Pinterest Challenge!

Sherry from Young House Love (seriously my favorite blog ever people, you should check it out at once), issued a Pinterest Challenge along with her friends Katie, Lana, and Emily.  The basic idea was that all of us who had been madly pinning inspiring things to our pinterest boards should actually make something inspired by those pins.  For anyone who doesn't know, pinterest is a great website where you can catalog and pin up anything on the internet that inspires you.

The challenge ended Tuesday, and while I finished my projects last weekend, I didn't get them hung/moved/photographed until last night.  Funnily enough, both the projects I decided to undertake were inspired originally by YHL.  

The first thing I wanted to try was re-painting a bookcase.  I had this wretched useless craft storage cabinet in my quilting room which was taking up space without providing any useful storage.  It was one of those pieces of furniture that looks like it will be so very useful, but then you realize it has been systematically designed not to efficiently store anything.  At any rate, I put it out on the curb and found a sturdy wooden bookcase from a used furniture store.  Inspired by Sherry and John's fabulous dining room bookcases which had been on my pinboard forever, I decided to paint the bookcase light grey with a deep rich pink back.  I'd never painted before so it was an interesting task.  After letting it dry for a few days, I moved it into my quilt room and it fit in the space perfectly!

I forgot to take any before photos, but it was basically a medium oak sort of tone.  I didn't sand it, just wiped it down thoroughly and painted with a primer-and-paint in one from home depot.

 A couple in progress shots inside the extremely hot garage.  Can you say painting in a central Oklahoma heat wave?  Yuck!

And here's the final thing, in place with my crafty goodness.  The very top are my special stuffed animals, especially the abnormal knitted sheep I got from my mom, on the next shelf- quilt magazines and my fabric-box-of-buttons-snaps-and-other-miscellany.  Under that are three baskets full of fat quarters, while the next three baskets contain notions and ribbon.  I'm excited to finally have a place to show the cute heart pillow (made a long time ago as part of a lesson in curved piecing), since I can't have it the living room due to dog-consumption.  The baskets I already had; they were part of another relatively useless storage system, but once painted grey and put on the bookcase, they're a great storage solution for corralling all kinds of stuff.  I'm so happy with the way this turned out- I love the pop of bright pink and it coordinates very well with the curtains in that room.

The second project I did for the Pinterest challenge was to make a ribbon shade for my laundry room.  It was also inspired by Sherry over at YHL, she made a cute ribbon chandelier for her adorable beanette's reading nook. I made mine the same way she did, basically ribbons and hot glue, only I put a ring on both the top and bottom of mine for some extra structure.  I hung it in my laundry room to cheer things up there.  While it looks really cute, it was very hard to get good pictures.  The laundry room has no windows, so with the light off, there's hardly enough light to take a picture and with the light on, there's tons of glare and you can't really see the chandelier part.  The colors are definitely more fun in person.

So there you have it, my summer pinterest challenge projects.  Hooray!