I decided to highlight some of the Christmas crafts I did as a special edition of the Pinterest House Project, since this fits the same theme as the rest of the series; bigger house, lots of space for decor, so many ideas on Pinterest!

I want to start with my favourite project. When I spotted this light-up Christmas canvas on Pinterest, I knew I had to make it. First off, it’s beautiful. Secondly, this is my all time favourite Christmas song. This craft was meant for me

I love the way it looks on my mantel. It’s the star attraction!

Once I realized how easy it is to write on a canvas (I used paint pens, by the way. So easy!) I went hunting for some other canvas ideas. That is when I spotted this very cute and simple Believe DIY canvas.

Next up was some plain old painted foam Christmas trees. I found so many beautiful DIY Christmas trees on Pinterest, but didn’t have time to make them all. This was a super easy craft that Lilly and I were able to do together. She did the first coat of paint on each one. I followed up with second coat and sparkles. That was it! Easiest craft of the season.

The next craft was also fairly easy, if you like to paint. I loved the idea of a mobile of clear, painted Christmas balls, hanging in front of a bright window. It took me a bit to find the clear ornaments, but finally spotted them at Walmart in packs of 4. I loved how this turned out. So pretty!

I had bought packages of styrofoam balls last year, with the intent that we would make some Christmas ornaments with them. Being a sewer who hoards fabric…these easy fabric covered Christmas balls seemed perfect. Lilly helped out again with this one. it was as simple as cut, wrap and tie.

We did a whole garland, highlighting these fabric Christmas ornaments from the main entrance way of the house.

I wanted to do a few crafts that were specifically on the cuter side for Lilly. This adorable DIY snowman scene was actually not an idea from Pinterest. This one came from my own flowing creative juices! You can read the full tutorial here.

I also wanted to make something that Lilly could keep in her room. My mom always had some decorations on hand for us to add a festive touch to our rooms. That is a tradition that I would like to pass on. I saw this DIY ribbon Christmas tree making the rounds on Pinterest last year and LOVED it. So very pretty! Given all of the crafts I have been doing for Lilly’s bedroom, I had a lot of ribbon on hand that would match her decor. Many of the tutorials online call for just pinning the ribbon or paper in place. I decided to use hot glue. It took a little longer, but I also feel it will last.

The last craft we pulled together was a DIY advent calendar. This is the first year we have had an advent calendar for Lilly at all. She is starting to understand time and old enough to really enjoy the countdown. With her Celiacs Disease, I always figured an advent calendar would be one of those things we make. I just never know if the chocolate in the store bought ones is truly gluten free. This is the one craft I made the hubby help out with. We used our existing weekly menu chalk/cork board. Lilly so was excited the first morning she saw it!

The last photo shows another idea I got from Pinterest, but it really wasn’t a craft at all. Like most homes, we have a ton of empty vases kicking around at any given time. I loved the idea of filling them with Christmas ornaments for a very quick and easy piece of festive decor. I’ll be doing a bit more of these for the dining room table before family dinner…since right now it is 95% covered in crafting supplies…

Now, while it looks like I got to a lot of crafts this year, we still didn’t even touch doing anything festive for the basement… I will be on maternity leave through most of the holiday season next year and will ideally get even more accomplished! *Crosses fingers for a good sleeper*

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I finished all the decor in my master bedroom ages ago, borrowed a friend’s fancy camera and went to work on the photo tour…but took weeks to actually get the post up. Thus is the life of a busy blogger

I will admit the photos are not as bright and detailed as they were in the tour post for my study. We don’t get the same amount of natural light in this room.

Let me start off by saying, I LOVE my master bedroom. I have always dreamed of having a master with an ensuite, walk-in and big enough for a reading area. I scored all three in this house and I am not ashamed to say it was one of the biggest selling features for me. Fellow parents, you get it. When you have kids, you need your own space. Your retreat.

Welcome to mine.

We lucked out when we bought this house. The wall colour already matched the tan, black and blue pallet I had going in our previous house, so we were able to use much of the same decor pieces. However, as with mu study/home office, I took to Pinterest to search out some truly unique crafts & tips to really personalize this space.

First up is our dresser area. Home to some basic decor elements and all of my jewelry storage.

Having all my bling out in the open, I wanted to make sure it didn’t look too cluttered. I had found a few DIY projects specifically meant for making jewelry on display look adorable.

I fell in love with the idea of door knobs on a plaque as a DIY necklace hanger. I had these cute recycled button drawer pulls that I bought at a boutique years ago, just begging to be used in a project. The wooden plaque came unfinished from the dollar store and I painted it white. It originally had a chain to hang it with, but I wasn’t thrilled with the look of that, so I used some hooks and wire from a photo hanging kit to make my own hanging method.

Next, I wanted to find a cheap and dainty way to organize my bracelets that made them easier to get to. I had seen some pins that showed using a spray painted bottle, and although that looked very cute, it seemed like a lot of work to get to the ones on the bottom.

When I spotted this bracelet holder, made from a dollar store votive and paper towel roll, it seemed perfect! It was super easy to make with some spray paint, ribbon and hot glue.

I will warn you that you have to be cautious of keeping a fairly even balance on each side. Learned this the hard way and had to add more glue…

I keep my rings, broaches, etc, in that little plastic bowl, also a dollar store find. I keep both of these on a dollar store tray that I spray painted black. I had them sitting on the dresser, but when the bracelet holder became unbalanced, it sent my Tiffany’s bracelet to the depths behind my dresser. We got it out and I promptly changed up where my tiny jewelry sits.

My earrings can be seen in the first photo of the whole dresser top. They are kept on a very cool cast iron erring hanger that used to belong to my my old company. One of the benefits of helping to shut down a company was the hand-me-downs.

Lastly, I finished off the dresser top with a few knick knacks and DIY decor pieces. The two glass pieces are a dollar store votive and recycled Perrier bottle, from the Pinterest idea of spray painting glass white.

The artwork is just a small canvas from Walmart. I drew out the same pattern printed on my bed linens and throw pillow and simply painted it the accent colour of the room. It helps that the pattern is very simple leaves…I’m not THAT talented of an artist

Next, we’ll head over to the bed area. We treated ourselves with some fancy new bamboo & organic cotton bedding when we moved in. I love it. So super soft and the print is very soothing and natural.

The gallery wall was incredibly easy to put up. You can read my tutorial for using wax paper to hang a photo gallery wall for more details.

The wall is filled with mostly just photos of my hubby and I. Lilly makes it up there in a couple, but I wanted one photo wall in the house that told the “story of us.” We’ve been together since highschool, so there is a lot of history (and hilariously adorable photos) there.

The words are significant. Adam and I used to sign our high school love letters with “Forever, and some, Adam” and “Yours till a little after forever, Crystal”

I know. Sappy. And very sweet.

I ordered the custom wall decal, “Forever, and some.” from Quote the Walls. I love it.

I also love all my fancy pillows…though I will admit that they don’t make it back onto the bed every day… The tan one is part of the new bedding and was used as the inspiration for the artwork listed above and the DIY pillow shown on my reading chair below. The black suede pillows I made a few years back.

It’s a little tricky to see, but the lines on the smaller black pillow are tan and blue to match the room. I did a simple zig zag stitch across the front of the material to add a bit of detail.

The last area of my room is probably my favourite. My own personal reading nook! Now, as a busy full-time working mom, we’ll see how much I actually get to use it

I used this area to try out some beautiful DIY artwork that I had spotted on Pinterest.

The first was a very simple print out framed. I saw some very sweet pins of wedding song lyrics used as personalized artwork. Our song was I’ll Always Be Right There, by Bryan Adams.

Next is my DIY leather wrapped painted canvas. I have seen this Happiness=Books quote online a few times and fell in love with it. You can read the full painted canvas tutorial here.

The little white canvas piece was probably one of the easiest to do and is definitely my favourite part of this gallery. This super simple tutorial for a DIY letter canvas involves gluing foam or wood letters onto a canvas and spray painting it white. That’s it! The message I choose reads, “Yous till a little after forever.” Which if you read above, makes perfect sappy sense I then added our wedding date below it.

Lastly, there was my cord art. Or cable drawing, as they call it on Pinterest. Using tiny clips to create a graphic with your visible hanging cords. What a fantastic idea! I knew this light would just be hanging here and really loved that I could turn it into a piece of art that fits this reading nook perfectly!

I also did this little pillow myself. I had left over leather from the turquoise canvas above and had seen some pins for leather appliques on decorative pillows. I drew out the same pattern that is on my bedding and on the painted canvas on top of my dresser to really pull in the whole room.

There you have it folks. The grand tour of my mater bedroom. I will be doing follow ups to this post to showcase our master ensuite and walk-in closet once they are both completed.

Any questions on any of the crafts or decorating tips above, please feel free to ask!

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Naturally, whenever I plant myself at the table for crafty type projects, Lilly wants to join in. So I put her to work.

Turning an old cardboard ribbon bolt into a jewelry holder for her vanity.

While I worked on a new piece of DIY canvas art for her bedroom.

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I recently spent a few hours putting together a wedding song poster for our master bedroom. I had modge podged word printouts of our wedding lyrics onto a fabric canvas and decorated it with the matching ribbon border. It was pretty.

It was going to be one of the crafts featured as part of The Pinterest House Project, master bedroom edition…which I promise is slowly, but surely coming along and will be posted soon.

I had stepped away from my craft table for a few minutes to help Lilly go to the potty. In the two minutes while I was washing my hands afterwards, my two-year-old managed to completely destroy that poster with half a bottle of modge podge. It was completely my fault. When you leave out craft supplies in the area that a toddler can access, you’re just asking for it.

There was no salvaging. I tried. Instead of throwing it out the canvas completely, I decided to refinish it and reuse it.

I had bought some beautiful turquoise leather fabric on sale at the fabric store recently and thought it might be cool to wrap the entire canvas in leather. I had pinned a couple of book quotes that I was going to use as printouts for my master bedroom reading nook and decided it would be great paint one of them directly onto the leather.

Things you need:

• Canvas – mine was just a cheap one from the dollar store & still worked just fine.
• Fabric you can write/paint on – leather, vinyl, canvas (maybe a different colour), etc.
• Print out of your design or wording
• Ruler
• Paper cutter – you can use scissors, but you want to make sure you have very straight cuts
• Fabric marker – Honestly, I didn’t have one….I used a silver nail polish pen
• Paint & fine tip paint brushes
• Paint pen – I just discovered these! I used one for the black and it was so much faster

I laid the leather fabric face down on the floor and place the canvas face down on top of it. I took the edge of the leather fabric and folded up to make sure that it met the edge of where the canvas was stapled to the wood frame. I stapled the bottom to hold it is place and then cut equal amounts of leather border around the two inside edges of the canvas.

Starting in one corner I lined up the edge of the leather to the edge of the canvas and stapled it down. I then moved on to the opposite corner and follow the same steps, ensuring that I pulled the leather very tightly across the front facing side of the canvas. Take extra care when folding the corners up to make sure they sit neatly. Think about hospital or hotel corners when making a bed. Use extra staples around the corners to hold them tightly in place.

Once my canvas was wrapped, I had to decided how I wanted the wording to lay out. I typed it out on a regular 8.5×11 piece of cardstock in landscape layout to get large lettering. I formatted it to be the fonts and styles that I wanted. I then used my cutter to neatly cut each line of text and placed them evenly onto the canvas to get a better visual.

I worked with each line of text individually. I taped the line of text onto the canvas and used it as both a visual guide for how to draw and space the letters, but also as a ruler to ensure it was straight. I also used a ruler to measure out the spacing between each line of text, allowing more spacing for the two accent lines that were done in a larger font.

For the books at the bottom, I looked up a few clip art style graphics to get an idea of how to draw them. I had to keep in mind that they would be done in one colour, so dimension was going to be harder to show.

Once the outline for the entire piece was completed, I used the paint pen to fill in the black text and the books and used a fine paint brush to fill in the cream lettering. It took a couple coats of each to really ensure the leather was covered.

I am very happy with how this turned out. I’m sure I would have loved any of the beautifully designed printables from Pinterest as well, but this is so much more personal.

Here is a sneak peek at my master bedroom reading nook. It’s not complete – I’m working on a pillow for the chair and I’m not sure I am in love with the ribbon instagram photo thing that I threw together, but it’s getting there! I am definitely in love with my cord art

Ideally speaking, I will make some valuable use of my time this weekend and get my little master bedroom sanctuary finally finished!

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I am starting with my favourite room in the house – The Study. That’s saying a lot considering my master ensuite and walk-in-closet…

My study is a home office and library, all rolled into one beautiful room. A room that I always dreamed of having in my home.

First up, my crate bookshelf. I’m in love with my crates. The one on the bottom was actually a Christmas gift from my mom when I was just 16.

I have to admit, I didn’t actually get this idea from Pinterest. I had crates to use as shelves over 4 years ago, long before Pinterest even existed. However, I loved when I spotted pictures of the same idea popping up on home decor and DIY boards. It reaffirmed my awesome design style. Here is a great pin of a crate bookshelf that caught my eye.

My working area is made up of an antique desk and exposed shelves. With the shelves visible from the front door, I wanted to ensure that I organized them to look clean & colourful.

I purchased a number of Martha Stewart Home Office accessories, including the brown magazine holder on the top shelf, and nearly bought more. I also found a great tutorial on making my own magazine holder from a cereal box.

But I was both cheap and lazy. So I bought a 2 pack of the double sized magazine holders from Staples for under $10 and spray painted them aqua. Done and done.

Likewise, I was also cheap when it came to other accessories for my desk. I jumped all over this tutorial for turning recycled cans into a DIY desk organizer.

And the gorgeous desk in the center of all this organized beauty? This gem was a find when walking through an old empty century home 4 years ago. I spotted this genuine typerwriter desk (complete with cast iron typerwriter inside) and asked the owner if it was for sale.

I took it apart and refinished it piece by piece. Once again, Pinterest wasn’t around at the time, but I do recommend this very detailed tutorial for restoring old furniture.

Moving clockwise around the room, we come to my home library. I have just a small collection of books.

It’s not an addiction. Not at all.

There are two other bookshelves elsewhere in the house, plus a full nightstand in the bedroom. I may have a problem…

When a bookshelf is this full, it really is just about making it all fit. But I did get some good inspiration on how to make a full bookshelf look organized.

My Mama was also sitting in the room while I worked on the bookshelf and gave me pointers about turning some books on their side. This helps to break up some of the blocking that can happen in a full library.

Many of the decorations – old antique books, trinket boxes, candles, etc, – I have had for ages. But I knew I wanted a few vases that blended perfectly with the room.

Now, I had intended these vases to look like these beautiful dipped votives, but this was a #PinterestFail. They looked terrible. I am sure it is because I choose glasses that were far too large.

Instead, I simply used brushes meant for glass and gently applied multiple layers of acrylic paint to give them a smoother texture.

The other half of this very spacious room is used up with a lovely quiet seating area.

I wanted something unique and personal above the one loveseat. When I spotted this amazing DIY Instagram photo frame, I knew I had found the perfect project.

With a huge bay window – one of my favourite features of the whole house – there is a lot of natural light to take advantage of.

When looking at the overall colour theme in this room, I noticed a growing trend of brown, aqua and red used together.

When we bought our leather sofa set, we scored a deal by accepting the chair in a contrasting colour. I love it that way. From there, it was just a matter of accessorizing around it & pulling it into the room.

In the end, I gained a creative, warm and inviting space. I think we found a great way to utilize a very spacious and bright room to its full potential.

Ideally speaking, every room in my house will be this easy to design and fall in love with.

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When we officially signed over the papers to buy our new house, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to take some of these amazing pins offline and make them a reality.

You know, actually get to the “do later” portion of “pin now, do later”

I may have sadly missed out on the wonderful world of Pinterest when I married my highschool sweetheart 7 years ago, but I knew I could pin the crap out of this new home.

Thus was born the #PinterestHouseProject.

Like the super-pinner I am, the board quickly grew to become of the the largest boards I have created. With over 110 pins and counting, there is no way I can incorporate all of them into my house immediately – plus my husband has already developed a auto-tone-out feature when I begun any sentence with “well I saw this thing on Pinterest today…“

The idea behind the #PinterestHouseProject is to create a board with pins focused around home decor inspiration and tips, as well as a few DIY projects. I looked for pins can all be realistically created or utilized in each specific room.

In a nut shell, I hired an interior decorator for my new house. Her name is Pinterest. I highly recommend her.

Each post I create will show the completed room in all it’s glory and will include links to the original tutorials. There were rare (and I mean rare – I am not a natural born crafter) occasions where I came up with an idea of my own. In those cases I will create a separate tutorial post to go over the details.

Here is are the rooms that I will be documenting in the #PinterestHouseProject:

• The Study (aka my Women Cave)
• The Master Bedroom – Coming soon
• The Master Bathroom – Coming soon
• Lilly’s Big Girl Room – Coming early Fall – I have a date with my old childhood vanity & a can of varnish first.
• The Family Room – Coming soon…following a paint job to our fireplace
• The Kitchen – Need to sort through the hundreds of pins on how to organize cupboards first…
• The Man Cave – Will be completed once I convince my husband to allow some Pinterest creations in his bar area… 
• The Sewing/Craft Room – Currently a storage room (read: dumping ground from the move). Just let me find the floor first.
• The Guest Room – On the look out for some great used furniture pieces to restore and revive before I can finish this one.
• The Storage Room – The real one. A huge utility room with so much potential.
• The Garage – I need to light a major fire under the hubs for this one. Likely to come when the weather is a lot nicer.
• The Laundry Room – I can’t wait to do this one, but we need new machines first. Ours are beyond ghetto.

By the time it’s through I will have a house worthy of a magazine – at least in my eyes. It has been a lot of fun so far, sorting through ideas and watching them come to life.

I won’t lie, there has been a #PinterestFail or two. But that has been half the fun!

No, I’m lying. When something doesn’t magically go like the tutorial says it is irritating as all hell. However I am usually able to make it work or find something that does.

Ideally speaking, with a little patience, a keen eye and a modest budget, I will make this #PinterestHouseProject work. It will be beautiful.

I’ll leave you with a little preview of what’s to come next week…

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