From Ghetto to Glitter: DIY Towel Box

Have you ever lived in a rental or small house with absolutely no space? I have... a few times over, in fact.

The worst part of living in a non-permanent space is the lack of storage space! Also, it is a total bummer that you cannot do any semi-permanent decorating in a rental home or apartment :(

 I began noticing this during my second year of college, when I worked and attended school full time (all through loans which is totally biting me in the ass right now). During this time I moved from trash pit to trash pit and picked up a few ways to beautify my ghetto belongings and use them to resolve my storage issues! Right now, my amazing fiance is working hard and paying most of our bills, but we don't live any sort of Jones' lifestyle (I think it's because Seattle LOVES being pricey!), so I resort to my low-cash-day training when attempting to decorate and arrange our tiny rental house. Below I have laid out the steps I took to decorate my "towel box."

This is the box I have been using as a towel box since I moved to Seattle....9 months ago... whoops!! As you can tell, I cut off the top flaps and attempted to tape the raw edges with Scotch brand duct tape... um, didn't work... I will definitely spend the extra few dollars to get the original duck tape brand.

I AM SO SORRY I DIDN'T SWEEP BEFORE TALKING PHOTOS! My house is always hairy since 4 out of 5 residents are covered in hair ( he he Ben is hairy). The two rolls of wrapping paper were purchased at my nearby Marshalls for $3.99 each!!! The second I saw them I grabbed them since I have never seen wrapping paper with glitter on it before. Anyways, I ended up only using half of one roll so in total cost this project used up $2.00 worth of new supplies.

Here is my towel box wrapped!! HOW PRETTY!!!!! As you can tell, I cannot wrap very well.... I ended up having to use an extra piece to cover the open gap my wrapping job left... Overall, It was really easy and fun to wrap a gift to myself... sort of ;)

Next, I decided my towel box needed a liner to keep the hair from getting in my box... this made sense when I was making this, ok? Ha ha! It definitely looks prettier with a liner, so at least there is that!

I made sure to cut 3 strips of my LEFT OVER POLYESTER lining fabric that would cover all sides of the box, and then an extra strip for the bottom. Then I hot glued the lining in place. PS- This takes A LOT of glue so be sure to grab a stick or two just in case.

Here is my box with it's hot glued Polyester lining! GORGEOUS! Much better than having Paula Deen's face look at me every time I grabbed a towel!

Sorry for the ONE off photo, but I turned my phone when taking this one...
VOILA! My finished  and pretty towel  holder!

I am so luck that this towel box/holder fits right outside of our bathroom door! I know it's kinda weird to have your towels on the floor, but if you don't have space then create it! I love the colors of the wrapping paper and the bronze/silver glitter polka dots. I am definitely happy with the result! 

So there you go! If you ever need a storage box do not overlook those moving boxes you've saved. They may be the difference between a cheap DIY alternative and a $15 towel rack.

A friend, me, and JoAnn makes three!

This past weekend I went on a shopping trip for fabric! I have been teetering back and forth on wedding dress designs and decided that I need to quit being so indecisive.

At first I wanted a completely unique dress in an olive color very much like this one:

Next, I saw this Dolce and Gabanna masterpiece and decided to have olive lace like this one:

Then, all of my olive dreams were destroyed when I saw this gorgeous grey Vera Wang dress:

So what have I finally decided on? This pattern:

JoAnn has the soft polka-dot lace I've been searching for! So now, I'm thinking of making an olive dress with ivory polka-dot lace on top... Should I do it? Should I just eat the money I spent on the fabrics? 

Let me know what you think, and let me know if you think it will work with this pattern.

I love the boat neck, the sheer chest, and the tulle skirt!! I am in love with this dress and I believe it will make an extra special wedding dress!

I ordered 5 yards of the super adorable ivory polka dot lace! It is currently 50% off, woo hoo, and I used a free shipping coupon for orders over $35!  A JoAnn photo of my new favorite fabric (an actual home photo will be added as soon as this treasure arrives):

Here is a photo of me and my green fabric that I will use for the bodice and very bottom layer of the skirt:

I definitely need to tan in order to wear this color! I used a different ivory tulle/mesh net to cover the green since that's how (hopefully) it will look when I make the dress! 

Thoughts? Am I crazy for wanting to sew my own dress (being a novice at sewing and all)? 

OH more news!! I have decided that I will be making my sister's dress (she is the maid of honor and thus deserves a spectacular one-of-a-kind dress)! She seems pretty excited about that so that boosts my ego up!

Hope you all have had an amazing week! The first day of Spring is tomorrow!

 I am working very hard at cleaning my house for this upcoming season. I am loving this Pacific northwest weather and cannot wait until the beautiful emerald summer reappears! :)

As dead as O-Ren

OK, so this has nothing to do with Kill Bill, but I just recently watched the two films and fell in love with that line...

This post is actually about my DIY Save the Dates!

My fiance is a very laid back guy that really has no qualms giving me full control of wedding plans... which drives me nuts! Before anyone gets a bad impression, my love is such a great man and I know I am very lucky but that still does not mean that I don't want to punch his face in a few days a year :)

Back to the Save the Dates:

I love the postcard invitations that have been trending for a while now. My Pinterest board is stocked high with all of the wedding postcards that inspired me to make my own. The only difference between the Pinterest postcards and mine is $$$! I've checked out zazzle.com and vistaprint.com but both sites turned out to be quite pricey, and the sites didn't allow me to edit the images (which for a person without Photoshop is very important). Instead of shelling out $1.75-2.00/card I decided to buy the AVERY brand Matte White Postacards (item #8387) and print them myself! Initially my little sister (creative, photoshop owning type) was supposed to make them, but she is so busy working hard and having a life (I can't blame her for having fun, can I?) that I resorted to using Microsoft Power Point and the Avery Design Pro program. It didn't turn out half-bad! I had to do a couple of trial prints and fiddle around with background transparency, but they turned out nice enough for a card that just announces our wedding date.

Here are some photos that may help you create your own special Save the Dates:

I'd love to make this up-right but it wouldn't go along with the others. So please cock your head to the left when looking.

This is the final edit for the back of our Save the Dates! It may seem too light on the computer but the words POP better when the background image is at a transparency of 62%. The photo below is of one the first I printed. The background image was at a transparency of  54% and looked "fine." Unfortunately the green grass interrupted the green in the font.

Side-by-side comparison of the two backs of our Save the Date postcards.

The front of our postcards show off my very amazing engagement ring! I am proud to say that it was custom made and my fiance planned it all himself. I am so lucky to have a man that knows what I want. Please ignore our messy desk!

This is my planner. I thought it was hilarious that I wrote "Print STD Cards." Let's just say that abbreviating Save the Dates is a BAD idea! AAAAND now you know I paid rent on Friday! ha ha.

As you have probably noticed, the cards all have weird borders with many different sizes.... It's ok, I freaked out for a whole hot minute too! I then remembered that I work at an elementary school and I can just chop off those borders with that giant blade on a wooden tray... what are those things called? Oh well, I'm going to use it and come back to add photos of my finished products.

As I write this I am assuming that everyone knows how to design things on Power Point, and maybe I am being a bit ignorant in thinking this, but if you need help at all please feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to type a step-by-step instruction on how to create custom sized slides and save them individually as JPEGs. 

How much did this DIY save the Rhudy Wedding?

Well, we are having a "destination" wedding of sorts. All of our family members and friends live in Kansas, Texas, California, or Venezuela so we completely understand that this isn't an easy wedding to attend. In lieu of expecting many guests we are still inviting all of the people that we wish could be there to share our special moment. I don't know about them but I LOVE memorabilia, so I keep all the cards and photos I get in the mail. I believe that receiving our Save the Dates will help people know that we love them and hold them special in our hearts. 

Now, to answer the questions, we are printing 120 Save the Dates. If we were to print them online through a custom card website we would spend in the ballpark of $210 JUST on Save the Dates... nothing else. Seriously? People would spend that much on a card that just tells you the wedding date?! Ridiculous! The Avery packet of postcards cost us $15 online and our Amazon Prime account got it shipped to us for free. Also, our ink is free since the printer is used for my fiance's work 98% of the time. I can understand that printing at home can be very expensive when buying your own ink, but if you think about it two new packets of ink (assuming one is black and the other multicolor) will cost you approximately $75. So in total you would spend $90 on printing your Save the Dates at home. That is more than half off the price of printing online! Plus, this allows you to be unique and creative with your design. 

I hope that this post helps any budget brides (as I like to refer to us) or any DIY brides out there!

besos,

VEM

Late Winter DIY Skirt

So.... my first skirt sewn AND worn! YAY!

Here are some photos of my uneven masterpiece:

Wore my new skirt while showing Seattle to a fellow Texan!

Whoosh! Action shot.

Polexia makes an appearance here! I love her!

This photo and the photo below are of my entire outfit.
The reason I wore grey tights is because my little flats
have grey in the plaid pattern! I felt very matchy-matchy
... except for my faded military style jacket. That didn't match at all.

I say it's uneven but according to my friend (who is male) and my fiance (another male) it was "fine".... UGH! I want it to be PERFECT! They will never understand what it is like to have the female brain (lucky them).

ANYWAYS:
I followed the Simplicity brand "Learn to sew" series, pattern #2286-B, and it was supposed to have pockets... Well, plaid isn't the best choice for making a skirt with pockets, or maybe it's just fine but I was too needy wanting all of the lines to match up. I made the pockets and stitched them on and then decided I hated them. I am going to try this skirt again with different fabric and see if I will keep the pockets!
It only took 2-3 hours to make and the instructions were phenomenal! I really enjoyed using Learn to Sew and it gave a nice little bite sized taste into the world of pattern sewing.

Miscellaneous information:
Fabric= $2/yard clearance flannel from Walmart nearly 2 years ago
Pattern= $1 during Joanns yearly Simplicity 5 for $5 pattern sales (I don't think I would have bought it for
              the $10 it costs online)
Using this pattern I learned how to insert an elastic, gather fabric, and sew a straight hem (well, it's not THAT straight)

I give this pattern a 4.5/5 for novice sewers like myself!