My Academic Planner

A few weeks back I had revealed my newly designed and available Academic Planner!  But I just realized I never shared my printed version with you all :)  So now it's time to show the planner off in its tangible glory!

I ended up having my mom print it at the office and send it up to me :)  I just LOVE the way it turned out!  I decided to put mine in a binder so I can easily swap out pages or add new things rather than having it spiral bound.  My roommate put hers in a storage clipboard.  So there are lots of ways to make this planner work perfectly for you!

Now you've been able to see a digital and tangible version of the planner :)  Want one of your own?  Pop on over to my Etsy shop and order your own here!

Makeover: Living Room Part Three

Let us all take a moment of silence for my computer charger...  A wonderful part of my life who decided to die in the middle of last week.  So my laptop has been sitting in my bag...dead...for the last few days.  And with no access to another computer all of my blogging endeavors had to be put on pause.  But today a wonderful friend (and my new grandlittle in the Theatre fraternity at the University) has leant me her charger tonight so I can be reunited with all of you!!  Hurray!!  But, alas, there is no saving my charger and I must buy a new one :(  Poo...

Anyway!  Today I have exciting news about our entertainment system!!  Hurray!!  If you are just joining in on the fun you can catch up with Part One and Part Two.  When I last left off we still had some painting and assembly to complete.  But now it is all finished!!!  Yayyyy!

Well for the most part anyway.  I still need to go out and purchase new hardware for the drawer pulls.  But doesn't it look great?!

And in the background you can see that we have one wall finished!  We just have a few more of the stencil pattern to fill in on the other wall and we will be finished with that too!  Progress feels so good :)

And here is a before/after picture of it so far.  I'll have a better one once the drawer pulls are added.

Next project on the list: organizing all the movies!!  Yup!  My roommate and I haver a lot of DVDs and VHS tapes (yes, we still watch them!) that need some organization.

So what do you think?!  Leave a comment and tell me what you think of the transformation and/or tell me about a piece of furniture you revamped to make fit your space :)

Hurray for Decorative Tape!

I am super excited to share my awesome find with you all today!  I have totally jumped on the Washi-Tape-Obsessed Bandwagon (along with basically everyone else!)  The difference?  I don't own any and have never used any!  Until now that is :)

Aren't they perfect?!  I haven't taken them out of their boxes yet (as you can tell) because they just look so cute!  And you'll never guess where I bought these.  Okay maybe you will - The Dollar Tree!  This place is seriously great!  They had twelve patterns in stock and I bought them all!  And I will admit that I plan on checking the other Dollar Tree near me to see if they have other patterns :D

I love them!  I tried to find an online link to share with you all but couldn't :(  Here's a picture of the packaging incase you have better luck!

Now I'll need to start brainstorming a cute, efficient way to organize and store my pretty new tape!  Feel free to send some ideas my way :D

Styrofoam Cork Boards

I've been doing a little more to tidy/spruce up my new office space as the costume designer at the university and am so happy with it :)  I'm not going crazy with projects and spending lots of money on it, I just want to add small touches to make it more welcoming (and functional!)  The first project I shared was the file cabinet update.  That was purely an aesthetic project.  This project is both cute and functional!

I knew I wanted a space to post design inspiration as I research and read through the plays for this season.  But cork boards can get expensive and the less expensive ones are small and unattractive.  So I decided to use styrofoam boards like I did in our laundry room makeover!  I picked up four square ones at Dollar Tree.  And to decorate them I picked up a roll of light blue wrapping paper and grabbed the floral wrapping paper I had on hand.  Remember the spice drawer makeover?

I just wrapped the styrofoam bards in the wrapping paper and hung them up on the wall!

So cute!  And perfect for what I wanted :)  I picked up cute thumb tacks from Dollar Tree as well and am all set!  I can tack any inspiration that I find.  From pictures to fabric swatches to bags of buttons!

Makeover: Living Room Part Two

Over these past few days my roommate and I have slowly been making progress on our living room.  Of course, life gets in the way so progress is slow.  But at least it's progress!  If you want to read up and see pictures of our progress before this post go ahead and check out the first post here.  Unfortunately this post won't be full of as many pictures.  But there will be a couple :)

We decided that we would go ahead and tackle the stencil on the accent wall a little at a time.  So here it was at the very beginning:

We still had about a million to go!  But now we're nearly done with all the stencil work.  You'll be able to get a better sense of the entire wall in the coming picture.  

As you know, we were also painting our old entertainment system to transform it from the wood to something more fitting for the space.  And I left you all with a lovely image of gray and streaky primer! Well no more! 

I'm in love with it!  I love how the colors work with each other and how it works in the space!  Just love it!  The shelves are nearly finished, they just need a little touch up work before they get installed.  And I'm thinking of swapping out the hardware too.  I am so happy with piece now!!  (And you can see my roommate hard at work in the corner!)  She will probably kill me when she sees her picture on here but that's alright :P  She's part of the process too!

And in the background you can see the progress on the wall.  I'm having mixed feelings with how bold it is...  But I want to finish it up and get the space all put together to see how it looks then.  If you have any thoughts so far I'd love to hear them!

We've still got things to finish up and a few more projects up our sleeves before the space is complete.  And my mom might be coming up to visit this weekend so we've got to get them all done before then!  Let's hope we can :)

File Cabinet Update

I just recently started working as the Costume Designer in the theatre department at the University I graduated from in May.  I am so excited!  There's a nice big costume shop with great machines to work with.  But it's a little drab so I decided to do some easy, quick updates.  Not to mention inexpensive!

First up: updating the file cabinet!

There is a file cabinet in the costume shop holding all sorts of accessories.  Earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and much much more!  The insides are incredible organized in labeled bins and plastic baggies.  But the outside looked...well, like this:

Boring and grungy.  I decided it needed an update :)  Plus I wanted to add labels to the cabinet so I know which accessories are in each drawer.  Making completing each costume much easier.

For the labels I cut index cards down to the right size and covered them in a light blue wrapping paper.

Once I put them in the cabinet I instantly loved the results!  But the top of the cabinet was looking grungy still so I covered that with a layer of the wrapping paper as well.  And then added a rim around the edges of the top.

Cute, right?  Then I took out the handy dandy label maker and added labels to the drawer labels.

I love the way it turned out!  So simple yet so effective.  And I bought the wrapping paper for a dollar Dollar Tree!  Can't beat that :)

Makeover: Living Room

Hurray!  My blog has officially surpassed 1,000 pageviews!!  I am so excited :D  Thank you all so much!  So how am I going to celebrate?  By finally tackling a big room in the apartment: The Living Room.  I've been nervous to try and take on such a big room in fear that I would totally mess it up and it would look awful.  But, I've decided it needs to be done and I can handle it!  With the help of my amazing roommate of course.  So that is what has been going on this weekend.

Here's what we have to start with (excuse the mess, we're working on it!):

Not awful but not cute.  And I want cute!  The walls of the apartment were already painted white with an accent wall in a sort of dark beige (with a hint of peach) color.  It was alright, but not my idea of a cute apartment.  The little entertainment system was free (always great!).  Our old professor moved to a different city and he didn't want all of his old furniture so, since we helped him moved, he let us take the things he didn't want.  So free entertainment system it was!  Our couches came in a great package deal from American Freight (along with our coffee table, two end tables, and two end lamps).  Then we've got Magic's (our cat) stuff and a few decorations.  Pretty bland and boring if you ask me.  So time for a makeover!

Day One
A day for painting!

We cleared everything out of the way of the accent wall.  The plan is to base it gray and then add a stenciled pattern in two shades of blue.  So today we wanted to tackle the gray base.

First we removed all of the blinds from the doors to the patio and the window to get them out of our way.

Then we taped off the areas we didn't want to paint.

And then we got to work!  Since we have awful natural light in our apartment (the only source for the living room is the patio doors and the one window) it was not photographing that wall very well.  So unfortunately I did not take get a picture :/  But, take my word for it, it's already looking so much better!

The other project for today was to prepare the wooden entertainment system for it's makeover!  Here it was in all it's wooden glory:

It's really a nice piece.  The wood is pretty and it's in great condition.  It just did not fit in our space.  Our coffee and end tables are also wood but they are a very dark wood.  So this piece just did not match.  But it was free!!  So we definitely wanted to keep it.  It just needs a makeover to fit in our space :)  And we decided that for us, that meant paint!

So step one was to coat the whole thing with primer.  We went to Walmart and picked up some Zinner Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer.  Our Walmart had limited selection of primer and this was the only one that specifically said it was good on glossy, finished surfaces.  And we could use it without sanding :)  Perfect!  So one coat of primer later...

Goodbye wood!  And that was it for day one :)  We left everything to dry over night since it would be getting dark soon anyway.

Our accomplishments:
- Base painted the wall gray
- Primed the entertainment system

On to day two!

Day Two
More painting!

After looking at the wall in the morning it looked great!  Only a few spots needed to be revisited with the paint brush.  Again, no pictures :/  But this time because I forgot!  You can see the walls in the background of the entertainment system pictures to get an idea of what it looks like.  Then it was time to paint the entertainment system!  Since we knew the wall would end up looking mostly blue once it was finished we decided to paint the entertainment gray.  So one coat of the gray paint and it's already looking perfect for the space!  But you can definitely see brush strokes and some of the primer sneaking in.  So that will need another coat.

A few hours of waiting and hanging out with friends and we were back to work!  A second coat of the gray paint and I'm in love with it!

SO much better than the wood!  I know what you're thinking "But Corley!  You forgot to paint huge sections!  You can still see the primer!  Are you blind?!"  Nope :)  I've got something planned for those areas.  But that will be a job for a different day.  Unfortunately I probably will not have time to get anything else done for the living room until Friday :/  Work does that to you.  But this is what we've got for now!

Our accomplishments:
- Touched up the walls
- Painted two coats of gray on the entertainment system

What do you think so far?

Grab-N-Go Diaper Change Bags

For some reason all of the craft ideas that I'm drawn to recently are baby crafts.  And somehow the ones that I've completed are all dealing with diapers!  Go figure.  My most recent one being the Grab-N-Go Diaper Change Bags!  Perfect for a mom/caregiver on the go.

Each set comes with 5 coordinating, drawstring bags filled with everything needed for a single diaper change.  So when you're headed to the store or you'll just be gone for a few hours there's no need to tote around a heavy, bulky diaper bag.  Just grab one of these bags!

The drawstring makes it easy to access the contents which is always helpful!  Because, let's be honest, fidgety babies can be difficult enough without struggling to get to your diapers.

Each bag contains:

- 1 Parent's Choice diaper (pick your size from newborn to size 6)

- 1 Wet Ones wipe (perfect for the diaper changer)

- 1 diaper trash bag

- 1 vinyl changing mat

- 2 small, clear containers (either pre-filled with diaper cream and baby powder, or left empty for you to fill)

- 1 ziplock baggie (either pre-filled with two baby wipes, or left empty for you to fill)

And, once you've used one of your Grab-N-Go Diaper Changing Bags, you can re-fill your supplies so you've always got a bag to grab :)  Here they are again:

And I am currently working on other color options for the bags as well :)  Plus I always love getting custom orders!

Want to purchase your own?  Head over to my Etsy shop or to my Facebook page.

A Start to the Reader Take-Over!

I'm really excited to get started on today's post.  I want to add more reader participation to my blog space :)  After all you are what keeps this blog going!  So I want to start featuring "Reader Take-Over" posts.  A place for you to showcase your own DIY projects, Home Improvement projects, etc.

Interested in being my first Reader Take-Over post?  Just e-mail me for details (craftedbycorley@aol.com).  I'm really excited to see and showcase all the work you all do!

As for me, I still need to get to work on my list of DIY projects for the apartment.  I've been working on my craft fair application and building up my inventory as well as working 4 jobs and going through some family stuff.  So life's been hectic to say the least!

I look forward to hearing from you all and any ideas you have for the new Reader Take-Over spaces!