It’s been a while since I’ve done a Weekly Wishlist. So let me waste no time in introducing you to Emilie Marian Designs! Her Etsy shop features an irresistible array of lovelies, from paper goods to stylish iPhone cases. These are just a couple of my favorite items:
I even had the good fortune to win a set of her stickers:
You can also find more from lovelies from Emilie on her website: FlourishandHope.com
I really loved how my Valentine’s garland turned out, so I whipped up an easy DIY Easter garland to make my mantel more festive.
I created eggs with felt and a variety of ribbon and the pom-poms with some fun multi-colored yarn. I picked up all of the supplies at my local craft store.
This would be super-cute with felt bunnies or chicks, too!
Here’s a shot of the garland and my Easter-ized mantel:
I think it’s pretty cute! And I love all of the bright, springy colors popping off our white mantel.
Linking up here:
Is it really the end of March? If so, could someone please tell the weather patterns to start cooperating with the normal average temperatures and behaviors for this time of the year? I don’t know how much more of this dreary, snowy, rainy stuff I can take. It literally took everything in me to muster my bee-hind off the sofa yesterday, change out of my flannel pjs into sweats (yea, you read that right), and attempt to put together some springy/Eastery vignettes around the house. Who can get motivated for Easter decor when there’s two inches of snow on the ground? At this point, I firmly believe that it will be 35-degrees with grey, cloudy skies for the rest of 2013. Blah.
Anywho, here are a few signs of Spring that I sprinkled around our house…
diy’d washi-tape eggs / framed felt egg / vase via my March UmbaBox
My grandma made the eggs in the foreground – she even personalized one for me <3
Hopefully these little signs of Spring inside will encourage more signs outside. Hopefully.
If you’re anything like me, then you’ve got pinboards full of unnecessities that you don’t know how you’ll live without. My latest find? This handsome fellow:
by Sugarboo designs via One King’s Lane
I mean, come on! A pachyderm in a bowler cap? How could you live without this? How could you not see it on your sofa and immediately grin from ear to ear? How could you have a bad day, come home, and not have your mood instantly turn around at the sight of this pillow? I know my life would never be the same if this were to make its way into my living room… (ahem)… (Tom…?)
But. It’s $110. Which is an absolute ridiculous amount of money to spend on a throw pillow. Even an elephant-in-a-bowler pillow. At least in my mind.
sigh.
Finally! After months and months and months and… you get the picture (ha! pun intended), we finally have a gallery wall in our family room. I thought the hardest part would be arranging the frames, but the hardest part turned out to be selecting what would go up on the wall! And dealing with a certain unruly zebra pencil sketch whose dimensions didn’t want to cooperate with the frames I’d purchased.
Let me give you a breakdown of how to hang it – I found this method to be SUPER helpful, and I would definitely use it again.
Start by tracing your frames onto paper. I’ve seen all kinds of things on Pinterest, like craft paper or newspaper. I started this after Christmas (yes, I realize that was nearly 3 months ago… I am notoriously/embarrassingly slow at completely projects), so I grabbed a pile of used wrapping paper that was, errm, still is, waiting to be recycled.
If possible, employ a frame-tracing helper. An 8-lb puppy is excellent for this task, until she starts shredding all of the paper all over the floor…
Once you’ve got all your templates traced and cut, arrange them on your wall with tape. It was awesome how easy it was to rearrange the layout until I was happy with it. And great to see a “true-to-life” size layout instead of just doing sketches on the backs of junk mail envelopes. I had also arranged the frames & pictures on the floor, but seeing the arrangement up on the wall made it a little easier to evaluate what went next to what, how close/far apart should they be, etc.
From here, you can mark where you want the nails to go, or nail directly through the paper templates. Then get to the good part… hanging!
If you’re curious, here are some details on what I chose to hang. From top left: hummingbird photo by EZ Pudewa (of Creature Comforts fame), which I purchased from her Society6 shop / watercolor tree print by Angie Vandenbogaard / culinary postcard / zebra pencil sketch from my dad’s aunt / leftover suzani fabric from my placemat project.
I like that we still have room to add onto the gallery, especially on the sides, or upward to the ceiling. I don’t feel like it’s quite “finished” yet, but at least it’s a nice little collection to start from!
Have you hung a gallery wall? Have you tried the template method? Or did another tip work really well?
PS – all of the frames came from Michaels. They offer quite a few options in a Gallery collection, and you can even find/buy templates to follow if you don’t want to create one yourself. They weren’t too pricey, but I made sure to stock up when they were on sale, or take my 40%-off coupons with me. Another reason why it took a while to put this together 😉