DIY - colorful wall

I have been trying to find inspiration for the couple of weeks and nothing hit me hard. UNTIL, I spotted the most amazing person with the most amazing blog. I spent hours going through every single post on Color Me Katie and I left feeling so inspired it was ridiculous. So I immediately got to work. And this is what my inspiration turned into:

This honestly doesn't need a DIY, cuz its pretty self explanatory, but I'll but one anyway.
Materials:
- cardstock or cardboard paper in different colors
- tape or adhesive tabs
- scissors, time, an empty wall
- and a quote you love!

My wall was looking a little blank, and I wanted something to look at while I was laying in bed. And thought to myself that I needed a quote that would motivate me get OUT of bed and go do something.
1. Find a quote. Mine was: There are 86,400 seconds in a day to turn it all around or to throw it all away.
2. I counted how much letters there were for every letter in my quote for example, I needed 8A's and 4N's.
3. Gather different colored cardboard paper and cut out your all your letters. Arrange them on a blank space as you go, switching colors to make sure the same colors aren't next to each other.
4. Once you have all your letters cut out space them out on your wall. NOTE: my quote is huge and it took a lot of rearranging to get the quote to be evenly spaced out.
5. Tape! Tape em all down, and then your done!

Its a super super easy project and I love my new wall.

picture inspiration.

the earth is pretty bombtastic, ya?

HAPPY EARTH DAY :D
Let's be honest I didn't actually celebrate Earth day, how do you even celebrate it? But I did make a cute green hair clip. I made it out of extra fabric I had from an old shirt, it was super easy. I basically just used the same steps from my DIY bow tie ring. I just adjusted the size to be a little larger. Speaking of rings! I recently ordered some adjustable ring blanks from GSboutique on Etsy, and they came in the mail today!

They were a little smaller then I expected them to be, but that was my fault because I was focused on whatever was the cheapest price! For 12 ring blanks it came out to only $4 and as you can (slightly) see in the last picture, I was so surprised to find an extra bag that said "a free gift for you. thank you. GS Boutique". How cute is that? So in all, I got 14 ring blanks that came out to about $0.30 each. Score! Now I just need to figure out what to put on the ring blanks!

If you know of any good ring tutorials or a site I can look at to find ring inspiration, please let me know!

two new headbands

I wanted to show two new headbands that I made...mostly because I straightened my hair for the first time in a while. Big deal? For me: YES! It literally, and I'm not kidding, takes a complete hour to straighten my hair. Insane, I know. It used to take about an hour and 45 minutes but I've gotten a better straightener and quicker skills since then. I have a TON of hair and its really really long and thick so that's why it takes so long. But anyway! Here are some of the projects I've completed this week:

The first hair accessory was made my using this tutorial and put a backing on it so that it can be slipped into a headband, or be taken out an worn with a bobby pin or as a brooch or whatever :D The Second head band was made from black and yellow ribbon braided together with three strips of thin maroon ribbon that I braided first before I braided all of them together. The last couple of photos are (half) of the outfit I wore today. Disregard the giant white tee I throw on as soon as I got home from school. I wanted to post some pictures of my knee high socks/boots combo because it got ALOT of comments today, with mixed reviews and I wanted to see what you guys thought. Some people like it and others were like "woah I've never seen that before". It's my first time wearing something like this and I personally LOVED it. For some reason, sunny southern California doesn't want to be sunny and it was extremely cold and really windy today, so this kept my legs are feet extremely warm, my top half was freezing, but that's another issue :D

DIY - wall quote art

Now I know some of you may look at this at be like, art? No way! Well, I use the term loosely, but trust me if you do this project it'll end up turning out a lot better than mine did. Unfortunely I didn't have a tutorial to follow and I just kind of winged it, so it took a lot of trial and errors. Mostly error :D But that's alright.

Materials:
- a pizza box, cereal box, or just a piece of cardboard
- scissors and/or X-acto knife
- can of spray paint
- contact paper
- a printable font set
- an amazing quote that you love

 I  used clear transparent contact paper so it was easier to trace (like was like $4 from CVS), I also used purple Krylon spray paint, and it shows a cereal box here but I had to switch to a pizza box later because the cereal box was too small for my quote, and I used Elsie's font embroidery pattern to trace my letters from.

Whether your using a cereal box or a pizza box, or any other type of box (remember for my final piece I used a pizza box not the cereal box you see in the picture) and cut it in half all around so that you have two separate cardboard halves.

Cut the excess sides off ONE of the pieces so that it's a flat piece of cardboard. Later the cardboard will slide into the other piece creating a reverse canvas-type holder :D

Get your printed font set and use the clear contact paper to trace the letters you want for your quote. My first mistake, was that I chose a quote that was rather long, so it took my forever to trace and cut out every single letter. My second mistake, was the font set I chose. It's very cute, but for a project like this I would advise you to use a thicker font so it shows up easier and is easier to cute out.

Cut out all the letters, adhere them to your cutout cardboard. See how thin my lettering is? Not good. Thick letters = way better. You live and learn. By the way the quote says "there was once a little girl who was a queen. well, she wasn't really, but she believed it and so she was." I love that message. You are who you believe you are.

Spray paint! Problem #3: I left it out to dry on my back patio....and it started to rain :( This definitely affected it so make sure you can spray and let it dry somewhere that it's not gonna come in contact with mother nature! If you look closely you can even see the rain drops :(

Once it dries, remove the letters and it should leave a stenciled-type mark on the cardboard. You can see with mine, the rain seeped through and spread the spray paint into the letter regions. If you look at the R in girl, you can see a perfect example of an untouched letter and it looks really nice. Unfortunately that's about the only letter that wasn't really affected by the rain. Anyway after I removed the letters, I slipped the cardboard into the other half of the box so it turned into a shadow box effect thing. You can also spray paint the outside of the box but I didn't because my spray paint was running out

As you can see, it looks messed up, because it is. I still put it up on my wall thought because it took me FOREVERRR and I wasn't about to just throw it away. Plus, I think it has some character with that weather-beaten look :D

Enjoy!

FAIL!!!! ----> DIY edition

So this past week I've been trying to do a lot of DIY projects. For myself and my bff who's bday is coming up.
And you know what? I failed. Miserably.
.
I have no idea why but everything I touch this week doesn't seem to turn out right. So I decided since I can't give out a good tutorial, why don't I just show you my failed attempts at life.


The first headband that I've ever made (I had to hand sew it too cause idk how to work the sewing machine I have) initially started as a gift for the friend I mentioned above....but it just didn't go as expected. I liked it, but that's probably cuz I spent like two hours making it, although honestly I probably wouldn't ever wear it. I do like the flowers I made using this tutorial. I'll probably end up making a hair clip with a similar design.

My next (and most heartbreaking) DIY fail was my poor attempt to bleach my leggings. I was really inspired by Sequin Magazine's white/purple leggings and Maria's AMAZING cloud-like leggings (both are amazing bloggers by the way, you should check them out :D ) anyway, so I thought to myself, hey I have a pair of dark gray leggings that I hardly ever wear. Thinking that bleaching them would make them look like Maria's was a mistake. First, my leggings were a lot darker, almost black. Second, I combined both of the links above methods are used a sponge to bleach as well as wrapping rubber bands...which didn't do much but make some spots harder to reach. In the end it ended up looking like this:

Yaaaa.....orange....honestly, I don't HATE it but I have no idea how I could wear that out of the house. I would have taken a picture with it actually on me but I haven't rinsed the bleach out yet in hopes that leaving it in will turn it into a none orange-y color.

Well, hey, you win some, you lose some
:D
right? well lets hope I can stop messing everything up!

life's adventures

featuring: the Irvine Mud Run :D

Ok, I'll be honest, I didn't ACTUALLY run in this race. But my mom did, and I played photographer for the day with a friend's amazing Canon. Because my camera sucks. Seriously. And after playing around with this Canon, I have no idea how I'll go back to it!








1. Buffalo Exchange (best chain thrift store I've ever stepped into) Razorback Tank - $16
2. My mom's shoes after running a 5K in the mud.
3.Why yes, that is a 4 your old playing with a Nikon. Insane? Yes. Future photographer? Definitely.
4. Morning Sun
5. They were giving out free boxers after the race. Hilarious idea
6. There were soo many people dressed up in weird costumes. Superheros, nerds, men in speedos, ninja turtles, santa, I saw it all today.
7. Dippin Dots ice cream

10 Spring Cleaning Tips

(image via weheartit)

Ah, spring. My second favorite season (after summer, of course). Along with spring comes flowers, bright colors, and .... spring cleaning. Honestly, I'm not one for cleaning, my parents can definitely confirm that. I clean my room and then literally two days later its messy again. But I wanted to share some spring cleaning tips that I'm sure gonna be following. I haven't finished my spring cleaning, BUT I have started it.

1. Crank up the volume. I can not work in silence. ESPECIALLY when I'm cleaning. The best way for me to get my cleaning done is to put on loud high volume fast music. Before you know it you'll be moving as quick as the tempo in the beat.
2. Don't clean alone! Because really, everything is better when your doing it with someone else. It'll keep you on task, well...hopefully.

3. Re-Style. I think it's really important to re-style rooms every so often and spring cleaning is the perfect time for this. This past weekend I moved my desk and added a window shade (as seen above...ya it doesnt fit the whole window but I actually kinda prefer it that way) and added a few other little projects to my room. It really helps you visually if your not looking at the same thing 24/7. Re-vamping your room will freshen things up even if its just in your own eyes.

4. GO THROUGH EVERYTHING IN YOUR CLOSET. This is a really important one. I clean my closet out a lot, but not thoroughly. It may be hassle but you should really go through every single article of clothing you own. I often look in my closet when I'm cleaning and say, "Oh I'll totally wear that one day". FACT CHECK: if you have something sitting in your closet that you've only touched once or twice you should probably re-evaluate whether you really need it or not. Also try on items that you haven't worn in a while, they might not fit anymore! And you won't know till you actually put it on. There were some pieces in my closet that I know I would never wear, and there were some that made me come up with a whole new outfit I never thought of.

5. Keep your fabric! Going along with number four, if you don't wanna donate your clothes (which I honestly frequently don't want to, sorry Goodwill), stash your fabric!! There's tons of great DIY projects you can do with old fabric from old shirts. In the picture above I used extra fabric (from the same shirt I used to make my bow ring!) to make a DIY dry erase board from a basic picture frame.
6. Don't freak out. I know what its like to look at a messy room and panic at the thought of having to spend forever trying to clean it, which makes me want to put it off more. You don't have to do everything in one setting, although I find that easier. If your crunched for time, make a list of what areas to clean and when to them. It'll keep you organized and stress free.
7. Have a clothing swap. Get together with friends and trade your "junk". Like they say, one mans trash is another man's treasure. I did a variation of this. And by variation I mean I heckled my mom to clean out her massive closet and I just took everything she didn't want. That works too :D

8. Build up. Even though I'm a college student living at home, I still have to work with a small space and I use a lot of dorm room tips for my room at home. Use your wall space. It's there, might as well do some organize with it, ya? Today I was seriously searching for a way to organize the HALF of my necklaces that wouldn't find on my regular jewlery organizer. So I just stuck a hanger on the wall and put my necklaces on it :) Done!
9. SHHH. Keep things hidden. I like to think that I have many valuable things in my room. So one of the best DIY's (and one of the most time consuming - but worth it) was to make a secret hollow book. It's amazing. I did mine out of an old dictionary (because NO ONE in my house ever opens up a dictionary) and it hold my journal, money, and random secret things :]
10. Your not alone. This is probably the best tip about spring cleaning. Seriously, everyone is doing it. I like to think that the best thing about slaving to clean everything is the fact that other people as suffering just as much as me hahaha jk :] but seriously, other people have alot of junk. And that junk could be gold to you. Go to thrift stores, yard sales, garage sales, or any sort of thing like that during this season. Just this weekend my neighbor was trying to get rid of his daughters junk because she left for college. I thought, "why would I want some other girl's broken crap?" but you know what I got out of this super sweet deal? A gold locket, a black heart necklace, a bunch of rings, more necklaces, some bangles I will surely DIY, that window covering shown above, the picture frame shown above and two others, a semi-cute purse, and a backpack I probably wont ever wear but love the idea that it was free anyway :D ya! i totally cleaned out, and you can too!

Enjoy.
xoxo <3