e shelf

ok...so more than a little late...but, the extra effort put into making this just right paid off i think! this is a project that i've been wanting to do for months now. i know i should be working on my floor, but this wouldn't be the first time i've done what's fun instead of what's necessary!

chances are that eden won't find any mugs or cute little sparkly pens with her name on it...the least i could do is give her something personalized. the fact that this item will hold all of her new-found (and mounting) hair bobbles and ever growing supply of ointments, lotions, etc. is a bonus.

the shelf measures 16" x 24". i traced an 'e' onto a big sheet of 1/4" mdf using my projector and cut it out with a jigsaw. the actual shelf part is also made out of mdf. i'm going to hang this in eden's bedroom.

ok, now on to the floor...honestly!

a splash of colour

so, you may be saying to yourself... that just looks like some thread wound around a piece of wood.

yup, that's what it is.

this is the colourful 'art' i created to brighten up a dark corner of my hallway. i wanted stripes of bright colour for this space... but, i didn't want to have to go out and buy dozens of individual paint bottles and a custom piece of stretched canvas (i'm pretty cheap!). so, i dug in my drawer and found handfuls of coloured embroidery thread. i took a scrap piece of wood that i painted white and started winding. 1" for each colour. but, any pattern of stripes would do.

kuler is a great site to visit if you are looking to create a colour pallet of your own.

sue's very fun lightbox

most of my project time this past week has gone in to painting our spare bedroom, which is getting a much-needed reno. i love painting in theory and those first couple of brush strokes are gratifying...but then, by about the 10th stroke, it quickly becomes a chore (then gets handed over to the husband, who ends up doing most of the work!).

so, as exciting as a newly painted (and very empty) room can be i'm instead showing you sue rose's very cool lightbox. sue gave me this lightbox years ago and it continues to be one of my favourite pieces in the house.

it's just so clever in its simplicity. sue made a wooden frame, covered the front and sides with canvas, filled the inside of the box with twinkle lights (the ones with different settings) and created a velcro canvas cover for the back so you can change the setting on the lights or switch them out. a wire picture frame hanger is secured to the back for hanging. it's beautiful when all lit up at night.

thank you to sue for letting me share! you continually amaze me with your talent (seriously, there is nothing this amazing women can't do!).

a shelf and a jumper

i know now that i use some of my projects as an excuse to sit myself in front of the tv for hours on end! i'm a total tv junkie and this latest project gave me an excuse to get hooked on dexter !


i'm hhmming and haaing about this shelf. not totally convinced now that it's up and running (it's a little borg starship), but i'll give it a chance.

the shelf hangs from either side of the mirror and opens up to reveal storage using a piano hinge.


the surfacing was made using prepackaged wood squares .




MY LITTLE JOLLY JUMPER

hanging in a door jam just wasn't going to cut it for my little dare devil. so, i took eden's jolly jumper out of the door and jimmied up a little contraption to hook it up to a beam in our living room. now she has all the space she needs to bounce, swing and twirl. you should see her go!

make-shift dresser

before my daughter was born we used her room as our home office. i'd built a crazy big desk for our computer, complete with all sorts of open storage. well, the computer had to come out to make room for eden and the desk was honestly too huge to go anywhere else in our little house...so, i turned it into a dresser.


first i removed the actual desk part of the unit and then i built little storage bins out of 1/4 MDF that slide in and out of the shelves.

the painted design was the fun part. i knew i wanted circles and a designed that flowed from one box to the other....so, i first tied all of the boxes together, then i traced out different sized circles on them using things like cd's and drinking glasses as my template. then i got out my paint and painted a thick ring around each traced out circle. i placed colour coded sticker labels in a circle over each painted ring, painted the whole thing white and then peeled off the stickers. looks kind of neat, i think!


WEEKLY POSTING

i've scaled myself back to weekly posting. i've discovered that i have an affinity for making crazy time-consuming things...either that or i'm pretty pokey! either way i'll try to stick to publishing a new post every monday, unless i have something to say or show before then.

enia storage variation

i've been working on an impossible shelf design for just over a week now. i know what i want it to look like and do, but i just can't get it right. i hacked straight through two prototypes and three sheets of mdf! i think i may have it now...we'll see. so, because i have nothing new to show you this week i'm going to cheat and show you something old.


these little boxes are a variation of my enia boxes. they hold my odds and ends...including one stuffed full of Canadian Tire money! (i'm waiting for all my 5 cent bills to add up!). truth be told i originally built them to house my bizzarely large nail polish collection. i'm still not quite sure why i have so many bottles of nail polish...

whirly shelf

this is a little storage shelf i dreamed up after noticing the rims on a car one day. i was thinking about how they spun and thought it would be fun to make a shelf that spun too.

the 'cover' spins from the blue square to reveal three little secret shelves. the whole whirly shelf only measures 16'' x 16'', so the little shelves inside are tiny....perfect for hiding jewelry and little nic-nacs.

built for my friend tammy, but named after my friend shawna shirley.

(don't worry tammy, i'm thinking up something to name you after!)

crystal box

i woke up to dancing rainbows this morning...
the sun was beating in my hallway window throwing its light through my crystals. the whole hallway was lit up and rainbows were sneaking in to the bedrooms. i love sunny mornings!

this 'window treatment' was one of the first things i built for the house when we moved in. i found the idea in one of my style at home magazines way back when.


the box was made with pine. i drilled little holes through the top to weave my invisible thread through and then hung my crystals (from ikea) from the thread. i used two little cup hooks to hang it from inside my window. fun and easy!

on-cue key holder

i am forever losing track of my keys, bank card, lipstick, basically anything that isn't attached to my person. so, it was really important for my sanity to have a designated place to dump all of my stuff when i come in the door. i wanted something really casual. my original idea was to have something that i could just chuck my stuff at and it would stick. this design doesn't quite do it, you have to wedge things in, but i still think it's fun. this catch-all holder is a pine box with four bright green broom heads screwed to the insides. i do think that if the broom heads were a little more ridgid that i would get my stick-to-it effect. i'll have to try it out some day!

named after my friend jason (louie) cullen...on-cue because it was supposed to 'catch' things on-cue!


THANK YOU TO LESLIE AT A ROOM SOMEWHERE

i'm feeling a little 'awh, shucks' about the write-up leslie over at a room somewhere posted on akacarolyn. seriously, leslie...so nice. thanks!

myng vase slipcover

one day when i looked around my home i noticed that i seemed to be collecting little rectangular glass vases, i had at least half a dozen (no idea why). just the cheapy walmart kind to hold flowers, candy, loose change, etc. i decided to spruce them up a bit and put together the myng vase slipcover (named after my friend amy long).

this one is made out of 1/4 poplar. i used a couple of different drill bit sizes to add the circles and glued it all together. super easy.

i'm thinking of a couple of fun ones as well...maybe some funky painted mdf ones. what do you think?



THANK YOU TO DESIRE TO INSPIRE

thanks to jo and kim over at desire to inspire for featuring akacarolyn on their blog over the weekend. their site is a must see! so gorgeous...take a look.

joyeau* towel holder

this is a fun little project that was born out of my laziness...why fold a towel neatly when you can stuff it in a star? these little towel holders are named after my friend jo-lynne breau.

(*for all the bilingual folks out there i only miss the 'x' because jo-lynne doesn't spell her name with an 'x'...but, she's still a star to me! cough cough).

the phanoli bookshelf

i love to read and have a ton of paperback novels laying around my home. to house a few of them i built the phanoli bookshelf (named after my cousin, stephanie olive, who reads even more than i do). it can get a little tricky when your stack of books reaches the top, but it's still fun. i'm thinking of building another one in a blond wood. i owe stephanie one of her own...!

enia boxes

i built these storage boxes in the spring of 2006. they were my first real design. not only are they great for hiding all sorts of clutter, but they were also featured in an exhibit put on by the Industrial Designers of Edmonton Association's called THAW in 2006.

named after my daughter eden nia.