Hello, world! Welcome to the second edition of #DIYFriday! It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful weekend, perfect for trick-or-treating and parties! I made a couple more costumes this week for myself and my sister but I’m not going to bore you with any more costumes this week, haha. Here are a couple projects that I think are just lovely, since they’re so pretty and girly!
The first project I want to share is something that I don’t think is typically needed, but I thought it gave our office an extra “oomph” in adding that extra gold to our theme. Our desks also looks great when the laptops aren’t there! Here is a photo of the two laptop place-mats I made for our desks:
Aren’t they darling? And with this project, you can change out the color to whatever your theme is. I used some leftover gold vinyl that was going to be thrown at out FastSigns and a piece of 1/8″ 12″ x 16″acrylic that I also got from there. You can definitely go to a sign shop and ask for them to cut out some strips of vinyl for you in your desired color. Another option that you can use are gold or washi tape. There are so many different varieties of washi tape out there, the possibilities are endless! You can really go crazy with this project if you want and pretty much make your own work of art!
The look I was going for was simple, clean and modern. That’s why I decided to go with stripes. I’m a fan of Kate Spade designs and they use a lot of stripes so that was my inspiration!
For the clear mat part, you may have some picture frames that have plastic/acrylic pane. I know Ikea and Michaels has some if you don’t. Or, you can use the glass from your picture frames that you’re not currently using, but if you have kids, I wouldn’t recommend it. Just make sure the mat is bigger than your laptop so you can still see the design when you have your laptop on it. Here are a couple other things you’ll need:
- Ruler/measuring tape
- Exacto knife
- Washable marker
- Squeegee or credit card
Once you have all your materials, the first thing you want to do is measure out the total height of the mat. Then decide how thick you want the space to be between each tape. The thickness of my gold stripe was 1/2″. I knew that I didn’t want the space between the gold stripes to be too thin. So I started by marking a spot at the center between top and bottom of each end of the mat. This is where I will align my tape. Since the total height of the mat was 12″, the exact middle pint is at 6″. So I put a black dot at the 6″ mark and did the same thing on the other end. Then it was time to place down the first strip.
I flipped the mat over, that way when I was done, I can just wipe off the back. Cut off a strip of your tape and make sure it’s a couple inches wider than your mat. Here comes the tricky part. I’m sure there is a more technical way of doing this but I didn’t have any desire to measure any more…(remember how I like shortcuts?) Well, I just eyeballed it and made sure the gold strip went directly over the dots and was spaced evenly. Meaning the dot had to be right in the middle of the gold strip when I turned it over. I was pretty close! LOL, like I said, I’m not that much of a perfectionist! It was good enough for me!
Once the tape was down and straight (sometimes it might take a couple tries so make sure you don’t put a lot of pressure on it in case you need to pull the tape back up to realign it), just go over it with your fingers for now. Next is the second strip and I went down 1 1/2″ from the bottom of the middle stripe. I turned it over, marked where 1 1/2″ was from the bottom of the middle strip is, then flipped it over again. This time it was easier because now all I had to do was align the top of the strip to the marks. When I finished with that line, I did the same exact thing, marking off 1 1/2″ from the bottom of the 2nd stripe and align the top of the strip to the marks. Once I finished that side, I turned the mat upside down and did the same exact thing.
Once I had all the stripes down, the next step was to make sure there were no air bubbles and that the tape was firmly on the mat. So I took my credit card and slowly pressed the vinyl into the glass and tried to push out any air bubbles. You may have a couple bumps under the tape due to dust or any random small particles that accidentally got under there. It happens and hopefully it doesn’t bother you too much! If not, try to make sure the glass is VERY clean before you put down the tape, haha! After that, it was time to cut off the ends where the tape hung over the mat. Ideally you would use an Exacto knife. But me, being the super organized person that I am (#sarcasm), I couldn’t find mine. So I found a pair of scissors that got the job done, haha. All you have to do is press the sharp part of the knife (in this case scissors) to the edge of the mat and push forward. It will easily cut through the tape/vinyl.
Once you’re done, you just gotta flip it over and wipe off any black marks you made and you’re all done! Ta-da!!
As you can see in the first photo, I made one for each desk. It took me about 30 mins to do both. I also created a make-shift calendar for myself so it matches the room as well. I think I want to spray-paint the black frame to gold, but other than that, it’s super useful!
Next up, the floral crown! I really adore this project! It came out way better than I imagined and it was so cheap! My sister is having portraits done and she asked if I can make a floral crown for her. She showed me some ideas of the style she liked and we headed off to Michaels. We found these pretty light pink roses and some baby breaths that looked real! It was nice that we had a coupon but they weren’t having any sales on the flowers that we wanted so she ended up spending about $23 for 2 stems of the roses and 2 stems of the baby breaths and the stem wires. I will warn you that this is not an “easy” project…you have to find the right spots to put the flowers and leaves strategically and there’s no “how to step” that I can show you when it comes to that. You kind of just have to feel you way through it. Hope I didn’t scare you!
Here are the materials that you’ll need:
- flowers – sprays of small flowers might be best but I don’t see why you can’t use larger flowers, make sure they have leaves
- wires
- glue gun with glue sticks
- wire cutter
Step 1 – Take 2 wires and measure out how big of a halo you want it to be. I put it on my head to get a rough idea. Keep in mind the hairstyle you will be doing too! Once you have your size, twist the remainder of the wire around each other, making sure the twists aren’t too tight. These spaces will help you secure the stems onto the halo.
Cut off the flowers and leaves from the main stem. Notice I tried to keep as much length as possible. I know I purchased 2 of each rose spray and baby breaths stems, but in the photo above, I only cut one of each. I wanted to try to make the floral crown with just these 2 stems first.
Step 2 – Start with the leaves. Use the spaces in between the twists to hold down the bottom of the stems and then glue it down. Be careful with the hot glue gun, I definitely borderline burned myself a couple times, haha. Once you put it on, you have to wait about 7 seconds where it’s still hot and you can manipulate the glue. I push the glue in or wrap it around the wires so that I know it will stay in place. The first layer was the leaves wrapped around the whole halo but make sure you don’t use all of it. I had 4 leaves stem left over.
Step 3 – The second layer are the roses. Just like the first, you need to find little holes to poke the stem through and utilize the stem from the leaves to hold down the roses. Once you have them in place, glue them down and wait a few seconds so that you can push the glue down or wrap it around to secure it. After you are done with the second layer, it should look something like this:
Step 4 – This is where you add the baby breaths. Just like above, try to squeeze them in between the existing stems. By now, you should be able to tell which side is the top of the crown and which is the bottom. The bottom one is where you see all the glue being used, lol! Once you’re done, it should look something like this:
Step 5 – As you can see, it’s nice but it doesn’t look “full”. That is why you saved the last 4 stems of leaves. Look and see which parts look the most sparse to you and add those last 4 little stems. Of course you have more if you need to, but we didn’t want to use those so we can return them. So in total, after the return, the project cost us only $12! Here is the final product!
I cannot wait to see the portraits that my sissy is taking with this floral crown on Monday! I’ll be sure to share those photos as well! I hope you guys love this as much as I do! That’s all for this week! Can’t wait to share the next room and DIY with you next week! Until then, stay lovely!
Jeap