Ironing Board Makeover. Among other things.

The last couple years, with all the moving and the pregnancy and the baby and the toddler and the homeschooling and so on and so on haven't left much room for sewing for me.

But, if I'm being realistic, it wasn't necessarily the insanity of it all that got me all stuck in the sewing category, but more the being bogged down with old projects that hadn't gotten finished, fabric that I had in my stash but didn't love anymore weighing over my head, and a craft/sewing space completely and utterly void of organization--that part mostly due to moving, but not entirely. 

So in this house I have a really great area to sew. Lots of natural light, lots of floor space, enough room for storage of supplies and room to cut and sew and work. It's taken me a bit with the all the organization it's needed, and the clearing out of the stash, and the lunatic toddler and unfinished projects and all, to get to a place where I can enjoy it, but I've slowly been checking organization and finishing old projects off the list, and this project was needed for some future projects I have coming up that are going to require a good, full surface area for pressing.

Let me preface this post with this picture, which was a ridiculously fun project of sewing and piecing approximately 40 gazillion scraps together to get these riotously happy placemats for my mom. The back of them is nice too--I also pieced that side together, with more muted shades and tones, and more uniform piecing. I call the backside "the preacher is visiting" side. Which is silly, because I'm pretty sure that my parents don't make a habit of having people they call "preachers" over, and what's more, if they did I don't think my mom would stress about having the more orderly side of her placemats up. She'd use a tablecloth. Haha. So, silly. But the backside is more orderly, and pretty, but less remarkable. Anyway, this project got me started on a piecing kick. Actually, I think my hexie piecing got me started on that, but we will save that for another day. Anyway, this was a super fun project, and exactly what I needed to both clean out some of my scraps (I bought some extra red scraps too, to flesh out my collection of fabrics), and give me a cheery kick in the pants at the end of a very long winter.  And, it got the idea for the ironing board cover stuck in my head.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad before. The foam under the cover was holey and wrinkled and made pressing so frustrating and annoying. For the past 18 months or so, I'd been throwing a folded towel across the top, but that wasn't foolproof at all. Many wrinkles, didn't breathe properly, not long enough, edges askew, so annoying. 

I very rarely iron. I don't actually understand how anyone consistently fits that in their list of things to do, actually. Hat's off to ya if you are one of those ironing people. But, I am SUPER particular about pressing when I sew. My rule (not original to me, but to someone who I sewed with when I was a kid) is to "never pin what you can press." Everything you sew will look so much better if you follow this rule. True story. 

So, we commenced with the fixing of the situation.

I cut a lot of 2.5 inch squares. A LOT OF THEM, I tell you. 

 Laying them all out. Because I am not insane, (debatable) I did what I call "hack-piecing"--I would still be working on this if I'd chosen to individually sew each square to the next square, and then combine the rows. Madness, right? But instead I drew out a 2.5 inch grid on a super lightweight fusible interfacing and ironed them on. Then you just sew your 1/4 inch seam allowance down the interfacing, catching your squares in the seam allowance too.

Because this was on an ironing board, I was worried about the seams and seam allowances pressing into the things I was ironing and pressing. So while I wanted this to work, I also gave myself permission that if it didn't work I would cut the elastic casing off the edges and turn it into a quilt top, no regrets. After I was done making it I tested it on my entire fabric stash as I sorted through and organized, and a bunch of other stuff, and I haven't had a single seam or imprint or anything show up on anything I've ironed or pressed and you can't see the seam allowances at all through the cover either. Thank goodness! Because I love it.

But I did slice open the interfacing and press the seams open really well.

Not quite done yet--waiting for good weather for the final assembly. But meanwhile, trying it out, and pressing and organizing fabric scraps. Welches Fruit Snack boxes are perfect for small fabric scraps--this one got a makeover with yellow spray paint and I love it. 

Padding for the ironing board makes an awesome magic carpet!

Finally, Finally FINALLY!!! Some good weather. Warm enough to spray paint. I unfortunately had a horrible cold on this day. Actually for the past um, forever, it feels like. Plus a sprained ankle. While training for a half marathon. Which is another side story. But anyway. I wasn't feeling top notch on this day, but spray painting had to get done. Because Minnesota doesn't like to let go of winter, and so the cold weather was coming back. So the spray painting had to happen on this day.  So I double-dosed on a pre-workout with excessive amounts of caffiene and amino acids and some cold medicine, and took my ailing self outside to spray. It was beautiful enough and warm enough to break through my self-pity, so it ended up being therapeutic. Of course, it's possible that I was hallucinating, but I'm going to just live in Happy Naomi-land, and go with therapeutic.  Besides, spray painting things always makes me happy.

I did half-inch foam stuck to the top with a spray on adhesive, and one layer of Insul-Brite to protect the melty foam from the heat of the iron. So far it has worked perfectly. I like my ironing board well padded, and this is the perfect thickness.

(Sorry about the terrible lighting. We are in the midst of a stretch of very gray days here) Lighting excuses don't make blog posts, so I took the picture anyway. 

 All Done! And what's more, the area behind and around it is all clean and organized and ready to use too! So happy to have a fun, usable space now.

*** Original Inspiration for the 2.5 inch squares comes from here. I didn't follow her tutorial, but she's who inspired me to go from a crazy all-sized patchwork to a more uniform 2.5 inch squares.

Urban Exploration

These photos are from a Sunday afternoon wander-about that we did in downtown St. Paul a few months back. It was a crisp Autumn day, and it was quite lovely. 

Urban Land Rover. I do miss Rovey. This Rover is affectionately known of as "Steampunk Rover" due to the fact that it's not computerized at all... the levers and buttons all actually manually change things... with loud thunks and whatnot. It's charming. And easier to fix than computerized stuff. 

 I am hoping that my obnoxious urge to spell Mississippi every time we get in close proximity to the Mississippi River goes away soon. Because quite frankly, I'm driving myself completely banana sandwich with it. M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I! Not to mention other people who might just be hanging out near me.

 One the subject of houses: Living in rentals is not for the faint of heart. That being said, buying a house isn't for the faint of heart either. So basically, no one can have a faint heart and survive. Because clearly, being homeless wouldn't be for the faint of heart either.

 After all that nonsense, allow me to proceed with my thoughts on housing. I like to joke that we will be building the PERFECT retirement house after all this renting business, because we have definitely in the space of two rentals discovered what we like and hate in a house. I can't wait to see how smart we are after four rentals. **cough**

Anyway, at this point in our journey, living in rentals is the only thing that makes sense. So we shall embrace it, learn from it and enjoy the process. And complain, when necessary. Ha.

Tacoma Recap: The LOCATION of our house in Tacoma was a DREAM. I absolutely LOVED where we lived. It made moving from beautiful Wenatchee to Tacoma a really great experience... the Puget Sound a stone's throw away from my front door? Bliss. The house itself, however?! A complete nightmare. We decided on it for the location, and the fact that "it would do" otherwise. It was poorly maintained, things that had been fixed were fixed with dismal workmanship, and the floor plan was a nightmare. Basically, we learned what NOT to do in that house. I could go on, but I won't. :-) I will say that I am glad we lived there and learned what we learned, but I was NOT sorry to be leaving that house. It frustrated and/or angered me daily.

This house here has been all in all so far a much better experience. The space is laid out much better. Originally when Garrett looked at it, I was slightly terrified because it is huge... we'd never lived in a 2000 square foot house before--at 1900-something the Tacoma house was the biggest yet, and it was so poorly laid out it the square footage wasn't worth mentioning. But all homes here have basements (something about needing to dig below the frozen ground line anyway, so might as well put basements in?) so that space bumps this house up around 3,000 square feet. It's a cleaning nightmare. But, that being said it is SO great for having guests--since our guests are traveling farther and staying longer it's good to have space so everyone is not in everyone's pockets. And the first two floors really are wonderfully laid out.

We mostly live on the top floor--bedrooms, and the ground floor, living areas and kitchen/laundry, etc. The basement we originally set up as a play area for kids, computer/office area, sewing area, and school area, as well as backup guest area with a futon. So far the kids play downstairs when Daddy is on the computer downstairs, we haven't done school even once down here, and I haven't sewed at all in the basement. After just a few weeks I realized that I MUST have my sewing and our school within proximity to the kitchen and laundry room. Not to mention being able to hear Daria when she wakes up from naps. Also, the basement is FREEEEEEEZING. You have to bundle up, double sock, sweatshirt, blankets, etc., in order to sit still in this space. It's cold enough that your nose drips if you hang out down here. So, in short we have a bunch of unorganized piles and misused space that's not reaching it's potential at all. I am thinking we might use it more in summer, but in winter I'd feel really guilty even suggesting that someone sleep down here. We are slowly working on it, and I'm hoping to get in the mindset of using it more as time goes by. Because it really is a fabulous space.

When we moved to Tacoma within a few weeks I had things mostly organized and pictures hung. Here, even the thought of that kind of organization makes me laugh. I haven't hung a single picture here, and while things are put away and liveable, that's about it. It makes me crazy.

Daria has just, in the past month or so started occasionally sleeping through the night. She has thwarted every effort (good solid effort, I might add) that I have made towards some semblance of order and regimen around here. Loudly. Have I mentioned that she's loud? So, once we were moved in I sort of had to step back and prioritize, and it literally looked something like this:

Food

School

Cleaning/Laundry

Everything else, not even on the list.

So, if you're wondering what I've been up to, that's about it.

Back to the waterfront:

We were there for the magical moments before sunset.

And for the sunset.

Urban Jungle.

 School with these two yahoos has been a lot of fun this year. I'm thinking I'll maybe talk about that in another post.

My point of view.

Who's on first?

That's about it for this post today. Thanks for sticking with me!

Color Therapy, Part 3

Click here for Color Therapy, Part 1 and here for Color Therapy, Part 2.

Finally finishing this up! I'm sure you were all waiting with bated breath. Since my last post we got some sort of horrible cold/flu thing that pretty much has knocked each of us out of commission for about a week. And, of all irritation, it knocked my blogging schedule off kilter. Oh well. Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. We are okay with that. 

I'm thinking that since we've paid our dues with this particular horrible illness, perhaps we should be excused from all illness for next year?! Ha, if only it worked that way. 

So, this is what I ended up doing with my beautifully painted clothespins... I found a over-sized Brandy glass vase thing at Walmart, and since I very specifically wanted something that didn't have a lid (I find it irritating to rattle with lids when my hands are full of things), that could eventually serve more than one purpose, and was cheap-ish. This fit the bill on all accounts, and I treasure it greatly.  I think possibly I need another 100 pack of clothespins, yes?! Hee hee!!

 After we were done painting most of the clothespins (I had deliberately withheld some in case I felt the need of another color) the girls and I stood back and looked at our work, and decided that the colors weren't quite full enough--they thought we were missing hot pink. :-) I however, realized that we were missing some depth to balance out the deep purple, and so I found some Navy Blue spray paint and did the ones I'd withheld--I'm SO glad that it ended up working out that way, because the colors look awesome.

 This is the lamp in the upstairs bookcase area, in progress. I love the look of writing on a lampshade, so I tried to accomplish that with this, one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson, "Hope" is the Thing With Feathers. In short, I was NOT happy with how it turned out.

Things that made it not work very well:

**The fabric of this particular lampshade was really heavy and rough--not conducive to writing on--I couldn't even get pencil to show up on it to initially trace my letters, and painting it with the stiffest of brushes was nigh on impossible. I ended up free-handing it with a toothpick. Which is why it looks so rough.

**If I should write poetry on a lampshade again, I would do a barrel shaped silk or soft paper shade--one that is equally wide at the top as it is on the bottom. And then obviously measure and tape lines to keep the letters uniform, and also, I would first write the entire poem with a pencil, and use an acrylic paint pen over the top of that.

All that being said, it was a learning experience for sure. I had it like this for one night--just to see if I could live with it, and in the few hours I looked at it it made me CRAZY--it became very clear it had to go. So, the next morning I took it downstairs and painted over it with a spray paint to see if it could be salvaged.

 And, AFTER! Painting over it with spray paint worked well enough. You can still read the poem but it isn't so shocking. It doesn't necessarily make my skirts fly up, but it will do for now, and I can live with it.

This space is SO WELL LOVED and used now, at any given time there is usually a girl sitting in the chair with a book and a drink.  I put a coaster there for form for a few months--I figure my kids should at least know when they are and how to use them, but I'm not really that uptight about it after all, I did beat this table with a hammer before I brought it into the house.

 A close-up of the lamp. Goodbye, scary tacky gold, hello lovely interesting green.

 Next on my "Make this House Livable" agenda was the third bedroom. Our third bedroom in every house we've had has always served as the computer room/study/sewing/craft/guest room. And, one reason we were attracted to this house was because the third bedroom was HUGE. Blessedly huge.

It's also been the room that always ends up with the oddest assortment of furniture in it, for some reason.

So, when we first moved into this house I thought we'd do school upstairs at the kitchen table. I assumed that I needed to be near the kitchen while we were doing school, as that is how we'd done it in Wenatchee, and it worked SO well. But, as we've lived in this house it became very obvious that wasn't working out too well, at all. The kitchen and dining area in this house is TINY, and therefore it was ALWAYS a mess with school stuff going on, and whatever else. More than that, it turns out what I needed to be near wasn't the kitchen, but the LAUNDRY ROOM! And in this house, the laundry room is downstairs, a million miles away from the kitchen. This house is seriously weird. So, I set about having us do school downstairs in the third bedroom, aka the computer room/study/sewing/craft/guest room ANNNND... now the School Room too.

Also, the last year or so of our life sewing has really taken a back seat for me. And, obviously that's something that is going to happen here and there, but it was getting to the point where I really missed it. And I needed to figure out a way to fit it back into my life, even if just in a small way.

I didn't take any before pics of this area, but let's just say that it was a mess. This table (which I absolutely LOVE--it is from my uncle and aunt, and was our dining table in Wenatchee, but it doesn't fit in the dining room in this house)  was one leaf smaller, and piled high with fabric and books. Also, the light in this room is wonderful and natural during the day, but it has the weirdest light fixture that is horrifying at night--rendering the room completely unusable, and that is NO exaggeration.

So, goals for organizing this room were:
1. Set up for school, seating and storage and supplies
2. Light so I can sew in the evenings and the girls can play
3. Game/Books/Art storage so the girls can play in this room in the evening while Momma sews and Daddy plays Call of Duty.
4. Storage for sewing stuff and school stuff, so this room can be clean and completely decluttered when guests need to use it.

 We were always needing more chairs in here, so the blue ones in the above photo I found at goodwill for $9.99 a piece. They are wood, so I should be able to repaint them if ever needed, and they are perfect school room chairs for not just this room, but any room of the future. I ended up with one extra little lamp from all my lamp/furniture moving--but it's little enough that it nestles perfectly under the big lamp, so we're calling it good--it is SO NICE to have light in this room in the evening! I can't even say how wonderful it is.

I do need to add one more leaf to the table--I keep forgetting to ask Garrett to help me with that. I was able to do the first one myself, but we need muscle on both ends of the table for another. This huge table is such a blessing down here--we are totally able to have both art/puzzles, whatever going as well as sewing projects. It's been nice to get a bit of sewing back in my life, and also have the room set up so we can spend the evenings with Garrett, down in his Daddy Dungeon, alternately known as our "School Womb" or Guest Womb". Hey, the walls are all dark red. :-)

When I first started into organizing this room I was a little worried that I was going to have to find a half bookcase for our school stuff, and possible some of the craft supplies. Thankfully however, the previous residents of this house had this shelving in the closet. Not so handy for guests who have hanging clothes, but SO nice for our purposes. I don't know what I'd do without all this shelving. This closet full of shelves has proven to be a complete lifesaver for me. I was able to rearrange all our office supplies and craft supplies to also fit sewing and most of our school supplies and about half our games on it too. Yay! I love it when stuff works out like that!

 So this was a fun little project I just couldn't resist.

You see, Anthropologie has these delightful little containers in both large, and small. And, I've been plotting making them mine for a ridiculous amount of time. However, I never could quite bring myself to do it, because of a few reasons:

1. The sizes of them are a little small for actual usefulness.
2. I want more color options for the big one, especially. The blue is pretty, but I wanted a green big one for my sewing stuff.
3. You really need three of them if you're going to store fruits or veggies in them--like one big one, and two small ones, so it would be balanced properly. That could get spendy.
4. I bought 9 pairs of shoes between December and March. Now, realistically, I didn't really buy ANY shoes between December and March. You see, the first ones were my treat to myself since I moved us. And, I got them on sale for $30. If you count our moving process over a period of 3 months that means that I worked for a rate of $10 per month, which is ridiculously low, and shouldn't count against my shoe purchases at all. The next two pairs were with Birthday money, so they ABSOLUTELY don't count. The following two pairs were due to the fact that we moved. I used to run errands in my super warm snow boots all winter long. Now living over here in big-city, classier dressing people as a general rule, wet puddle-ville, it became apparent that snow boots were not going to cut it. So, I had to get a black pair and a brown pair of errand running flat cute (not heeled) boots. I firmly maintain that this is not my fault, and these shouldn't count against me.  Then, I did our taxes this year, and saved us a bundle on not going to an accountant. And I really needed some cute flat sandals for summer. So, I found a black pair and a brown pair--good basics for the need at hand. But then, I realized that anyone in their right mind who's rewarding themselves for the thankless and horrific task of doing taxes, especially in a year where there's a home sale and multiple other fun little things along those lines, should buy sandals in an actual shade of delight--not black or brown. So, I got myself a blue pair. But then, in order to get free shipping I had to spend another $5. So I got myself a coral pair too. And therefore, you see, I haven't ACTUALLY bought nine pairs of shoes. It just SEEMS like I have. My logic here is inescapable.

Somehow though, I find that this particular shoe saga takes a bit of the joy out of spending a ridiculous amount of money at Anthropologie for a few little trinkets, so I'm holding off on that for a while. :-)

Also, should you need any exorbitant purchases justified, I'm your girl, just give me a call.

Also, Disclaimer: My allowable shoe purchase price is stupidly low--so it's not like I spent a ton of money on said shoes.

So, anyhoo-how, after all that, I bought a bucket of strawberries, and and spray painted the trash at the end of the strawberry eating. :-) Then I coated it with multiple coats of an outdoor polyurethane, and I gotta say, I'm THRILLED with the outcome. Totally cute and usable and not the end of the world if it gets stepped on or dropped.

 I don't know anything about food storage and polyurethane, so I don't know that I would ever make these to put food in. Actually, I probably would, but I don't know that I should.

 That being said, I think I might need a yellow one, and an orange one, and a blue one... yeah. :-) Also, the bottom of it is my very favorite part--ha! I will admit to sometimes lifting it up, and grinning at the bottom. :-) It's the little things in life.

 So, for now that ends my pictures of the organization and projects around here. I'll be back with more, soon. Getting sick really threw me off my track--BOO! I'm hoping to be back on it soon. It feels like the clock is ticking for Bebe's arrival. It's not THAT imminent, but I've lost two weeks of good work due to being sick, and I'm not overly thrilled about that. Oh well, we will try to take it as it comes. Be back soon with more fun posts!

Color Therapy, Part 2

For the "before" photos, go to Color Therapy, Part 1. 

Before I proceed with continuing my storybook style recap of the crazy amount of painting that went on around here a few weeks ago, I have a few official items of business to care for from the previous post.

To my dear Sweetheart:

I do apologize for taking a picture of the yard before the dandelions were killed. Rest assured, my readers, the dandelions are all dead. For now.

I also apologize for taking a picture of the back of Rovey with the bolt caps off. I also, since I'm being all apologetic and everything, apologize for not noticing that the tire store didn't put the bolt caps back on--I was distracted by the enormous screw/drill bit that I've been looking for, and apparently we drove around on since last July. 

I DO NOT however, apologize for using the words "cereal bowl" and "underwear" in the same sentence. Mostly because I find it highly amusing that this even disturbed you. Please notice that I have also managed to work the words "cereal bowl" and "underwear" into not one, but two sentences in this blog post.

Thank you, I am done with the official business now.

  

Seriously, this was a ton of painting, that all total--since I was taking breathing breaks especially, haha, took me about three days. If I had it to do over again, this lamp is probably the only thing I would have primed--I didn't realize I even had primer when I started painting it though--I found it a bit later in the game. I was planning on antiquing it with sandpaper after the fact however, so it ended up just fine. I just sanded the bubbly areas down a bit.

Adding the clothespins to a bowl after they're all dried... this is not quite all of them. I used Krylon and Rustoleum spray paint, and the nozzle on the Rustoleum was way better, but the Krylon dried way faster. So you gotta pick your poison, apparently.

The rain started about halfway into my second day, so I had to move it all into the garage... which is beyond dark, and not horrifyingly disorganized, but definitely worse than I would like--I need more shelving, and the inside of the house has to come first. You should have seen the look of horror on my children's faces as I started hauling ALL our lamps out there so I could see what I was doing. "MOM! You can't spray paint all our lamps!!" Haha. I told them I could, and they better watch out, because I might spray paint them too.  Of course, I did not spray paint any of those lamps, or my children.

This is the table after it's coat of stain. Minwax Brand, Jacobean Color, which is my very favorite stain. The legs were pretty beat up, but somehow, strangely enough the top was pristine. It looked weird. I'm not a fan of perfect furniture. Furniture in our house gets drinks set on it, and feet, and whatever else, and that is how we like it. We are in charge--not the furniture. Also, I have the bad habit of not looking where I set my drinks while I'm reading, and spilling my drinks everywhere when I set them halfway on and halfway off the coaster. So, I set about beating the top of this table up with various metal tools I found around the garage and using my patented swing hammer, spin it in the air, let it land however and wherever it wants maneuver. The top matched the legs by the time I was done. :-) One good thick coat of Polyurethane, and the night to cure, and this table was ready to go...

Cleaning the "Command Center" area out... So excited at this point!

Originally when I bought the three Goodwill Lamps, I had intended on just buying regular shades at Walmart and calling it good. But, when I went to Walmart to price them out I realized that at more than $15 a piece, by the the time it was all said and done I'd have been spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 for the shades. Which, realistically isn't that much money, but I have some other things that I want that I would much rather spend that $50 on. So, I decided to go back to Goodwill and see if I could find lampshades that would fit the bill, and come in cheaper. It took two trips, but all together I paid for these three lampshades what I would have paid for ONE at Walmart. Not too shabby. Obviously the colors are all wrong, but with some base coats of spray paint, and then brush coats on two of them, they ended up being a bit of work, but definitely more original and they will work for as long as we need them to.

Drumroll Please!! This is my official "After" photo of my Command Center, right off my kitchen.

All total, including the cost of spray paint and things like a whole tablet of scrap booking paper I had to buy for the girls cameos that I only used about three sheets of, this project came in under $45!! Awesome!

The fabric that I used I didn't count in the cost--because I bought it quite a while ago. I've had it in my stash because I'm collecting fabric to make quilts for my girls. I only used about a 1/2 yard for this. It is Sis Boom Queen Street by Jennifer Paganelli (Maeve in Periwinkle). I assembled the bulletin boards by mounting styrafoam pieces from the packing for the command center desk onto the wood that I knocked from the table I refinished. Then I wrapped the Styrofoam in fabric with Mod-Podge, and mounted the cork board on top.

I LOVE these cameos. They were way harder than I expected them to be--but now that I've done them once, I think they'll be pretty easy to repeat. I have an ultrasound pic in the third frame, and that will obviously be traded out for a cameo once Bebe' is big enough.

The basic process for doing cameos is all over the web, so I won't repeat it here other than to say: take a profile pic, trace the face, freehand what you want their hair to look like if necessary, and then cut it out, trace it onto paper and cut that out, then mount over other pretty paper. There ya go. My tips for doing your own cameos would be:

1) Make sure your photo is a PERFECT 90 degree angle of the face, with closed mouth. If your kid is old enough, show them what you're trying to do so they understand what you're looking for. Telling Brie what I was doing made a magnificent difference in her cooperation anyway. :-)

2) If you're using a 5x7 frame, then print out a 4x6 of the photo. If you're using a 8x10 frame, print out a 5x7. Basically, just go one size smaller than whatever you want your finished product to be. It will look nicer.

The frames were ones that I had around that I just gave a few coats of blue to match the fabric and offset the red in the cameos a bit.

The lamp! I had some "help" with the sanding, so it got a little more antiqued than I probably would have done it in a few places. I'm ok with that though. :-) The shade took to the spray paint quite nicely, but I wanted it to have a brushed look, so I brushed over the top with a few different shades of yellow/tan. The original bottom trim was in rough shape, and the shade wasn't quite long enough for the lamp, so I added a ruffle and bias tape trim from some bias tape I had sitting around to solve both those problems.

This jar was originally a Pirouline tin. My girls use Crayola's Super Tips markers for EVERYTHING, and so I always keep a few extra packages around here as backup, because it feels like they'll all be working just fine, and then one day they're all mashed and unusable any more. I haven't been able to figure out where to keep the backups so they're out of sight but available, and this container solved that problem perfectly. Plus I needed to break up the red just a bit. I'd found the primer by the time I got to this, so I just primed it, yellowed it, and then mod-podged fabric over the top. I also cut out a piece of green paper (same as the bookcase and a few other things in the living room) to tie that color in and also cover up the manila of my pending paperwork file.

So, there ya have it... the "after" of one project completed!!