Showing posts with label illusions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illusions. Show all posts

26 January 2011

Secret Beer & Other Plans

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (I think...?)  Kress and I have recently joined the SCA.  Very simply, for those of you who might not know what that is:  the folks who get dressed up in Medieval and Renaissance costumes and fight with sticks in the park.  This is why I'm so busy this week: I'm up to my ass in alligators with costuming and putting together gear for our first event, which is in two weeks!

The SCA involves camping, and camping involves, amongst other things, brightly-colored plastic coolers...which don't exactly add to the ambiance.  My friend Nan sews cushioned slipcovers to drop over hers, to turn a plastic cooler into an ottoman!  Camouflage and additional seating! Awesome.

So in addition to three full adult costumes, I'm sewing an "ottoman" disguise for my rectangular, rolling cooler this week, based on this pattern:





And since we're on the subject of me sewing things, here are a couple more ideas I'm planning to put into action as soon as I'm done with all this costume business:





That's:
  1. another cooler cover, this one to turn a cube-cooler into a Moroccan pouf
  2. a drop-cover for the old desk chair that I use at my sewing table, because it's FUGLY and scratched and stained and torn
  3. a canvas "tent"  cover for the wire shelving units that I currently use to hold up my sewing table top (1), which will eventually be replaced with nice shelving, once I have the extra funds and the time to build them, paint them, and fill them with baskets (2)

2 and 3 actually use fabric that I already have in my "Storage Pit" which is what Kress has taken to calling my craft room closet, which he swears has an entrance to Fabric-Narnia hidden in the back behind the stack of spare pillows, LOL.




cube-cooler pouf:  yeah?


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24 September 2010

More Sewing Room "Afters": Storage Boxes

Remember the, uh, "storage" situation in my sewing room?


I know.  UGH.  Ugly, beat-up, naked cardboard boxes.  Too-big-for-the-shelf cardboard boxes.  Stuffed-full-of-crap-I-don't-use cardboard boxes.  

Today I browser-window shopped while I was at work*...and then I scavenged the Box Graveyard that the people in shipping keep making in my nice, organized file room (grrr) and...brought home several more cardboard boxes.  New, crisp cardboard boxes.  Smaller cardboard boxes.




After work, I busted out some black stripe and black-white flocked damask-print gift-wrap that I'd been saving for a rainy ugly-cardboard kind of day, and...


Cheater!  Fronts only, to conserve both wrapping paper and tape, which I discovered tonight is in pretty short supply around my house - also because the sides of the boxes won't show when they're put away. (They won't, right?).

Et voila!


Much better!

Not that I'm "done" or anything.  Off camera to the right is a mountain of BS I still have to sort through, most of which will be recycled or thrown away.

Also...



 Whatever.  ;)





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15 July 2010

"New" Living Room: Windows

The "Wood Smoke" grey is blowing me completely away.  I'm just in love with the color - warm, soft, kind of rainy-day.  Sets all my stuff off *perfectly*.   The living room is done, and I'm in the process of doing the kitchen and dining room area right now.

But: photos!  I has them!  Well, some.  Room photos will have to wait until my house is no longer a construction zone, and until I can get that ONE perfect photo that isn't screwed up by the light in the room being all weird (or until I find a really awesome new camera abandoned on my front doorstep or something). 




For Now...

I am completely in love with the way the windows in the back of the room are coming out.  I love my wall o' windows: lots of natural light, plus a great thing to play with for someone with a curtain addiction.  0:)  


This is the window corner before, with the "Matagorda" sand colored paint (yes, it's beige, shut up) and the old window treatments (cream-colored crinkle-voile, which I'd hoped might go with the grey, because I DO love these, but not so much: they just looked dirty against the new wall color.  So I took them down, and one of the cats promptly peed on them while my back was turned. Mmm, catburgers for dinner tonight...).

You can see why light is an issue - when I took this picture, this room was so brightly lit by the windows that you might as well be outside.  But the camera sees big bright squares of light with darkness surrounding, so that's mostly what I get when I try to photograph this room;  the flash washes everything out, and turning lights on in the room only makes everything look yellow-y. 






And here's an "after" shot - again, in full daylight, not that the camera can tell.  Maybe it needs glasses. Poor thing.    

The accessories have stayed the same;  but I've raised the curtain rod up to 8" above the window frame (about 5" above where they were before); the white sheers are a placeholder.  They'll soon be replaced with some in a different fabric, and a couple more layers of color and texture.


Another thing I'm digging here is the way I separated the single large window on the south wall into two tall, narrow windows.  Demo & remo not included:  I wedged a 1x6" board into the window frame between the top and sill, caulked it in place (so it can be removed easily later, should I change my mind), and painted it to match.   This is a bad photo, but a decent shot of the nearly invisible line between the board and the wall above the window. 

The metal mini-blinds (grrr) ride up and down behind the board.  I'm working on making some brown linen curtain panels into roller shades to use instead, which will be hung in a pair to enhance the two-window look.  (One day they'll grow up to be bamboo chick blinds).

I do love me a good illusion!  From the opposite end of the room (not that I have a decent picture), three tall, narrow windows and the glass door makes a MUCH more cohesive architectural statement than two windows of completely random shape/size + door.  <--- I really just said that, didn't I?   Well, it does.

 

Anyway.

This candle lantern arrangement is one of my favorite things in the room. I love them, and I love the way they look hung in a group like this.

The accessories in this window corner hardly changed at all - the lanterns were here before, as were the giant Bird of Paradise plant and the sheer fabric screen. 


(And no, the paint color's not this dark or cement-ish.  That's the light thing again. Sigh). 




One of the changes that did end up happening back here was that I placed three of my mid-sized deity statues in the windows, one statue centered in each window.  I saw the idea online somewhere recently and decided to try it out.  I love the result - and that the statues are heavy enough that the cats can't knock them over and break them, hehe: 


Hidden behind the sheers

The Buddha and Ganesh were raffle prizes that I won at the women's festival I 
go to every year; the Kali & Shiva statue on the right was a gift from a friend. 




But wait! There's more!  For tomorrow.  MWAHAA.  :)


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