Giant Sewing Studio Pegboard

I can't believe it has been a year since we put our house on the market and went searching for a new house!  At this point in time last year I was nervous about finding a house since our house sold in 24 hours and we had a time limit of about 3 weeks to find a new one.  We saw several houses in the beginning that could of worked but we would of had to compromise on some of the things on our wish list.  This time around I didn't want to compromise too much because I knew that I wanted this house to be our forever home.  I'm glad we stuck it out even though our offer on this house got accepted with less than 24 hours to spare!  One thing that I really wanted in our new house was a dedicated space to sew and craft and this house has the perfect space!  Here are some before pictures of the space.

This little room is right next to our family room in the basement which is perfect because I plan on the family room being a play space for the girls.  Another great thing about this room is the storage!  Those built in cabinets are perfect for storing away many of my craft supplies.  In the last picture you can see the other side of one of the ugliest accent walls I've ever seen!  Here's what it looks like from the other side.

When I saw the listing for this place I laughed out loud when I saw the picture of this wall.  But despite this ugly wall I knew that the rest of the house is perfect.  Someday we will get rid of that wall but for now it is a good conversation point when people take a tour of our house!

I'll talk more about the rest of the things in this room in a future post but today I want to focus on the pegboard wall.  After painting the room, we got to work putting up the pegboard.  I purchased these pegboards from Home Depot.  It would of been cheaper to buy one continuous piece of pegboard but these are nice quality and I thought it might be easier to hang four smaller pieces than one giant one.  I also purchased 3 pieces of 8 ft long one by twos, wood screws, and 3 pieces of 8 ft long flat crown moulding for the frame.

I didn't take any pictures of the hanging process but it was pretty simple.  We found the studs and screwed the one by twos to the studs (one at the top and bottom of where we wanted the pegboard and one close to the middle).  Then we screwed the pegboard panels to the one by twos.  Finally I cut the ends of the crown moulding pieces at a 45 degree angle with a miter box and saw.  I had to cut one of the pieces in half for the sides of the frame.  We used a pneumatic nail gun to attached the frame around the edge of the pegboard.

I was originally going to leave the pegboard white but I loved this wall color so much that I didn't want to lose so much of it behind the pegboard so I painted the pegboard to match the wall and then painted the frame white.

The hardest part of this is figuring out how to fill it up with stuff now that it is on the wall.  I bought an assortment of pegboard hooks and accessories to hang my tools and shelves and such.

I found this little letter board at Hobby Lobby.  It came with white letters but I also bought some smaller blush pink letters from Amazon.

I found this pink wire shelf/bin at Target.  I couldn't find it online to link it but it is from the Pillowfort collection.

It is so nice to be able to easily reach for my tools while sitting at my desk but also not having them on the desk and cluttering up my workspace.

A lot of my storage solutions for this pegboard came from either Target of Ikea.  These Ikea Skurar votive candle holders are perfect for holding various tools and they are so pretty.  By the way, I can never remember the weird Scandinavian names for Ikea stuff.  It took me so long to find the link to these because I couldn't remember what they were called.  I also have a few sizes of the plant pots from the same collection.  I'm using the smaller size Skurar pots on the pegboard and I have some larger sized ones hanging on the pegboard.  I have 4 of these Bekvam spice racks on the pegboard and I intend to buy more.  

Most of them will be used for ribbon and trim storage.  This is the BEST solution that I have found for ribbon and spooled trim storage!  In our old house I had my ribbon spools on a tension rod in the closet.  It was a pain to remove the spool though when it ran out because I had to take a bunch of them off in order to get the empty one off.  This works so much better because I can still pull it out to cut pieces but it is a breeze to remove them when they are empty.  I actually bought these spice racks to turn into little bookshelves in my daughters' rooms.  I'm glad I never got around to putting them up because this is one of my favorite storage solutions on this pegboard!

I found this little wooden crate in the aisle with unfinished wood projects at Hobby Lobby.  Those two boxes are a Kate Spade watch box and a Michael Kors watch box.  In the Kate Spade one I store my pattern weights (side note: I have searched all over for the Kate Spade watch that came in this box and I hope to find it soon or I will be very sad.  It is a black watch with pave cat ears around the watch face and I love it so much!).  I have needles and my other sewing machine feet in the Michael Kors box.  I found that little odds and ends container in the Target dollar section and I love that it is blush pink and has that light wood lid.

These floral buckets were also from the Target dollar section.  When I first found them there were only 2 of the floral ones left.  After putting them up on the pegboard I loved them so much that I knew that I needed more.  I checked that dollar section every single time that I went to Target for a month straight and was finally rewarded by finding 3 more.  A few are empty right now but the others are holding pom pom trim, elastic, and some other trim that I bought by the yard recently.

I took this little fabric and lace garland off of my daughter's teepee:

Photo credit Exposures by J. Linnea

I printed my Etsy shop logo on some printable heat transfer material and ironed it onto some linen fabric and then added some lace trim.  I'm so excited about this pegboard and my sewing studio.  It has been so much fun to sew in this room!  

I've also been busy working on the family room that is right next to this space.  Over my Easter break it got a new coat of paint and now I am working on a few fun decor projects including a way to display/store children's art, a fresh look for the benches that were on the porch at our old house, and a really cool decor project involving wool felt pom poms and paper mache letters.  I am also slowly working on some sewing projects related to cloth diapering so I hope to have an update on cloth diapering with those projects soon.  Also here is what I have been working on lately:

You can read more about the pattern and tutorial that I used for these bibs in this post.  And here's my now 7 month old cutie rocking the bib on the left:

Headband Holder

Part of the fun of having a little girl is being able to dress her up.  My little one has already accumulated quite the collection of headbands. I was storing them in a tray in one of the drawers of her dresser but since it was filling up quickly I decided to find a new storage solution.  I love to find fun ways to store accessories as evidenced by previous blog posts.

Scarf and Necklace Storage

Earring Display

Bracelet Holder

This project is very similar to the bracelet holder that I made a little over a year ago. For the bracelet holder I used a cardboard tube from the vinyl for my Silhouette Portrait and for this project I used a cardboard oat container

I used wood pieces from Hobby Lobby for the base and top. I decided to cover the oat container in burlap.  I decided to add a stenciled design with coral paint which was inspired by this project:

Stenciled Storage Boxes

I used the flower stencil (burlap storage box above) which I made using a transparency sheet for an overhead projector and my Silhouette Portrait.  You can find out how I made the stencils in this blog post.

I was a little bit concerned that it would look weird because the design isn't symmetrical so when I moved the stencil I couldn't line up the flowers perfectly but I think it turned out just fine.

I sprayed the fabric with spray adhesive and then attached it to the oat container. I tucked the extra fabric on the top and bottom inside the container.  

I then glued my wood pieces together with liquid nails.  For the base I used two round plaques with a candle holder sandwiched between.  For the top I use another round plaque and a finial on top.  I got the idea for this from this post from the blog The Good Life.

Then I painted the base and the top with a vintage white craft paint.  Next I attached the base and the top to the oat container with liquid nails.  One thing that I wish I would of done is to put something inside the oat container to weigh it down a little bit before attaching the top,  The holder is a little light even with the wood base and top.

Finally, I glued some lace ribbon at the top and bottom of the oat container to add a little more decoration to the holder.

Well that's all there was to it.  It was a very cheap project as I already had many of the supplies on hand.  I think I completed it for under $10.  

Finishing Touches in the Nursery

 

The nursery has been finished for several weeks now.  I hope to have the big reveal ready for you in the next post but I thought that I would share some small finishing touches in the nursery.  First of all, I purchased a can of gold spray paint for the curtain rod in the room but I got so much use out of it beyond that.  Above you can see the fox lamp that I purchased at World Market.  He used to be black but that was boring so I spray painted him gold.  Isn't he cute?

I also spray painted the cheap plastic frame that houses the "Lefse Norwegian for Love" print.

You may remember the frame that I spray painted gold to add to the wall with the string art.  I said in that post that the photo in the frame was just a placeholder.  Here is the updated frame:

I love this photo of my grandpa and grandma and my grandpa's siblings and their spouses.  My Great Aunt Lyla is on the right side.  The frame mat is just some scrapbooking paper that I had on hand.

I also spray painted the top of this canister that I found at HomeGoods.  The handle is a cabinet knob from Hobby Lobby that I glued to the canister top with E6000 glue.  I have little things stored in the canister like a thermometer, pacifiers, nail clippers, and a nasal aspirator.

I also wanted to finally update you on the cloth diaper storage in the room.  We have decided to go the cloth diaper route part time.  We plan on using cloth diapers when we are at home with baby.  To store the diapers I found some media storage baskets at Target

To attach them to the wall I needed anchors, washers and screws.

I started by cutting pieces of newspapers to the size of the bottom of the baskets.  I then pushed the screws through each of the 4 corners for each basket.  I pushed the newspaper on to the screws to mark the spots where I needed to drill.

Then I taped the newspaper pieces to the wall, making sure to check that each one was level and evenly spaced.

I drilled holes for the anchors in the spots that I marked and removed the newspapers.  Then I inserted the anchors.

Then I just screwed the baskets to the wall placing a washer between the screw head and the basket. The baskets fit about 6 BumGenius diapers.  The diapers pull out easily without taking all of the other diapers with them.

For a diaper pail we decided to use two small SimpleHuman trash cans: one for cloth diapers and one for disposable diapers.  I made the labels using my Silhouette Portrait and gold adhesive vinyl.  The cloth diaper pail is lined with a reusable liner.

I finally filled the bookshelf in the room.  I found the storage baskets at HomeGoods.  Two of them are currently empty but the other one is filled with toys that my nieces have outgrown thanks to my awesome sister-in-law.  The storage boxes are from Michaels and contain manuals from all the new gadgets that we needed for this little baby.  Well that is all for now but the big reveal is coming soon so stay tuned!