DIY Chalk Paint

If you don't already know this little cheap trick than you may be very excited by this!

I have been super keen to try chalk paint for ages but in all honesty I was not keen about the price for a little tub. Not to mention that you have to buy a new tub for every different colour that you want to work with. When I saw this little trick, I was super stoked and hoped that it would in fact work. Well low and behold it did. DIY chalk paint...Here's the recipe...

Ingredients

2 1/2 Tablespoons of Plaster of Paris 

1 1/2 Tablespoons of Cool water

1 Cup of paint

Instructions

Mix the paster of paris and water together and then pour it into 1 cup of paint and stir until fully combined. 

That is it...seriously how easy is that!!!

One 2.5Kg bag of Plaster of Paris cost me $8.09 from Bunnings and I used a cheap $2 tube of paint from Spotlight. So for $10.09 I made the chalk paint that I wanted, plus i still have most of the bag of plaster left! I plan on using it to paint the bottom of my dining table. And the great thing is I can use it in whatever colour I want! You may have guessed by now that I was pretty excited about stumbling across this recipe!

 Here is what I painted...

I had this home sign sitting around that I was dying to give a makeover

Before...

After...

This Chalkboard used to be my Grandma's. It was originally a wooden calender board. So she would hang her calender inside it. Because of this, there are some thumb tac marks in the blackboard section, but I don't notice them when there is something written on the board. I had painted the chalkboard paint last year and had painted the frame a dark turquoise but I had never really loved it . No before photo's sorry. And I haven't cleaned the board very well, but you get the gist. I only did 2 coats of paint as I liked that you could slightly see the turquoise coming through which gave it a weathered look.

 

I'm so happy with how they both turned out! I love the colour and this cheap DIY recipe!

Kylie xx

Melted Crayon Canvas

So I've said before how much I love Pinterest. And given that I love saving money and DIYing, I therefore love trying projects out. I always feel like Pinterest makes every project look really easy, but lets face it sometimes they are just not as easy as the seem. Like my latest project. Have you ever seen the melted crayon canvas project. You know the one where you melt crayons onto a canvas with a hairdryer?? How could this possibly go wrong right?? Wrong!! I must say that the outcome I do love and it was fun but super messy and definitely not enjoyable to clean up afterwards. As your melting the crayons, they splatter onto everything. Here's what my hands looked like at the end...

 And my blinds.....

It was also all over our table, one of our dining chairs and all over my shirt.

 But I love the way it looks!

And here it is hanging in my study...a bit of colour in that room finally!

So my advice would be, If you are going to try this yourself, put on some old clothes, drag an extension cord outside and do it on the grass. Your hands will still get dirty but they are the easiest thing to clean afterwards. It's fun to make and dirt cheap! The cost of the project was less than $5...that's my type of bargain!

Kid's playroom

I'm so excited that the kids playroom is finally starting to come together. I just scooped up this perfect craft/eating table for the kidlets for $40. I wanted one that miss 7 could still sit at, so I did all my research re table heights and the found this one on Facebook.

It's a solid wood dining table that has had the legs cut down, making it the perfect height for what I needed. I have seriously searched high & low for the perfect height table, so I am stoked!

 The reading nook has also finally been started! The material has been hung. Just need a matching shelf and some better cushions (and books of course!) and it will be a reading nook fit for a princess. 

Not long now and it will be all done! This mumma is excited! 

Princess Mia's Nursery

My gorgeous bubba is now 4 months old and we have just finally finished her room!  Our 4^th bedroom is really tiny, so at first she was going in that room, so we painted it. Then we changed our mind & she was going in with her sister, so we painted that room. Then we changed our mind again and decided to put her in with the study, so we painted it. Then we decided to convert the garage into a man cave & study and give the 2 older kids the bigger bedrooms. Clearly we are not great at making decisions! And now she is back in the original room that she was going in.  The great thing is that 3 of our bedrooms are now painted yay:)!

So our gorgeous little Mia now has the little room again. She still sleeps in a bassinet in our room, so I haven’t been too concerned about getting her room together, but she is getting older now so I thought I better get my butt into action as it won’t be long till she is in there.

So here it is......

I love making bunting and it is cheap as chips. I already had this fabric lying around. I am a very basic sewer and am not great at sewing straight lines, so this design is really easy. I just cut my fabric into flags, placed them back to back and sewed together using a zig zag stitch. Then I got pinking shears and cut along both sides. After that, all that is left to do is sew the binding on top. I used lace. You can either pin the flags to the lace or if you like doing things quickly like me, just place the flags in a pile in the order that you want to use and just pick up and place inside the binding as you go. Remember to leave room at each end of the binding so you can hang your bunting. The lace was $1.99 a metre & I used 2 metres, so this cost me less that $4 to make:)

My beautiful mother in law bought this lamp for our 1^st bubba but the cute lampshade that came with it got destroyed.

 I couldn't part with it so I bought a $10 lampshade from Bunning’s and painted it with some turquoise paint that I bought as a sample pot and decided it was too dark for our wall. Then just attached some pink lace. Decorating cost $0:)

I made her name out of paper mache letters bought from Spotlight for $3.99 each.

I used paint on the sides, scrapbooking paper on the front and then decorated with ribbons, felt and kindy glitz that I already had. When doing a project I often just use things that I already have around the house. It’s amazing the amount of stuff you probably have stashed around the house that you forget about. Total cost $12.

I bought a set of 3 bird frames from Kmart for $5. They were all hanging in a line with ribbon from smallest to largest. I cut them loose and put some coloured scrap booking paper in the photo spaces. The other 2 are hanging elsewhere in the room.

The curtains are block out and the perfect colour for the room. They were from Kmart and were a bargain $29. Sorry they arn't ironed!

There are some gorgeous gifts that we received that hang proudly in Mia’s room.

When she was first born, a friend made this gorgeous frame with all her birth details on it. It also happens to fit with the colour of her room perfectly.

One day I got a package delivered to the door. I was so excited when I opened it. My beautiful friend had ordered a personalised “Mia” baby package and one of the items was this gorgeous blanket. Love that she has a special blanket with her name on it!

My gorgeous sister loves making pretty things, so I asked her if she could make Mia a mobile that i had seen on pinterest. It’s so adorable and I’m not the only one that like it...it is Mia’s favourite thing!:)

So here it is the best view that i can get of most of the room, given that it is so small & i can't get a good angle. But it's the perfect size for a little person.

That's it for now.
Kylie xx

Bringing an old buffet to life

With moving into our new home (in August), we finally had room for some more furniture:):)! 

I have wanted a buffet for a while now. This used to be my Grandma's and had been sitting in my sisters garage for a while and she was now keen to get rid of it. Perfect!! Just what i needed. Plus she only lives across the road, so it was even easier to get here. 

Obviously it's pretty dated, but nothing a coat of paint can't fix!

This is what it looked like when i got it. It also had a hutch, which we got rid of at the time but i'm now regretting doing that. It would have been perfect to house my crazy tea set that i have just started collecting....yes I'm an old lady at heart:)

Seeing as the buffet was lacquered, i had to use a primer/stain killer so that the lacquer wouldn't seep through the paint. I used Zinsser's 1 2 3 Interior & Exterior primer, sealer & stain killer. Cost was $24.90 and after 2 coats on the entire buffet, there was still plenty left in the tin. I removed the doors before applying the primer.

After the primer, i painted 3 coats of white gloss enamel paint. I used Taubmans Tradex White enamel paint. Cost is $49.90 for 4 litres. After doing this, another project and architraves/skirtings in 3 rooms, we still have plenty left in the tin! 

We kept all the same hinges, so the only other thing that needed to be purchased were the 3 door handles. This was actually the biggest cost in the whole project. They were $6 each, which only seems expensive cause it's a tiny little handle!

We already had the 2 tins of paint, so this whole project only cost an extra $18! That's my type of furniture! Love a good bargain:) 

Kylie xo