Furnish Your Home With Free Stuff -- Beautifully!

The holidays are right around the corner, and many of us are thinking about sprucing up our homes, in preparation. With tight budgets, the task can feel a bit daunting, but it doesn't have to be. You don't need a lot of money to create a beautiful home. In fact, sometimes you don't need any money!

This morning, a quick scroll items being offered up for FREE on Craigslist turned up scores of awesome stuff.

Upcycle Leftover Sets of Notecards, to Create Useful, All-Occasion Cards

We've all got them. Maybe they're stuffed in a drawer somewhere, maybe they're in a closet, or maybe they're in the "donate" box in the mud room.  Every thrift store has them, too. They are the (often unopened) event specific thank-you cards. "Thank you for the wedding gift", "thank you for the shower gift", "thank you for the baby gift", etc.

The other day, I was looking at a package of these notecards at the Goodwill, and it occurred to me that these cards can be upcycled as card bases for all-occasion cards!

Our New Beach House Cats

We adopted two cats this summer. I was scrolling through our local Nextdoor forum, and noticed that someone was looking for a home for their cats, as they were soon to be moving. I was a little shocked, at first, after all, who leaves their cats when they move? When I clicked on the posting, I understood.

Syd and Leo each weigh over five hundred pounds. They are not easy to move. The owners had moved them several times, but they were getting older, and it was time to find the cats a new family. I called them and made an appointment to meet the cats in their Seattle courtyard.

Working on the Beach House Path

It's been quite a while since I posted any beach house updates. We continue to plug along with projects, but we try to balance work weekends with resting weekends and entertaining weekends.

Each year we improve the beach path a little bit more. When we first bought the house, the path was only inches wide, and full of holes and random hidden driftwood logs to trip us up. I think I spent as much time face down in the dune grass, as I did walking down the path!

DIY Patchwork Rugs for Cheap!

We own some boat slips in our condo marina. Along with the slips, there is a condominium clubhouse in the adjacent building that is jointly owned by all the moorage owners.

It's basically just a giant concrete room. A few years ago, a sump pump that serviced the residential portion of the building malfunctioned and flooded the entire space. The carpets and portions of the gypsum board needed to be removed. It was ugly.

How to Weave a Pretty Seat

I popped into a Goodwill the other day and found the cutest little bench -- that is, it could have been cute. If it had a seat.

My husband has a running joke about my love affair with "broken chairs". We've moved broken chairs half-way across the country and back again.

How to Decorate When You're Broke

We've all been there. We want to freshen up our homes, but our home decor budget is non-existent. Here are some ideas that you can use to decorate your home when you're broke.

11 Easy Art Projects Anyone Can Do

Do you ever look at art and think "I could never do that"?  I promise, the ability to do art is not exclusive to people with fancy degrees or exceptional talent. Sometimes all you need is to just. get. started. You don't need fancy or expensive supplies, either. My favorite set of oil pastels came from the $1.50 store!

My tiny travel watercolor set is a child's set. I use Crayola markers and colored pencils in my art journals. Creating art is relaxing and healing, and it's a great way to bridge generations.

Craft Storage From Altered Tins

I love a good upcycling project, and these upcycled Altoids tins are no exception.

I have some lovely sets of Melody Ross debossing tools, but while the alphabets and numbers came in beautiful tins, some of the smaller sets came in blister packs.

How to Decorate With Zinc

Don't you just love an old-fashioned kitchen work table with a zinc top? Zinc can feel charming or industrial -- or even a little bit of both!

You may feel like zinc is out of your price range, but you can add zinc accents to your space on any budget.

For a big splurge, you might use this vintage architect's table as a kitchen island. This table would be equally at home in a farmhouse kitchen or an industrial urban loft.

factory20

Anything with chippy goldenrod paint makes me giddy, but add a zinc top and I am in love.

1stdibs

If you can't find just the right vintage piece for your space, SDS Designs builds custom zinc topped tables!

You can even use zinc for you countertop material. The zinc countertops in this kitchen, from Country Living, are simply gorgeous.

Country Living

Zinc countertops and tables may not be within your budget, and that's okay. You can add just a touch of zinc, with this boot tray, from Crate and Barrel.

You can organize your desk in style, with this zinc wire basket.

(affiliate link)Zinc Austin 3-Tier Paper Tray - World Market

Keep track of incoming papers with this beautiful zinc-finished tray. I love that it has a surface on top to put a pen holder and a few office supplies. I'm pretty sure I NEED this!

(affiliate link) St. Laurent Paper Tray - World Market

I am a big fan of mail sorting baskets, and these are no exception. This first sorter would be perfect in the mudroom for school papers.

(affiliate link) Urban Trends Metal Mail Organizer with 3 Shelves, Galvanized Zinc

(affiliate link)Urban Trends Metal Mail Organizer with 2 Shelves, Galvanized Zinc

craigslist

For an even smaller budget, I found these vintage Ball jars on Craigslist yesterday. I LOVE Craigslist. You can find vintage ball jars and Mason jars, with their original zinc lids in antique stores, on EBay, on Craigslist, and even at garage sales. They are a wonderful way to add storage to a kitchen or craft room.

Do you love zinc? Zinc lends such a warm patina to a space. I would seriously LOVE to have that chippy yellow table as my kitchen island, with lots of blue Ball jars for storage.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to House Revivals. We have lots of projects and tutorials planned for 2015.

Thanks for stopping by!

How to Make Pretty Jewelry From Paper Scraps

The other day I had a bunch of tiny paper scraps strewn around my dining table. The paper was left over from the Chinese New Year wreath project, and from the Chinese Paper Lantern project.

The paper scraps consisted of handmade papers, colorful deli papers, and Chinese red envelopes. The colors looks so pretty all jumbled up together, that I didn't have the heart to toss them in the waste bin. Does this happens to you? My husband suggested I may have a special kind of crazy, but I told him seeing beauty in mayhem is part of my charm. I'm not sure he was buying it....

In spite of the fact that it was already way past my bedtime, I snapped a quick cellphone shot of the papers, then grabbed a bottle of glue. I envisioned turning the pile of tiny scraps into pretty multi-media pendants.

Also sitting on my table was a pack of index cards, that I shared about in my $1.50 store post.

I grabbed two of the cards, and proceeded to glue the tiny scraps all over them. I just kept layering the papers on, occasionally dry brushing a bit of gold craft paint between layers. When all the papers were used up, I glued the two cards together, back to back, and brayed them down really well, so they would be nice and flat.

Then I grabbed a pair of old scissors and cut the card into rectangles. I wasn't worried about making them perfect. I rounded the corners a bit, then brushed some more gold paint around the edges.

The rectangles still needed "something", so I wrapped them all with strips of handmade paper.

Next, I hardened the rectangles by brushing several generous coats of wood petrifier over them (affilliate link: PC Products PC-Petrifier Water-Based Wood Hardener, 16 oz Bottle, Milky White).

This is where I ran into a little problem. Do you see how the strips of handmade paper, above right, are really dark? That's from the wood petrifier. The rectangles in the middle were only coated with Mod Podge, and they darkened a little, but not too much. The rectangles on the left have not been treated at all. After some thought, I decided to petrify all the rectangles, then go back and wrap another layer of handmade paper strips right on top of the previous wraps. Then I sealed the whole thing with Mod Podge. It all worked out in the end -- in fact, I love the extra dimension the little rectangles have now!

I definitely love how the wood petrifier soaks into the paper and hardens it -- living in the pacific Northwest, you never know when you're going to get caught in the rain -- but you will always want to test it to see if it darkens your paper too much.

To turn the rectangles into jewelry, I grabbed some thin craft wire and some beads from a couple of broken vintage necklaces.  I simply wrapped the wire around the rectangles, and occasionally threaded a bead through the wire.

I LOVE how the paper and wire and beads look together! I made several pendants, and even made a set of earrings.

For the earrings, I gently bent the paper rectangles while they were still a bit damp from the wood petrifier.

I could not have been more thrilled with how these pieces turned out! You do not need any special tools to do this --just an old pair of cheap scissors. I cut the wire with the old cheap scissors (don't use your good fabric scissors), and wrapped and twisted it with my fingers. On a scale of one to five, this projects requires a skill level of one!

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please subscribe to House Revivals, so you won't miss any of the fun projects we have planned. Be sure to "like" and subscribe to us on Facebook, so you won't miss any of the in between stuff that happens. House Revivals is also on Pinterest -- see the links in the sidebar.

Thanks for stopping by!

This post is being shared at the following lovely places:

DIY Show Off

Getting Shelves In the Studio Attic!

We've been hard at work on the Attic of Shame. My husband and I spent an entire weekend assembling shelves, then we did it again last weekend.

For each shelving unit, I had to go into the attic and clear the space for that unit, so all the heavy things were lifted and moved from the taller side of the room to the short side of the room, a bit at a time. Then, when it was time to put up shelves on the short side of the room, all the heavy things were moved back to the taller side of the room.

Make Beautiful Jewelry From the Hardware Store!

You can create beautiful things using humble supplies. Craft stores are amazing, but we don't always have the time or extra cash to shop there, and sometimes we don't live anywhere near a craft supply store. Other times, we just want to create something beautiful from stuff we have lying around.

I recently found myself with a few moments on my hands, and cleaned out my purse. In the very bottom of my bag were some glass sample tiles from a big box hardware store.

2015 Stash Busting Projects

Do you ever feel like your stash of supplies is getting out of control?  Finding that balance between having a "palette" to work with on creative projects and becoming a hoarder can be a little tricky!

Every now and then, we need to take an inventory of our stash, and decide if our supplies still represent who we are as designers, artists, crafters, and decorators. In 2015, I am challenging myself, and want to challenge you to join me, in a series of craft busting projects.

Why You Need to Shop Architectural Salvage Stores

If you've been reading House Revivals for very long, you will know about my love affair with reused, reclaimed, and re-purposed items.  After all, why buy new, when you can buy used, right?

I adore architectural salvage. As an interior designer, I love the idea of giving a design project "soul" by including items that have a story to tell.

Remember When We Got That Energy Audit?

Last year we had an energy audit done at the beach house. Best. Idea. Ever! Around that same time we were buying another property and renovating it and dealing with the sudden loss of my husband's mother, so I didn't share too much about the improvements we made afterward. While I shared a little about the audit here...

How to Convert Your Antique Double Bed to a Queen Bed

I recently posted about our antique bed makeover, but I forgot to share something really important -- how we convert our antique beds from double, or full-size, to queen size.

It can be very easy and affordable to convert most beds to queen, depending on the type of rails you have and how they are attached to your head board and foot board.

Juju Hat Wall Decor Tutorial

Earlier this year I shared a Juju hat inspired wall decor project made from vintage book pages. That project turned out pretty cute, but I wanted to try it again, using a technique that involved lots of scrunching of paper to give the project more texture and dimension.

How to Landscape Your Yard for Free

Let's face it. Landscaping can be really expensive. On  recent visit to my daughter's new home in Alabama we went shopping for trees or shrubs for her yard and I was stunned!  I thought: there has got to be a better way.

In our old historic neighborhood, we all shared our plantings and seeds. Whether we were saving rare old tomato seeds, or thinning our iris, digging up "volunteers", or removing old sod, we always offered our plantings to our neighbors first. The problem with a new neighborhood, is that no one has any old plantings to share -- but this doesn't have to stop you from getting previously loved plants!

Fishing Basket Table

Some of you were curious about the basket table in the picture with our beautiful horseshoe backed chair that I posted about earlier.

(This post is participating in the Blogging A to Z Challenge, T is For Table. See link in sidebar. )

This table was adapted from traditional Southeast Asia fishing baskets.  My in-laws picked it up during an overseas tour during the Vietnam War.