If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know I bought my first house in December last year and have been adding making it my home ever since (you can read my house-buying journey here and my previous homeware haul here). I’ve had a box full of frames and odd bits in my living room since I moved in in February, alalways saying ‘Yeah, I’ll sort that out this weekend’, and surprise surprise, it’s taken me til AUGUST to do it.. well some of it. I popped into my local town centre yesterday to get myself a few supplies for my DIY day to give myself some more motivation to actually do it.
So first up is this super cute weekly planner blackboard from B&M. I’m pretty sure it was only £2.99, and it comes with chalk to write on it. For me, this is an absolute bargain and it goes with my grey/white colour scheme – perfect! I can’t decide if i’m gunna use it for meal planning or as a kind of diary kind of thing, but i’m happy to leave it fresh and clean next to my front door until i decide!
Next up, if you’ve read my home/ interior posts, you might remember that i’ve got a frame gallery in my living room. I’d been struggling to find things to go in a few of the frames so had just been using random wallpaper samples until i found something. I called in at Wilko to get a paintbrush for the DIY project coming up and wandered down the wallpaper isle to have a nosey. I’ve decided that I want to add a bit more colour into my living room so am on the look at for some funky (did I actually just say funky? Yes… yes i did) cushions but can’t find any that would fit in with the room, so I thought adding some more colour into the frame gallery would be a short term solution. I found this incredibly cute bird/ leaf/ glittery wallpaper and grabbed myself a sample. DIY/ HOMEWARE TIP* Wallpaper samples are actually a really good way of adding a bit of FREE ‘art’ into your space.
and here’s how they look in situ… I think they do brighten it up a bit?
Another one of the things in that dreaded homeware box were these 2 copper frames from Matalan. I got them months and months and months ago. I got them probably before I even bought my house, I just had to have them! I think they were £6 each, and obviously haven’t had any use up until now… I used another of of my wallpaper samples from Wilko, this time, more of an ethnic vibe to go with my Moroccan styled bedroom.
And fiiiinally.. my little DIY/crafty homeware project of the day. I bought these crafty letters from Hobbycraft when I first moved in, put them in their place and just left them there. I’d planned to paint them in this metallic copper paint, but just never got round to it. I’ve had a week off from work, and thought it would be the perfect time to do it. I thought i’d go through the process as part of this post, in case anyone else wants to save themselves a load of money (it’s actually really expensive to buy anything like this) and do it yourself!
I bought a little tester pot of white paint from Wilko for £1 as a base, just to make sure the metallic paint went on more smoothly and came out as a bolder colour.
It actually only took a few minutes to dry, i thought it would take ages, so did all my other bits while i waited. I made sure the base was even and everywhere was covered and then went in with the first layer of metallic copper paint.
I had to do 3 coats of the metallic copper paint, it went on a lot thinner than I thought it would, but there was plenty in the tube so it was all okay! And here is the final result! I’m really happy with it, like i said before, i’d looked around to just buy these on Etsy and other crafty places and it was working out £10 a letter, and this was done for maybe £5 for the whole thing, so well worth it in my eyes!
Also… can we just talk about this light up Z in the corner?! I got it from Primark for £3… It was the only letter on sale, so clearly they’re not as popular! I am totally not complaining, it was exactly what I was looking for and saved me a fiver! I’m also still looking for 2 5×7″ prints to go in the 2 frames on the top shelf, but nowhere seems to do them this small, so if anyone knows of any, pleeeease let me know!
