Tag Archives: Mrs. B DIY

Find Your Marbles

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Courtney Barnes at Style Court did an entertaining series on magazine and tear sheet storage a while back. Yep, about six months ago. Or so I thought. It was actually a year and a half ago. Yes, a year and a half ago I read Courtney’s posts and thought, “I need to get on that.”

My magazines were stacked on shelves and as I pulled and replaced them they were all a jumble. The tear sheets are in horribly mismanaged files. Some are actually in folders by the subject that inspired the ripping, “Curtains,” “Product,” “Fabric” and the like. There is a broadly named and useless file brimming with treasure entitled, “Whole Rooms.” Another over-full and wobbly folder contains dozens of vintage features. Nonsense.

So I used a little of my Christmas money to buy lucite magazine holders from CB2 for the current magazines, which has left just the tear sheets to corral.

Thomas Britt covered many books on his Chinoiserie bookcases with cream-colored paper and gilt-edges stickers, but it was his engaging story of learning to marbleize paper as a teenager that has been bouncing around in my head for weeks.

Then I saw this. Stumbling upon things that have not caught your eye before is one of the advantages of poor organization. This charming shelf belonged (and may still belong) to Hitch Lyman, a garden designer and artist, who covered “treasured garden volumes with marbleized paper.” This image appeared in House Beautiful in February of 1998; the shelf may look the same today, though I have no way of knowing. Regardless, I don’t think I have seen anything as charming in months.But. I’m not a girl with a lot of time on my hands. I can’t go around willy-nilly covering books in my office. And yet. I do need binders. Binders to hold the tear sheets. In fact, I need several, which is why the lovely but somewhat pricey linen ones have never hit my shelves. Last week I picked up several of these cardboard binders and plan to cover the spines with wonderful paper.








I do. I plan to. Stay tuned.
For more information on marbleized paper, check Courtney’s posts here which includes a link to a post by Janet Blyberg on the same. Google turned up several how-to’s on marbleizing paper; Martha shows you how here.
Images of Tom Britt’s home via New York Social Diary, photography by Jeffery Hirsch. House Beautiful image by Richard Felber. Click on the image to see the books, and the “cat scratching post disguised as a chair,” bigger. It’s delightful. Top five paper images from Paper Mojo; bottom two from Paper Source.
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Arts and Crafts

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“Mom, are you an artist?”
“No. That’s not art. Art is harder than that.”

My eldest is right. Art is harder than this. This is craft, and my apologies to Gunther Forg.

The hallway needed….something. Even though it’s yellow, it seemed achingly bland. I had picked these frames up at a garage sale a while back. I bought eight canvases for nearly nothing and carted up various paints from the basement. Paint samples for rooms that didn’t work out, craft paint and kids’ paint. It’s an equal opportunity supply closet. Some were used in their original form; a few got to mix it up.

I used the image, top, for color inspiration, measured and drew lines across the middle of the canvases and painted. All eight canvases were completed in an evening.

The canvases did not quite fill the frame openings so I had the framer put in a white fillet. The framer, Frame Works, deserves the “Patience of Job Award.” I took in eight frames and eight canvases, but the direction and order of the canvases mattered and the direction and order of the frames mattered (they are chipped and worn which I liked, but they needed to be arranged specifically.) So I had labeled each frame and each corresponding canvas with a number and an arrow pointing which way was up. And, “Well,” I said, shifting my weight but not averting my gaze, “I need them in a week.” Unflappable, Betsy never blinked.

I’ve ordered this Dash & Albert runner for the stairs from Stuff and that will be the last of the spitting and polishing before the holidays. I’m still aching for dining room curtains, but fear they remain in perpetual simmer on the back burner. There is a great wool at Off the Floor Now at a terrific price, but I’m worried it is too pale. When I mentioned it to one of our guests he said,”You’d better wait; I get the feeling you’re picky.”
I have no idea where he got that impression.
Image, top, Elle Decor, December, 2006. Photography by William Waldron. Design by Shelton, Mindel & Associates. The image also appears in Style & Substance, The Best of Elle Decor.
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Homage to House

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Mr. Blandings and I had a dinner party Friday night. We were having thirteen guests and the last few weeks were spotted with menus and planning and cleaning.

While Mr. B wants to talk food, it is usually the last thing on my mind. He’s a very good cook. The food is always great. It is the first box I check when planning a party at home.

Getting ready for a party always seems a bit crazy, but I always seem to take on a little project that I feel quite sure must be completed before the event or all is lost.

My granny lamps are happy in their new spot in the front hall and the parchment shades finally arrived. A former blogger on whom I relied for stylish advice, House of Beauty and Culture, graciously provided a suggestion for the shades as lamp millinery is a stumbling block for me.

He suggested the shade but also planted the seed that a border, like that of a French mat, would be a nice detail. When I emailed back, “Huh?” he was lovely and sent me pictures and instructions.

HOBAC had suggested insetting the line by a quarter of an inch, but I was chicken. After mixing the paint and adding the glaze I was really afraid as I thought there was a great possibility that disaster loomed.

The first two lines were awful and I mumbled a particularly unpleasant twelve letter word. A little more glaze and a better brush seemed to do the trick and, well, fortunately there is a “back” so the worst of it is to the wall.

I don’t know if this is quite what House had in mind and while he might not care to be credited with inspiring my amateurish attempts, I am incredibly grateful.

How I’d love to have a large oval mirror to go behind.
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In the Closet

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Jennifer Boles of the Peak of Chic did a great post last week on the design equivalent of lipstick.  She’s layering her home with thoughtful touches that are both stylish and budget friendly.  She asked her readers what their “lipstick purchases” have been.

Mine have been paint.  When we bought the dream house we had a little bit of time between closings so we freshened up our new home with paint.  The painters did not think they would have enough time to finish before we moved in so I pleaded, “What if you didn’t do the closets?  Would that save enough time?”  Yes, agreed, no closets.  A happy compromise and, as I like to paint, I thought I’d do them myself.

Nearly nine years later I had completed one.  Five years ago I painted the big boys’ closet while they were skiing with Mr. Blandings.  But right before school let out I took on the front hall closet.  It was supposed to be papered with the same paper as the front hall, but had been forgotten.  Nine years ago.

I don’t usually like pink for myself but I was having a hankering.  The first shade was horrific, but the next, while vibrant, was just what I was after.  Then, just following an exchange with another blogger about the current wave of Draperesque design not holding up, both of us nodding our heads at our computer screens, I Dorothy-ed the ceiling.  I was inspired by a couple of pieces I’d seen in Joe Nye’s showroom in New York.


I’ve been thinking about these butterflies for a while.  Once completed I decided they were too dense, but I suppose my perspective was skewed as I was on a ladder in a very tiny space.  Also, I think a new globe is in order but I’ve been far too busy running my ridiculously-indulged children around to pick one up.  Which will also be the excuse I use for not painting the remaining four un-touched closets for at least three more months.

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Execution*

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*Disclaimer: 1) not a designer, 2) it’s not styled and 3) it’s a playroom.

With all projects there is a kind of “Big Bang Theory.”  Everything sort of explodes before it comes back together.  I pushed everything to the center of the room and painted, moving the ladder strategically through the two foot border I had created around the perimeter.  I tried Benjamin Moore Aura for the first time with great results.  It covered the yellow, which should have been named Acid Trip, in two coats.

I taped off a red border around the ceiling to give a little more structure.  It’s horrible to paint with red, by the way.  It took at least four coats to give a solid stripe and it might have been five.  I’m quite impatient and more than three coats makes me grouchy.

Once that was finished I made a few samples to scale to decide how close the dots and starbursts should be.  Then I measured it out with a yardstick and marked the pattern with pencil.  

I did the dots first with a black paint marker.  For me, I have to save the best for last or I abandon the whole thing.  If I’d started with starbursts I might not have finished the dots.  The rubber stamp worked great and survived to stamp again.

I’m not going to be glib.  It took a long time.  Though low-skill, as all of my projects are, it was often tedious.  And the pattern of the dots did make my eyes cross now and again.  Also, for the record, the boys did not help in the least.  

But I had fun.  This is the kind of thing I want to do.  I just told a friend the other day that the thought of playing tennis or bridge makes me want to hurt myself.  I’d be eternally happy painting one room after the next, but fear my family would commit me.

I picked up the vintage goose decoys at Suzanne Cooper’s.  Mr. Blandings thought I might reconsider and let him take them to the Duck Club; I did not.

I replaced a reproduction pine hanging shelf with these shelves from West Elm.  Cleaner, lighter, fresher, better in every way.  
Of course, I didn’t hang them, I just stood and directed.  This is where Mr. Blandings’s enthusiasm for my projects begins to wane.

This housed the built-in ironing board.  The rectangle to the left is metal and folds down as an iron rest.  When we had the rooms painted I wanted to take these out and fill in the opening but the painter somehow talked me out of it.  I can’t even remember the explanation of why it wouldn’t work but in hindsight it was stuff and nonsense and a mistake.  We mounted L brackets here to create more book storage which has proved handy.

I ordered incredibly inexpensive white cotton curtains from Pottery Barn and added a black grosgrain ribbon.  I used hemming tape because I can’t sew.  Frankly, sewing would probably be just as easy.  

The issue, of course, was never the blue and red, but rather the green and red.  The white of the wall cuts it enough that I do think it escapes looking like a Christmas display.  The room could use a little grounding and I wanted to paint the floor black.  (Please don’t tell Mr. Blandings; he might come undone.)  But in an email exchange with frequent commenter Toby Worthington about the curtains he suggested painting the baseboards a dark grey.  A better solution, especially as he reminded me that a black floor would show every speck of dust.  
Maybe over Labor Day.
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