Tetris Chest of Drawers

I bought a set of drawers months ago from Ikea and spent ages deciding how to paint them. Every time I looked at them the shape reminded me of a game of tetris but I didn't think all the bright colours would go in my living room. Then it hit me - why do I need to stick to the traditional colours and then this idea was born!

What you will need:

Ikea PS 2012 chest of drawers

acrylic paint (white, black and red) - I got mind from poundland

Pencil

Ruler

Step 1

Take all the handles off your chest of drawers

Step 2 

Measure out your squares and draw them on your drawers. I had to make mine slightly more rectangular than square so that there wasn't any gaps on the drawer. You can use the same pattern as me or make up your own. If you want to use mine then just split the length and height of the drawer by the number of squares I've used in that space.

Step 3 

Paint your base coat colours on the squares until the front of your drawers are covered. I added white to the black to get the lighter grey colour and black to the red so that I had enough shades.

Step 4

Now for the tricky bit - doing the shading. For each of your base shades you need 3 colours to do the shading:

• One very light one (used on the top side)
• One not as light as the first but still lighter than your base coat (used on the left side)
• One darker than the base coat (used on the bottom and right sides)

I painted all the tops of that certain base coat first and then added a tiny bit of black to made it darker for all the left hand sides, before adding even more to make the other two sides, making sure that you paint the corners at an angle so they all join up together evenly.

I started out trying to draw all the shading on before painting it but I got bored and realised that my paint brash width gave me the desired effect so I just used that.

Step 5

Paint a thin black line round the outside of your tetris shape blocks (not the individual squares) and use the rest of your black paint to cover the rest of the drawers and handles.

Step 6

Screw the handles back in, then step back and admire your handy work before putting all your junk back on it!

I use mine as a TV cabinet as my TV is mounted on the wall so it looks like it's floating just above it and it's great for hiding DVDs and the Xbox (which fits in the tall cupboard on the right)

I'll be back,

Craft Cupboard 2.0 - Week 1 - The Haberdashery Shelf

So I made a new years resolution that I was going to learn a new craft every month this year so 2014 is definitely going to be a busy year. However before I can even start to think about that I had to do something about my craft cupboard. I had been so busy crafting on the run up to Christmas that I had just shoved things in everywhere and it was now over flowing.

Then it hit me - why don't I merge tidying my cupboard with learning a new skill - WOODWORK!!!

I started designing craft cupboard 2.0 immediately and was very pleased with my plans, masking taping them to the wall for inspiration

I couldn't wait to get started the next day and dragged my boyfriend to the local DIY shop (Homebase) to help me pick out wood. I was all ready to by sheets and sheets of wood but Quinn recommend I just buy a couple to get me started and then if it works out ok then I can come back for more. Luckily it had turned out I'd bought enough for 1 shelves worth of wooden tidies and that was hard enough work in itself! Turns out my plans to have the whole cupboard finished by the end of this week was a bit inspirational but I am very happy with what I've managed to achieve.

The first shelf I started with is my Haberdashery shelf for all my material, wool, buttons, ribbon and thread. I didn't think I had to much for this shelf but it turns out there was lots of things hiding in there and I might need to do a wee bit of a further clear out

For the stuffing and wool I just made your average box. Actually the material one is the same but I wrapped the material around piece of cardboard before slotting them into the box so that I can easily see what I have to hand. I made two of these material boxes, putting one in front of the other.

For the 3 in the middle they were slightly more complicated so I've made a tutorial for each in case you want to learn how to make your own!

Thread Holder

Button Drawers

Ribbon Holder 

Hope this inspires you guys and hopefully over the next few weeks I'll have some more time to tackle another shelf

I'll be back xx

Take my hat off to you

I love unusual looking lights and recently I stumbled across the idea of mixing head-wear and home-wear together

no not like this....although it is a rather fetching choice of outfit. I was meaning something more like this:

Top Hat Lamp Shade - Mr Kate

After getting some inspiration from an awesome blog by Kate Albrecht I started thinking about how I could make one of these for myself and then it hit me that I had a top hat gathering dust in my craft cupboard

I'm not going to lie, it took a while to find it as y cupboard is pretty jam packed at the moment but it was well worth it. 

This lampshade was the simplest craft project I have done in a while. All I had to do was take a pair of scissors and cut a small hole in the top of the hat. Then I unscrewed my current lampshade in the livingroom and pushed the screw lamp base through the hole before screwing the white piece of plastic back on.

I used a low watt energy efficient light bulb as i was afraid the hat might burn but I've been using it for a couple of months now and it's all good as the hat doesn't touch the bulb - so give it a go, it really is that simple.

REMEMBER - don't let the bulb touch the hat and if you are worried about it looking like a fire hazard then take it down immediately

I'll be back xx