The Interior DIYer
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Mini makeover – coffee table tray, round deux

Around this time last year I did a teeny, tiny makeover on our coffee table tray. It was blah and wooden and whatnot so I painted it a light grey to cheer up our coffee table, but unfortunately it still looked shit hadn’t reached its full potential.

I attacked it a couple of weekends ago with my trusty can of ‘winegum’ paint from Montana and voila. Much better. Om, nom.

And here’s what it looked like before I painted it this time around – 

To pump up the volume, the below now NEEDS to happen to my tray. The moment I saw this picture {which the focus is meant to be on the jewelry, but my brains were immediately distracted by the spike candy} my heart actually stopped. Something along these lines has to happen in my living room. 

I showed photo to father this past weekend to pick his brains hoping he would know of some hardware piece that resembles these studs to some degree. BUT, the Practical Patty that I am is already thinking things like “it’s a high traffic area, and if someone’s clothes get caught on one of those spikes, a) someone/kitty might get hurt, b) contents of tray will morph into glamorous shrapnel and fly everywhere”. Well poo. Thanks, brain.

Has anyone out there in the blogosphere tried something similar to this? I’m thinking maybe gold thumb tacks  as a last resort, but it won’t have anywhere as near of an impact.

xx A

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Just right

Last night I did some experimenting. Before you get too excited, it was with flowers and how we would arrange our teapot centrepieces, what combinations looked good, and how many flowers we would need per teapot. 
Before any of you vomit directly into your mouths, yes those are carnations, and yes I bought them in all their dark and moodiful glory. I know some people can get aggro when the word ‘carnation’ is even mentioned. But think of these mixed with dark purple smoke tree leaves, dark {possibly black} roses , and of course, hydrangeas, all of which set against dainty old teapots and the likes. Om, nom, nom. 
But I have a dirty secret. I painted this hydrangea. I used Montana‘s matt finish spray paint in ‘Winegum’, sprayed from afar to avoid drips or blotches, and I have to say, it is incredibly convincing and natural looking. A light dusting in places to still reveal the natural colour in some areas, I think I’ve found my ideal bouquet colour*.
See the before and after pictures below … {keep in mind these photos don’t do the ‘after’ picture enough justice}. What do you think? For the record, fiance didn’t realized it was sprayed. But then again, he’s a man.

*I should state that when ordering hydrangeas, you can’t get them in this colour. Farmed hydrangeas don’t come in a spectrum of colours like you would find in your neighbours garden, so the flowers available to us are only in a limited number of bright hues. 
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Sneak peek – living room makeover

At long last, I’ve begun my living room makeover I planned way back in May. Monday was a glorious Bank Holiday for us here in Ireland, so I spent my day cleaning my apartment, painting, and cleaning up after painting. And I enjoyed it. 

This is what I fancied up a couple months ago for what I wanted our main feature wall to look like {you can check out my original makeover post here}. This entire wall was originally all chalkboard painted, but since our apartment is dark, all that black wasn’t exactly cheer inducing. 
I’m not one to set goals and then let them get dusty, and after 3 months it was getting dusty enough for me.

So above is a snippet of what’s left of our blackboard wall. Much more sophisticated. And a lot brighter. I painted the surrounding wall with Crown Paint‘s ‘Swans a Swimming’, as chosen last October for the rest of our living room. I blogged that too. You can check out here.

For what has happened over the past couple of weeks {lots of unnecessary stress, and none of it wedding related}, I thought the text on the below E Card was quite suiting, so I scrawled it in my fanciest penmanship on the remaining blackboard left above our shelf. I’m going to go on a limb here and assume I’m not the only one feeling like this …