A Campaign for Hacked Ikea Dressers

I have another dresser to introduce to you.

And NOW, an obligatory assault to the eyes:

Ikea laminate furniture in its full glory. 

Complete with a grad student apartment context and what appears to be a small pharmacy crammed onto the surface. Aaah, please make it stop!!

The sheer magnitude of improvement almost disturbs me.

I became aware of campaign furniture from....Pinterest. The look subtly masculine, yet chic. Campaign furniture was originally made for travel, specifically army travel. The UK Army and Navy manufactured a lot of this furniture in the late 19th to early 20th century, as reported by Wikipedia.  Now I, too, have my own little piece of history, and it houses a little birch Ikea dresser beneath its satiny grey exterior. 

Here's a brief list of items I procured from trusty Home Depot to make my vision come to life:

Brass corners ($2.50/pk x 4 pks = $10): to be completely honest, I'm not even sure what is the original intention of this product. 

They can't possibly be made for the sole purpose of creating campaign-inspired furniture?

Behr satin finish paint "Creek Bend" ($13): this color is the It color right now for interior decorating. It's so hot, I'm afraid it will evaporate and I'll be left with a birch dresser again. Worst. Nightmare. Ever.

Oh, please also refer to my last dresser adventure wherein I laud the merits of Zinsser Oil-Based Primer. This product gave me the support and confidence I needed to see this silly project through to the end. I would like to thank it for my Lifetime Dresser Painting Achievement Award.

Cup pulls ($4 x 4 = $16): At first I was angry that this cup pull did not come in brass at the store. Online there were so many finish choices (copper, brass, nickel, polished nickel), my head was spinning (or was that the paint fumes?). But I wanted so badly for my dresser vision to come to fruition that I just Went For It. I think it was a good move. The mixed metal look adds some interest.

After one coat of primer (applied with a roller, then smoothed over with a foam brush), I applied two coats of Creek Bend (grey paint). I painted the whole thing with a foam brush---it created a much smoother texture than my last dresser which I painted with the roller.  The roller left all sorts of ridiculous fuzzies onto the paint.  A detailed discussion of fuzzies is probably not good for my sanity.

Poor Mike drilled all the holes for the brackets and pulls. At least he didn't have to do them by hand!

I think it looks like a treasure chest! Ahoy matey, what bounty lurks beneath! (Actually nothing right now, as we need to pack for our move in less than 2 weeks!!!)

I may be MIA again for a while, as I have to move to another city, go on vacation to NOLA, transform into a pulmonary & critical care medicine fellow, and then take my medicine boards.

*explode*

Dressy Dresser

Hey look! It's a new dresser....wait a minute that looks familiar.....

I caught the furniture makeover bug baaadly after spending too many hours on Pinterest.  My poor Ikea Malm dresser did not stand a chance. 

Here are my ingredients:

Paintable wallpaper ($15): applied to the front of drawers.

I cut strips to fit, then soaked them in the bathtub.

As I carried them from room to room, wallpaper paste dripped everywhere.

Oil-based primer ($8): miraculous product unanimously recommended by furniture DIY bloggers.

It allows one to paint over laminate furniture without sanding or pre-treating in anyway, which is perfect for apartment dwellers like me who lack tools and workspace.

Behr paint (color = Pot of Cream) ($13): dries within 2 hrs and ready for a second coat!

Unfortunately, I did not splurge on paint conditioner so brush strokes and fibers of the roller were quite apparent. Oh well!

Brass cabinet pulls ($1.69 x 10 = $16.90): adds a baroque zing.

I contemplated crystal knobs for their swanky feminine look, but they were $4 a pop! Oh well!

It was NOT easy to measure them out, drill TWO holes per pull, AND screw them in. 

Luckily I had the help of....

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drumroll

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Husband with drill (priceless + $39): Mike got something out of this adventure, too: an electric drill! 

Whoopeeeee!  He is sporting his favorite J.Crew shirt and new Levi's.

Oooh, and here the dresser is adorned by my newest acquisition ;)

Now, I still have a roll of textured wallpaper, 1/2 a can of primer for my next victim project, and most of the glossy white paint. Husband and drill also still available for commission (I hope).

Chairdresser...Part One

Recently, I lamented that my yellow vintage furniture was dangerously straddling the line between vintage and disintegrating. See how the seat was punctured and sadly repaired with tape? This is how my poor chair dragged on for the last 10 years or so. How embarrassing!

I went on an amazing adventure all around town to gather the items necessary to rectify this important problem. After a whirlwind tour of an upholstery shop, I brought home some new yellow vinyl (it was in the discount room for $8! Ha! They probably thought they wouldn't be able to sell it.) and some other fun-pattered fabrics. I also bought a staple gun at Home Depot. Be afraid...be very afraid. (That was addressed to all of the chairs in my home.)

Behold, the crime scene:

Before and after (actually, after and before):

The new chair sits higher than the old one because I even got new rubber stoppers for its legs and now it is standing tall and proud, and slightly bouncy, too. The chair on the right is still in reasonable condition, but I probably will reupholster it, too, so that they match. Sadly, it is impossible to find the exact vinyl that is used for these chairs.  There are maybe just 2 companies on the internet selling this "cracked ice" vinyl and they charge $35/yd!!!! Holy moles that is expensive vintage vinyl! I think $8 plain yellow vinyl will suffice, thank you ma'am. I now have enough yellow vinyl to cover at least 8 more chairs. Anyone interested? Maybe you will be after looking at one last chair picture.

Convinced? I thought so.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Fern Friends

Mike and I went on a walk in the park/woods yesterday.  

I saw some fern dotting the woodsy landscape and was 'naturally' inspired to carve a fern stamp!

Fern are graceful and refreshing. Bright and lush!

Of course, I then proceeded to make a series of thank you cards out of these. One day, I may start a business out of these crazy thank you cards. For now, I call this the Fern Period.

In case anyone is wondering, the recipients of these cards are the folks who interviewed me for a fellowship training position in pulmonary/critical care medicine.

I can't help but make them different from one another--there are a million ways to create a design using just one stamp and a pallete of ferny colors.  I felt pretty good about myself when I came up with the idea to make ghostly gold ferns with a bold fern on top! I get attached to these cards for their uniqueness and happy-accidental good results... and I just want to hoard them.

Look at the pretty sheen from the gold stamp ink and the slubby texture of the paper, such is joy.

I hope the people who receive them experience the ferny feeling that I got when creating them!

But juuuust to be sure, I slapped this stamp on the back ;)

And a big thank you to you, if you are out there reading about my fern friends!

Wedding Invitation Suite, Part Dos

My guests loved the invitations! Or perhaps they were polite. That said, the encouragement gave me that extra push to start a few more projects: programs, thank you notes, take over the world.

Bridal shower thank you cards

This is our program.  I am still feeling kind of self-conscious about it because I think it needs a bow or a rhinestone or something. Rhinestones have rescued a few of my failed projects. I wish I could be a sheet of rhinestones.  As you can see, I drew a picture of Mike and me.  I then scanned it into the computer where I had the free reign to alter its color and add some more frills to my dress on photoshop.  In the end, I think I could have added the frills by hand with the same amount of effort. But at least no ink was wasted!  I (somewhat brilliantly) figured out a way to print the drawing onto my purple paper (which is starting to become kind of annoying as it just won't run out) with my printer. But then I had to wait a full 24 hours for them to dry.  Then I decided I wanted to illustrate the rest of the bridal party.  While this was amusing for like 2 days, I am starting to think that I'm a little weird...

My little stamps and beloved carver.

Here is a little preview of the thank you cards. I decided to make them all different.
I love Sigmund the Pigmund and Platelet the Penguin wearing bowties. Maybe you can't tell but I put *~*RHINESTONES *~* on their bowties. 

And to think , it all started out with my humble linoleum "printing shop" in our little apartment in Pittsburgh....

Hope you enjoyed that sampling of my wedding-related art projects.

Wedding Invitation Suite, Part Uno

I wanted to do a post on my invitations for a long time.  I held onto them for over 2 years (insane much, anyone?), making little adjustments/improvements every few weeks, lovingly putting them in different orders (alphabetical, family ranking, how much I liked the person), laying them out on my couch, bed, and floor, then storing them in their basket. These were the last few days that the invitations spent in my clutches:

Right: Patrick the Ostrich approvingly gazes upon the invitations.
They are laying on bed to dry (and be photographed) after I calligraphed the addresses.
Left: As you can see they are in their box, ready to be hand stamped and then released into the wanton custody of the mailmen and women who folded them and ran them through some machine that squished them. Grumble.

Early phase, back when we still lived in Pittsburgh.  I was toying with the idea of making belly bands out of scraps.

I arrived at the final design of my invitation after perusing literally hundreds of other invitations online and carefully examining the wedding invitations I had received from my friends.


Ingredients:
-Pocket fold made out of cardstock (Aspire Petallics 98 lb cover, www.thepapermillstore.com)
*The purple color I used for my invitations are currently not available, so you will be linked to pink instead*
-Announcement (printer paper, yes very classy)
-Information card on a different cardstock (Via Felt 80 lb cover, www.thepapermillstore.com)
-Map card on same cardstock as Info card
-RSVP card on same cardstock as Info and Map cards
-Large outer envelope (Aspire Petallics 80 lb text, www.thepapermillstore.com)
-Small return envelope for RSVPs (same as outer envelope)

Since I purchased the paper in bulk, I still have a LOT of paper left for random other projects but I am running out of ideas fast. I purchased a carton of 750 sheets of 6" x 33" shiny purple paper since it was the smallest unit available and it was only $20 something back then.  I probably used 50 sheets for the envelopes and now....the world is my paper oyster.

Left top:  all the different components laid out
Left bottom: the international invitations get placed into a different outer outer envelope for extra protection across the border
Right top: assembled invitation suite and outer envelope
Right bottom: closed invitation

On the next episode, I will discuss more about the design and erasers as stamps and other salient topics.  Stay tuned!

My DIY Save the Dates

We sent out the save the dates recently! (3 weeks ago) Wow, now we really need to have this wedding. I was so nervous to send them out, thinking that they will all get lost, or worse, dumped into a creek. Luckily, our US Postal Service colleagues came through, and at least 5 people have received their save the dates, I know because I harassed them about it. I loved each and every one of them so much that I took pictures of them so that they'll always live on in pixel form on our majestic world wide web:

Behold some close ups.  I wish I could close up each card since they are all different but here are a few:



Who is Sivan, you ask?
This is Mike's middle name/Hebrew name.

Completing this little project was pretty rewarding. The highlight occurred when the postal worker lady gave us stamps in denominations of $.05, $.04, and $.20 so that we had to put no less than 3 stamps on each save the date to add up to the $.29 required to send them.   

All in a day's work!

An Update

Here are some latest versions. I am experimenting with placement of the text.  I have a few qualms but they are minor.  Such as faintness of the "pittsburgh, pa" stamp.  I realized after looking at a few other save the dates that I should include our names and our location. Otherwise people would not know who the weird bird cards are arriving from!

Now I have to figure out what goes on the other side :)

Here are some reflections on the process.  I carved this design last year because it is 'somehow' involved in the invitations as well (secret.).  I liked it so much I decided to use it again.  Besides, it will provide thematic continuity.  Actually I put a lot of thought into the meaning of the design too but that is a story for another post.  

I use a speedball linoleum carver both for my eraser stamps and for linoleum.  I use erasers because I found a whole bunch of them really cheap at a miscellaneous chinese store, but otherwise there are specific stamp blocks that can be used (pictured left). 

Then I mix up the ink on a plate of plexiglass (from Home Depot) with my trusty squeegee. This is my favorite part because you never really know what color you'll get.  I am not particular about getting the shade right; I usually like to be surprised and mix colors based on how I feel at the moment.  The second batch of these that I printed had some lovely pink and mint shades.

When inking the linoleum, the trick is to thin out the ink until the consistency is right.  The first few prints are always too inky for me.  The last few prints are underinked.  I'm sure master printmakers have this all sorted out, but I'm happy with I can get doing these by hand.  When I was in high school we had this amazing printing press and made huge prints.  Nowadays I am content with my little card-sized prints.

green bird friend

many bird friends

a sneak peak

One phrase to explain it all--4th year of medical school.
This is another bridezilla moment except that it has been surprisingly long-sustained so I am probably a permanent bridezilla, or rather, just neurotic. It all started with me deciding to make all of the wedding stationery myself.  Let's just say that it was too late to turn back when I spent $50 on 750 sheets of really long 33" x 6" shiny purple paper.  The shiny purple paper and I certainly had some adventures last spring but it is too early to unveil those right now.  I will share a more recent adventure: TODAY'S ADVENTURE!!

Left: multitudes of linoleum printed birdies
Right: carved eraser stamps, trusty corner punch