Beating the Blahs: Yellow!

Winter is not only cold in terms of its temperature, but its color palette. Every where I look, things are hard white, black, blue, and gray. This is a fine color scheme to have but after a while it just gets so overwhelming and dreary. I can feel myself starting to get depressed because of the weather, and that is just no good. Time to be proactive and focus on things that will make me feel happier.

I did a lot of blog reading last year while planning the Scrimp Wedding Extravaganza (n.b., if you're planning a wedding, be sure to read this website for inspiration), and I fell in love with one of the color schemes that was a Popular New Thing last year--yellow, gray, and blue.

So I collected some pictures of yellow things-around-the-house, to lift your spirits and mine while we dig out from under all this snow.

Project: Frame It!

Yesterday, while Mr. Scrimp was getting very involved with a new video game, I decided to do a little on-the-fly craft project. Back in October, we'd picked up four $5 black frames at Wal-Mart, hoping they would fit some prints we had on hand. Sadly, they didn't, and I never got around to returning them, so they just sat in a bag in our spare room for months.

Until yesterday!

Saturday!

Oh my gosh--this is my 100th post in this blog since October. That isn't a ton, but it's still a milestone and I feel good about it.

Sadly, it's going to be a short and pretty unmemorable post. I have spent my day doing crafty things and redecorating our mantel. There are pictures, but Mr. Scrimp and I are about to run out the door to a friend's birthday party, so I don't have time to download them off the camera just yet. Look for them tonight or tomorrow morning, along with instructions for copying my project.

Happy Saturday, friends!

Project: Apothecary Jar

I am in love with apothecary  jars. Actually, I'm pretty much in love with all decorative jars. Unfortunately, the nice ones (like the three Pottery Barn jars shown here on the left) can be very expensive--starting between $40 and $60 apiece.

This weekend, after months of sighing and ogling and envying, I decided to jump on the bandwagon, imitate a project I've seen done various ways all over the Internet lately, and make my own darn jar. It was incredibly easy, and incredibly quick.

I spent roughly five minutes on this project, four and a half of which were waiting for my glue gun to warm up. Total cost? $2.

Pictures and instructions after the jump.

Project: Five Minute Wall Decor

We're having unseasonably warm weather here, but it's still wet and gray. In order to add a splash of color to one of our bare walls, I whipped up this little project based on an idea I saw a while back at Dollar Store Crafts. I kid you not, it took me less time to complete the project and hang the finished result than to write this entire blog post.

Link: Custom Fabric at Spoonflower

I was browsing around the other day and came across Spoonflower, a company that lets users upload their own fabric patterns and prints them on organic cotton. Previous patterns are available for sale and there are some really, really beautiful and unique fabrics there.

It's pricey--ranging from $18 to $20 a yard, with 8x8" swatches going for $5 and fat quarters going for $11. Still, if you find something you really adore, a swatch or fat quarter is enough for a smallish project where it's a trim or a feature in a larger piece. Perhaps the center of a pillow or cushion, or the front panel on a purse or reusable shopping bag?

Even if it's not in your price range, go browse around for a few minutes just for the sheer enjoyment of the artistry in some of the patterns.

Five Dollar Decor - Tape

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating proje

Geeks, mechanics, theater people, and college students the world around know the value of a good piece of tape. I use tape way more than I should, probably, but I can't help it. It has everything going for it--it's sticky, it's decorative (if used properly), it's versatile, it's cheap.

Today, I'd like to feature five decorative uses of regular old tape. Prepare to have your mind blown.

My Nemesis

I hate wearing pantyhose. Still, sometimes there just isn't another option, so I sigh and pick up a pair at the store, and wear them once or twice. Maybe they get a run. Maybe they don't. Maybe they accidentally end up going into the dryer and turning into a mess of horrible static. Maybe I just get sick of them and throw them away.

From  now on, though, I think I'm going to try and use them around the house. WiseBread put together a list of 20 money-saving ways to reuse old pantyhose and I'm going to give it a shot. I feel guilty throwing anything away when I can still get good use out of it, even if that use has no connection to the item's original purpose.

Five Dollar Decor - Paint

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating project?  

When I first started writing these posts, Mr. Scrimp suggested I write something about paint. I was hesitant, because it's nearly impossible to find sufficient quantities of good paint for $5 or less, but while the title of these blogs is "five dollar decor," the idea is that you can redecorate one room for about $25, and you can definitely change the entire look and feel of a room with nothing but paint.

For people who live in apartments where you can't paint--well, this isn't for you. We aren't allowed to paint, but I still daydream about it. But if you live in a rental where painting is ok, or are fortunate enough to own your home, painting is a perfect and low-cost way to totally revamp a space.

So, here are five suggestions for ways to transform a room with paint. Some of them are pretty straightforward. Some of them, though, maybe you haven't thought of yet.

Five Dollar Decor - Bathroom

My most recent project, which I've been doing in little bits and pieces, has been redecorating our bathroom. Every time I go to the store, I keep an eye on clearance or thrifted items that might make our bathroom look a little more finished, and when I find one, I snap it up and put it in there.

I'd take pictures of the changes I've made, but I can't seem to find my camera anywhere, so for now we're just going to have to make do without.

A bathroom is really easy to transform with a few simple purchases. Start out, though, by clearing all the clutter and getting things really clean. Dirt is the easiest way to make a room look unfinished. Cleanliness is the easiest way to make it look new.

1. New Shower Curtain

When we moved in, there was a shower curtain already in the shower/tub. It was pretty hideous--torn, white plastic with blackened spots of mold and grime all over it. I picked up a new curtain at CVS (or maybe it was Walgreens) for $5 and had Mr. Scrimp put it up, because I'm pathetically short. I count it as one of the best five dollars I've ever spent on home decor.

Even if you buy a plain vinyl curtain, it can be decorated with paint or acrylic markers.

If your vinyl curtain is clean but the outer curtain needs to change (ours was actually pretty nice), you can also find those quite cheap at thrift stores. Alternatively, you can make one--find a clearance fabric you like, measure the distance from your curtain rod to the spot you'd like them to hit when they hang straight. Add three inches to the top and bottom for hemming, and that's the height of your curtains. Measure from one end of your shower to another and add an additional four to six inches for some fullness. Hem, and hang.


If you're willing to spend some extra money, you can find all sorts of really beautiful or interesting shower curtains online with a price range of anywhere from $10 to $50. The one pictured here, from Target, is $9.99.


2. New Bath Mat

I lucked out on this one. In the home goods clearance section at TJ Maxx, I found a woven cotton mat that matched our bathroom colors perfectly and had been marked down to $3. If you're willing to wait on sales or clearance, I think you can probably score a similar deal and keep this item under $5.

How you choose a bath mat or bathroom rug can totally define the look of your bathroom. If you get something that coordinates with the walls and floor, you'll keep a neutral, one-color sort of look going. Or, you can get something that contrasts and adds a really beautiful splash of color to an otherwise drab room. Find something that you'll be happy to see when you stumble into the bathroom in the morning.

I found the one pictured here at Amazon for $9.99 in about 30 seconds of looking. They're definitely out there, and cheap.

You could also consider repurposing a small rug that you currently have somewhere else.

3. Line Insides of Cabinets


 A few years ago, Martha Stewart had a bit on this. I can't find it now, of course, but other people have since taken up the torch.

This is one bathroom project still on my list that I haven't yet accomplished, but it's definitely happening. Find a pretty wallpaper, wrapping paper, or scrapbook paper and use it to line the inside of your medicine cabinet and other bathroom cabinets. Hopefully you don't have the kind of nosy guests who snoop around in your cabinets, but just in case you do, give them something pretty to look at--and if they don't, give yourself something pretty to look at.. especially if you live with someone who chronically leaves cabinets standing open.

There are a couple of ways to do this--sallyTV does it with foam core and rubber cement. Design*Sponge, whose final result is what you see pictured here, used spray adhesive and wallpaper.

If you have concerns about being able to remove your work, you could also try fabric with spray starch, or contact paper.

4. Storage

The best way to keep a bathroom clean and happy is to make sure that everything in there has a place to be. You can buy plastic adhesive hooks at major pharmacy chains for just a couple of dollars. I mentioned last Friday how easy and cheap it is to find clear plastic boxes (with lids) that are perfect for tucking into small spaces like the area under your bathroom sink, and hold all sorts of things.

Every time I'm out shopping clearance sales or thrift stores, I also keep my eyes open for small containers, tumblers, soap dishes, or what-have-you that will fit inside of our medicine cabinet so that all the things in there can stay nicely organized. I recently picked up a great ceramic tumbler to keep our toothbrushes in for a mere $1.50 (it had a chip in it, that we never even notice because I turned it towards the back).

5. Decorate

Obviously, this whole post has been about decoration to some degree. I mean something a little less practical here, though. Find something to put in your bathroom that is there simply because you like to look at it. This could be wall art, a small sculpture, a piece of ceramic, a potted plant--anything that is beautiful and that you just, well, like. After all, you spend a lot of time in your bathroom. Shouldn't you be looking at something pleasant while you're in there?

This doesn't have to cost you any money at all. You probably have plenty of things in your house that don't quite work where they are, or could stand to be moved around. Look around and see what you've got.

I picked up a medium-sized ceramic sculpture of a bird the other day for $2. I couldn't figure out where to put it, until I hit on putting it in our bathroom on the small table under our window. It serves absolutely no purpose, but it's there, being pretty, and making me smile whenever I see it. I call that a $2 well spent, and a bathroom well-decorated.

Textiles

tex-tile. [teks-tahyl]
-noun
1.  any cloth or goods produced by weaving, knitting, or felting.
2. a material, as a fiber or yarn, used in or suitable for weaving


I love textiles. I love to sew, knit, crochet, spin--even weave, although I haven't done it in years and years and years.

When I first learned how to knit and crochet, pretty much the only thing I could do was make, well, useless things. I was really good at crochetig long chains, and knitting mysterious lumpy triangles that never achieved the shape I wanted them to. Over time, I graduated to scarves and the occasional hat (once I learned how to crochet in a circle). I can follow patterns.. mostly.

I can crochet like the wind. Sadly, I can't knit that way, and so I rarely do any knitting because it takes so long to make any progress, especially with the kinds of projects that interest me. My goal this year is to knit a sweater, but I feel like there's a pretty good chance it won't happen.

Still, there are lovely things out there that you can make by knitting or crocheting, and I do occasionally get some knitting done. I have made many halves of socks, and a couple of fingerless gloves, and a scarfy-shruggy thing that I never wear because I was just making it for practice.

I was going to post a pattern for a really cute crocheted scarf that I found on craftster.com, but then I realized--you know, there are probably a lot of people out there on the Internet who can't knit or crochet. And that's a shame, because in this day of do-it-yourself, reusing, upcycling, and movement away from blatant consumerism, it's a skill that should be cultivated.

So instead, I'm going to suggest that those of you who don't know how to knit or crochet learn how to do one or the other. The starting materials are cheap--even Wal-Mart sells knitting needles, crochet hooks, and cheap acrylic yarn. It's not an expensive hobby to learn. You don't even need to buy a book! The internet is full of instructions on how to do all sorts of crafty things, and these two skills are no exception.

Lion Brand Yarns has an entire website of crochet instructions, which will teach you everything you need to know to get going. (NB: Lion Brand also recently put ALL of their patterns up on their website for free. That's right, free. What better time to learn how to use them?)

Then there is the fabulous website, Knitting How To, which has instructional videos for both knitting and crochet, as well as small projects to get started with.

If you are a visual learner and not happy with the videos you find there, YouTube is full of them, and google would probably turn up more.

I've taught myself all sorts of things using internet tutorials like this--most recently, how to cable knit, which I thought was going to be really difficult, but which turned out in fact to be fabulously easy.

And once you've learned, or if you are already proficient and yawning over this blog post, you can go become a member at Ravelry.com. Here you can create a profile, find patterns written by other members or published by companies, post updates on your progress, read reviews of patterns, and more.

(Photo Credit: Lion Brand website)

Five Dollar Decor - Organizing

Organizing is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite thing. I love to sit down and organize things. I hate and am terrible at keeping them that way.

I'm often struck by the huge change that can be made in a space by doing very little. This week, I'm going to continue with the getting ready for the new year theme by talking about some quick and inexpensive ways to make dramatic changes in cluttered spaces around the house.

1. Use a Hanging Shoe Organizer

...and I don't mean for shoes. We have a shoe rack in our front closet that my mother-in-law gave us. Because we tend not to buy shoes unless we have a repeating need which none of our current pairs can fill, all the shoes we wear can fit on that one rack with a couple of spots left over.

We also have a hanging shoe organizer in our bedroom closet. After months of being frustrated by overstuffed dresser drawers, socks on the floor, and sweaters taking up most of the hanger space we had, I hung an organizer in our closet. Ours has several sizes of compartment, some larger and some smaller. In half the smaller compartments, I tuck all of Mr. Scrimp's clean, matched socks, and in the other half I put all of his folded undershirts. The larger compartments are big enough to hold sweaters, either rolled or folded.

Organizers run the gamut in both price and quality. Ours was from Bed Bath & Beyond and cost about $15 (I already had it on hand, it was a gift), but I've used the cheap ones in the past in the same way and had no problems. You could try using this one from Organize2Fit.com, which is only $4.99.

2. Sort Your Mail

Mr. Scrimp and I throw our mail into a basket on a small table,and it inevitably ends up in a pile that needs to be sorted through before bills can be paid or letters can be read and replied to. Apartment Therapy suggests buying a small plate rack/organizer and sticking it on your desk or front table to hold letters. Because it's designed to hold plates, it will hold larger, sturdier envelopes just as well as small ones.

The photo at Apartment Therapy uses a $10 rack from the Container Store, but you can get a similar one from Ace Hardware for $4.58.

3. Bottle Things Up

I spent four hours today deep-cleaning our house. I scrubbed floors, sorted papers, reorganized things, and wound up, like I always do, with little piles of things that don't really have a specific place to go--pins, thumbtacks, twist-ties, spare buttons, and the like.

I also have, in my medicine cabinet, a fairly large assortment of accumulated pill bottles, most of which have one pill left over from treatments finished or forgotten, painkillers unneeded, or cough medicine gone bad. I'm heading to the craft store tomorrow or Monday to pick up a couple of sheets of scrapbook paper and put into practice this fabulous idea over on Curbly, which involves covering prescription bottles with scrapbook paper and nice labels, and using them to hold all those little odds and ends that don't have any other home.

Even if they just end up back in a junk drawer or stowed on a shelf, I'll know where to find those things the next time I need them, and where to put them the next time I go on a cleaning jag that turns up half a pound of doodads that I have no home for but can't throw away.

And, as an added bonus, all those prescription bottles that I never throw away will also get sorted and dealt with!

4. Boxes in Kitchen Cupboards

I will admit, there is one exception that I allow when it comes to our rule about never storing food in plastic. We have a very small closet/pantry space for our dry goods, and for quite some time it was a horrific mess. Things were sorted more or less by category of food (baking, canned goods, spices, etc.) but the shelves, while narrow, are deep, and every time we cooked we ended up making a mess of things that, more often than not, never got cleaned up. After a while we were just tossing things on top of other things and it was a disaster.

Then I remembered that I had a couple of plastic shoebox-sized totes from my dorm room days that were sitting unused in our guest room. I recruited them for kitchen duty, spent 45 minutes reorganizing, and ended up with a closet that was unrecognizably different from its former self.

This is a great way to bring an immediate visual change to a small pantry space while also organizing it for easy access to whatever it is you need at the moment. With all your spice jars in one box, all your teas in another, a third holding bags of flour and sugar, and so on and so forth, you'll not only be able to locate all your food, but you'll be able to fit even more inside.

My boxes are Rubbermaid that I think I picked up at CVS a few years ago. I also recommend these ones from The Container Store, at $1.29 apiece.

5. Creative Shelving

Our lack of shelf space isn't just a problem in the pantry. With the exception of our kitchen, which has far more shelving than it ought to have given its tiny size, Mr. Scrimp and I can never seem to find enough shelves to hold all of our books and knicknacks. The next time I find a guitar case at a thrift store, I'd really like to have Mr. Scrimp bolt it to the wall in our guest room so that I can turn it into a bookshelf like the one pictured here, which was a project featured on RecyclArt. Seriously, how completely cool is that? (Come to think of it, I might have mentioned this on the blog before. I just continue to think it's an incredible idea.)

If nothing else, I feel like this should inspire you to look at objects around your home as having new potential to become an organizational aid, and you'll end up with a house that is clean, decluttered, organized, and ready for a new year to begin.

Bedroom Sign Project

So, although I rarely end up posting them here on Scrimpalicious for some reason, I do a fair amount of crafting and sewing projects--which is one of the reasons I started the blog in the first place.

Today, I decided to put together a Christmas present for my six-year-old nephew. "Homemade" has sort of been our gift theme this year, so I really wanted to come up with something that was designed especially for him, and ended up with this chalkboard sign for his bedroom door--sorry the picture's so terrible. I can't find my camera and had to use my cellphone.

It took about 30 minutes to make. I picked up a chalkboard in the wood crafts section at JoAnn fabrics, along with a small painted wooden bomb, comic book "pow" explosion graphic, and the stars you see in the upper right hand corner, and some red Mickey Mouse alphabet stickers.

I painted the chalkboard in a comic book yellow with acrylic paint, hot-glued the wood shapes on (I glued the "pow" on top of the bomb to add a little bit of comic-book action to the sign), and spelled his name out with the stickers. I didn't worry too too much about lining the letters up perfectly, to give them a slightly more comic-booky feel.

I varnished the whole thing (except the chalkboard part, of course) with three coats of satin varnish, and hot-glued a string to the back for hanging. I also picked up some chalk and a chalkboard eraser to go with it.

This was a lot of fun and turned out looking great. I think it would also be a super project to do with a kid for their own room.

Five Dollar Decor - Winterize

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating project? 

Christmas is in a week. If you haven't got your decorating done, well, I can't look too much askance at you, because we haven't even put ornaments on our tree yet (I know, I know.)

But I do feel like at this point, even if you haven't actually put them up, you know what your holiday decorations are going to be. So, I'm not going to write about Christmas decor.

Instead, I'm going to write about that awful time after the holidays. You know what I'm talking about. Christmas decorations come down, the New Year is over, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, it's still winter. And if you live in the North, like Mr. Scrimp and I do, it will still be winter for up to five more months. It's time to settle in for more cold, some breathtakingly beautiful weather, and a lot of dreariness.

So, once Christmas is over, why not get ready for January by freshening up your home with these touches? My favorite thing to do in January is to celebrate the new year by doing all I can to create a clean and fresh feeling at home. It's a good time to clean and organize things, and if you're going to be redecorating, I suggest using a lot of white, light blue, or yellow accents. Those colors just scream "clean and new" to me, and bring a little bit of winter inside without any of the grayness or chill.


1. Forced Paperwhites

These are a January-February staple for me. Delicate, sweet-smelling, and ridiculously easy to grow, you can find bulbs for cheap at most grocery, hardware, and Wal-Mart type stores, and plant them in any spare bowl, planter, or dish that you have lying around. This article at About.com has step-by-step instructions for how to do it.

(Photo from Holland Acres)

2. Window Covers

Rather than keeping blinds and heavy curtains up that block out the scant sunlight, why not take them down and instead cover your window glass with clear contact paper or light fabric applied with starch? These will allow light to come through while still preserving your privacy.

Clear contact paper can be purchased at most drug stores, Wal-Mart, and places of that ilk. It is removable without much hassle, and you can decorate it at will. Design*Sponge suggests drawing on it with a white paint pen, as in this photo.

If you live near an Ikea, you can also get frosted paper specifically designed to be applied to windows without adhesive, for $4.99.

3. Candles

The dollar store sells bags of small votive candles. While they generally come in nondescript tin holders, they pop right out and can go in any assortment into whatever clear glass holders you have if you don't like the tin. Group as many as you can fit onto a thrifted or on-hand silver tray or gilt-framed mirror and light them all at once.

This is great on a dining table, kitchen table, coffee table, bureau, desk, mantel, or, well, pretty much anywhere with enough room to safely display candles. The clean white and silver are lovely during the short days, and the extra, soft light will make the long nights a little more pleasant.

(Photo from Better Homes and Gardens)

4. Reconsider Christmas

Look at your Christmas decorations. Have you got any that could be tweaked and de-Christmasized a bit to hang around and be plain winter decorations? A green garland, a string of white lights, or an arrangement of silver glass balls in a clear jar or bowl don't necessarily need to be strictly for Christmas. When you take down your Christmas things, reserve one or two of the least explicitly Christmassy ones and try putting them in a new spot or adding a new element or two to increase their longevity. Best part? It's free!

5. Outerwear as Decor

You're wearing scarves, gloves, boots, and hats anyway. Rather than tossing them in a closet, why not make them into a design element? Install a row of Command hooks (or nails, or pegs, or anything that you can hang something on) in a hallway. Hang an assortment of brightly colored scarves (or bags, or hats, or mittens on strings) on the hooks.

You can change the items on the hooks out once a week for a fresh look, rearrange the colors, hang a mix of knit and cotton scarves to play with texture--the possibilities are pretty much endless and make use of things that you already own to bring some colors into your hallway or entrance room.

(Photo from Howstuffworks.com)

Celebrating Ingenuity

More than just about anything else craft-related in this world, I covet a dress form. I'm not kidding--I lie around and daydream about the far-off day when I have the $300 to spend on one. On that day, every sewing project I undertake will be different. I will be able to fit things--fit things, I tell you--that I am making for myself. I will be able to drape fabrics. The possibilities for what I will be able to do will be endless.

Sadly, it is going to be a long, long time before I have that kind of discretionary spending.

If you're like me, you've been nodding your head in sad acknowledgment as you read this. Well, nod sadly no more, my friends. Blogger MJ over at Making Do with the Not So New has come up with a solution. When she wanted a dress form in order to fit clothes for a squirmy toddler, she didn't throw up her hands and whimper about the cost. Oh no, she did something about it, and made a dress form out of duct tape and scrap fabric!

Now, if you're going to do this for yourself, you are going to need someone to help you, because it involves close wrapping of the body with duct tape. Happily, Mr. Scrimp is the type who will think this is hilarious and I shouldn't have too much trouble talking him into swathing me in duct tape from the neck down, especially if it means I no longer drag him into the sewing section at our local JoAnn Fabrics to sigh over dressmaker's dummies.

You can find the tutorial here. If you do it before I get it finished and posted about, please comment or email me and let me know. I'm intensely curious to know if this is really as easy as it looks.

Snips and Sniffles

I am indeed staying home sick today. The problem with staying home sick from work is that if you're sick enough to stay home, you don't really feel up to doing all the things around the house that you ought to do.

I'm trying to decide which projects I'm going to attempt today. I've got to sort through some clothes, and if I find any appropriate t-shirts, I might try to make this re-usable shopping bag from Cut Out & Keep, which is made from a t-shirt sewn into the shape of a plastic grocery bag.

(Found via a five-page list of t-shirt mods at HideYourArms. Go read all of them.)

Tonight's Project

I have a new craft project I'm going to be starting/documenting tonight, but in the meantime, if you're looking for something to do today or a gift to give, why not make one of these microwaveable heat packs from blogger Homebody Holly?

If I need a heat pack in a hurry (at least, back when I still had a microwave), it was easiest just to dump a few cups of rice into a pillowcase, tie the open end, and nuke it for a few minutes. The moisture in the grain (barley and wheat berries work well too) heats up quickly and stays warm for a long time--it's great. Anyway, I would never have spent money to buy myself a microwaveable heat pack when I could just throw one together as needed from household objects, but I would have been thrilled to get one as a gift so I didn't have to have rice-scented pillowcases.

Dollar Store Crafts

Good morning, Scrimpalicious readers! It's a balmy 43 degrees this morning in Ohio, and it's hard to believe that we're already in December.

I have a guest post up today at Dollar Store Crafts, which I'm sure you're all going to check out. While you're there, be sure to read the rest of Heather's great blog. It's full of ideas for crafts of all kinds on about as limited as a crafting budget can get.

And while I'm at it, hi to all the Dollar Store Crafts readers who check out Scrimpalicious today. Leave a comment and say hello!

Five Dollar Decor - Celebrating Nature

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating project?

Well, another week is gone, and it's time for the weekend. If you're like me and someone who loves you gave you a subscription to Martha Stewart Living at some point, you have seen the ridiculous amounts of greenery that litter her home(s). Well, I have plants in my house, but I can't afford two dozen houseplants to put in my Indoor Garden Corner Nook Thing, or whatever she calls it.

That being said, I am a huge nature lover, and I would love to theme a room around the things I find most beautiful in the natural world.

1. Framed Faux Foliage

Ok, I'll cop to getting a little carried away with the alliteration there. This idea comes from The Red Chair Blog via Dollar Store Crafts. Once again, you may need to dig around to find a frame that keeps this project under $5 for you--but then again, you may not. It depends on the scale you're going for.
 
I recommend tea-staining the paper you mount the foliage on in order to get the antiqued look that is so popular over at Design*Sponge. Or, you could borrow a page from their book and try more creative backgrounds--why not brown paper, from the back of a grocery bag, or leftover scrapbook paper, or wallpaper? The sky's the limit. If you live in an area where location and weather aren't conspiring against you, you can of course make the project even cheaper (but less instantly gratifying) by using real foliage.

Alternatively, you could splurge on some paint and antique the silk flowers, or paint them some color other than green, or use them as stencils. When you're done, hang them in groups, as in this photo from TheNest.com.

2. Laboratory Garden

Your $5 here is going to be spent at the dollar store or the thrift store, where a little digging will pretty easily find you five glass vases--narrow and cylindrical, or, if you can find them, the stranger and more bulbous shapes that are reminiscent of a steampunk mad scientist's lab.

Head outside--even if you live in the city, you should be able to pull this off. Right now it's November, and I live in the land of the Lake Effect, so greenery is getting sparse, but it would be just as lovely to fill these with tall, stripped branches or boughs of berries. In the winter, you could change it up and stick some evergreens in there or something. In the spring, early flowers and greenery could take over, and in the summer you could do anything that grows, of course.

Cluster the vases on a side table, or spread them out along a larger table or mantel.


3. Branch Hooks

I'm going to be getting together with my husband and seeing about putting together a photo tutorial for this, because we want some for our house. You can purchase these for about $40 a pop from Live Wire Farm, or you can make your own with some carefully chosen branches, a power drill, and a couple of screws. (via Haute Nature)

4. Stones

This article in Country Living, of all places, suggests filling two large glass jars--one with stones, and one with blown eggs. I'm not sure I would do the eggs, because country living isn't exactly the aesthetic I go for when it comes to decorating, but you can go pretty crazy with stones. Fill a jar with small rocks from your front yard. Take a day trip out to the country and dig up a giant flat stone to put on your coffee table. Make a centerpiece of river rocks (which you can buy by the bag at some dollar stores). It's quick, it's simple, and it's beautiful.

A google image search revealed some beautiful photos by people who have done something along these lines. I'm sharing my favorite, which came from EcoSalon.


5. Leaf Mobile

By and large, I associate mobiles with babies. You know, they hang over a crib. That's where they go.

Well, yeah, if they're made of felt and have clowns on them, they do.

I'm using the term "mobile" here loosely. I'm not suggesting you sit down and spend your weekend going crazy making something that spins around in the wind or anything like that. My aunt once made a much simpler version (and I wish I had a photo) by stringing fall leaves on fishing line and attaching each line individually to the ceiling with a thumbtack. The leaves were staggered so that as you walk into the room it looks as though, hovering above the table, someone had frozen autumn leaves in time as they were in the process of falling.

You could do it that way, over a dining room or coffee table. You could string them up against a wall as an art piece. You could get crazy and cover an entire wall with strings of leaves.



I know that a lot of these ideas might not be up your alley. It's really, really, really easy to overdo decor in this theme and end up with some sort of messy, cluttered, "rustic" look, and I hate that. So while I might not implement all five of these ideas in one room, I would happily scatter all five throughout my home.

Five Dollar Decor - Books

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating project?

 
My husband and I both majored in English, and have a soft spot in our hearts for books. Generally we're both pretty opposed to any sort of decorating that involves destroying a book, but these are so gorgeous that I decided to link to them anyway. Depending on the project, you could use a cheap copy of your favorite book (I've been able to find most of mine for less than $1.50 at Half.com), a dollar store romance novel, a comic book, or something else you have just lying around.

1. Wall Covering

We live in an apartment and can't paint or paper our walls, but you could cover an accent wall with individual pages of a book for a beautiful and unique look using nothing but sticky-tack.(Photo and inspiration from Frolic)

There are several ways to mix this idea up. Instead of covering an entire wall, you could just put up blocks of pages instead of framed artwork. If you have some ink and rubber stamps, you could stamp a page here and there. Or you could do a light watercolor or acrylic wash over some of the pages to scatter in some pops of color.

2. Floating Shelf

This one appeals to me, because as many books as I might use up for decorating, I will still have more left over and we never have enough shelf space. This creates a shelf out of a book, creating an illusion of floating books on your wall.

Design from Instructables 

3. Flying Book Art

The photo here comes from an in-store display at Anthropologie, and was taken by Casasugar. Here, covers were removed from old books, they were glued together, individual pages were folded down in a repeating design, and the books were hung by the ceiling by the holes in the centers.

You could do this, or, if you didn't want to remove the cover, you could simply fit the opened book over a length of rope or ribbon and fold or roll the pages to keep it open as it hangs. Great for an office, reading nook, or kid's bedroom.


4. Framed Books

Want some nice artwork for your walls, but too broke to purchase any and unwilling to actually destroy a whole book to make your own? Why not borrow an idea from Good Housekeeping and put your book in a shadow box? Craft stores regularly run huge sales on frames, and you can also check thrift stores for nice frames that you can salvage (usually the art is appalling; try to visualize the frame without that awful oil painting of the Easter Bunny). 

If you can't find a shadow box and book together within the $5 budget, and don't want to bump your spending up by a few dollars, you could imitate the aesthetic this project by simply attaching the book to the wall (although this will involve damaging it a little) and hanging an open frame around it.

5. Book Wreath

The fifth and last Five Dollar Decor idea for this week  is actually a wreath made of book pages, with photos and instructions by Living With Lindsay. I'm not actually a big wreath person myself, but if you are, I think you'll dig this one.

This could be made in multiple sizes, and even multiple shapes. If you already have a room decorated in a books-and-paper theme, this could be a great finishing touch.



And that's all for this week's Five Dollar Decor. Happy weekend!