Faux Snakeskin Ikea Lack Table

In addition to redoing my girls’ bedroom, I decided my living room needed a makeover as well. I don’t recall how I came across Emily’s blog Recently, but the moment I did I fell in love with her DIY faux snakeskin table and HAD to HAVE one of my very own. Her step by step instructions were so easy to follow. Click here for the step by step guide. Emily reused a plastic table that she picked up at goodwill. I purchased a very inexpensive LACK Sofa table from Ikea because I knew it would come in separate pieces and I thought that would be easier to work with. It’s a good shape and height but seriously lacking in personality.

I purchased this faux snakeskin fabric from Hancock Fabrics on clearance for $1.99 a yard!! Talk about a bargain.

And I scooped up some Mod Podge and a sponge brush and was ready to begin. I ran out of mod podge half way through the project so make sure you have enough. You will need to paint it on the surface of your table to make it sticky and then again on top of the fabric several times to get it to harden and shine.  ( I used two 16oz bottles for the entire project.)

My piece seemed a little rough, almost sandpaper like, when it was dry so I contacted Emily to see if she sealed her table with anything. She recommended Minwax Polycrylic finish so I applied 2 coats of once the mod podge dried.

I am beyond obsessed with my new table. Seriously, if you were to purchase this in a store you would pay hundreds, if not thousands for a similar table. A huge thanks to Emily for her inspiration!

 

Foyer Wallpaper

My foyer and living room are essentially one room so when I decided to redo the living room, I clearly had to update the entryway as well :).  I live in a rental apartment so there’s not too much I can do but, I think at a bare minimum you have to paint those horrible white walls and make it feel homier. We did change the paint from a beige to a grey but I still felt like my walls were lacking some personality. I love wallpaper and would probably wallpaper every room if I owned a place. Fortunately, there are tons of companies that are making temporary wallpaper targeted towards renters. I scoured the Spoonflower website to try to find a pattern for my one wall when you walk into my apartment. I purchased two swatches and polled everyone who walked through my front door.

Here’s option A

diamond_circles wallpaper by holli_zollinger for sale on Spoonflower – custom wallpaper

And here’s option B

watercolor dots magenta on dark grey wallpaper by katarina for sale on Spoonflower – custom wallpaper

Personally, I liked option B but literally every person that came in liked option A so that’s what we went with. Here’s what our foyer looked like before…

And here’s how it turned out after the wallpaper was applied.

   

I was under the impression the wallpaper was going to be some kind of peel and stick paper. This was not the case. The wallpaper arrived with adhesive already applied to the back of it. The wallpaper required much more work that I anticipated although it wasn’t really hard to do. Basically you had reverse roll the paper, soak it in water for 15 seconds, fold it like a book on itself for 1 minute and then hang it from top to bottom while smoothing out the air bubbles. It was definitely a two person job, one which my husband wasn’t too thrilled about doing, but it didn’t take long. It was about an hour to hang the paper (our wall is approx 12′ wide), then we let it dry for 3 hours and then with an exacto knife we trimmed the edges. I think it makes a pretty big impact on such a small wall.

Designer Crush: Jonathan Adler

I just received the latest Spring catalog from Jonathan Adler and it made me so happy! I love Jonathan’s style and playfulness and somehow even though he uses so many crazy patterns and color and styles it all still works! In case you didn’t see it here you go. Enjoy!

Girls’ Room Reveal

I am so excited to share with you Grace & Charlie’s new pink princess bedroom. Here’s what their room looked liked before (I was anti pink when I was pregnant with Grace)

And here’s how their shared room looks now….