The Created Home: Playroom

Showing posts with label Playroom. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Lampshade Makeover

What do an iron and a lampshade have in common? One very wonderful makeover project!

I bought this lampshade on clearance at Target with the purpose of giving it a makeover. Though it is cute, it is just not quite cute with the decor of my home so it needed a change. Using my iron, I set it on full steam and steamed around the shade. The steam and heat loosen and lift the glue making it possible to separate the fabric from the pieces needing to be reused.

Here is the first part of the metal frame. In this particular shade there is a bottom frame as well rather than being all in one piece.

Now that the shade is separated from the frame, it is time to separate the fabric from the shade.

Using the steam once again iron over your fabric. Begin to lift the fabric from the shade.

Once you have separated the two, you now have a shade ready to be recovered. Lay out your shade face down on top of your fabric to use as a pattern. Cut around your shade leaving enough (but not too much) fabric to be wrapped around the edges of the frame.

Then with spray adhesive or fabric glue brush on the glue on the wrong side or your fabric. Once your fabric is in place, use your hot glue gun to glue the top part of your frame in place. Once that is done it is now time to glue your bottom frame. After your frame is in place you will need to glue the edges of your frame. Go around the frame with your hot glue gun and wrap the fabric around the frame.

Now time to "fun" it up with fringe! Don't let that glue gun cool because you will need it yet again to give your new lamp shade some sassy style. Remember the adorable play kitchen remodel? This stylish lamp coordinates with the bottom part of the ruffle. Oh the ear piercing squeals my girls let out, yes they love their new set up as much as I do.

P.S. The lamp base was a garage sale find that used to be green. It got a fresh coat of black paint along with a new "hat" and I have to say this very inexpensive makeover turned out swell.

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Monday, August 27, 2012

Play Kitchen Remodel

When my oldest daughter was two she received a wooden play kitchen for Christmas from her grandparents. She was so little she could barely see over the top of the kitchen. Eight years and four more kids later this wooden play kitchen is sill played with and well loved. So well loved that the paint on the burners was chipped and needed refreshing. Why stop there I thought? Why not do a kitchen remodel? That is exactly what I did and boy am I glad I took the time. The adorable factor was kicked way up! It is amazing what a little paint and fabric can do. Now many more fantastic "meals" can be created by my five darling little chefs!

For the knobs I added scrapbook stickers and then sprayed them with Mod Podge sealer.

I simply hot glued the ruffle onto the kitchen door. I also used my nifty hot glue gun to add the embellishments. I just love an upgraded kitchen don't you? Simply adorable and perfectly simple to do.

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Friday, August 12, 2011

A Messy Situation

Warning this post is not suitable for perfect homemakers with perfect kids. The images you are about to see may be disturbing to most moms.

Welcome to our unfinished basement. Our basement that has been once, twice... now three times organized and has taken on different purposes (see post here). Our basement that used to be a home to some of our friends (see post here ) as they were saving money for an apartment. With them lived two cats... cats that later I discovered I am BIG time allergic to. Leaving me unable to venture down into my basement the whole nine months of my pregnancy for possibility of a horrible Asthma attack. After our friends moved out I decided to turn the basement into a playroom. Brilliant idea... except all this happened days after finding out I was expecting and then realizing I could not go down there. So as I said, I had not been down there in a long while but, obviously someone was going down into the basement... because this is NOT how I left it.
I put my mom detective skills to use and I found those responsible for this messy situation.

Their sentence... two days of clean up and a lecture first from mom and then from dad. They said they were really sorry for what they had done. Even the part when they ripped apart a Styrofoam cooler into tiny, tiny little pieces. You can see evidence of that in photo one and two.

I love plastic bis! I have toys sorted by kind or by what is fun to pair together in play. I came up with this system many years ago and it works really well. It helps a child play with a toy the way intended as well as keep them from getting overwhelmed by so many toys all at once. Also trading out the bins is like Christmas all over again. I used Word and printed out labels using different fonts. I then used packing tape to attach the labels I made with printer paper. The tape completely covers the paper keeping it protected.

I now store the bins behind a gate to remind the kids of our house rule. One toy out at a time. To get a new bin of toys everything must be cleaned up first.