French "Rustic Toile" Valance

As you know I have been working on a little “facelift” for our guest bath; creating all kinds of projects to give it some elegant glamour and I finally just finished the last of my projects.  Woohoo!!!  My final project was to make a new valance to go over the bathroom window, something to tie everything all together.  I searched through all of my resources and did not find any inspirational ideas for valance style; however, they did help me to decide on the fabric type, color and pattern I wanted to use.  I chose (from my fabric stash) a nice home decor heavy weight fabric in a black and white toile print. Take a look.

This is the plain window with 2” wooden blinds already up and a basic white shower curtain, nothing special to look at here.

This is the fabric I had several pieces of in my stash, wonderful remnants I got at the fabric store for a steal, super pricey otherwise. The fabric is “Rustic Toile” by Waverly Fabrics from the home décor line, about 1 yard long. When I am working with an expensive piece of fabric which is going into a room where it may not stay for a long time I try to sew it up in a way which allows me to re-use it later.  Instead of cutting the fabric I used the whole piece by pressing the selvages under on the sides then folding it in half to create a self lining and turning down the top edges to make the rod casing and using the largest stitch allowance my machine would sew.  The long stitches are easy to take out if I ever want to turn the valance into whole fabric again.

Once I had the casing finished I hug the valance giving it a bit of pouf but I felt it was missing something.  I went to my notions stash and looked for something to give it a pop of black because the light print faded into the very white shower curtain right next to it creating a lack of contrast.  I found some really pretty French jet black pom-pom trim which seemed to pull out the black and give it more definition.  I simply used the same stitch length to sew it just below the casing stitching, easy to remove later down the line if I wanted to re-use either of the items.

Here we are all done and already hanging up right over the window.  I just love me some toile, I would put it everywhere if I could get away with it! I cannot show you how well it adds contrast with the shower curtain right now… you have to wait to see the whole thing in the reveal in my next post. Hehe!!!

Thanks for letting me share my final bling project for the guest bath facelift; I am very pleased with the results so far, I cannot wait to see what you all think.

See you soon.

Laurette

Glam It Up!

I had a few accessories leftover from my studio makeover which did not have a home so I decided to use them as the jumping off point for the re-style of our upstairs guest bath.  After playing with the layout of the accessories I realized I needed a few more things to tie everything together.  I wanted to use several things I already had on hand before going out and buying anything new, all I had to do was glam them up with a bit of bling! Here are a few simple projects I did to achieve the look I wanted.

I have a lot of black, white and crystal embellishments in my paper crafting stash so I thought why not use some of those to add that bit of black and sparkle to a few items I could use in the bathroom.

My first project was to bring a little pizazz to a basic soft blue candle.  I used some stick on crystals and black & silver adhesive stickers and stuck them on the side of the candle, so cute!

For this project I wanted to glam up some basic bath salts so I tied some narrow black satin ribbon around the neck of the bottle and added a small black crystal adhesive sticker to the center of the bow.  It was still a little blah so I used another one of the stickers from the same pack as the candle and placed it in the center of the jar; much more elegant now.

I had two glass jars already on the counter but they were just not up to the same glammie standards as the rest of the accessories, too much silver and no bling.  I wanted them to match a pretty glass candle holder from the studio I wanted to re-purpose as a holder for pretty soaps.  I grabbed some black ribbon and some bling buttons to match the candle holder and went to work.  Aren’t they gorgeous, I just love their elegant bows and pretty sparkle in the light!

For my final project, I took a fabulous card my daughter had given me and put it in a basic black frame.  The card had all the elements of the room in it and would tie everything together when placed on a small décor shelf on the wall.  So easy and very effective!

Thanks for letting me share my glammed up projects with you, I hope it inspires you to add a bit of easy sparkle to your life; every girl needs a bit of bling!  More to come about the guest bath bling facelift keep checking in often to see what project is next before the reveal.

See you soon.

Laurette

Guest Bath Bling

I have a couple of fun posts coming up starting with this one.  As you may have already guessed I have a thing for decorating with black, white & bling, usually all together in one room but sometimes the bling shows up with other colors too, I love my bling. My entire studio is decorated in that combo and my future walk-in-closet will also be in similar décor colors so I thought to myself why not do the same things in the guest bath right next to the studio?  I had been looking for inspiration but just could not settle on anything until I found myself with quite a few leftover accessories from my studio makeover; the guest bath was the perfect place for them. All those black, white and bling accessories would be my jumping off point for that room.

I just wanted a quick little project to do while waiting for my hubby who was getting started on a much bigger project outside which I would not be doing very much work on, with the exception of the design decisions as he went along. Anyway…. back to my project, I will share that other project soon.  I knew I was not going to paint or change out any fixtures at this time, maybe later this spring, oops!.... don’t tell my hubby that! I was only going to have three or four days to do a little styling/makeover/face lift. Now that I had a jumping off point I needed a design direction so I pulled out some of my resource books, magazines and Pinterest boards.  I have close to a hundred resource materials which can make putting together design/inspiration boards a pretty lengthy but fun process. Here is some of what I chose for my design inspiration and why.

What drew me to this picture are the black and white shower curtains, the crystal chandelier, the bold yellow accents and the green plant in the tub.

This photo was close to the wall color currently in the bath with white trim work, and black and white art prints. The accessories I wanted to use would work well with all the hard surfaces already in place.

These next three photos were ultimately where I wanted the walls and accessories to go once they were painted and decorated sometime in the near future.

I was totally attracted to the wallpaper in this shot and the beautiful mirror and white woodwork.  I would not be doing wallpaper but I needed some inspiration for the valance for the bathroom window next to our tub/shower.

Even though I loved the yellow accents in the first photo my favorite colors are in the blue family so this photo shows them all tied together and just what I was going to be using for my pops of color.

Now I was ready to create my design boards, you are probably wondering why I use them, the truth is I not only use them to inspire me but I also use them to remind me of all the little details I want to incorporate into the project; my memory is not what it use to be these days and this way I would not forget and get off track.  Whenever I see something visual that speaks to me in an advertisement, magazine or book I cut it out or make a copy and put it in a box or in one of my inspiration binders so I can use it later when I finally get to the project I want to create, then onto a board it goes.  These boards have a little of everything on them including physical elements I want to incorporate into the project.

Once my boards were completed I pulled fabrics from my fabric wall and trims, ribbons and bits of bling from my stash and I got down to some real design work; I was off and running.  You will have to read future blog posts to see what comes next.

**The reason I shared all of this is because many times I am asked about my creative process and how I decide what goes into a room. So here it is and something you will see on my blog from now on as I go along creating new projects all year long.

Thanks for letting me share my creative process with you; I hope you will check in often to see what décor projects I created to go in my new bling guest bath and of course to see the before and after photos and the final reveal.  Oh...I almost forgot!!! There are also the big outdoors projects which we are currently working on, lots to see, stay tuned!

See you soon.

Laurette