Spoonflower wallpaper review

Welp, this is a post I totally wasn't planning on writing... but when I realized I was going to have to upload pictures of my new self-designed wallpaper to a third party if I wanted to share them on Spoonflower anyway, I figured I might as well talk about it here, too.

As a fabric lover (okay, hoarder, whatevs), I fully did not anticipate that the first thing I'd ever design and buy from Spoonflower would be wallpaper. Spoonflower started with print-on-demand fabric, and I'd say it's what they continue to be known for.

The only other thing I've received from Spoonflower-- a free fabric swatch!

The thing is, the fabric reviews are pretty terrible and I'm leery of purchasing any Spoonflower fabric, even though there are tons and tons of awesome designs to choose from-- uploaded by the designers themselves. I've read multiple message board chains and reviews saying that the fabric fades terribly after just one wash. How well the fabric design holds up ultimately depends on the ink colors and type of fabric you choose, but I just don't have it in me to research what combo of ink and fabric I should choose in order to make sure it lasts past one washing. The fabric prices are also pretty steep.

The wallpaper prices, on the other hand, are pretty reasonable for a peel-and-stick, removable and repositionable, woven vinyl wallpaper. Spoonflower is far from the only print-on-demand wallpaper service, but I went with them because they had decent prices, and I was already familiar with them.

I looked at a lot of designs already in the database but decided to design my own because I couldn't find a design in the colors I'd already settled on (my wall had just been painted purple so I needed something to go with that). Plus, bonus, you get a designer discount on your own designs. Just 10%, but a discount nonetheless.

I made a design in Photoshop using an antique floral bouquet image on a linen-look apricot background. (Pro tip: found this tutorial from Scathingly Brilliant on making a pattern repeat super helpful). I ordered about 14' of the woven wallpaper and it arrived super quickly, faster than I expected anyway.

And once it arrived, I loved it! It was pretty much what I wanted and expected. It was maybe even a little better than I expected on the image resolution, when it came to the flowers anyway. On the background, on the otherhand, you can't see the linen-look design at all, which is probably my fault-- I think I don't have enough contrast there. I also didn't use Spoonflower's color chart when making my design, so that probably was part of it too.

Putting up the wallpaper sucked. But I think that's the case with any wallpaper. In fact, the fact that you can reposition this paper probably made it was easier to put up than other wallpapers. Hopefully I'll get better because, to be honest, I'm hooked! I'm examining walls in my house with a new eye, trying to find places to put wallpaper. The best part is, you can take this stuff down with no wall damage, so I can get as quirky as I want with the designs.

I still don't think I'm brave enough to buy Spoonflower fabric anytime soon, but Spoonflower wallpaper is awesome. In fact, I've decided to make my design available in my Spoonflower shop. And I'll be posting the entire project this wallpaper is part of soon on my YouTube channel.

DIY French Memo Board tutorial

For some reason I felt especially accomplished with this post. I think it's because I wasn't just stashbusting and using up spare craft supplies, I was also fulfilling a need we had.

For as long as we've lived here, I was planning on putting a bulletin board over the bookshelf in our boys bedroom to hold mementos like postcards, ticket stubs, and birthday cards. After consulting with Google on searches like "boys bulletin board", I figured one of those ribbon bulletin boards, or "French Memo Boards" as I learned they're called, was just the ticket.

I especially loved that I got to use a super-fun comic book themed Star Wars fabric-- getting it out of the stash, and on display on the wall. I also harvested a stretched canvas from an unused flannel board (pro-tip: just ignore those little tutorials out there that tell you to use flannel as the base for your felt-boards. USE FELT.)

I did have to buy a couple of things: ribbon and buttons. Both were on sale but unfortunately now I have to use up the rest of those. Everything else came from the stash.

Yay to getting projects ticked off the list! Yay to using up stuff that's otherwise just sitting in a drawer! (See what I mean about this week's sense of accomplishment?)

Have you made one of these ribbon bulletin boards before? They're actually super easy and can be done in an afternoon-- which, of course, added to the I'm gettin' stuff DONE feeling. I made a How to Make a French Memo Board tutorial video if you'd like to try one:

DIY pillowcases; pretty and vintage inspired

Welp, it's no secret that I love mismatched, vintage-style bedding so I decided to make myself some pretty pillowcases.

It feels a little silly to take apart actual vintage pillowcases for fabric, then turn around here and make vintage-inspired pillowcases from new fabric-- and I guess I don't really have a good explanation for it, haha. Other than, I've really been wanting a vintage sheet quilt and bought the pillowcases in my previous post just for that purpose. I did think twice before taking those other pillowcases apart, though.

Here, I saw this purple floral quilting cotton at JoAnn and fell in lurve with it. I put off buying it forever, until it ended up in the clearance section. I eventually bought the rest of the bolt, a little more than 2 yards, for less than two bucks a yard! The JoAnn branch in my city was relocating, so they had all of their fabric on sale on top of the regular deals and sales-- I pretty much got this stuff on triple-sale. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but was kinda thinking pillowcases all along.

The mint was a remnant in my stash, and I purchased clearance rick rack for 97 cents. My first successful rick-rack application, I think. I just love it when other people use rick rack and I'm often inspired to try it whenever I see a cute project that includes it, but somehow every time I touch the stuff it turns into this corny Becky-Home-Eccy looking project. I think one reason it works here is because it's so subtle. The trim barely peeks out from the cuff, adding some vintage detail.

These are super easy if you're inspired to make your own! I know, you're thinking, well duh, how hard is a pillowcase going to be? I think a pillowcase is one of the first things I ever sewed, after all. They're made using a method that creates no exposed seams. You can find a tutorial by doing an Internet search for the burrito method, sausage pillowcases, or turn-tube or tube pillowcases. Various names for a method that accomplishes the same thing. Mine came together in well under an hour, not including pressing and cutting. I know there are more in my future!

Sewing project: bandanna pillows

These pillows have a zipper opening at the bottom, unlike my previous bandanna pillow (pictured below), which had a split opening on the back. I think next time I'll return to the split opening. I also just stitched around the edged as opposed to the bias tape edge on the previous one. One thing I did again was interface the bandannas first; they're just too flimsy not to!

The smaller brown one is not a bandanna, in case you haven't guessed. I quilted it to tie the color scheme in the other two pillows together.

DIY shutter chalkboard and message center

We have a bunch of shutters in our garage thanks to my husband's job as a window coverings installer. As you can imagine, we're trying to come up with ideas for vintage window shutter crafts so we can put all these vintage shabby shutters to good use.

Some of the shutters are in better shape than others, so for this project, Lance took a couple that had the louvers falling out, and knocked them the rest of the way out. Then he added a board painted with chalkboard paint to the back, and Bob's your Uncle, a shutter chalkboard is born. These two were painted with spraypaint and distressed, but mostly just because we didn't want to put a white shutter on a white wall.

We hung one shutter message board horizontally in the entryway, and the other vertically in the kitchen. (Recognize the quote from the green one? It's from Ratatouille!) The remaining louvered side can be used to display postcards, greeting cards, bills, or children's artwork, attached with clothespins.

Thomas & Friends birthday party bunting (paper)

When I saw this book for just a buck at the thrift store, I thought it should come home with us.

It's one of those books that makes sounds... but this book was pretty old and beat up, so the sounds were less children's book and more creepy horror movie-- all scratchy and hard to hear.

I thought I could rescue it by giving it new life-- Thomas the Train Book Bunting! I used thrifted bias tape for the project as well.

I actually made this one before the Thomas the Train Fabric Bunting, which is now hanging in his room. I decided that hanging this one too might be overkill, so... I'm actually going to disassemble this one and use it in a different project! This Thomas the Train book is getting more lives than a cat.

I used a fancy paper punch around the edges, which kinda gave it a Papel Picado feel.

Thomas & Friends Book Bunting

Materials: Thomas the Train Book ($1 - thrifted), bias tape (.50 cents - thrift store), thread

Total cost: ~$1.50

DIY Retro Bread Box

I've wanted a vintage-style enamel bread bin but can't quite seem to afford one. You know the ones; white or pretty pastels with the word BREAD emblazoned across the front, lest we forget what to store in there. ;)

I racked my brain for a while on how to paint letters onto a readily available metal bread box. What kind of food-safe enamel paint would go on neatly? And how do I get it to not look so much like a stencil, just like my inspiration?

I found this cute retro bread box at Target, and although the garage-door-style opening isn't exactly the style I wanted, but I couldn't pass it up for the price.

And now, the solution to retro-fy it... vinyl stick-on letters. They're a true black and a good font for the look I was going for. They're just permanent enough, but not too permanent that I couldn't preposition them. Yes, they're crooked in the picture below. That's the beauty of it; after this picture was taken, I straightened them out. And then was too lazy to re-take the picture.

These basic black ones I found at Wal-Mart in the poster section for I think about $3.99, maybe even $2.99. But I saw similar ones at Office Depot in different colors and fonts, which might be fun to try also!

DIY Retro Bread Box

Materials: bread box ($17.99 - Target), vinyl letters (~ $3.99 - WalMart)

Total cost: Under $25

DIY Nursery Letters

When I was a kid, I was always super disappointed whenever I perused personalized souvenirs. You know the ones; keychains, license plates, and shotglasses that come already emblazoned with common names. I could never find my name.

So now, I love the chance to personalize anything I can. That's carrying over to purchases for my son, too. So even though nursery letters are becoming pretty cliched, I still wanted to make some. In fact, since his first name is so short, I decided to plow forward into his middle moniker as well.

They're pretty straightforward, so I'm not going to insult your intelligence with a tutorial. I wanted the "cobbled together and collected from various sources" look, so they intentionally have different fonts and paint designs.

UPDATE: I've had lots of people landing here looking for ideas to DIY their own, so even though I didn't photograph a tutorial, here's a list of what I did (see below the new picture for a list of tools and materials):

1. Shopped at local craft and hobby stores (and one big box chain!) for mismatched letters.
2. Sketched out the letters on paper (see the new picture below), and drew designs on the letters so that I wouldn't have the same patterns too near each other.
3. Came up with a color scheme, and just like the patterns, sketched it on paper so I wouldn't have too much of the same color too near each other.
4. Lightly sanded the letter with a fine-grit sandpaper. I was mostly looking to smooth out the manufacturing imperfections.
5. I considered priming them, but didn't! I got right to painting the base coat on each letter. Some took more than one to get the base as dark as I wanted it.
6. Once they'd dried, either free-handed the next design layer, or started applying painter's tape. (TIP: paint the base coat over the painter's tape before changing colors. This'll keep the second color from seeping under the tape).
7. Finished each one off with a layer of clear spraypaint! DUNZO.

DIY Nursery Letters
Acrylic craft paint on wood
Letters: From Richard's and WalMart, $1.99 - $2.49 each, approximately $18 total
Paints: On sale for 50 cents each at JoAnn (Purchased in Navy, Cobalt, Orange, White, Black, Yellow, Red, then mixed)
Foam brushes: $1.99 at JoAnn
Crackle medium: $2.49 (Used on letters "T" and "L")
Clear spray paint finish: About $3.69 at WalMart, KRYLON in Satin
Total project cost: Approximately $29