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All Things Home

how to make a custom shower curtain

As I shared in boy’s bathroom refresh, I made a custom shower curtain out of a curtain panel from Calvin’s former room in our PA house.  And, as promised, I’m sharing how I did it! This is one of those sewing projects where you just need to sew a semi-straight line and you’ll be okay. For this project, I used decorator-width fabric, which was 56″ prior to hemming and a , which is 54 x 78″.  This is taller than a standard shower curtain, filling the visual vertical space better (in my opinion.)  It is narrower than a traditional shower curtain, though, so I will make two. One tip – it’s nice to use a fabric for this project that looks good from both sides.  That way, you don’t have to look at the “backside” of the fabric and/or you don’t have to make a liner. Start off by hemming

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All Things Home

mini landscape “place cards” & a giveaway

While the boys were at the climbing lessons, I mingled around the nearby , looking for inspiration and pieces to use in an upcoming post about a summer table setting.  I found beautiful as a great launching point, but I wanted to add a whimsical element to the table beyond fruit, flowers, and a pretty cake for the pedestal.  This particular Walmart has a pretty robust art supply section and, of course, I meandered through there to see if any new art supplies caught my eye.  I found some mini stretched canvases and cute wooden stands and the wheels started turning.  What about painting mini landscape “place cards” as a little takeaway for guests? I put them in the cart and couldn’t wait to get started on them the next day. are the mini canvases I purchased for the landscape place cards  They are about 2 x 2″. I wanted

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All Things Home

Hand Painted Mora Dresser | Part 2

In case you missed part one of this dresser makeover, you can check it out HERE. At the end of yesterday’s post, I said I would show how the dresser turned out as well as how I distressed and finished it, so this post is fulfilling that promise. And here it is… I did a light distressing with 120 grit sandpaper, just to “knock down the newness” of the fresh paint.  I also wanted to soften the decorative painting.  You can see how I did it in the video… I also replaced the broken caster, added new glass knobs, and finished the piece in MMSMP’s Hemp Oil… This piece still followed my tradition of scrolly decorative painting on drawer fronts, but I changed it up a bit by adding the folk art animals as well as some different strokes. I love the rabbit and I think I need to play

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All Things Home

Hand Painted Mora Dresser | Part 1

Last week, I finally got around to painting a dresser that’s been hanging out in my garage since October!  I put it off originally because the winter weather set in, but then this spring has been busy and it’s been out of sight, out of mind.  Jeff cleaned out the garage a few weeks ago and I promised I would paint the dresser and get it out of there. Well, I finally did and I made a video of the process. So, here is how the dresser started… It’s a pretty little piece, but the finish was a bit dinged up.  A part of me wanted to sand it all down and do some kind of a whitewash or bleach the wood or something, but a reader of me asked if I would paint it specifically for her.  Since I was just going to sell it, anyway, I was happy

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All Things Home

repairing a broken stool

I was going to call this post “how to fix loose stools”, but I realized that sounded like an Immodium commercial or something and came up with a different name.  You’re welcome for that. Anyway, moving past the potty humor, I have a thing for antique stools.  They are multi-functional and, since they are hard-working pieces, they are typically worn to perfection.  They are very soulful pieces of furniture in my view. Often times, though, the rungs that connect the legs on stools (and chairs) loosen over time, especially if they’ve been stored in a garage or attic where extreme temperatures can loosen the glue. Fixing this issue is so simple, though!  Just get some wood glue… …and brush it onto the end of the lose rung and the recess it fits into. Push it back in… …and wipe away the excess glue.  In my experience, most of the chairs

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All Things Home

straightening the studio closet doors

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, we got the first set of doors for the studio closet built and installed, but unfortunately, they were a little warped!  Ah!  We were trying to make this a simple, easy project, but these doors were not playing along with that and made things complicated.  They were warped just enough so they wouldn’t even catch on the magnetic catches we installed.  They would just pop right off. It was a drop-head-in-my-hands moment. The good news is that they didn’t look that warped or that bad and there was a fix that did not involve taking anything apart or building new doors.  (Which would not have fit in the simple/easy plan.) I bought a piece of hardware called a turnbuckle.  It is made specifically for screen doors, but I watched tutorials where it was used on gates, shed doors, and even cabinet doors. 

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All Things Home

fixing the bottom of an upholstered chair

This chair has had issues for a while, but I’ve been ignoring them.  It’s typically been in out-of-the-way places, so it wasn’t something I had to look at or be bothered by regularly.  Well, since I moved it into the studio, this saggy bottom has been annoying me. But still not quite enough to actually fix it. It went on my “annoying project list” to hang out there until I was in the mood to tackle it.  Well, then it started shedding all over my studio floor.  No, no, no.  Not in my creative sanctuary.  Even the boys pointed out the pile of “hair” under the chair, which is saying a lot because they are not generally observant about messes. So on Friday, before I took some time to paint, I took about 15 minutes to fix the chair.  Some of the webbing was coming undone and it obviously needed

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All Things Home

mixing a custom color & fixing too much chipping

The first thing I have to say about painting these two antique washstands is that I didn’t follow my own advice. But, before we get into that, let me show you how the pieces looked before… I painted these pieces in MMS Milk Paint in Linen a few years ago for our master bedroom in PA.  They were the perfect size for that long and narrow room, but they looked dinky against in our new home’s higher ceilings. I knew I was going to sell them when I found replacements for them.  As I was working on the guest room, I found two dressers to flank the bed and that meant I needed to get this pair ready to sell.  I could’ve sold them as-is, but some of the paint rubbed off during the move and I felt like they could use some freshening up.  Chris, my Junk Bonanza booth-mate,

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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