LAX TO YVR GIVEAWAY!

LAX TO YVR is participating in its first giveaway!

There are some great prize packs to be won over at the rikrak studio blog. I'm giving away two alphabet letters painted on burlap from my shop!

Details on how to enter the giveaway are here.

Happy weekend!

CRAFT HOTEL IN BUENOS AIRES

I meant to blog about this hotel we stayed at in Buenos Aires ages ago. So back in March we went down to Argentina to attend my cousin's wedding. It was the Dude's first time there. I learned about Craft Hotel through Remodelista and booked one night there so I could see all the design goodness it boasted. It was the first time I ever stayed at a boutique hotel.

I love the shelving behind the bed and the storage baskets underneath.

The terrace was probably my favourite feature in the hotel. The rustic furniture was to die for. Plus it offered great views of the city.

I wished I had more time to lounge about while visiting.

The courtyard was also lovely. The checkerboard tile floor really gave the space a nice graphic punch. The bikes were available for guests to use.

Craft Hotel is in Palermo Viejo, which is where the young hip people of Buenos Aires like to go to shop, eat, and be merry.

HACKING A SUNBURST MIRROR

Earlier in the summer I found a dusty old sunburst clock at an estate sale. I grabbed it so that I could transform it to the sunburst mirror I always wanted. It was the best $2 I ever spent at an estate sale.

Here's the original sunburst clock.

I couldn't wait to take off the ugly clock face. But when I dismantled it I ran into a couple problems.

Originally I thought I was going take off the hands of the clock and the little knob that holds them and simply glue a mirror on top of the clock face. But when I unscrewed the hands, the clock and the battery pack behind it all came loose as well. This called for a Plan B. How was I going to glue the mirror onto the space where the clock used to be? Additionally, how was I going to hang up this thing since the hook for hanging the clock was attached to the battery pack?

For the mirror solution, I first cut a few pieces of craft foam into circles. I ended up only needing to glue two of them together to fill in the space in the centre. 

For the hanging solution, I used some picture hanging wire I had on hand and tied it to the back like so.

Then I glued on top of the foam circles the mirror I hacked together using a 7 in. round mirror and a 7 in. wooden embroidery hoop that I painted gold. And voila!

It's everything I hoped it would be.

There are lots of instructions out there for how to make a sunburst mirror from scratch. This one and this one are two pretty good tutorials.

This sunburst mirror has one little imperfection. Bonus points to the first one who can point it out. 

LIVING ROOM

Things have been changing a bit in our living room recently.

Last weekend I visited Stepback, my favourite vintage home decor store in Vancouver and scored a couple things that I'd been searching for a long time.



We had been hoping to add a two-tier cart to our living room to function as the landing strip and occasionally moonlight as a bar for when we have a party. Stepback had just what we needed. I love the industrial vibe to it. The Dude is not a fan of industrial decor, but he was game for this piece because it's been nearly impossible to find a cart small enough for the space we had in mind. What I love about this cart is that it's on wheels (I'm a huge fan of furniture on wheels) and that it's airy looking instead of bulky. I'm trying to avoid monolithic pieces of furniture so that it doesn't seem overcrowded in our tiny apartment.



The second thing I found is a vintage toolbox I needed to round out my collection on the top shelf above my desk. I definitely need it to store my ever growing stash of craft supplies.



It looks quite cheerful up there with the other vintage toolboxes, don't you think? Vintage toolboxes have so much character and they provide a creative storage solution.



The last new addition to the living room is the sunburst mirror I hacked. I'll devote a separate blog post to this piece. It looks fabulous on the large wall, which was bare and sad-looking until recently.

SHOP UPDATE

I recently put up some new felt party garlands in the LAX TO YVR shop. They are so fun to make. I really love working with felt. They cheer me up just looking at them. Until Monday, September 5, all felt garlands are shipping for free to Canada and US.

Hopefully I'll have my Christmas product line ready for the shop soon. My goal originally was to have it all ready by the end of August. but I've barely even started working on it! August has been a crazy hectic month, and I'll be relieved when it's over.

Also I'll soon be announcing two giveaways I'll be participating in September. So you'll get an opportunity to score some of my products for free!

ROAD TRIP!

I'm back from my recent trip down to Washington and up the Sunshine Coast. The occasion was a family reunion on my in-laws' side.

First I drove down to Yakima, WA to pick up the Dude's step-grandmother. It was a real treat to do a long drive by myself. I haven't done one of those in ages! Driving for six hours was actually relaxing for me because I was forced to do nothing but drive. It was a welcome break from my usual multitasking hectic daily life. Driving down Highway 82 was my favourite part because of the breathtaking views of the sheer barren desert. Living in lush, green Vancouver, I really miss seeing stark desert landscapes. Yakima reminds me very much of Southern California.

Then we drove back to B.C. to connect with the rest of the clan, and we all drove up to Sechelt in the Sunshine Coast. The Dude's uncle hosted a two-day 60th birthday party extravaganza in his fabulous vacation home. It was a lot of fun to have the whole family together in one place. And the weather was perfect to say the least.

View from the ferry, on our way from Horseshoe Bay to Gibsons. Riding the ferry is always a visual feast.

Birthday party. At this point a piñata was getting smashed.

TAKING A BREAK

Meet our resident spider. He hangs out in the balcony where he feasts on the pests. His main source of food came from the impatiens. They were infested with little white bugs so I threw out the plant recently. I hope the spider is able to find other food.

I'll be away this week from Wednesday to Sunday, so both my shops are closing and I'll be taking a break from blogging. First, I'll be driving down to Yakima, WA, and then up to the Sunshine Coast. Those two places couldn't be any more different from each other. I hope to capture some good photos at both places.

Photos from our recent visit to Bowen Island:

PAINTING WITHOUT TAPE

The thing I hate the most about painting is the prep work. I absolutely hate taping the edges of a room. It's the painting I love to do. The Dude is the opposite. He doesn't mind taping, but he hates painting. How could you hate the most fun part?! So I make him do all the taping.

Anyway, I searched on youtube for painting without tape methods and found the "cutting a paint line" technique. I looked at several videos and turns out there are slight variations for this particular method. This was the one I liked the best:



I used this method to paint the bedroom, and it has revolutionized the way I paint. After a few tries, I got the hang of it. Vibrating the brush a bit while I cut a line seemed to work best for me. I also held my breath when I first began, but after a while I could cut a line while breathing normally.

Also, the secret to cutting a straight paint line is to use a damn good paintbrush that's angled. I splurged on a good one by Purdy that's 2 inches wide. And it's crucial to load the brush with the right amount of paint or you'll end up with a mess.

Using tape has it downsides: it's wasteful, it's a pain in the ass to put up and take down, and the paint usually bleeds through. Drawing a paint line by hand is a win-win...except for when you mess up. But paint is easy to clean up when it's wet. So just wipe off and start again.

PAINTING THE BEDROOM

Obviously, I didn't do the black accent wall behind the bed. The Dude pointed out that with the dark grey curtains, a black wall might feel overwhelming in our bedroom. I'm so glad he pointed that out. I'm in no hurry to change the curtains because it took forever to find them.

Our bedroom is tiny and hence difficult to photograph. There's hardly any space to stand in. These are the best photos I could wrangle.

Here's the "Before" picture:




























Overall, we're both pleased with the results. Now that the whole bedroom is painted in Behr Ultra Pure White, we like the paint choice a lot better. When I did half the room back in May, I was very disappointed with the paint. But I feel much better about it now (to great relief). It's a bright cheery white, which is exactly what's called for in gloomy Vancouver.



The one thing I want to change now is the bed linens. I got the one above in the spring when I was still planning to paint the black accent wall. Now with the white wall, it's too much white. I really want this set from IKEA. I've been coveting this duvet cover for a long, long time. I should have just gone with my gut instinct and gotten them. Oh well. I'm not ready to buy it after having just recently purchased the current one, which is also from IKEA. I may just get a colourful throw and toss it on the bed.



A made-up bed is a rare sighting in our household. I'm a neat freak about everything else except the bed. I just don't see the point. And it's also due to pure laziness. I can't be anal about everything.

We're not sure yet what to do about bedside lighting. The Dude hates our current lamps, but I'm not eager to go shopping for new ones because frankly I'd rather spend the time on more urgent matters. For example, I really need to paint the yellow nightstand, which we picked up for $2 last year at a church thrift sale.

The next place to paint is the living room. I was considering Ultra Pure White but it's too white. I'm seriously considering Benjamin Moore Simply White. And I haven't given up on the elusive black accent wall. It's going to happen somewhere in the living room. I hope.

LEARNING ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR

I recently completed an introductory course to Adobe Illustrator at Emily Carr. Taking this class was like drinking from a fire hydrant. Too much information coming at me at once. And we just learned the basics. I'm sure there's a million and one other things still to learn.

It was fun to learn Illustrator finally. But it also made me realize that it's a lot harder to learn new software as I grow older. I hope to practice by using it frequently so I don't forget everything I learned.

The images here are a couple of assignments I did for class.