Tag: make

home: made [ magazine files ] 

home: made [ magazine files ] 

It’s great to find easy DIY projects that are both affordable but also effective. 

Transform magazine files with paper or fabric to allow them to match your interiors perfectly. 

Make your own base file from thick cardboard or head to IKEA, WHSmiths, Tiger or similar to get hold of plain files ready to cover yourself at home. 

On trend fabrics or papers with geometric, metallic or other modern pattern designs, would work perfectly but explore stores like FabricRehab for gorgeous quirky fabric designs. You could head to your local charity shop or carboot and pick up shirts, pillow cases or duvet covers to get patterned fabric cheap which you could use or if you’d rather use paper head to the highstreet for a huge array of patterned wrapping paper ideal to use for covering. We love Tiger for their cool Scandi patterned papers for £1 a roll or the every expanding stationery department at IKEA is full of great papers too at bargain prices. 

We found tutorials to help your DIY at HelloAerie and CreativeInChicago.

And when your taste or interiors change you can easily update the covering to match! 

home: made [ lampshades ] 

home: made [ lampshades ] 

Home projects are always satisfying and there’s lots of simple lampshade tutorials to produce your own shades for your home. Choose the fabric, colours and style to suit your interior. 

A great method is to use the DIY kits available to buy that allow you to make a drum shade. These kits are available on line from various stores including Ebay and Amazon. 

We also found brilliant tutorials from Cath Kidson and Design Sponge.  

The tutorials are straight forward and can allow you to create various sizes of shade. They can also inspire you on fabrics to use. Always ensure you’ve tested your fabric by holding it up to the light to ensure the light can filter through. 

home: made [bed headboards ] 

home: made [ bed headboards ] 

The vamping a bedroom with new furniture can be costly so a good alternative is to make a bed look like new with a new DIY headboard. Or by a cheap basic base and make it look better with your own designed head board. 

We found some great projects that use anything from reclaimed wood to old doors as a base for your project. Think outside the box – you could try an area of tiling, patterned or plain, to create a modern look or work on creating a giant weaving that could hang at the top of the bed. You could even suspend a rug in the place of the board to create a textured bohemian feel. Search online now for sale rugs from West Elm or Urban Outfitters that would look great.

Head to CuteDIYProjects or DIYnCrafts for a big selection of tutorials for head boards – a great selection of projects for many skill levels.  

home: made [ rugs ] 

home: made [ rugs ] 

We love a fun DIY project with great results. Produce and making your own homeware is satisfying, rewarding, often cheaper than buying the item and also a good way to update something old or plain. 

We found some great tutorials at DIY Network for making and designing rugs for your home. There’s a great selection of different projects to achieve varying looks depending on your style or needs. 

There’s also a great selection of tutorials at ArchitectureArtDesigns too 


Many of the projects use old T-shirts, scraps of wool or fabric, or plain rugs which can be picked up cheaply and many highstreet homeware stores. 

home: made [ mason jars ] 

home: made [ mason jars ] 

We love a crafting or DIY project and this super book brings together 35 brilliant projects using mason jars and other glass containers.

‘Crafting with Mason Jars and other Glass Containers: Over 35 simple and beautiful upcycling projects’ 

This book explores methods and makes for great lighting, storage, gifts, kitchenalia, table settings, wedding ideas and so much more. With easy and building to slightly more complex tutorials, it’s a lovely way to improve your crafting skills and give you a great repertoire of ideas to use for many occasions and interiors 


RRP £12.99

Currently on Amazon at £9.54 

home: event [ flower arranging ] 

home: event [ flower arranging ]  

Learn to create beautiful flower arrangements with this incredible opportunity at the Academy of Flowers on their Covent Garden Experience. 

A one day course, for £240, sees you start your day early in Covent Garden wholesale flower market before heading the the academy to learn to arrange and hand tie beautiful bouquets

29 July 2016

8am – 4pm 

Book your place here : https://www.academyofflowers.com/content/covent-garden-experience

home: made [ dipped spoons ] 

home: made [ dipped spoons ] 

Simple creative projects are great to make personal gifts, are fun with the kids and result in unique items for the home.

Items dipped in paint are hugely on trend right now with stores offering a variety of furniture and accessories with the ‘dipped in paint’ look. Anything from stools and coffee tables to vases and glasses can look great with splashes of colour. It’s an easy way to get highlights of present colour trends into an interior – currently popular is copper, neons and simple monochrome – either black or white. 

Start small with an easy project of dipped wooden spoons. All you need is spray or paint, masking tape, a brush and to strengthen to allow washing use a sealing agent like acrylic sealer, shellac or paint in enamel paint instead. 

Head to high street kitchen stores, IKEA, or supermarkets for cheap basic wooden spoons. 

For simple tutorials try BespokeBride, BrightNest or LittleBitFunky.

home: made [ hallway hooks ] 

home: made [ hallway hooks ] 

Creativity and thinking out side the box can be stretched to any projects across the home. 

Planning hallway hooks and storage can be an excuse to be quirky and fun, and you can design a system that not only looks good but works for your needs in the hallway – the room of the house that gets so much traffic and needs to function for accessible storage for coats, shoes, dog paraphenalia, shopping bags and all sorts. 

When planning your hook system search google, Pinterest and similar for ideas and inspiration. Think about the type of hook and the type of layout. Hooks can be classic in look but arranged in a quirky order – you don’t have to have them in a straight line. Hooks can be colourful, unusual or could be made from other items that produce something that can act as a hook. We found door knobs, cutlery and even a rake head used for hanging. 


Explore DIY store hook departments for a mix of traditional or modern shaped hooks. Hang metal hooks on a coloured wall or make hooks stand out on a white wall by spraying the hooks in great colours. You could use shades of one colour or look to current colour trends for inspiration. 

Visit homeware stores like IKEA, Anthropologie and Tiger for a great mix of great designs and more unusual hooks. 


And hooks don’t have to be directly onto the wall but could be mounted on panels of wood, pallets or even coming down from the ceiling. You can also think about combining hooks and baskets for a flexible interchangeable storage system. 

Explore EBay, Not On The Highstreet and Amazon for cool modern metal baskets, vintage style aged baskets, woven baskets and old, or made to look worn, crates for effective storage that can hang from hooks. 


You can create an eclectic display mixing height and style and change according to your needs, and add more hooks and baskets when you need more space. And if the hooks are empty why not hang decorative accessories for a design feature. Hooks can also be personalised with letters or names on or above using stencils or stick on initials (we spotted some easy peal stick on letters from Tiger in a great font). 

Make your hallway personal and make a statement with the first room people see in your home.  

home: made [ lanterns ] 

home: made [ lanterns ] 

It’s not just the larger items of furniture for the garden to think about as the warmer weather arrives but the little accessories too. 

For lighting in the garden it’s good to think about solar or battery powered options to avoid the need to get electricity outside although whilst renovating a house it’s always good to plan ahead and get outdoor sockets fitted.

For use with battery powered lights or candles we love these pretty home made tin can lantern lights. Fairly simple to make with tools including a hammer and nails or bradle or similar. 

We found this simple tuturial on Inhabitat.com that step by step guides you through the make. It also mentions a useful tip to freeze your tin cans before using to help avoid denting and for ease of punching the design out. 

Designs can be pattern-based, outlines of butterflies or birds or you could even do letters and spell out a name or phrase. These would be great at an outdoor wedding with the names of the bride and groom or simply ‘love’ or ‘happiness’. 

Punch design pattern templates to follow if you’re not confident with freehand can be drawn on first and you can also download and print patterns to follow. 

home: made [ creating with text ] 

home: made [ creating with text ] 

Discovering TipJunkie was a good moment. A collated selection of DIY projects all designed with the typography fan in mind. 

From creating giant initials to hang on the wall to decoupage with book pages to word art, this feature has 16 projects to have a go at. 

Our favourite DIY is the printed letters or numbers on a cork board, as featured in last Friday’s trend post. Either freehand or with stencils, with emulsion paint and a brush or sponge, you can get creative with words, letters and numbers on a simple plain cork board (see bottom right in the picture). A good spray varnish finish will help to ensure your work lasts and won’t chip with the daily use. 

Home accessories and styling created with typography designs are the perfect way to personalise your home, whether it be the initials of the family hung on the wall, or the pages of your favourite book pasted onto the wall, a quote you love on a giant canvas, or even stencilled letters spelling out ‘welcome’ on a wooden hallway floor as you enter the house.