I’ve got a lot of nervous energy this morning. It’s quite a big day for me. I am currently on a bus to the Big Apple to be in the “tech section” of the audience for The Martha Show. I’ll be live tweeting and blogging this afternoon, reporting all of the fun things that will be airing on the show. I’ve long-loved Martha, so it’s such a thrill to be picked to do this. I’ll let you know when the episode goes live, but if you want to follow along today, be sure to follow me on Twitter!

Additionally, my newest project Umba Box (edit: link fixed) launched this morning! Umba Box is a unique monthly subscription service that finds the best of the best in the handmade world and sends it to subscribers each month. As popular handmade sites continue to grow (not naming names, but rhymes with Betsy!), I’ve had to spend increasingly more and more time searching for products that wow-ed me. Umba Box does the scouring for you. All you have to do it subscribe for $26/month, and wait for your handmade goodies to arrive in your mailbox each month.

The Hubs and I were at Ikea last week picking up some organizational items. It feels like I’ve bought so many, but somehow I still feel disorganized. While wandering, I saw a few cute succulents that I wanted to add a little life to our living room. I got it home and was bored with the plain pot,s so I decided to spruce it up a bit. I had some recycled sari rope (the shop appears to be currently sold out) that was just screaming to be used in a DIY. So I busted out the hot glue gun and got to work. Here’s how it turned out:

That’s it for now! Happy Monday, loves!

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to the Design*Sponge at Home book signing & craft session at the Georgetown Anthropologie last weekend. Seeing one of my fave blogs turn to a book format + a morning of crafts + my fave store, Anthro? Could this combination get any better?

Grace Bonney used an excerpt from her new book to show us how to make wax seals out of wooden dowels. I’ve always loved the elegance of wax seals, but never found a need for them (our wedding invitations weren’t that formal). What a perfect project!

It’s fairly simple and only requires a few specialty items (fine-tip wood burning tool being the most exotic, and some of you might have those in your possession already). If you want to learn how to make these, turn to page 213 of her book. This book is seriously worth the price, and is FULL of awesome inspiration, projects, and DIY how-to basics. I’m so excited to continue to comb through it while curled up on the couch with a cup of tea.

Here are some pics of Grace and the attendees at the event. I’m not going to lie, I took advantage of the opportunity of taking pics around Anthro without looking like “that girl.” Thanks to Grace and the Design*Sponge team for a wonderful morning!

a fab photo backdrop courtesy of ritzy bee events

It seems like tank top dresses are quite the trend this summer. Figuring it was easy enough to make myself, I picked up a couple yards of fabric, grabbed one of my old tanks from my closet and went to work. I’m loving the kelley green + navy combo. So fresh.

Because I love ya so much, I whipped up this tutorial so that you can make your own. The steps are included in each picture, but the basic outline is as follows:

• Gather materials
• Cut out skirt and sew both vertical seams
• Create an elastic waistband
• Sew top half of tank to skirt
• Hem skirt to desired length
• (Optional) make sash for waist

Let’s get started!  For your skirt, you will need to cut 2 pieces of fabric that are exactly the same size. For a really full skirt like mine, each piece should be the same width as your natural waist measurement. So if you have a 30 inch natural waist, each piece will be 30 inches wide. If you don’t want quite as full of a skirt, you can do 75% of your waist measurement. So if you have a 30 inch natural waist, each piece should be 22.5 inches wide. The length is completely up to you. I gave myself a lot of extra length so that I could try it on and hem it at the very end.

You now have a tube skirt that is huge. Each seam should be sewn together, and the top and bottom are open. Now let’s make the waist band.

Now that there’s waistband, we’re going to open it up so that we can put our elastic in. The length of your elastic should be one inch less than your natural waist measurement. You want it to be a tad snug on your waist.

Since this seam opening is on the inside, I didn’t bother to stich it shut. If you want to stich it shut, this would be the time to do it. Now we’re going to attach the tank to the skirt that we’ve made.

Your dress is basically done! Now we just have to hem it. Try it on and see where you want it to fall. Pin it in one place and carefully take the dress off. Using your pin as a guide, evenly pin the rest of the dress up on the underneath side.

You’re done if you want to be! I made a sash, but you don’t have to it at all.

What do you think, friends? Looks pretty easy right? Send me pics if you make one yourself! I’d appreciate if you’d Pin a picture from this post to Pinterest if you love it!

PS- In case you missed it, Stamp 48 is now open to sponsors! Click here for more info!

xo,

Lauren

For our wedding, we knew that we wanted to have a dessert buffet with mini goodies so that our guests could try a sampling of deliciousness. We had a huge assortment of treats ranging from chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate mousse cups, apple pie pops, mini raspberry cheesecake, and mocha truffles. My goodness, I’m drooling just thinking about it. How embarrassing. We also had a small two-tiered strawberry buttercream cake with an adorable cake topper from Ready Go, which I fell in love with from the second I found her Etsy shop. Cute right? The Groom bears such a striking resemblance to my Hubs (I think it’s the beard!).

But I knew that all of our fabulous goodies would need just-as-fabulous display trays. Not finding anything that I loved for sale, I went about making my own. I did some antique shopping with Sarah in Hagerstown, MD this spring on the hunt for various items for the wedding. We hit the jackpot with a stuffed-to-the-gills warehouse that had so much stuff, most of it wasn’t accessible as there was just no pathway to reach it–other stuff was in the way!

I managed to find a great assortment of vintage china plates, platters, teacups, and sherbet dishes to make handmade cake stands and dessert platters for a garden-style dessert buffet that sat under a big oak tree in the yard we were married.

Making the cake stands is super simple. Pick out your plate/platter and a base. The bases can be anything from teacups, to candle sticks, to sherbet dishes, to milk-glass juice glasses. The sky is the limit. After making sure all of the dishes are clean, mix up a little epoxy, apply it to either the base or the underside of the plate (but don’t apply to both, it will make the epoxy less effective), stick together, apply pressure for a minute, and let dry. Presto! Super cute dessert plates that are personalized to fit your theme.

Guess what! All of these cake plates are for sale in my newly resurrected Etsy shop. Please do take a look and pick one up for yourself! Also, I’d love it if you would add my shop to your favorite shops, because I plan on keeping it stocked with all of the DIY projects I blog about.

[all photos by Stamp 48, except the first + last photo, which was taken by our wedding photographer, Red Shoes Photography]

Earlier this year, I had my eye on a scarf from We Are Owls. It was cashmere, hand-painted, and gorgeous. But also more than I was willing to shell out for a scarf. But it was still swoon-worthy.

source: we are owls

Because I’m trapped in way-hotter-than-I-would-like weather in steamy Washington DC, I wanted to focus on cooler times: nights when the slight chill in the air calls for a scarf messily thrown around your neck, but still allows you to look polished. So I decided to make a We Are Owls inspired scarf. It’s really simple, given you have the right tools. I didn’t experiment with many supplies, but I was really happy with Tee Juice fabric markers I used on my first try. Here’s what you need to make a Poem Script Scarf:

I told you it was simple, right? Grab a Tee Juice marker (I used the black broad tip version, found on Amazon) and a scarf in the color of your choosing and let your creativity flow.

I chose some phrases out of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 47. The Hubs recited this sonnet to me last autumn right before he left for a week for business meetings on the west coast. I picked the lines: “For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move/And I am still with them and they with thee/Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight.” Here’s how mine turned out:

A Few Tips

• Make sure you lay something underneath the scarf/pashmina. Because of the loose weave of the fabric, the Tee Juice marker will seep through. Try not to move the scarf on your surface once you’ve started writing, otherwise the ink will smear.
• Practice a few words on a scrap piece of fabric of a similar weave. I didn’t do this, so my first words are slightly different from the rest of the poem. That’s okay, it just adds character. Try different amounts of pressure on the fabric and how much you squeeze the tube. Both produce different results.
• Let it dry well, then iron using a cloth over it for several minutes to make the ink permanent.

Do you remember this tutorial?

Here’s how they turned out for our wedding. I just love them. It was so special to incorporate my grandma’s hankies into our wedding.

Happy Monday! More posts coming soon!

[photo by Red Shoes Photography]

Oh friends, today was filled with such inspiration and goodness at the DIY Business Association Brooklyn Conference. I hopped on a bus to attend my first business conference as a freelancer and meet some industry friends offline. It gave me just the dose of motivation that I’ve been needing, and I was able to meet some rad designers, entrepreneurs, crafters, and generally awesome people. I took home some key points helpful for any creative business that I’ll be sharing with you in the coming days- you betcha’!

While I work on brain dumping into blog posts, I wanted to share a few fun DIYs that I’ve been meaning to try lately. Do you have the toughest time keeping papers stuck to your fridge with your current magnets? Ours are all promo magnets from take out eateries or friends’ wedding save the dates. While it’s lovely to gaze upon our friends’ smiling faces, the magnets are generally worthless to hold anything thicker than a Kleenex. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a desire to stick tissues on the fridge lately.

I’m thinking about tackling these fun projects that would allow me to use extra-super-humongo-heavy-duty-magnets with these. Then my papers will stay up. Right…?

My grandma and mom recently lent me their stock of vintage hankies from my great-grandmother and great-great grandmother to be used in our wedding next month. They both had such a stock- it was crazy! What I found really amazing was that any time a letter was sent to a friend, it was customary to include one of these hankies. Can you imagine if that was still done today with emails? Our inboxes would runneth-over with these pretty little keepsakes.

I have a couple of ideas of how I’m going to use these in our wedding, but I wanted to share one with you that you could use, regardless of if you’re getting married: hanging Mason jars wrapped with vintage hankies- a lovely addition to your patio or home.

[just a selection from the stash that I was loaned]

[get all your supplies together!]

This is simple to put together, but step by step directions are below:

1. Pick a hankie to use. Seriously, this is the hardest part.
2. Fold your hankie in half, then fold down the hemmed edge about an inch or so, depending on the size of your Mason jar. You just want the height of your hankie to be just less than the height of your jar.
3. Wrap the hankie ’round.
4. Secure with a pretty little bow.
5. Now the fun part: making the hanger. I found this amazing bark-wrapped wire here. It took about 3 weeks to arrive, which is longer than my Amazon-Prime-Spoiled-Self would have liked, but I’ll deal. Estimate the amount of wire you need based on the circumference of the mouth of your jar, plus how far you want it to hang down. Then add a few inches just to be safe.
6. Cut the wire. I included this because I didn’t have any wire trimmers on hand. I just twisted the piece in the spot where I wanted it cut for about 30 seconds, then it popped off. It’s not the most professional method, and as you can see it made a bit of a mess, but it got the job done.
7. Starting with one end of the wire, wrap around the jar, just under the lip of the mouth and twist and tuck to secure one side. Create your loop that will be your hanger, and bring the other end under the circle of wire that’s under the mouth of your jar. Did I make that way too confusing? I might have. Let me know.
8. Twist the wire of your final side and make sure that it’s secure. Trim off any excess wire.

Now just fill with either a tea light (careful that it doesn’t get too hot and burn the bark wire, if you go that route), or fill with pretty flowers and hang for all to admire. I’m not telling which one I’m doing

As an added bonus, check out what I did with several paper doilies that I glued in a row, then wrapped around a mason jar and secured with twine. Cutie? Would make a great candle holder or vase.

… coming up on Monday! But here’s just a little bit to whet your appetite.

Happy weekend, lovelies!

[photo by Stamp 48]

As the mercury remains at the bottom of the thermometer, we spend more time inside in our homes. Even though cozy-ing up with a bowl of soup and streaming Netflix is one of my favorite things, all of the indoor-time can make my space feel cramped and mundane. Here are 4 tips of how to spruce up your space without spending your hard-earned cash.

1. Rearrange and declutter

As simple as it sounds, this can make a HUGE difference for me. Try changing up a seating arrangement to get a different feel in the room. It’s a quick change that has a huge impact. Not feeling that bold? Try changing a few lamps and picture frames around.

Decluttering also does the trick for me. Sort through your stack of mail, recycle or store old magazines, and return pens to their rightful location (how are those ALWAYS on every flat surface in my place??). An organized space always makes me feel refreshed.

2. Use items in uncommon ways

Try looking at everyday objects beyond their common use. Just because an object was created for a specific purpose does not mean that it must be confined to that purpose for the rest of its useful life. A few months ago, I found a small 3-foot wooden ladder at a rummage sale that was perfect to store magazines next to my wing back.

I love the idea of taking these vintage tennis rackets (I’m a huge fan of the sport), taking out the strings, and using it to frame a couple mirrors. I’ve always wanted to use vintage tennis rackets, but they always seemed so “1980′s rec-room basement”. This adds a fun twist to the idea.

via apartment therapy

3. Give a piece of furniture a fresh coat of paint. It takes a little bit of elbow grease and sweat-equity, but the results are well worth it. $5 for some sandpaper + $20 for some playful paint and you have yourself a new focal point in a room.

4. Add some vertical interest

My favorite way to do this of late is to add some garland draped over a curtain rod or a large mirror. It’s a quick way to personalize your space with fun colors. I bought a large 2″ circle punch and went to town on scrap card stock. I then fed them through my trusty Singer and voila!: quick garland.

via purl bee

Technorati Tags: DIY, home decor, garland, decluttering, declutter, paint furniture, organize, uncommon uses, vintage tennis rackets, interior design, bright colors