Decor Roomies

Monday, November 29, 2010

New Look for Decor Roomies!

Hello Loyal Followers and Friends!

Oh hello pretty new header!

After purchasing Photoshop Elements 9 on Black Friday, Allison has obsessively been playing around with the software as if it were a really cute puppy or kitten or anything that you can't get enough of when you first get it. If you are looking for an inexpensive and simple to use program without shelling out actual Photoshop dough, then I definitely recommend Photoshop Elements (they aren't paying me to say this, even though it would be awesome if they did!). I have tried Gimp in the past but I just wasn't getting along with as there weren't that many tutorials available on the internet for what I was looking to use it for.

Two birdies because there are two of us :)

Our blog is now totally custom thanks to reading many, many, many tutorials (too many to recall otherwise we'd share the links - so sorry!). We've got a whole new header, background, profile picture, and button (that still needs to be sent to Photobucket and coded, etc.).

We've also got more posts ready to share with you this month as school is FINALLY winding down for the semester! Only two more weeks before we get to ~~be lazy~~ DIY until our brains hurt.

Photoshop Elements 9 will you please marry me? - Allison

Christmas decorations are definitely going up either tomorrow or the following day. Everything is patiently waiting to escape the cardboard boxes and help us be merry and cheerful as we go into finals week. Of course we'll share photos with you as well, from which you can hopefully get some ideas for how to decorate your own home for the holidays on a ~~broke~~ college student budget.

Happy almost December,

Allison & Chelsea

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Of Bulletin Boards and Stitches

Where to start?

I have been trying to think of a plan for the area above my desk for a while now. I wasn’t feeling my dry erase/bulletin board combo from the good ole dorm room anymore. Maybe it was the permanent dry erase marker stains? Or the bright blue yarn we used to hang this up sophomore year? I’m not sure what lead to its ultimate demise, but I was ready to move on.

A few weeks after I had the initial thought to change things up and once I figured out how EASY it is to make bulletin boards , I found these two wonderful frames at work. In the trash. For free. Of course they came home with me. Of course they lived in my car for a week before ever making it onto my room. Eventually* I decided to turn one of them into a bulletin board for the area above my desk.

*Eventually = 3 weeks

I decided that I deserved a break from my unit plan and teacher work sample and think pieces and other assignments I no longer have to think about (insert happy dance) to make this bulletin board.

I got out my wood filler, pliers, and trusty ORB spray paint and got to work!

As I was cleaning up my ~~mess~~ supplies I was attacked by a ninja holding a piece of picture frame glass. Obviously, he was trying to steal my mad crafting skills again and he threatened me with the picture frame glass. I am not one to back down from ninjas with picture frame glass in their hands and really thought I could take the ninja. But I couldn’t. He dropped the piece of glass and it fell onto one of the toes on my right foot while another corner of the glass made its way down my left leg and left me with a mere scratch below the leg and a three inch gash above my ankle. The ninja ran away because he was scared of the blood. I waited until the following day to go to the doctor and get stitches and a tetanus shot because it didn’t seem too bad.

Once I got over this traumatic experience (21 years without stitches – I only whimpered little bit) I covered foam display board in black fabric. I then taped a diamond lattice design and painted it with green craft paint. I didn’t like the final product though, so I dug through my fabric box and created this instead. It’s all finished now and I couldn’t be happier.