Office

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Greenery

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I found a present from one of my cats earlier this month. I’m not going to show it to you because it happened to be a pile of puke filled with leaves. Leaves from a flower arrangement  Mr. Smith got me. 

Needless to say I will not be getting any flowers anytime soon. Nor will I have any plants in the house. Which is a tragedy since I love plants, though a boon for the plants themselves since I tend to kill them (My black thumb skills even extend to cacti ) 

  
On the plus side they make some pretty amazing fake plants these days and you can find them pretty cheap this time of year. I recently got an orchid for our library, 

  
And one for the living room alcove, I’m debating painting the back wall of that alcove the same dark blue the dresser come entertainment center is soon to be. What do you think? 

  
I also found some succulent pieces. This one is perfect for a centerpiece in the dining room, not to tall to obstruct conversation and not to wide to obstruct eating. And if it does need to be moved for a large dinner it’s rather cute on the window sill as well

  

One of my friends used to work at a nursery and I managed to snag this awesome bulb (as in flower bulbs) crate from her.

  
 I gave it a nice wash of milk paint ( you can see another post on milk paint here)

  
I put a little four dollar strip of fake grass in the bottom and screwed it to the wall making sure to anchor it in the studs. 

  
Add to that my stained monogram from a while back and a succulent container and my office finally has some “artwork”. The Beemer approves 

  
I even snuck in some greenery on one of my office bookshelves (“gasp” a bookshelf with no books)

  
Not to mention the cutest desk lamp. And those blades of grass are pens 

 ” Hooray!” for a bunch of plants that the cats have no interest in and that I can’t kill!  It’s a win-win-win

Oh and I’ve also managed to sneak some greens into my diet. It’s a good thing too, all this new found energy has got me on a roll. 

  

Seriously I’m addicted to this stuff. It’s like thin mints in liquid form when you mix it with soy milk, one 8oz cup a day and I legitimately feel more energized. I have never taken “supliments” or vitamins and I avoid caffeine like the plague because I’m a naturally anxious person and it just seems to make my anxiety worse.  But after I had the chance to try this for three days I could feel the difference in my energy levels despite it being caffeine free. I had improved digestion and didn’t crave sweets since this gave me a daily chocolate fix. I was sold and ran out and got a full size. Ok I’m done trying to sell you on this I’m not normally one to do that, I just really like it and thought I would share. 

I’ve got a quick paint update for later this month as well as finishing up my entertainment center and what should be a very interesting frame arrangement for our oh-so-empty hall way. I’ll catch you later. 

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Progress update: 1 month 

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It’s been exactly 1 month since we moved in and most everything is unpacked and furnished. I spent today hanging some pictures and getting a few things cleaned up So I figured I would give you a bit of a progress report while things were clean lol. 

   Our massive bookshelves are finally stocked with all of our books… Ok not all, there are a couple smaller shelves in other parts of the house.
   
  And the dining room is looking rather smashing as well. It’s just missing a mirror on that far wall, unfortunately I ran out of picture wire. 

Now that the china cabinet is in it (which I foolishly didn’t get a picture of) I’m debating whether the dining room “needs” a rug. Personally I think it might just make it busy, plus food stuffs in rugs; it is not fun. What do you guys think? 

We’ve also managed to get the daybeds in each office sorted out 

   
 
Now it’s just a matter of artwork, I think I’ll go with old botanical prints for my office (the green) and we will carry over the map theme we had in the other house for Mr. Smith. Some of the frames are already the right color. 

  
Hmmmmm I sense a honeymoon destination. 

  
The teal is going to have to have a quick repaint. 

Not too bad for a month’s work  when we started with a pretty darn empty house. 

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Bulls and Bears

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No, I’m not in Chicago (Alas, I’m sure it’s much cooler there) But amidst all the things in my life I completely forgot to blog about a project I did a couple of months back for the office I work at.

This isn’t the first decorating project I’ve had the chance to do for the office and I’m sure it won’t be the last; if you want to see the others you can click here or here. 

  
I work at a financial planning office. It’s pretty awesome but it is lacking a little… Style. Luckily I’ve been given the go ahead to jazz it up a bit. We had a bunch of coasters from various places but no matching sets so I took the liberty of buying a little pack of blanks from the craft store and sanding them nice and smooth.

   
 Then I just doodled a little geometric design. I chose a bull and a bear since we work in stock portfolios (among a myriad of other things), used my scanner to enlarg it to the right size for the coaster then numbered each section to correspond with a paint color. In other words I made myself a paint by numbers, that way I wouldn’t end up with two like colors touching each other due to lack of planning. 

  
Then I taped the photocopied image onto the coaster and traced over the lines with the blunt edge of an exact-o knife

  
This left an etching of the image in the soft pine wood of the coaster. 

  
After that it was just a matter of painting each section like I had planned out. 

  
I had four coasters in total so to make each one different i flipped the images so the animals were facing opposite directions and also shuffled which numbers corresponded to which colors. 

  
After the paint was dried I then used a walnut stain over top. Stain over paint may sound kind of silly but on a thin coat of paint  it still pulls out the grain of the wood and gives the paint a distressed/vintage look.

   
 The final touch is just a quick clear coat to seal everything and protect it from sweating water glasses. 

  

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Keepsakes

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I like to make artwork out of things that aren’t really “art” I suppose it’s a bit like scrap booking, I call it Keepsaking.

 

So along with the foreign money I arranged in frames I framed another little keepsake. I was cleaning out my purse not too long ago and I found a ticket stub from Cinderella. I wasn’t overly wowed by the recent live action iteration of Cinderella (fingers crossed for Beauty and The Beast) however it has a more sentimental value. That was the night my boyfriend (ok fine fiancé) proposed to me.

 

When I found the frame for my calendar (you can see that here) I also found this rather epic frame on clearance. So I decided to put my tiny ticket stub in it.

First I had to make a mat for it though

I just cut an old mat up as a template. Then I used some washi tape to jazz it up

And finished off the edge with ribbon

Then, Hey Presto! I got myself a little keepsake for my desk at work.

Not to mention absolutely no excuse to forget that particular anniversary.

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Make it Rain

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Obsolete money.

Yeah, I have a strange plethora of foreign currency. A good bit of which is obsolete. At least the coinage is. A small portion of the paper currency may still be good, I’m not sure. At any rate I’m not using it for anything but décor. I had one of these done already, but then as I was cleaning out my bathroom for its recent remodel (which you can find here) I found a matching frame … kind of. I had forgotten I painted it to hide its gaudy gold. So then it was a matter of trying to paint the new found one to match several years after the fact.

A little brown, a little black, a little bit of pearl sheen. Eventually I got them to match up. Close enough at least.

Then I just arranged the money to fit into both frames instead of just piling it up on top of each other

What kind of artwork do you have that isn’t technically artwork?

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This Week on Tiny Bows

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I kept coming across all of these DIY dry erase boards on Pinterest a while back, where you just take a frame and put in whatever lovely paper you want and use the glass as your board. I thought “how cool is that” then I remembered that I have absolutely no use for a dry erase board. That is until recently. About a month ago I started working as a recept— nope my official title is Client Relations associate… Meaning yes I’m a receptionist, I also run social media and newsletters and anything else that deals directly with our clients on a more personal level— anyway — at a small (as in I’m one of three people) business. Well, I’m a very visual person and sometimes unless it’s right in front of me I won’t remember to do it, so long story longer enter my awesome dry erase calendar. 

  
I ran across this frame(s) on sale at Kohls and knew it would work great. So I rushed off home and got to work. 

I pulled out all of my fabric and paper and decided on a theme. Our office is pretty sparse at the moment but has a teal lamp and abstract painting in it. 

  
luckily I’ve got lots of teal to go around thanks to recovering my dining room chairs and my experiments with fabric dyeing. 

  
So then I just took the stock images from the frames and used those as templates to cut the fabric and paper I had chosen to size for the frames

  
A little jaunt in publisher to make some labeles for days of the week and notes and I’ve got myself my very own Pinterest inspired dry erase calendar.

  
  

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Meta Bows

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Guess who can actually see what they are doing now?

  
Yeah I broke down and got glasses. I knew I needed them when cross stitching was getting hard, but with one of my new jobs it was actually getting to the point where I would have to stop what I was doing just to let my eyes rest.

So enter my new glasses with bows on the bows. 

   That’s right, there are so many bows at this point it’s getting a little meta. 

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It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Cold Season

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That doesn’t necessarily mean it feels cold here. This is a picture from December 1st.

No, I don’t live in the southern hemisphere.

You’re going to have to settle for another short post as I was battling the seasonal bug for a couple of weeks. I did manage to get a little work done on those chairs, though they are not ready to be revealed to the world yet.

However I did get all of my Christmas decorations up. Well… the village has no snow, but that’s a bit laughable around here anyway.

Of course there are bows on my Christmas tree!

Mostly it was a matter of putting up our tiny tree and, making my desk (see my series on it here) a little festive.

I decided presents would be the easiest thing to do, to the rescue empty gift boxes (again). This might be because of my obsession with wrapping presents. Sure I love giving them, and receiving them is nice too, but wrapping them is the best part.

As evidenced in the pictures above and below.

I also have a candle that has been on my desk for a while now that I periodically burn. I thought I would Christmas it up a bit (did I just use Christmas as a verb?) I started off with a plain old apple candle and took off the label. Any old candle would do, the fact that mine is red is a plus.

Next I took some wrapping paper and cut a 2″ wide strip to go around the candle. I got lucky and have a grid on the back of the wrapping paper I’ve been favoring this year but you can measure it out. In fact if you have a pattern you like or even a saying you can always print something out.

I then just taped it on tightly. I then put a second 1″ wide strip of another pattern over it.

Then to top it off just tie a ribbon around it. As you can also see I’ve been favoring twine ‘a la’ brown paper packages tied up with string.

Not only is it a cute way to spruce up your own candles it would be a nice way to gift a candle. The scent name is usually printed on the bottom or lid of the candle as well as the label so its not a big deal to peal it off. Don’t worry about the paper getting too hot. I guarantee with proper candle use the outside of your candle does not reach the required 451*F if it did you would have a problem even if there wasn’t paper around the jar.

Also,I forgot until after the fact, I have those funky patterned scissors hiding in my craft trunk, they would work well with this and you wouldn’t have to worry so much about straight lines… who needs straight lines anyway.

All the bows!!!

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(Not About The) Desk Part 3.5: Pride is One of the Seven

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Yep! I’m am pretty proud of what I have wrought.

 

So after the contact paper in the drawers I went a little contact paper crazy.

Or perhaps a lot.

I decided I needed a pad for my keyboard and mouse to sit on. That was easy enough I just stuck felt and contact paper together. Two sheets of felt, some scrap contact paper, a seam in the middle. Tah dah!

Using it right now I can say it makes a great mouse pad and I’m no longer worried about wearing a spot in my desk.

I also used every bit of scrap I had to cover my icky tape dispenser. Not exaggerating, it really was icky, covered in goo and sticky stuff and what have you. Now on to find fun washi tape for it.

And line a pen holder. Obviously the paper in the pen holder isn’t stuck to it. Its just two scrap sheets of contact paper still on their backing, with backs facing each other, cut to size, rolled up, and stuck inside it.

Oh yeah and a composition notebook just for the hell of it.

Did I go overboard? I feel like I might have gone overboard