Master Bedroom Update, Part 3

Do you get inspired by nature like I do?  More times then not, I want to be enjoying the outdoors: frolicking in the trees, laying out in the sunshine at the beach, or even working on a sweat in the garden.

But I can't be outside all the time.  It would be awfully cold to be sleeping out in my backyard in the damp coastal weather.  But maybe I can bring that feeling of being surrounded by nature inside?  Like on all four walls of my bedroom!

Homemade Stencil

I found section of a fern and had it blown up to fit on a 11x17 size of paper.  Then I cut out the shape, traced the shape on a flattened cereal box, and WAH-LA!  I had my own homemade stencil that didn't cost me a cent.  (Also what didn't cost me a cent was an old bath sponge that I was going to throw out anyway. :-)

I could vary the height of the stencil, depending on where I placed it on the wall and how far down I painted, and could also (after the paint had dried on the cardboard) flip the stencil over and work with the mirror image or rotate the stencil to make the print look different everytime.  Can you guess, by the picture above, that each fern print came from the same stencil?

I loved playing around with the shape and coming up with new configurations that would add to the "organic" look I was going for.  This layout was definetly not planned out, but thats exactly why I love this type of stencil to work with.  Not like the geometric pattern stenciling projects I've seen that look great, but so much repeated steps-that can get boring to do quite quickly.  This project took me three 2 hour-nights to do, but could have easily been done in one day (if I ever had an entire day to myself ;-).

Have you ever done any stenciling?  What did you most enjoy about it?

Master Bedroom Update, Part 2

Oh headboard, how we missed thee! It has been more than 5 years since we last had a headboard on our bed. That's longer than we've been married!

Our old bed frame came from neighbors in our apartment complex, who were moving out and sold to us an entire bedroom set of four pieces: a nightstand/dresser, armoire, mirror, and headboard with bed frame. It worked with our rental house, but we -I- was tired of it and wanted something new. So we went on the lookout for something we could do.

Source: google.com via Petra on Pinterest

Pinterest is awesome, no? I went back and found the actually site: http://hoboswarehouse.com since I had pinned this before I grew an etiquette conscience by reading CrafterMinds.  Don't worry, I just slapped my own hand.

I love the subutle curve and the gentle tufting.  I have read tutorials on diy tufting, and a headboard should be the perfect place to start, but we got antsy to get the project started, done and over with, so we skipped the tufting for now.

Piece of plywood cut out in curved shape

I'm not very good at belaboring you with the step-by-step tutorial since I'm sure you could just Goggle "how to make a padded headboard" and you would get something much better then I could ever write.  So I will just share some photos of our process:

Cut 2x4 boards to make frame to attach headboard to back wall 

The fabric we purchased from Ikea.  It's in a nice neutral color so I it could go with any color we decide to change our walls to in the future.

Super thick pad bought at Joann's fabrics

Yes, our garage work space was very tight that day.  I had to work around my husband's dirt bike and stand.  Total man cave our garage is.  Well, with plush carpeting.  ;-)

Lots of staples in the corners

We worked so well together on this headboard project, I'm looking forward to finishing the rest of the bedroom with my hubby!

Master Bedroom Update, Part 1

This post is more than a bit overdue. Like try a few months late, but I'm trying my best now to catch this here blog up on my recent -productive- activities!  I give props for all you mommy bloggers out there that have daily (even weekly!) posts. Actually, that goes to all bloggers out there- if you have any tips on how to keep on top of posting to your blog on a more scheduled basis, please share!  I think I just need to make the time to sit down and type! and I haven't been.  But my brain just jumps onto the next project on my list, instead of keeping up this baby.

On to the post:
So my husband was never very fond of the wall color in our bedroom. It was painted this way by two owners past (not the ones we bought from, the ones before that). But it just happens to be my favorite color: I call it Blurple. You know the color found in those beautiful blue-purple hydrangeas?

(Before)

Blue Hydrangeas were also the flower of my wedding, so you can see why I hestitated on changing the color in the first place.  Well I guess it is not very masculine in my husband opinion on color.  But his biggest issue was that it was too dark for his taste, and he wanted something lighter on the wall.  Wait a sec, I thought men liked darker rooms?  He and I are often switched, in our lives together, as male-female stereotypes.  ;-)

After much debate and discussion on if we wanted to go through the effort of putting up wainscoting and a chair rail, we decided to go with a light tone over a slightly darker tone in a sage green color to still give it that half tone look.

Bedroom Walls (Progress)

I think the room looks bigger now thanks to the lighter color up top.  We even went as far as to paint the ceiling with the lighter color as well.  (Which is hard to see in the picture above.)

There are still plans to put up a chair rail, to give the room more architecture, but you might have to wait a while longer to see that post. We may even put up crown molding at the ceiling to better show the light green above.  In the meantime, I'll be posting again (what?! Two posts in one day? Unheard of! ;-) on what came next to our bedroom walls...

because I can't miss adding a pic of my little helper