DIY Furniture

I'm going to take on furniture today, because they are so important in a home.
And sometimes it's hard to spot what will look good, what's worth saving, and what will be a lot of work.
It all depends on what you are willing to, and trust yourself to do, because everyone can reupholster a chair, giving enough time and the right tutorial.

And most importantly the will to do it.

First of all, don't look as the furniture as a whole, if you like a piece of it then you can use that in a more practical way, like this desk, you may not need a desk but this nightstand is one so cute, with minimum work.
See the blog on Sugarbeecrafts.

 Reupholstering a chair can often be hard work, but look how beautiful, elegant and different it can look with a little piece of fabric, but maybe a little bit more of patience.

You can see the tutorial on how she does it on centsationalgirl.

And it's often seeing the possibilities in the detail, if it has some custom detail, some fascinating lines or even if it's just box shaped, if you can picture it fitting in your room with another color, it's almost a must.
It's really amazing how much difference just white paint can make, and painting wooden furniture white is really trending right now, and sandpapering the edges to make the furniture look old is also a neat trick, but note that it looks better on dark wood, or painting dark texture before the white on top.

This is a huge difference on this rather plain looking sideboard, but the wood sometimes adds to much texture that sometimes it's better to tone it down and make it simple. and for the ones that aren't afraid of color could also have some fun with the details on the middle doors, or get handles in fun bright color.

Sometimes the wood can be the splash of color, mixing different wood types is a good way to reuse old materials, and it gives a lot of personality and has different texture on each wood type, just watch out for splinters and sandpaper everything down good, specially when you're handling old wood.

And don't be afraid of something different, in color choice, method or style, you can with the right attitude give almost any furniture the right personality for your home. This is a painted glass table top, and you can see how to do this on designsponge

Now let your personalities shine and turn this 

Into this.
What an amazing transformation, just by paint!
see tutorial on momentswiththemontanos

Have fun repainting old furniture and giving them new life !

decoration tips

Decorations are important, small, tiny changes in a room can mean a lot, even just one candlestick.
So if your unhappy with a room start by looking at the details, what can you add and what can you take out.
It can make a whole new room for you, without spending almost any money.
And here are some easy, affordable ideas.

 Need new bookends ?
This is such an easy DIY task, and it doesn't cost that much.
you can use all kinds of plastic animals & toys, just find what you like the most.
See the whole tutorial here

Now, this is an easy decorating tip, you can take any picture and print it out, nail by the outlines on a plank of wood, and you could also just nail one nail in the middle, if you don't want a heart, have the nails any color, the wood any color and the string any color! this screams creative ideas for me, how about you ?

I like this idea a lot, you can't always find a flowerpot that works for you or they are too expensive, but this way, you don't need to buy, or make, a flowerpot at all, you just need a little bit of heavy clay mud, or bonsai soil, potting soil, moss and twine, and of course a small plant.
See the how to here

This is a wonderful way to display books in your house, and it's perfect in little kids room, they have a harder time hurting themselves on this then on pointy corners on a shelf.

Like Marisa did on her blog

the full tutorial is here

This idea from apartment therapy is wonderful. It's easy, affordable and looks amazing.
See the tutorial here

And like you may have noticed already, wood done right is one of my favorite DIY.

DIY by modifydesign

Hi, sorry about how long it's been, I've been working hard on a project which is going to be in a show on friday and over the weekend. I'll give you a sneak preview though because I just finished it an hour ago or so.

 This is how the chairs looked when I found them in a dumpster, I should mention that it's a school project with the Icelandic garbage company on reusing what's been thrown away.

 This is a table I found, I don't have a before picture because I got too excited about this tiny table.

 Here it is without the dark-brown glass that was on top of it, I hope you can imagine how bad it looked before.

Here's the chair that was missing a leg, I made a new one from old curtains, and plastic bags, and cut out fun Icelandic words that mean a lot to me and glued them on the leg. The table also has plastic bag on bottom "shelf" and I sandpapered the glass, put on a primer and chalkboard paint. Yes, you can put that on glass, just sandpaper it enough and use a primer so it will stick.

 Here's a close-up of the leg I made.

And here are the chairs and the table together.
And I found the camera too, It's an old Olympus om20, I'm going to check if it's save-able. 

I'll post pictures from the show and show you the other amazing stuff my classmates have done.

Reuse newspapers

Breg Hanssen and many more have found a wonderful way to reuse newspapers, it's completely environmental friendly and it has beautiful wood-like texture, and you can do it from home by mixing flour and water for glue!

It can also make this beautiful texture that you can see in the Wood-turned side table by Tessa Kuyvenhoven

This paper chair by Peter Plantan and Nusa Zupanc won 1st place at a competition hosted by AWR. Here, they let the original pictures on the paper hold, and didn't create another texture.

You can make beautiful trinkets like these from the Dutch design duo called rENs

 You can make beautiful bouquets from old magazines or buy them from Wethered paperworks

 These ornaments are made from the comic section of newspapers by kissadesign

 

A trashcan from newspapers and other leftover paper. 

And Treesmart makes these beautiful pencils from newspapers!