these panels on the front edge so I recycled them - they basically are an invisible means of attaching the straight edges of your fabric panel.

- Finally, the back panel of the chair. Again, I recycled the metal tacking strips along the sides and pounded them in with my mallet (you can see the actual tacks here)

- To finish off, I stapled welting all around the base, and then a base cloth to hide it all.

-

- one last thing to do is sew the cover for the base cushion. I don’t have any special tips for this one, except to make sure you sew the cover just a little smaller than the cushion itself so it’ll be a nice snug fit, and also to place the zipper at the back of the cushion so it won’t be seen.

And we’re finally done with the chair! Sorry this was such a terribly long post, but hopefully the details will come in helpful if you’re planning your own upholstery project.

Here’s the finished product! A lot of work went into it but it was totally worth it.

I’ve wanted my own wingback in my living room for a while, and had the good fortune to find an old chair on craigslist back in November last year. Yes, that was 6 months ago *awkward cough*. (hey it’s been busy around here!) But finally I got round to working on my chair and it’s finally done! So here goes - part 1 of the process, taking everything apart.

What you’ll need:

- something to remove the staples with. Either get a real staple lifter/tack remover, or just make do with a sturdy flat head screwdriver and some needle-nose pliers, like I did.

- a staple gun, preferably electric to make it easier on your hands, and staples (I used Arrow T50 5/16” ones)

- a mallet to pound in any staples or tacks

- access to a sewing machine to sew up welting and a couple of seams on the nose of the chair

- 5 to 7 yards of new fabric. Most books recommend 7 to 11 yards, I got 7 and ended up with lots of extra fabric. I found some I liked at fabric.com but for some reason they messed up my order, and I happened to find a print I really liked at IKEA of all places.

- welting cord, batting and foam. You might be able to recycle these from the existing chair if it’s in good condition, or else get it from your local craft store.

Here’s what we started with..

- Start removing fabric from the bottom of the chair by taking out all the staples. Save all the fabric pieces you remove, they will be your patterns for the new fabric. Label all the pieces - I scribbled on the fabric with a sharpie descriptions like “right wing outer panel”, “left arm inner panel”. Take lots of pictures as you go so you can retrace your steps later. You may also find some strips of metal teeth - save these and use them again when you’re putting the fabric back on.

- The first couple of pieces come off from the base of the chair, and then the left and right side panels, and the back outside panel of the chair.

- Next remove the ‘nose’ (the bottom front of the chair)

-then the outer wing panels. These are fabric covered stiff cardboard pieces.

- Next remove the back inside cushion of the chair. In my case it was easier to remove all the padding along with the fabric, and replace the whole back cushion together with the new fabric.

- Then the wing inside panels and arm inside panels at the last stage.

- finally, stripped down to just the frame and batting!

And that’s where we’ll stop for now.. no sneak peak of the finished product, but here’s the fabric I chose.

Hang on for part II when we get to the real fun - putting the new fabric on the chair!

By the way, don’t worry if you’ve never done any upholstery before - this was my first upholstery project! I read a couple of books and they were somewhat helpful (Matthew Haly’s book of upholstery, Singer Upholstery Basics Plus) but I found in many cases it was just about using common sense to figure your way around your chair, making a couple of snips around the corner to get the fabric to fit, adding in an extra tack when needed and finding a way to hide it etc. A couple other helpful blogs (Creative Maven, Mormon Chic) gave me the guts to give it a go.