DIY Home Inspiration Series, Part 2

Tip number two for how to make your room home-y:


Get a rug. 


Especially if you have laminate floors, and at least a small rug if you have hardwood, just to mix it up a bit. And to prove how awesome rugs actually are, here's a visual demonstration, courtesy of YoungHouseLove. Literally nothing is different between the pictures besides the rug. Well, and the dog.

Boring, boring, OMG DESIGN MAGAZINE! Room is so much brighter with the rug

And, because I'm still awesome, here's even a DIY for this divine faux grass rug!!

And then here's more proof/inspiration.

Images via abigailahern.wordpress.com, Anthropologie, thatsnotmyage, Michael Graydon, SoLovelyDecoration, Layla Grace, VK, ModernisticDesign, SacramentoStreet, maleneb (tons of great rug ideas here), pinterest

DIY: A Not-So-Chevron Circle Rug

I've been seeing chevron everywhere recently.

Yes, I'm including the recent tribal craze in this category - there are chevrons in there!

So when my good friend and beautiful co-worker Kate showed me this chevron braided rug DIY, I instantly ran to the fabric store. I mean, who needs three rugs in your room when you can have four??

This is what I was aiming for:

And this is what I ended up with:

A braided circle rug with a distinct lack of chevrons. I tried three different ways to get the chevron rug to work, but alas, it was not meant to be. Mostly because I didn't buy enough fabric. Boo. But a circle braided rug is nice too, I suppose. So here's a tutorial!

What you need:
Strips of cotton or whatever fabric scraps you have lying around
Needle
Thread
Scissors

What you do:
1) Braid strips of cotton.

2) Sew them in a spiral pattern. (Since I very loosely braided all of my strips, I had to handsew them all together, which took me waaaaaay longer than I'd care to admit. I'd recommend you braid the strips pretty tightly so you can machine sew them together with a zig-zag stitch)

3) Step on it!

and in the beginning

...there was a sewing machine!

Okay, so this post technically isn't about my sewing machine, but since I finally got it up here in Boston now, I've been just bursting at the seams (pun intended) with arts and craftsy ideas so I figured I might as well document my mad sewing/artsing/craftsing bursts somehow. As my first submission to the internets audience, I present my hand-crocheted (as opposed to hook-crocheted) doily rug! It's made out of some kind of cotton rope that I got on a HUGE discount at my fabric store.

The inspiration rug:

SOOOO adorable, I'm crazy in love with lace and doilys and the flower design! My dorm room next year is linoleum (yuck), so I've been looking for creative ways to make it nicer. I wanted this the second I found it. However. This rug is going for $600 bucks, plus shipping on Etsy (here). Eek.

My version:

Sorry for the crappy picture, it kind of looks yellow/shiny in this picture, but I promise it's a nice cotton-y white in real life! I'll get around to taking a better picture eventually... Slightly thinner rope, and it's a tad smaller, but hey! For 15 bucks, I'll take it! Took me about a weekend to make. Don't know why, but I've always found crocheting oddly relaxing, so it was a good weekend, with a pretty cool outcome!

I've got a couple projects in the works this week... And there's leather involved!! ;) Stay tuned.