Hopeful makeover – living room

I’ve been sick for the past week, and in an attempt to find the silver lining, all this time moping has given me time to mess around on Photoshop, yay!
I’ve wanted to revamp our living room for a while, and to get the ball rolling I did this little mock-up of the focal wall in our living room I want to tackle. At the moment it’s a massive blackboard wall, which is cool and all, but our apartment doesn’t get much light, and I’m really feeling it drag the room down. Considering I love dark colours, I think the addition of depressing Irish weather is encouraging me to brighten it up. So I tried my hand at an ‘after’ image of what I’d like it to look like, and I’m quite pleased with the result!

This is what I came up with, and I’m pretty stoked. A fresher look that’s a little brighter, more uplifting, a little more grown up, but still has the same major elements, and some existing items we already own – 

I kept a smidgen of the blackboard wall, offset from the white shelf, and coloured the rest of the wall to what we already have – Swan’s a Swimming. I’ve had a knot in my knickers to invest in an orchid, but that mother is going to need to be faux since I {unintentionally} murder every plant that enters my care. Spruced up with a Stockholm Rand rug, an unattainable Gun Lamp {a girl can dream}, some crates to balance the scales, and one musn’t forget a hydrangea. 
There are two elements I can’t change in our living room – the white IKEA shelf and TV stand. We’re tenants, and we don’t own these items. Yes, I paint a small amount of our apartment, but I would never have a problem re-painting before we leave. Another item that will remain but haven’t included in the second image is our massive regolit lamp, which is needed, but would stuff up the image. I’m pretty excited about getting started, and can’t wait to give our living room a little revamp! Happy Saturday, everyone 🙂

May the 4th be with you

As is tradition with ‘Wars enthusiasts around the world on this day each year, May the 4th unites and gives a good enough excuse for all levels of Star Wars aficionados to celebrate all that happened in a galaxy far, far away.

It is my beloved fiance who is the Star Wars fan in our household, but I am happy to teeter behind the bandwagon, and buy him cute Star Wars t-shirts and underwear and sweaters and whatnot. In my defense, I’ve never actually watched all the movies in one go and had them explained to me, so I cannot call myself a fully fledged fan. I just like black and white stuff and luckily my husband is pro-empire, so that works out well adding stormtroopers and stuff to our home. I’m merely a Star Wars spectator.

In the spirit of the day, here are some pics I took while we were in Tunisia 2 years ago – I had researched that some of the original Star Wars sets still remained in the vastness of Tunisia, so I arranged for myself, fiance, and my broseph to travel there in order for my two nerf herders to fondle some of the original sets. And fondle they did. Here is the first film set, Hotel Sidi Driss, which is an existing underground hotel that I think was used as Luke’s home.

We also drove into the Sahara, quite close to Algeria, for the second set, which was purpose built, and kind of abandoned / preserved for years and years.

For those of you who  may have read my lovely layers post, this is the set where I was charged to use the facilities, merely because I was not a man. At least I got a cute ticket. I framed it good.

In my inbox – deceptive DVD covers

Another treat has arrived in my inbox, yay! I do enjoy a good surprise. This week Robyn from One Simple Trick sent me a lovely e-mail regarding her deceptive DVD covers she made in order to cover up some of her favourite, and unfortunately unsightly, DVD’s after seeing my deceptive dust covers tutorial. Take it away, Robyn …

“… the random colouring of my books doesn’t bother me. The random colouring of my DVDs, however, does. So I decided to make the covers for my DVDs instead of my books. I’m currently in the middle of an extensive move and am staying with family until we finish it, so I only have a handful of DVDs with me, and those are the only things I can put on for background noise for knitting …”

Great minds, Robyn. Back in the day my first deceptive dust covers were to hide my unsightly CD’s while I lived at home with my folks. Look how crafty we are.

What I next need to point out needs its own paragraph – the faux encyclopedia-style set of Friends DVD’s – just amazing. It’s giving me lots of ideas for covering similarly heighted books. Ultimate craft sophistication. 

Thank you so much again Robyn for your lovely e-mail and for hooking me up with your deceptive picture 🙂 It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.