Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:

I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:

I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.

I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.

I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.

On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.

This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.

The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.

On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 

So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.

For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Hey, check it out, guys, I'm selling my artwork!

Visit   my new Etsy shop: 

Shop now! 

What: 

• soft pastel drawings and sketches
• acrylic paintings
• available framed or un-framed

Why?  

• Because where the hell would I hang dozens of drawings and paintings?  I must make it...therefore eventually, I must sell it. 

When:

• Right now! Go buy art!   

For updates and new product info:

• Like my facebook artist page     
• Follow me on Twitter

Bedroom + Art

Couple of things from the weekend:

1. I went to Ikea, and I bought a loooooot of things.  The first item on my list, and the most important, was this:

Oooh, aaah...

ALVINE KVIST duvet & sham set, $39.99.  I have wanted this duvet cover for YEARS, you guys.  I finally have it.  Yay!  

I also purchased:

1. a whole bunch of FAGLAVIK drawer handles for my kitchen, which I'm about half-done putting in place. They're $7.99 for a 2-pack, but I found a bunch in the as-is section for  $3, so I bought them all.  Turns out, I need three more two-packs!  Oops.  Pics when done. :) 
2. an UPPLEVA (I know, right? Wth) tilting tv wall bracket, so my TV is now hung on the living room wall again!  (And now, since I've replaced the one I lost, I'll probably find it any day now). 
3. a metric assload of small, cheap things, like you do.  

2. I painted some pictures.  A pair of canvases, for a pair of dear friends' birthdays: 

I completely forgot what I called this one, but it was for my friend Laurie, who is bright and tall and colorful, and always growing and reaching.  She's also a very spiritual person; when I was little, I thought sunbeams streaming through the clouds were happening because Heaven (which was a floating cloud island) was right there at that exact moment (God flew it around, naturally) - so this is Grace and Heaven and stuff smiling down on Laurie.   :) 

This one was for my best friend, Sylvan, and is called "Sylvan of the Trees", something I see her say a lot on her various blogs and on Pinterest.  That's her face, yes (no, it doesn't really look like her, because I'm terrible at portraiture.  You're lucky I can even draw faces that don't look like Monkey Jesus), but the whole picture is her.  I wanted to paint a picture for her, to her, but I wasn't sure what to paint - and then I decided to paint a picture of all of the things about her that I love, so that she can look at the picture and believe what she sees, even if she doesn't believe me when I tell her she's awesome.  Her response to this, of course, was to flail her hands at me, saying, "STOP GIVING ME FEELS!"   Hee.  I think she liked it. ;)  

More soon!  

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Sort of An Update?

Still working on both the art room and the sewing room.  I don't have any cool new pics of the rooms themselves to show you, but WOW was the art studio a good idea.  I've got most of my supplies organized, and it's turning out to be a GREAT workspace!

working on a painted box top for an SCA project

*zooms off to go paint more things* 




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It's Here! It's Here!

The gift package that I won from Surya arrived today!  I'm THRILLED with all of it - so beautiful!  It all went into the living room:

The rug is sooo soft and cushy, and I LOVE the colors, even more than I thought I would.

My favorite, of course, is the blue in the center...that you can't really see in this shot.  But I have plans for a new coffee table soon, and I'm thinking it'll all look smashing together.

The GORGEOUS artwork - a framed textile - that now hangs over my fireplace.

The pouf also went into the fireplace, although I'm sure that's not where it'll stay.  I'm not sure exactly where to put it, but you know me - even if I was sure, I'll end up moving it all over the place anyway.

I keep waiting for a cat to sleep on it.

I guess I'll settle for Daisy smelling the heck out of it.

It's all hand-embroidered, and covered with all kinds of little seashells.

Rabi is very confused by the rug.



















YAY! Thank you, Surya!

You can follow Surya by on Pinterest,   Facebook,   Twitter - and everywhere else as @suryasocial.

Peek-A-Boo!

There are a LOT of things going on in Laura-land this month, including lots of little bits around the house; but as always (er, lately), I remain too bogged down in my costuming schedule to get much around the house finished so that I can show you.

But here's a wee bit I did over the weekend.  I'm preparing to gut my bedroom closet and re-do it.  Part of the equation is moving the door mirror to the closet door from the small hallway between the living room and bedroom.  I really like having a mirror in that hallway, though, so I picked up a new one over the weekend to stick there, since I didn't have one large enough for the space.

That's also the Victorian plant stand that I'm in the middle of refinishing.  It's not done yet, but it won't be a big deal to put Garden Buddha on the floor for a day when I'm ready to finish refinishing it (it's been scrubbed, partially stripped, and sanded smooth.  It just needs a stain touch-up and to be re-sealed).  Garden Buddha still has a broken arm, but, for the time being I'm just imagining him as the Bodisattva of amputation.  ;)

I like that.  I do not like, however, the way these two small tables with things hanging over them are so similar, and so close to each other.  It feels like doing a double-take every time I look towards this doorway.  

I also miss this:  

Not the colors, but I loved having that hallway full of artwork and photographs.   And I liked this whole-hallway collection far better than the more linear and cleaned-up version I did when I first painted the living room gray: 

  

So I'm thinking of going back to the giant gallery collection thing in that hallway, around that new mirror.  I'm just not sure of exactly how it's going to go just yet.


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Silver & Gold

Did a bit of paintin' and knobbin' over the weekend.  Here's what happened in the master bathroom:

This gold mirror was really cool.  It was a bit in-your-face with the gold color, but I liked it.

So I painted the two picture frames in the room to match, and then the gold was SCREAMING AT ME.

So I painted all three of them a lighter, less obnoxious gold.

That's better.  Softer.

The two frames - both painted, and the broken one repaired.

This is the same artwork (postcards, actually) as before;  the frames were painted a deep olive green before, and the mat behind the cards was the same blue as the walls.

But wait...what's that shiny dot on the cabinet there?

CABINET KNOBS!!!

These cabinets have never had knobs before!  And these knobs, actually, have never had cabinets before, so it works.  (I harvested them from a set of modular MDF cube furniture years ago and just had them in my stuff).

* By the way, this picture is the first one I've taken that accurately reflects the color of the walls.  Yeah. It's  that blue.  Also, please ignore all the BS on the counters here - that's not intentional, it's just all over the place for no reason, lol.  

Yeah.


Those are SEXY.






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Guest Room Before & After!

Sweet Pea approves of ur makeover.

Holy cow, did Kress and I work our collective BUTT OFF yesterday!  The guest room went from a big empty space to a finished guest room in about 7 hours.  My back huuuuuuurts.  But it's done!

Not everything is as it should be, or will be in the "final," "finished" room; but the room's ready for an actual guest - who will be arriving next week.

Wanna see the room "before"?  Hope you're sitting down...

Before


Toldja!  Crammed full of music gear, a drum set, and 8-year-old carpet that was naaaaasty.  The drum set was sold, and the carpet removed - Kress suprised me last week by removing the carpet and readying the slab floor while I was at work.  Yay!

The white walls are really just primer'd white, from baseboard to ceiling fan.  Bo-ring.  One day there'll be a color in here...once I decide what that color is going to be.

a garage full of crap that was waiting to go into the room

After 

Bed and nightstand: free, from a friend.

Curtain, and the tablecloth over the wooden bookcase:  already had.

Wooden bookcase:  already had (actually, Kress' dad built that, a million years ago).

All of the bedding is new, from Kohl's - the only new pieces we bought for the room, aside from the flooring that we installed yesterday, which is the same flooring from Ikea that we used in the craft room.

Most of the artwork was already in the room;  I added the mirror, and one of the document frames.

The clock is the one from my sewing room.

While the room isn't finished, I do like the overall feel of it.  The comforter is polyester, and feels pretty gross.  It was a quick, cheap, "Oh, shit, we don't have a comforter" type thing.  It'll do for now, but I do plan on replacing it pretty much as soon as I can.

The closet doors are the blue ones that were once in the craft room, when I thought I wanted a blue closet, lol.

There's Sweet Pea on the bed again.  He and Rabi CLAIMED this bed pretty much the second it was set up and dressed - neither of them have left it since.

The more I look at this room, the more I really, really like it.  It's kind of random and homey.

Kress, hard at work on nailing the baseboards back on, after five hours of putting down the floor itself.

I'm pretty impressed with our materials estimation abilities, LOL.  We ended up with only half a box of planks left over - not much to store, and perfect for finishing out the thresholds in this room and the craft room (whenever we get around to that).

This room still has to double as a music room, which will require some creative furniture arrangement in the future;  but for now it's ready for company next week.
:)

Tiny crappy screwdriver:  not a nail set!
Whoops.  (My bad).








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Before & After: Craft Room Whoopass

I opened up a HUGE can of whoopass on my craft room over the long holiday weekend!  I'm tired, and sore, and at this particular moment I pretty much never want to paint anything ever again - but the room is 99% finished, and I'm SO excited about that!  Check it out:

Before:

 Loooong sewing table. Stained plywood top (ok, but the finish was wearing off), on black wire shelves for legs (wobbly, ugly, cramped legroom).

Gray walls.  Soft and relaxing, but boring.

Green painted concrete floor. (Hey, the paint was free, and at the time it was better than bare concrete).

3 of 4 wood plank shelves, fabric s l o w l y  being moved from bins on the floor underneath to "neatly" "folded" stacks, pending storage box decision.

Closet packed to bursting, half-assed, mis-matched carboard and paper boxes, and big plastic bins.


The bottom shelf was supposed to be an extra work surface for me to roll my chair up to. Do YOU see any place to work??

<-- 8yo carpet




After:
After a loooong four-day weekend of taking shelves down and re-painting them, painting the walls, sorting and organizing until I thought I'd die from it, and making some furniture changes:

I painted the top 2/3 of the walls a fresh, crisp white.

The wooden shelves were painted a cool, charcoal gray - kinda reminds me of the color of those old, metal, Steelcase desks.

The closet, formerly a weird, too-light blue, got the same treatment:  white walls (top and bottom), and "Steelcase" gray on the shelves.

I like the gray "frame" around the closet opening.






<-- the carpet's been removed in here, as well. Finally.

The sewing table top also got painted gray;  the shelf  "legs" were replaced by Ikea's CURRY legs, in silver.

While the dimensions of the top haven't changed, the table itself is about 3" shorter than it was - which I was REALLY worried about doing, but it actually turned out to be exactly what this table needed. No more shoulder strain!

A LOT of art went into this room, much of it my own.  These four are actually the very first "real paintings" I ever did.

The black bulletin board that used to sit behind the sewing machine on the right is now hanging vertically at the end of the desk. Less looming, and more space for art! :)

<-- Ikea's HELMER  file cabinet.  SO cute, and SO incredibly perfect for all of my sewing things.  No more shelves full of random boxes of loose stuff! :D

ALL of the shelves and fabric boxes are now in place! The boxes still need labels.

There's a gray "frame" around the window, too - since the walls were already gray, I just taped off everything I wanted to refrain from painting. The inside of the window casing is still gray, too, and I really like the effect.

Look, a ceiling fan!!!  Belive it or not, this is nearly my favorite part of the room.  This room is ridiculously hot in the summers.  Now I don't have to wheel in a big ugly box fan to keep me cool in here.

Note the gray border around the top of the walls.  There's a nifty ceiling thing that hasn't happened in this room quite yet, so I left space. :)







That's a lot of change, for a LOT of work - but really, not so much.  Really, all that happened in this room was:

• painting
• changing the table legs
• installing a ceiling fan
• bringing in that little Ikea file cabinet

But it took four days to do.  Four days of nearly non-stop work - Saturday and Monday were like 14-hour days.  I'm actually looking forward to going back to work this week, so I can sit still, hehe. 

There are a couple more things in this room to show you, which will happen in their own post - like curtains, plants, and other "soft" things, to break up all this gray-and-white, which, in these pictures, seems a bit stark. The fabric boxes still need labels, and I have a nifty idea about that to experiment with.  Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be finishing up the ceiling, too.  

The next big thing, though, will be putting real flooring down in this room, and its neighbor.  If things go the way I'd like them to, that'll happen this next weekend.  Woohoo! 

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