Pillow Talk

As anyone who knows me knows, I have an unhealthy obsession with throw pillows. Unlike my obsession with plants, which I can sort of justify by telling myself that I am "rescuing" them (from what terrible fate, I'm not quite sure), pillows just take up a lot of space on the couch...and after a while, in our closets, which are filled to bursting with them.

I love that you can totally change the look and color scheme of any room, just by swapping out the pillows. Three years ago, I took an introductory sewing class that changed my life. We learned to make an envelope-back pillow cover, and I have since made about a hundred million of these. For any of you living in the Hamilton area, I highly recommend taking the pillow-making class at Needlework (www.iloveneedlework.com). Once you know how to sew, the possibilities of what you can do with your decor have no end!

Which brings me to my latest project. My husband's family cottage is situated on the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation Reserve by Lake Huron, and last summer, I found the most gorgeous wool fabric at a CAR WASH there, of all places! This super amazing car wash sold tons of beautiful traditional print fabric, craft supplies for leather moccasins, and even some Pendleton blankets. I knew I had to snap up the sweet fabric below or I'd be kicking myself in the tush all the way home.

Last week, I finally found the time to turn this fabric into two new envelope-back pillow covers. So quick and easy...and much easier on the wallet than ordering similar pillows from Pendleton!

When paired with some Turkish kilim cushions I ordered from Istanbul last year (!), I now have the colorful, exotic couch I've been lusting after for years.

Insta-makeover! (Well, not quite instantaneous, but it's amazing what a difference a couple of new pillows can make.) If you're ever up by Pinery Provincial Park, take a side drive down the road to Kettle Point. The beach is beautiful...and the car washes are a crafter's dream :)

AT HOME Magazine Story

So, this morning was a bit of a crazy one, with me waking up an hour after my alarm went off and one of my daughters waking up with pink eye, so it was a huge surprise when the phone rang a bit after eight and one of my friends told me that the issue of At Home magazine was delivered with this morning's paper, and THE HYDEOUT was on the cover!

Kathy Renwald, who wrote the story inside, did such a wonderful job of capturing my design sensibility and the "feel" of my home, and the photos look lovely, I think.

You can check out the issue here at:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?EID=064c888d-af25-4799-a36b-1eed761b0ffe

Stay tuned for some super fun blogs posts next week: I've got a couple of projects on the go that are almost complete! And if you're new to this blog, please "like" The Hydeout on Facebook, so you can get notifications whenever I post something new.

Till then, thanks for checking out what's new on The Hydeout, and have a fantastic weekend!

Fun with Plak-Its

If you're like me and still clinging to some of your old first-apartment-post-grad wall art (you know what I'm talking about--the Plak-It Claude Monet Water Lillies, that framed canvas print of a dog with an Afro that you bought at Urban Outfitters), here is a fun project for you. As long as you can stomach painting over that mounted black-and-white poster of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's that you know you're never really going to put back up on the wall, you can turn these dime-a-dozen reproductions into beautiful, original pieces of art.

This is one of my favorite things to do because it is cheap and easy...and, hey, it's environmentally responsible, too! There are just two steps to this project:

1. Get out your white paint and paint over your old "art." Wait for it to dry completely.
2. Decide what you want your new art to be. You don't have to be an artist for this. Find a stencil you like on-line, print and enlarge it if necessary, and simply fill it in with black paint. Or, you can write a word or a line from a favorite poem or song. I did this one free hand, but you could buy an alphabet stencil at a craft store and get a similar effect. So simple, yet, I guarantee you, much better than what was there before...

For the silhouette art of my family below, I cut around photographs of my family members' faces where they were in profile, then blew them up to the size I wanted them. I traced around the pictures directly onto the painted Plak-It board, then filled them in with black paint. I really wanted the piece to have some texture, so before I painted it white, I basically used up all my ugly colors of acrylic paint by slapping them on haphazardly and unevenly and using a metal spatula to chunkify the paint even more. Then, once it was completely dry, I painted over it with a thick white interior wall paint. You don't have to take this extra step, though, if you don't mind a smooth finish.

There you have it...original art in a day or less! Natalie Vaillancourt...this one's for you (I know you have some Plak-Its with motivational quotes lurking in a closet somewhere)!