Tag: yellow

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday

Wooden Tree Decoration

Jessica Smith

One of my favorite gifts that I made this year I of course failed to take a nice picture of. Just my luck.

I made my godfather a decoration of trees and a graphic design print with lyrics from his favorite song, In the Bleak Midwinter.

BleakMidwinter

The print is simple and has the first verse of the song. I wanted to create a decoration to sit beside it, so I used pallet wood to create a tree scene.

Tree cutouts

First, I cut out pallet pieces using a jigsaw. I didn’t care for the lines to be perfect, so you’ll see that the trees aren’t all straight or the same size. Imperfection is the name of the game.

Once my trees were cut out, I sanded them down and laid them out in a way I thought looked pleasing.

Stained trees

I pulled a piece of scrap wood from my stash and cut it down to size. I wanted just enough behind the trees to help the whole decoration stand on its own.

Lined up trees

Next, I stained the trees. I used a darker brown stain and a light green stain, choosing to leave the tree in the middle untouched.

Once the stain dried, I screwed the piece of scrap wood into the trees so they would be permanently affixed together.

Last, I used a small piece of scrap wood to create a star — I wasn’t able to cut a star out of wood, but instead stained an itty bitty piece of wood yellow and used a wood burning tool to add a star. I added this to the center tree only.

Ta da!

Final trees

Like I said — not a good picture. It really doesn’t do this decoration justice. My godfather loved his framed graphic art and the accompanying tree decoration. I almost didn’t want to give the trees away!

Home Improvement, Paint

Chevron Accent Wall

Jessica Smith

Last night I was beyond hyper and spontaneously decided to tackle my faux backsplash/accent wall in my laundry room. I think my spontaneity was key in the project, otherwise I would have over thought everything from the design to the colors.

I have seen so many designs online lately for accent walls: quatrefoil, shell, stripes, chevron… you name it, it’s been done. In my cracked out state, I went with a segmented chevron pattern and I LOVE IT. Also, it was way easy. Way.

I was too into groovin’ to my sweet tunes last night to take a ton of photos (imagine a quality mix of Bohemian rhapsody, Baby got back and Beloved)  but here’s the gist of what I did: I wanted the wall color to show through my pattern so it tied the accent wall into the rest of the space, so using 1″ tape I taped vertical stripes on my wall with no intention of filling them in. I spaced my lines out using a small level as my measurement. Honestly, I did this to avoid doing math. It’s about 9″ wide and was a perfect spacer. It also doubled as a level — go figure. I made sure my lines were pretty darn straight. They weren’t perfect, but they were mostly straight.

Then, I started to create my chevron pattern. I grabbed a pen and started marking my tape where other pieces of tape needed to intersect. Again, I used my level as a spacer. I placed it at the top of my cabinet and marked at the bottom, continuing until it wouldn’t fit anymore. I did this for all of the tape, then connected the dots.

Here’s a fun tip — if and when you run out of your painter’s tape, and if you just so happen to have masking tape or washi tape in the same width, you can use it as a substitute for painter’s tape. Yes, this happened. I was sad to paint over my mint tape, but didn’t want to lost my awesome energy and stamina with the project so I made the sacrifice.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up

With my pattern taped and ready to paint, I started to apply my paint colors: metallic gold (Thanks, Martha!) and ivory/manilla. I originally was going to do something with bolder pops of color, but went for the metallic paint as my bold choice. I also was going to add a third color, but my pattern only took up so much room and the third color probably wouldn’t have added anything to it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up and painted

I painted two coats of each color onto the stripes before removing all of the tape.

*Drumroll*

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall

Love love love love love love love. Love. Had I thought this project out more, I probably would have gone with a mint or teal chevron stripe, but I am so glad I didn’t. I think the gold tones play off the countertop wonderfully, and make the gray cabinets pop even more.

I started this project after dinner at 5:30(ish) and was cleaning up at 7:30 p.m. — not to bad for the fabulous result!

BEFORE:

{A Smith of All Trades} Laundry Room

AFTER:{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall again