Month: August 2014

Mood boards make me happy (a craft studio update)

Hey Y’all!  Hope your weekend was great – mine was wonderfully family-filled and I am sad to see it go.

I thought I’d start the week off by sharing my mood board for the craft studio.  After a floor plan, this is my next major step in planning out a space.  It may seem a little silly, or even tedious, but it is a really easy way to make sure that your colors and key pieces are heading in the direction you want.  Sometimes I will shoot pictures of the walls and do a full Photoshop rendering (I did with the master bedroom – to be featured at a later date), but that is not always necessary.  Especially if the room you are doing happens to be a disaster zone and shooting pictures of blank walls is pretty much a pipe dream.

I think of mood boards as an ultra-focused pinterest board – a place where you put all your ideas together so you can look at them as a whole and make sure they all work together.  In fact, if you don’t want to muck around with photoshop, you can do just that – make a pinterest board just for your room, and pin away!  The only catch is that it helps to be very selective in your pins if you take this approach.  For example, if you were doing a bedroom, only pin one bed.  Make sure that bed is one you a) love and b) can actually find (or at least get close) and put in the space.  Pinning 8 beds doesn’t really help – it is better to pin one bed, one dresser, one wall color, etc. so you can see the room at a glance as close to its final form as possible.

That being said, I generally stick to Photoshop, because it is familiar to me and because I can make the background my wall color and/or rug.  Doing this really helps me make sure every accessory and piece of furniture works with those two anchoring factors, which helps assure me that the final product will be harmonious.

For the craft studio, I decided to go with a neutral light gray-blue on the walls.  Specifically, Valspar’s “Seashore Fog.”  I originally planned to paint the walls a deep navy, but have since moved that idea to the master bedroom.  Frankly, this makes more sense since the master is ginormous and the craft studio is the size of a shoebox.  Additionally, I am a big enough girl to admit that I chickened out – what can I say, I was nervous about defying the old rule of small space = light walls.  Sometimes (usually) taking a risk is worth it, but I think the light walls will really make the room feel bigger, and I will just use the navy in smaller doses.  I am still toying with doing a navy accent wall or ceiling…you’ll just have to wait for the reveal to see what I choose!

I also chose to go neutral for the rug in the studio – gray and ivory.  One, because it was on sale (and y’all know the Doctor and I love saving money), and two, because this way I can change the accent colors in the room without being bound by the flooring color.  I tend to get bored with things after a year or so, so rather than fight that I try to make sure the foundation (ie, bigger or more expensive pieces) of the room are something I know will work with a variety of colors and design styles.  The Doctor doesn’t mind me changing up the pillows or picture frames in a space every once in awhile, but if I tried to replace all the rugs and furniture in our house on an annual basis he might not be so happy!

Other things to consider placing on the board are major pieces of furniture (the dresser and the desk in this case), as well as a few accents to represent the entirety of you planned color scheme.  Note that I said “a few” – it is super rare that I will put everything that is ultimately going in the room on the mood board.  It is just too visually confusing!  Imagine if your favorite restaurant put all the ingredients and recipes under every item on the menu – it would be too much to slog through.  In my experience, the mood board works best as a tool if you limit it to major, key pieces of information.  Of course, you don’t have to be as narrow-minded focused as me –  anything that evokes the feel you are going for is a candidate to be added.  I know some bloggers who add song lyrics or fashion spreads to their home decor mood boards – it’s all up to you and what will help you envision the space.  I am pretty literal and focused when it comes to mine, so I tend to stick to the actual things going in the room.

In this space I knew I wanted navy and gray with gold elements and one additional color for “pop.”  I considered yellow, green, aqua, and red, but ultimately settled on pink.  I love the preppy, feminine feel that navy, gold, and pink create when used together, and the reality is the Doctor would be less than thrilled if I tried to put pink as a major player in the main parts of the house.  Since this is my office, and the spousal veto exception applies, I decided to dive headfirst into preppy, girly, and glam.  Of course, I will be sure to throw in some warm wood as well to keep it in balance with the rest of the house, and I will try to avoid glitter overload.

So here it is…

mood board

…my mood board for the craft studio – feel free to let me know what you think by commenting below!

 

 

Till next time,

Sarah

 

A public service announcement

So the other night I was talking about this little blog with my husband, and he indicated that he would prefer to be known as “the doctor” rather than the somewhat less impressive “mister.”  I told him I was happy to do so provided he would let me design an emoji/avatar featuring him peeking out from behind the Tardis that I can use on the blog. #yesiamserious #itshallbedone  (Also, for all those who know what I am talking about, bonus points for you!)

So this is just a little heads up to tell y’all that the doctor and the mister are indeed one and the same amazing man I married 🙂

Craft Studio floor plan

One of the very first things I do when I decide to tackle a room redo is a floor plan.  It’s not nearly as fun as, say, shopping for accessories, but it is a foundation for the whole room and thus a necessary evil.  Now this isn’t always a formal thing – sometimes I can just stand in a room and mentally place the furniture (that was what I did with my living room and it worked out fine).  Some spaces need a more in-depth approach though, especially if they are overly large (master bedroom) or small (craft studio).  This room in particular presented a challenge because:

1) there is an awkward jut out for the closet that makes the entrance feel cramped even with nothing in the room
2) there are two huge windows (yay!) on two very small walls (boo!) that I really wanted to leave as unblocked as possible.
3) I have alot of craft/art stuff, so I need to squeeze lots of storage and work space into a very small room.

Now when I say small, I am not kidding – the room is nine feet long and ranges from ten feet at its widest point to just under seven at its narrowest.  It’s smaller than my walk-in closet!  Couple that with the door and window placement, and it’s a challenge to say the least.

My first step was to sketch everything out to scale on my computer – there are a bunch of ways to do this online, but I used my old standby, Adobe Illustrator.  I just happen to be really comfortable with that particular software (yay for graphic design backgrounds), but it doesn’t matter what method you use.  Even pen and paper is fine (that’s what I used to take down the measurements) – the important part is to get it into a form you can play with. Here is my illustrator plan, sans furniture:

floorplan base

Next up was to create furniture blocks to represent any large items (furniture, shelves, rugs, etc. ) that are going in the space.  Remember that you don’t have to get the overhead silhouette perfect.  Plain old squares are fine, as long as the square represents the maximum dimensions of the piece.  In my case this was especially important since I was using furniture that I already had (read more about my $100 budget here), so I couldn’t feasibly buy smaller scale furniture specifically for the room. If you are using paper, just cut your furniture blocks out of another piece of paper so you can literally move them around.  If you are going the digital route, just create a new layer for your furniture. In the craft studio, I had two desk options, a chair, and a shelf unit that I knew were staying.

After that, it’s all about moving things around and filling in the holes with new pieces if necessary.  Have fun and play around with placements you might otherwise not do.  Because it’s digital (or paper), there is no heavy lifting involved, so it makes sense to figure out the best layout, even if you have to move things around a bunch of times.

Here are some of the plans I came up with – the pieces I own are in blue, and the new additions are in yellow.  You will see I also kept a running total to the bottom of what I would need to buy so I could see at a glance where each plan would put me in my budget.  I also added some notes at the bottom for my reference so I could remember what I was thinking – my ‘lil pea brain only has so much room!

1
option 1
2
option 2
3
option 3
4
option 4

After looking them over, hemming and hawing, and sleeping on it, I am down to options 2 or 3.  As much as I love the idea of having one long, glorious expanse of counterspace at my disposal (option 4), it would involve alot more buying, which would eat into my budget for cute accessories (for shame!).  Plus, options 2 and three give me both room to leave an easel out and a standing desk for my computer – something I have been wanting to do for awhile to get away from being so sedentary.

Stay tuned for a post on the colors/mood board for the craft studio later this week, as well as a closer look at the light fixture I talked about here.

Till next time,

Sarah

A corner to dream…

Have I mentioned that I am lucky?  Like – WHOA kinda lucky y’all.  Despite all the tough stuff that life throws my way, I have a roof over my head, a family that loves me, an AMAZING mister – it’s a pretty sweet deal.

And under that roof is a tiny little room (emphasis on tiny) that is all mine – my very own corner to dream in.  When we moved into the house, the mister and I decided that we would each get a room of our own – one that we could use however we wanted, and decorate to our own tastes – no spousal vetoes allowed.  Unsurprisingly, the mister converted his into a gym (soon to be decorated as a shrine tribute to his favorite college sports team).  I decided to make mine a craft room/art studio.  So I loaded all my crafty stuff in there, and there it sat – for a YEAR.  To be honest, I just didn’t feel inspired in the space.  It just felt small…and cramped…and, well, boring.

*As a sidenote, I also don’t feel inspired in the mister’s room, but hey, it’s a GYM, so that’s to be expected, lol.

So, I decided to change that.  I am overhauling that space, and it is gonna be beautiful, inspiring, and girly-as-all-get-out.  Think pink…and gold…and glitter.  It should go without saying that I am totally rocking that “no spousal vetoes” thing. There is, however, a catch.  Money.  #guessishouldnixtheliveinunicorn #no24ktgolddeskforme

My budget for this entire room is – are you ready – $100 bucks.  For everything.  New furniture, paint, accessories – it’s all fine as long as the total doesn’t top the century mark.  Gulp.

So the theme of this room will be re-purpose, re-use, re-cycle, and re-think.  Which is fine by me, because it’s a challenge – and I love me a good challenge.  Plus, it’s sure to yield a bunch of DIY projects for you guys.  Win-win, right?

I have been working on floor plans, as well as a mood board and a DIY light fixture which I am pretty darn excited about.  I can’t wait to share (so here’s a sneak peek of said light fixture in-progress because I am a child and have zero willpower, lol)

DCF 1.0

Till next time,

Sarah

P.S. – That’s the thoroughly boring (and messy!) craft room in the background – you can see the need for an intervention, lol!