Weekend Recap: Celebration!

This past weekend my sister, Ximena turned 26! So my weekend was full of client work during the daytime and then a little bit of celebration during the evening!

Hit of the night was…. fingerstaches! (Thanks Danay!)

You can imagine the pictures that ensued once everyone had their fingerstache on. Of course I didn’t take pics. Bad blogger I know, but this is what you could imagine it looking like:

Good times were had by all. I’ve been swamped with work so it was nice to head out and relax for a little bit.

Of course the best part of a birthday is the gifts! I must share what I got the birthday girl. First I made sure to wrap my gifts in a green manor and used some left over fabric and ribbon to make them pretty:

Now what was inside the packages:

She loved them and I would highly recommend etsy seller Pradman. The jewels are stunning and the prices are really budget friendly.

Jon made the birthday girl her own special gift:

Close up of piece:

She loved it!

A little bit of luck

Totally in love with this reusable fabric gift wrap. It’s only $15 and the gift receiver could either keep reusing it or frame it up! I know that I would be making room for it on my gallery wall.

My sissy’s birthday is this Saturday totally wish I had seen this earlier. Ah there is always next year. 

Two for the Road

When I was a little girl my dad introduced me to classic movies. My favorites had to be the ones with Audrey Hepburn. To this day Audrey is still a constant source of inspiration. There are little peeks of her all throughout my home. Luckily for me Jon doesn’t seem to mind sharing his house with two lovely ladies.

As I was searching for inspiration for a recent e-decorating client I stumbled upon this movie poster and everything just came together:

Don’t you just love when that happens? Where do you find inspiration for design projects?

Quick Slipcover Sofa Revamp

Can you spy what I’m obsessing about now:

{Design by Kemble Interiors}

{Design by Palmer Weiss}

{Design by Ruthie Sommers}

Of course it’s the borders on the seat backs and sometimes cushions.

Love the crisp square trim on all of the cushions. What a custom look! So easy to recreate the look yourself if you have a slipcovered sofa and want to give it new life!

You could go for a classic square box trim or try your hand at a little fretwork pattern. Since you will be sitting on the sofa I would reinforce the ribbon run it through the sewing machine.

You could also purchase solid colored fabric and have your local tailor/dry cleaners sew on a 2″ square border on each cushion. I can get this town in my town for $20 a cushion. Not bad for a totally new look for your slipcover.

Totally tempted now to try it out on my sofa. Hmm wonder what Jon would think about that? Are you a fan?

Show & Tell: Chevron Closet

I love seeing readers projects pop up in my in-box. I especially love it when one of my projects inspired them to do a project of their own.

For example Carmel of Our Fifth House recently send me her closet re-vamp.

Check out the before:

I must say my looks really similar and I don’t have an after…yet.

Her after:

Nice and neat. Love how organized it is and she even added a little sitting area. Now my favorite part and where I come into the equation.

Chevron Wall:

Carmel checked out the DIY library and found my No Paint stripes tutorial and used it to make her chevron wall:

Beautiful. Not only does it not damage the wall, but it’s a bit cheaper than using Japanese tape and takes less time than paint!

A big thanks to Carmel for sharing!

Matchbook Girl

Matchbook Magazine is finally live! You must go and check it out while I deal with some technical difficulties. Sorry for all of the different background changes on the blog. Working on getting it fixed.

DIY: No Sew skirted table

Months ago I picked up a neighbor’s cast away dresser and decided to give it a new life!

Originally it was a dark walnut stain:

We then tested out our paint compressor (totally love it!) and got this:

I wasn’t in love with the ornate design on the doors of the dresser so I had to come up with a different solution. Of course my immediate thought was a skirted table, but paying for a seamstress wasn’t in the cards so I came up with an alternative.

Enter some bargain fabric (only $5 a yard) and stitch witchery vinyl and a piece of mdf!

I decided my skirted table needed to have some faux side pleats so that I could easily open and close the drawers. Now measurements vary depending on the size of your piece, but I cut to cut the following pieces:
-2 side pieces (Make sure you add an extra 6″ to the width so you can make a faux pleat)
-2 front pieces
-1 skinny piece for the faux pleat in the middle

Once you have the pieces cut use your stitch witchery to iron on a nice hem on all of the pieces. Once that is done start my taking some measurements to find the middle and staple your skinny piece here:

Once that’s done it’s time to work on the sides. For the side pieces you will have a bit of extra material. The extra material will give you a nice crisp corner and provide a faux pleat for you. Pretend you are wrapping a large gift and use the same technique on your fabric:

Once both sides are done it’s time to do the front panels. Just center each front panel in between the corner pleat and the middle pleat:

Almost done:

Now I didn’t want the top piece to stay exposed and I didn’t want fabric on the top, because I was afraid it would get dirty and since I would be stapling it on I wouldn’t be able to remove it and wash it.

Here is where the wood and vinyl come into play. I measured the top piece of the dresser and went to Lowes where I had them cut a piece of mdf to size. They were really sweet and cut it to my exact measurements which was great. No need to run home and take out the power tools in the drive way. Once we bought it home I wrapped it up in some durable orange vinyl and simply placed it on top. Due to it’s weight there is no need to nail it on top or use liquid nails to it.

Voila!

So happy with the results and what fun to get back to my DIY posts. I took a little break from them. Lots of craziness going on around here so I haven’t had a lot of extra time, but I now have a lengthy list of finished projects that I’m going to showcase! Woo hoo!

Cabin Fever

Having a home in the Catskill’s would sound like a dream to Jon. To me, not so much until recently when I filed away this amazing cabin revamp:

Check out the before:

New flooring, a fireplace facelift and loads of white paint:

Opposite site of the main room:

Before:

The homeowners took down the walls and added an Ikea kitchen:

Better view of dining room that featured ebay finds and treasures from her travels:

One of my favorite little parts of the cabin has to be the elephant pulls on the master bedrooms closet door:

{Similar pulls available on ebay}

I’m certain this would be Jon’s favorite part:

To learn more about how PR guru Melanie Brandman transformed her cabin check out this article from the NY TIMES.

Do you any of you own a country retreat? I know it’s on my one day list.

Greek Key Border

Just spotted this paintable greek key border and within seconds I already thought of a handful of things that I could do with it!

{Only $9.99 a roll}

First up actually using it as a border on walls, but in a unique way. Something along these lines:

{Design by Jennifer McGee Design}

Or line up rows of the border in a picture frame moulding and recreate this:

{Design by The Brooklyn Design Company }

Or dress up a plain console and recreate this look:

I would totally lacquer it up!

Or dress up the sides of a Billy bookcase and again lacquer it up to get something with this sort of vibe:

Endless possibilities! What would do with a roll or two of it! 

Show & Tell: Statement Headboard

Visions of this headboard have been dancing around my head for months now.

It belongs to Michelle Adams of Rubie Green and LONNY.

It started out as a prop for a Rubie Green ad:

Then it went home with Michelle:

Then Michelle moved and it went with her:

It’s glamorous and stylish shape will make this headboard a classic piece that can fit into many design styles.

I toyed with the idea of a similar headboard when we made our bed, but in the end I didn’t want to bug Jon with the shape so I’m still without it.

I do get to live vicariously through Kristen of This Charming House.

She recently tackled the project herself and provided amazing instructions for how you can get the look yourself.

Here is the base:

Here it is upholstered:

Plus my favorite picture:

Great job Kristen!

Hmm perhaps I will tackle this project one day.

*Worked on any projects that you want to share with all? Email me at camila@effortless-style.com and let me know about it! Perhaps you’ll see it featured on the Show & Tell post.

Chevron Zebra

So wish I was working on a dining room that required a little touch of the jungle!

{Dining Bench}

{Dining Chair}

Best part they are both now on sale for $99 each!

Rainwater

It is pouring here today, which makes it seems totally fitting for me to reveal the paint color I picked out for my main bathroom. Yesterday my family was guessing that I went with orange or coral so they were in a complete shock when they show what I really picked!

I’m in love with the paint color! It’s rainwater by Martha Stewart. It looks a bit gray on the computer, but it’s a lovely blue/gray/green combo.

*I personally find Martha Stewart brand paint to be a little watery so I had them color match it and used Behr painted. It worked out perfectly.

I just finished ordering the little finishing touches so hopefully I will be able to do a full reveal this weekend!

Weekend Recap: I’m over it…

During the summer I asked all of my lovely readers how they felt about black walls, because I was starting to feel over them.

You see I had painted my main bathroom black a little over 3 years ago and I was getting the itch for something different.

Everyone calmed me down a bit and told me how much they loved it so I decided to leave it as is and try to make some minor tweaks to the black well of those tweaks finally lead me to do this:

I had been pretty low key all weekend I had a busy week and really just wanted to veg out, but of course yesterday at 6pm I decided enough is enough and I primed the walls for paint! It took 2 coats of loads of stinky fumes that gave me a headache, but it’s done and I’m painting it the new color today.

Stay tuned!

What did you do this weekend? Anyone watch the globes? I did in between painting and I gotta say I didn’t really feel wowed by any of the dresses.