Pinterest Challenge: Bubble Wrap Mash Up Part 1

I am terrible at waiting for a big reveal. I'm a girl that eats my dessert FIRST. So guess what!? Here's what I made for this week's Pinterest Challenge! Click here to see a bigger/prettier version.


"Quilty People"

 Ok, deep breathe, let me tell you about the inspiration now. We've been looking for a piece of artwork to put in our dining room for at least a year. We are two full-time desk job + grad school students, don't judge. Thank goodness four lady bloggers challenged me to take something I had pinned and make it a reality. Instant motivation!

Source: intellokids.blogspot.com

It all started when I saw this bubble wrap painting pinned by one of the lovely Pinterest Challenge... uh... thrower-downers Sherry from Young House Love. 

I must admit to you, internet, that I am not a bubble-wrap-painting-novice. I, much like the preschoolers on the blog this originally came from, think bubble wrap is an excellent way to create a funky, textural pattern. About a year and a half ago in the midst of the worst snowstorm ever, I made this painting, "Snowpacalypse." Get it?

ANYWAYS, in order to take my inspiration and bubble-wrap painting skills up a notch, I decided to do a mash-up with THIS pin I found last week. 

Source: ffffound.com

Beautiful colors, geometric perfection. The idea to do a mash up was ALSO inspired by another Pinterest Challenge... thrower.... downer, Emily Henderson (OMG OMG OMG). If you are familiar with her show, Secrets From a Stylist, you will know that she takes two people's styles and mashes them up in a glorious new style.

So since this blog post is officially too long (sorry, I'm just feeling so chatty), I'm just going to have to break it up. Stay tuned for part two where I show you how I turned some bubble wrap into a piece of art. Then maybe there will be a part three where I show you my other preschool-paintbrush-substitute: Q-Tips!

What do you think? Will you be trying out the bubble wrap art anytime soon? 

Response 2: Paper Pushing and a Project

As previously admitted, I've been increasingly enamored with wedding design blogs, so my classmate Gina and I have been sharing our favorites since her blog falls right into this category. In her latest post, she shared some fun invitations/save-the-date designs all of which I love.

There's just something about fun notecards and stationary that really make me wish I wrote more than a handful of thank you cards in a year. Below are the note cards I used for Christmas and birthday thank you notes this year. Both were picked up from the Michael's dollar bin while I was there probably buying a whole bunch of stuff I miiiiight need.

In addition to note cards, I also love paper products in general. I am super envious of so many designers who create patterns for cards, wallpaper, fabric, you name it. One of my recent favorites has been Jessica Swift. I can't even remember how I stumbled across her blog a few weeks ago but I was instantly in love with her fun designs and products. So when she posted an amazing deal to get a pack of scraps of her beautiful paper I jumped all over it envisioning the many decoupage projects I was about to embark on.

Materials ready!

So here's the first of many (so many scraps left yaaay). I transformed a Mead composition notebook into something infinitely more stylish with some Mod Podge glue and a roll of contact paper. I picked out some coordinated scraps and glued them to the notebook, then covered the whole thing with contact paper. The whole thing took about 20 minutes. Here's the result!


Front

Back

I haven't decided yet what to write in said notebook (a chronic problem for me... buying beautiful notebooks with no intention of writing in them) but I love how it turned out!

Week Ten: Everybody Loves Crafts

"Crafting, or 'making things,' has always been a delightful pastime of mine because it requires putting common elements together in order to achieve a lovely something that nobody needs." - Amy Sedaris, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People.

So our Border's bookstore is going out of business and everything is 50-70 percent off. Perfect excuse to buy a useless/hilarious book. Amy Sedaris is like a snarky Martha Stewart. Her book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People is useless AND hilarious. For example, one featured craft is a Kitty Tea Cozy. Instructions: "self explanatory." I plan to put this on my bookshelf right next to my Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.

In addition to releasing the book, Amy also created several funny "how to" videos demonstrating some of the crafts in the book. Here's one:



In case you have any doubt how funny Amy Sedaris is. Here's a clip from NPR's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," where Amy plays the game "Not My Job." (class note: I hope this counts as a "type" of content...) Her brother, David Sedaris is a regular on This American Life, another favorite show on public radio. I highly recommend both Amy and David's books if you are looking for an afternoon of snarkiness, but only if you think you need to learn to stretch before and after crafting.