Getting Beachy with It - AKA The Saga of Circus to Coastal

I have been happily moving along on the transformation of Mini's room from Circus to Coastal.  I wanted to make as many of the elements in the room as possible so today I would like to share a few of those projects with you.

After the room was painted I discovered the paint color I had chosen wasn't the easiest color to match, especially since I had this picture in my mind of what I wanted.  One of the things I had pictured was white bedding with shams, a bedskirt and accents in a worn canvas chair/beachy feeling fabric and it had to be striped.  It seemed like I had seen the a million times but everytime I found something it didn't quite match and wasn't the exact fabric I had in mind.  My mother (aka The Nana), Mini and our spare, Bri went shopping recently and of course we did our time at JoAnn.  Don't you just love that place?  I have the hardest time staying on task when shopping there!

I had looked here previously, as well as Hobby Lobby and every website possible to find fabric but on this shopping day I scored big!  Aisle 1 - on sale was this fabric.

It was exactly what I had in mind!  Don't you love it when that happens?  I rushed home and The Nana and I set about turning el perfect fabric into these shams.

They are lending just the right feel to the room.   I also picked up some burlap on this shopping spree.  I have been seeing so much of it out in blogland and just love it.  I really felt it would give some natural feel to my room transformation.  I had wanted several words cut out of wood and painted in the room, 2 of which were to be Drift and Dream.  I mean when I'm at the beach that is just what I want to do..drift on my float of the waves and dream about never going home!   Since my attempts to cut these out had ended badly I wanted to add these words to my pillows.  Hmmm...how to do that.

Before I go any further with this project you need to know this.  I can sew but I really don't like it because, well, because it involves math and following rules.  You know that whole measuring thing with those little lines between a 1/4 of an inch?  Do we need those?  Then there is the whole sewing in straight lines thing...there are those rules again.

The Nana on the other had has sewn for years.  Clothing, drapes, upholstery, my wedding gown!  So you can imagine what it is like to learn from a pro...she learned back in the day and will turn a jacket in a store inside out to inspect the seams.  There is absolutely no hope that I will ever sew as well as she does but I do make an attempt from time to time.  In the interest of full disclosure I generally like to have her onsite when I make these attempts.  A lot of the time she ends up taking over the project because I never sew to suit her don't care like I should!  I was so tickled to complete the shams above by myself.  Okay, The Nana was here and did help with the cutting since I cannot cut straight but I did the sewing and the ironing (ironing and seam trimming is uber important to The Nana).  Coming off this big win I decided to take on the burlap pillows unsupervised. 

Before figuring out how to add my words to the fabric I needed to get all the pieces cut.
The cutting was a bit challenging due to the loose weave of burlap but hey with all that give I figured I could make it work.  I may have figured wrong...err none of the pieces seemed to match up.

Not being deterred by the non matching sizes I moved on to adding the words.  First I printed off my text, this took a bit as I needed text that could be turned into a stencil.  Then using a tip from a fellow blogger I taped my text to a sheet of wax paper, wax side down.  Using an exact-0 knife I cut out the stencil then ironed the wax paper onto the burlap.  Wow...how easy was that?  I will be using this idea again and again.

After letting them dry I went to work turning them into pillows.  Easy enough right?  Well for most people yes easy, but I can make a mess of anything.  After I made several attempts that included sewing the worded side on the inside and leaving the stuffing opening on top, I took a break.

It was The Nana's birthday so I prepared dinner and Mini made cupcakes from scratch and we celebrated Nana's big day.  Okay, the truth is when she arrived dinner wasn't quite ready and I showed her my "pillows."  "Oh, those are really cute!" she said.  So I confessed all my mistakes (cause by lack of attention to detail).  She felt sorry for me and helped me remake the problem areas and close them up.  Thanks Mom!  Then we enjoyed our dinner and birthday cupcakes and then plopped these cuties onto the bed to check them out. 



Mom and Mini

 They are just right...can't wait to show you the whole effect when I reveal more of the transformation.