Crafty Lil' Peach

So being the poor married college student that I am (and also having the desire to have a pretty house), I have been finding cute decorations that I like and making my own version of them so it doesn't cost nearly as much money. Plus it has my own personal flair.
I got lucky and found an amazing sale at Michael's for paint (0.29 a pop) and the rest of my materials have been things I found or already owned (For the most part).
I am also lucky that I have a handy man of a husband who likes to collect random pieces of wood. Plus my aunt has a very large wood pile in her back yard for fire wood so again...I got lucky.

The basement of my aunt's apartment (where we are living) is mostly furnished (with more furniture than really necessary) so there isn't a whole lot I can do to the living room...So I started with the half bathroom.

The walls are already a tan color and it has very pretty wood and tile that reminded me of the outdoors so I went with an outdoorsy theme with a little bit of my own colorful flair.


Here is the counter top:

I Painted this picture. It's modeled after one I saw online.

This is the original one below. 

I found the pine cones in the back yard and I already had the vases. It took forever to paint the pine cones because I didn't have enough paint to dip them so I did them all by hand with a paint brush. Luckily because they are all on top of each other in vases they didn't have to be perfect so only one coat was necessary.

I found the mason jar at DI (Utah's version of Goodwill) and the pump came from an old lotion bottle. I found the tutorial on how to make it here: http://theblissfullycontentlife.blogspot.com/2010/08/homemade-christmas-canning-jar-soap.html. Check it out. It is really easy. I don't especially love how this turned out. The lid was gold which would have clashed with the silver of the pump and I didn't have silver paint (although now that I'm thinking about it I suppose I could have mixed some silver paint.) so I painted it white. But maybe I'll repaint it. We'll see.

I made this project significantly more difficult because I don't have a glue gun. If I had a glue gun it would have been a lot easier. I picked some sticks from outside in varying thicknesses and broke them all to varying heights , the shortest of which would still cover the glass of the candle. Since I didn't have a glue gun I would put 5 or so sticks on at a time (or however many I could hold on) and then tie some hemp around it.Once I was finished with all the sticks I wound the hemp around pretty thick to complete the look I was going for. Honestly if you're going to try this...use a hot glue gun.

This is over the toilet (Obv.)

Here is a close up. If you can't tell, those blue splotches are leaf outlines. This really didn't turn out as well as I had imagined.

First of all it's painted on cardboard...cardboard doesn't look great up close when it's painted. Secondly I was trying to tape the leaves down to paint them but they wouldn't stay so I ended up just holding them down with my hand. That was hard because they wouldn't lie flat and so the imprint isn't great. Shortly after I finished this I found a site that shows you how to make leaves into stamps...little to late there buddy. So maybe I'll remake this with DIY leaf stamps instead of...this. (Here's that website http://buildmakecraftbake.com/2009/04/how-to-hammered-flower-and-leaf-prints.htm). 

Now like I said before, I have no money. So instead of buying an awesome frame for this I pulled the frame off of a full length mirror I had and then cut it to the right size. Once again not having a hot glue gun I glued it with Elmer's. Surprisingly this worked pretty well. It just took a lot of trial and error to get to that point.

Last but not least, this is hanging on the back of the door.

Yes, those are sticks wrapped together with hemp to make a heart. No, it was not especially easy. But regardless, I really like how this turned out. It just took trial and error and a lot of little stick pieces to make it look like this but it has a fun rustic feel that I'm happy with.

Well that's the whole bathroom. I'm done decorating it for the time being but who knows when I'll find something else that would fit perfectly. The next project I'm working on is decorating the Hollywood themed guest bathroom. Ha. I know you're excited to see how that turns out...I sure am.