Painted Plastic Doll House

One day, I was through the warehouse and I was like, "Hey look! That doll house matches our Noah's ARC nursery color palette perfectly!"

JUST KIDDING!  It started out like this...

Cute, but.. eh... not quite right.  Call me crazy, but I decided to disassemble the whole thing and repaint it in our colors.  Total tweeker project right?  Minus the drugs of course.  

I unscrewed all screws and had to use 2 butter knifes to get the roof off.

Then spray painted with a primer that adheres to plastic.

Next, a coat of semi-gloss white spray paint (because I had it).  And finally, the roof, trim, and other details with our light coral and minty green colors.  I also went back over the little butterflies and birdies with a sharpie.

DIY Fabric Covered Suitcases

We found a bunch of old green suitcases at the Salvation Army warehouse and snagged them for exactly that... a new take on storage and a new use for an old item.   But cute? they were not.  So my  teammate, Pavitra found this awesome idea online and gave it a go.  Here are her instructions for this fun DIY project: First we picked out these cute fabrics. We picked fabrics with small prints. After a light cleaning the suitcases were ready to go. Using Mod Podge, attach the fabric to the suitcase. Using a rotary cutter, clean up the edges.

Once you do one, the rest go quickly.

Now you have lovely finished suitcases that can be used for storage, decoration, or whatever!

Breakfast Tray Turned Corkboard

In less than one week the Noah's ARC Design Challenge will be complete and up in Salvation Army stores throughout Orange County!  On judgement day (this Saturday the 13th), Westwood College will be presenting their design in Orange (180 S. Tustin Blvd.), The Art Institute will show off their space in Fountain Valley (26229 Brookhurst St.),  Saddleback College will unveil their work in San Clemente (2727 Via Cascadita), and my team from Interior Designers Institute will reveal our finished nursery in Huntington Beach (17362 Beach Blvd.).  So if you're local, stop by between the 13th and the 29th to see how all these fun projects come together and the amazing transformations created by these four design schools using Salvation Army donations and a little (well... actually A LOT) of elbow grease.  

Today we're busily working away to get a wall stenciled, furniture painting finished up and moved into the space. I'll be doing a review of an awesome stencil from Royal Design Studios soon and showing you lots of other DIY projects this week as we sprint to the finish line of this challenge.  For today, here's a project that turned a breakfast tray into an adorable cork board...

I found this pretty little breakfast tray at the Salvation Army and love the scalloped edge detail for our nursery.

Then I found this pack of small cork sheets and the idea came to me!

I could make it into a pin board for kid's art and display it in the gallery wall that I'm creating.  I have been thinking... I wouldn't recommend putting a pin board in a nursery, but since these items can be purchased from the Salvation Army for any room, and cork was at hand, a cork board would be alright.  If I were actually making something for a nursery of my own, I'd probably use clothes pins or something that would stay on the board instead of little tacks that could get misplaced or fall off.  

That being said, here's how I made it...

First I removed the legs and broke off the base with a hammer.  It damaged the rest slightly, but I fixed that easily with a little wood glue.

Then I painted it with a few coats of "Charisma."  I had Rachel do the final coat with the air compressor gun to get a smooth coat over all the angles and holes.

I cut two pieces of cork to fit inside. For symmetry, I cut them both so that the seam would be in the middle.

Finally, attached saw-tooth picture hangers to the back...

 I found that it made it easier to attache by taping the bracket down first.

Alphabet Stamp Art

Here's a fun one for ya!  I made this alphabet art for the Noah's ARC nursery with a little plastic toy I found at the Salvation Army warehouse.  To be honest, I'm not really sure what the toy's actually purpose was. It may have been for letter-shaped blocks or something, but I don't know.  All I know is that it had the perfect impression to make it into a stamp.  And you could do the same with anything that has an impression in it (doesn't have to be the alphabet).

For those of you who are new to the blog, here's a little background:  I'm designing a nursery with 3 other students from my school (Interior Designers Institute) as part of a contest put on by ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) Orange County Chapter and The Salvation Army's Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC) in Anahiem.  Our 12'x12' space will be set up in the Huntington Beach Salvation Army store and judged against 3 other spaces set up in participating Orange County stores designed by other design schools.  For more info check out the Salvation Army's press release.  They'll be up April 13th through the 29th and aren't all nurseries, so if you're local, come by and check them out!  It's a great opportunity to see what you can create with donated items.  And our stuff will be silent auctioned also.

Anyway... back to the alphabet art.  I used the Sherwin Williams paint we got for the nursery.  Check out this post for details about colors.  (SW also accidentally gave us the lightest color on the coral swatch, "Angelic," so I used that too.)  But if you're doing this your self, you can really use any paint, wall paint, acrylic, tempera, whatever you've got!

First I painted the colors I wanted onto a piece of paper. I started out with the darker coral and blended it to the light.  Then I simply stamped the plastic piece into the paint and printed it on a piece of paper.  I recommend printing onto thicker paper so that it doesn't wrinkle.  I used a thick cotton paper that I had left over from a school project.  (I did this late at night in my garage, so please excuse the poor picture quality).

That's my first trial run.  I did a few more...  some didn't come out too great....

Then I decided to try adding the minty green color, which I liked even better for this project.

After a few tries, I discovered that it worked best if you check your stamp after you dip it into the paint to make sure that the whole stencil is evenly covered and not overly dry or wet in areas.  Then when stamping, make sure you have a flat surface underneath and press down on all areas of the stencil before gently lifting it off.

When you get one you like, simply measure and cut your paper to fit in your frame...

...and voila!

I also painted the frame because we're doing a gallery wall with frames in our color pallette.  What'dya think?

If anyone wants one of these and doesn't have the time or tools to make one themselves, I was considering selling some on Etsy.  I may even do custom colors if there's enough interest.  Let me know.

Painting Plan; Primed and Ready!

As promised, I present to you (and I mean to say that in a deep announcer's voice)... the color plan for the Noah's ARC nursery!  

I made this little mock up with the picture I took in the warehouse (we didn't have a photo with all the furniture in its proposed arrangement, but this gives you an idea of what we're going for).  The dresser will be painted in Sherwin Williams "Charisma," creating a bold statement against a neutral tone-on-tone stenciled wall.  The crib, rocker, ottoman, and armoire will all be painted SW "Westhighland White."  The armoire will actually be facing the crib.  And finally, the side table and floor lamp will be "Colonial Revival Sea Green" to balance the warm coral colors.

On Sunday we got busy and got everything except the armoire primed and ready for color.

So there ya have it! A short one for today, but I can't wait to show you a very cute project I just did for some art to hang in the gallery wall.  More on that tomorrow!

Nursery Furniture Choices and Layout

It's time for another update on our Noah's ARC nursery design. We all made it to the warehouse on Friday (that's Warehouse Visit #3) and thank god because we have just two weeks to transform these donations into a chic and whimsical nursery design.

Between the four dressers, two rockers, multiple side table, a few unexciting bookcases, and cribs the workers had set aside for us, our warehouse pile had grown to substantial size.  We desperately needed to weed through our options and finalize our selections so that we could begin painting.

As we began moving around our furniture to see what would work together, the workers wheeled by this beautiful armoire with the perfect whimsical details for our nursery. We'll take it!

This piece will replace the boring simple bookshelves we'd stored up as options.  It also helped us determine which dresser to choose.  Remember all of these from warehouse visit #2....

We decided that one of the two wider ones (bottom) would work better as our changing table.  That way we could fit a changing pad, diapers, baby powder, etc on top as well as a lamp and a few accessories for styling.  So of the two, we decided on the bottom right one.

We think it works better with the armoire because the curves on the door kind of echo the curves in the armoire details, where as the other has only straight lines (the bottom left of the four).  Curved lines also give a more feminine feel which is appropriate for our girl's nursery.

Then we fished through this sea of literature to find children's books.

We'll use them both for staging the room (in the armoire or on the dresser or table) as well as for art (in a gallery wall above the dresser) and other diy projects (possibly rosettes made from book pages).

And then there's the piece that makes the space a nursery...

The workers set this lovely crib aside for us, which we like much better than the first one we found.  We really like the detail in the turned rails and the curve in the head and foot board again mimic the curves in the armoire and dresser.

Finally, the nursery wouldn't be complete without a rocker.  But team IDI wasn't thrilled with the two we had found before.  One was too chunky and the other too small.  So we were excited when we found this glider.

It's similar to the larger one we had before, but has more delicate lines, which work better with our crib.  And we found a gliding footstool too! Yay!  The rocker will be painted white to match, so they'll look like more of a pair once they're finished. And cushions will be made/recovered to go with our color scheme.

In fact everything will be painted!  We set up the space in the warehouse to determine the color of each piece.

You can also see our super cute clover table that we chose to accompany the rocker.  (It wont actually be floating out in the middle of the room like that).  Coincidentally, we decided on a layout that's pretty similar to the concept sketch I did last week.

At that point we hadn't made furniture choices, hence the word "concept," but that gives you an idea of where we're headed.  And here are a few other possible layouts I did last week also.  The one we're using is in the top left corner.

So we've got a lot of work to do. Here's the crew at our last warehouse visit happily awaiting all the projects ahead of us.

Are we doing a good job of hiding the stress of it all behind those smiles?  Maybe it's just me that's trippin', but we really have a lot to do!  I'm actually getting excited the more we work on it.  We got together on Sunday and got a good chunk of work done.  I really think it's gonna come out awesome!

Check back tomorrow and I'll show you our color choices for each piece and the progress we've made so far.  Here's one last little peak for you...

It's comin' along!

Semester Break and Spring Busy

The final week of the semester has passed and we're now on spring break... more like spring get-busy-and-work-like-mad-to-finish-this-nursery-design-in-only-two-weeks! Tomorrow I'll have a post for you on the progress of that project, but for now here's a few clips of other happenings these past few weeks. Because even though this project is somewhat all-consuming (at least here on the blog it is), I've also had homework, finals and life as usual keeping me busy. 

Wen't to a beautiful wedding for a beautiful friend and partied it up with old buddies (an old friend and awesome bloggers has a brief post about it here); ate brunch by the lake with the rents and Frank for my birthday; and discussed my mom's living room redesign and possibly pairing mom's vintage drapery fabric with modern graphic prints for a more contemporary look.

My cramping hand finished up all my drafting homework; while interested eyes watch the a building across from my office materialize.  I switched my winter white pillows back to spring-fresh green and lounged on the sofa watching The Office (and the awesome backward hug between Michael Scott and Deangelo Vickers).

Took time to smell the flowers; saw a pink-ribboned pony trot down my street one weekend; had numerous snuggle sessions with my kitty; and after a long internal debate, I got my birthday present to myself in the mail.

And completed rendering after rendering of that same sofa, a bedroom, and, for our final, a living room drawn by my professor (I did all the marker, but I can't take full credit for the bottom right rendering).

After all that busy-busy-busy, I sure am happy to have a break from school and more time to focus on the nursery design.  It's kinda like one of those crazy rushed design shows except those people don't have another full-time job! Haha. But I do have a great group, which makes it easier. We work really well together and are making a ton of progress, so come back tomorrow to check it out!