Friday, June 21, 2013

Decorating My New House: DIY Projects for "The Wine Cellar"

It's your lucky day-2 posts in ONE DAY! Actually, I'm just really behind on getting all my cool projects up here. The wall grouping for my bedroom is basically done! I added the painted quote canvases I just made, and a few other things but I still need to add some splashes of apple green, my other accent color.

I like how they turned out! The shelves used to be navy, so my mom painted them black and I put up the two canvases I painted. The glass bottles are an old vase and an empty glass dressing bottle that I filled with the same pink paint from the canvas. I made the letter "K" for my dorm freshman year and decided to use it again-it's just Mod Podged with magazine clippings and painted black on the front and back. Finally, the plate is from my grandma's house and I laced it with cute pink quatrefoil ribbon. I'm ordering another one of my favorite monogram stickers for the center.



Also in my room now is the amazing headboard my mom made! It's really hard to see how cool it is in the picture unfortunately. It started with an old crib my mom bought from Craislist (we repurposed another part of the crib, which you'll see soon!). She used two pieces of foam core board on the side of the crib with the bars, tied with dental floss or embroidery floss through punched holes. Next, she covered the foam with batting and stapled black fabric over the whole thing. Finally, she purchased a button covering kit to do buttons in the same fabric and make it tufted. I love it!



In the living room, here are a couple of the cool projects my mom also did. (She's been SUCH a big help in crafting all sorts of things for the Wine Cellar house while I started my internship). These were all originally inspired by Pinterest crafts. The rug we have in the living room is a cheap $10 grey rug that my mom actually PAINTED with a stencil and white paint. It turned out really well, I think.



For the wall above our TV, she took a frame and picture we already had and cut up paint samples to make this cool design.



Finally, the famous sunburst mirror, made from gold-painted paint sticks!




This might just be my favorite project, also made from a part of the crib she purchased. The end of the crib (the flat, non-slatted part) we painted with chalkboard paint and a white trim for an entryway chalkboard! I did some cute lettering.


Decorating My New House: Craigslist and Clearance finds for "The Wine Cellar"

In case we don't personally know each other, I'm a college senior at Bradley University and this year I'm renting an off-campus house with four of my best friends. The house is old, but we've made a major effort to decorate it as cute as possible (and for the least amount of money!). On my campus, it's a tradition to name your house and the name gets passed down with the house if other members of your sorority or fraternity rent the same house the following year. We are the first Sigma Kappas to live in this particular house so we got to re-name it! Let me show you some of the cute things I've done for my room, kitchen, and living room in The Wine Cellar!

First of all-Craigslist.org is AMAZING. A real lifesaver when you have to completely furnish a house, especially a college house where you don't want to buy expensive things quite yet. I'm also a big fan of upcycling old, used furniture. With just a few small changes a piece can go from shabby to chic so easily! 

Here's a few examples of my "upcycled" furniture and Craigslist finds. 

Ikea chair: originally $199 at Ikea, bought for $20 on Craigslist
Matching ottoman: $5



Desk: Free! This desk was originally garbage-picked by my grandma in the 1950's. It started as a flat black paint, then a funky pale green in the 60's, a screaming electric yellow in the 70's, white with country flowers stenciled from the 80's-90's where it lived in my little girl room, then a nautical navy blue for our basement, and finally back to classic black for my college house! We spiced it up with cute clearance knobs from Hobby Lobby for $1 each. 



Dresser: Also free! This was another roadside find that got spray-painted black and some new knobs. We also lined the drawers with cute wrapping paper. 



Scalloped edge bedside table: Free from my Great-Grandma's house, then painted black and topped with an old lamp and $5 lampshade from Craigslist.



Chair: This was an old, nasty orange chair from my grandparents' old house and my mom sewed a slipcover from a treated painter's dropcloth for $6


Pillows: Made from clearance printed duck from Hobby Lobby or muslin fabric from our sewing box at home and recycled pillow forms. 12 pillows for under $12!



Coat Hooks: This shelf came from my grandma's house as well-it didn't have coat hooks and was an ugly oak, so we painted it and added hooks. It still needs artwork on top.


More clearance finds came from my favorite store, Hobby Lobby. My mom and I were shopping and happened to come across an 80% off home decor section. I found 3 adorable prints for my kitchen! The "Kitchen" print only cost me $9 and the two square prints ended up being $6 apiece. 





I know the pictures are a little dark, but you get the idea. 

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Painted Quote Canvases

So for my first real post, I decided to show you all what I've been working on for the past couple of days! I've been home at my parents house this week for my brother's graduation party and for Father's Day this weekend and had lots of time to craft for my new house! A while back I bought a pack of canvases on sale at a craft store and I knew I'd find a way to use them. I have two black shelves that my mom painted for me to make a wall grouping above my bed at the new house and needed things to decorate them. I absolutely love cute, inspiring quotes and I thought it would be fun to paint them for my room!

For the first one, I used a bunch of different fonts and printed off the quote the way I wanted it to look in a Word document first. I freehanded it in pencil on the canvas and just used black acrylic paint and a very skinny paintbrush to do the lettering. Some of the words are also done in chip letters that I painted black as well. I might add ribbon to the outside to spice it up.

 The typed copy 

 The finished project!



For the second one, I painted the background a bright pink-my accent color in my room. Instead of painting on each letter, I used stencils for a different look. I really like how the white on pink turned out. You can't tell really well in the picture, but the word "sparkle" is covered in white glitter!




Stay tuned for what the rest of the wall grouping will look like! I want to do a letter K and paint some vases to go on the shelves as well.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Hi there, friends!

Welcome to my new blog! I'm so excited to get started with it, and start posting all the things I'm working on and fun things happening in my life. I started blogging about 6 months ago, when I left for a semester abroad in Granada, Spain. I loved blogging so much, I decided I wanted to continue doing it after the semester was over and Keeks & Co. was born!
In the past two weeks, I have returned home from Spain, unpacked, re-packed, moved to Peoria where I go to school, started my internship, come back home for my brother's high school graduation party, and now I've started THIS! It's been a whirlwind, but now it's time for me to fill my free time with great books, movies and fun craft projects to decorate my new house!
Stay tuned to see if all the Pinterest crafts I've been eyeing actually work out! :)