On making paper snowflakes for Christmas (and other great Christmas advice from Martha and others)

paper snowflake

If you are looking for a low key, low cost Christmas craft to help decorate your place, I highly recommend making paper snowflakes. If you have kids who are getting under your feet while you are doing other things, teach them how to make snowflakes and get them to make a bunch. Then gently tape them to the wall or hang them with some thread. Your place will look more Christmas-y for sure.

If you don’t recall how to make snowflakes, here are three places to go for advice on them: One Little Project and A Piece Of Rainbow and Martha Stewart.

Of course Martha has more than good advice on how to make paper snowflakes. She has a section of her site devoted to holiday crafts and Christmas. So if you feel you need some inspiration on how to make your home life more festive, check out those links.

 

Retro radios, remade

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I absolutely love this City Radio, shown above. You push the button and it play music from the city listed.  So cool. Love the analog design too. It reminds me of the best of Dieter Rams and Braun.

Part of the reason I love it is because it reminds me of the old radio my grandmother had. As a kid it had all the cities of the world listed on a glowing panel, and as I would move the dial a needle would go back and forth and play music from different parts of the world (depending how good reception was). That just amazed me then.

If you have technical skills, and old radio and a raspberry pi, you can make such a thing for yourself.  Just google “convert old radio raspberry pi”. Of the links I found, I like this and this and this.

For fans of faux calligraphy

Some fantastic fun links:

  1. 60 free minimalist fonts for your designs – Learn
  2. 60 free calligraphy fonts to bring charm to your designs — Learn
  3. 50 free stylish fonts to bring a touch of elegance to any design – Learn
  4. The Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing — Learn – Learn
  5. 60 free sans serif fonts to give your designs a modern touch – Learn
  6. 11 Simple Hand-Lettered Fonts For Your Bullet Journal | Little Miss Rose
  7. Three Ingenious Hacks to Fake Brush-lettering | Little Miss Rose
  8. 8 Fancy Hand-Lettering Ideas That Are Actually Easy
  9. How to “Fake” Calligraphy | I Try DIY

40,000 home decor links to make your place more attractive

Ok, not quite 40,000, but quite a lot. Some are very practical, some are inspirational, and some may even have you building your own furniture (as I did).

First, here are a bushel of links from the Apartment Therapy web site. They have lots and lots and lots of pages filled with ideas for people who rent apartments that can be used by anyone, renter or owner. Very practical, low cost, smart ideas and approaches to home decor. Good stuff.

Not so how to oriented, but this handful of links might give you some ideas and inspiration to improve your place:

Now that you are inspired, here are some good links I found for buying furniture:

Or if you want to build vs buy furniture, you might want these links:

Finally, if you are not so much into furnishing your place but more into painting it, then consider these few links:

(The lovely entrance at the top of the post is from a link to How to Make a Small Apartment Feel Huge | A Cup of Jo)

In praise of unfinished projects

Do you beat yourself up for starting projects but not finishing them? Do you not even try to start for fear you won’t finish? If so, I recommend this article: Why Quitting is Perfectly Okay. — So, this is life. — Medium. It’s one thing I hope you finish. Everything else is optional.

Of course, finishing them is also good. Either way, you have something to gain by starting those projects.

And hey, it’s Sunday evening at the start of May: a great time to plan your projects for the week or the month. Give it a go.

Beautifying the dreadful rental closet door

If you live in a high rise apartment, you likely have big sliding doors hiding clothes in your closet. It’s bland at best. (That’s being kind.) If you want to tackle this and make it into something more attactive, then go here and steal some ideas: 5 DIY Ways to Upgrade Rental Closet Doors — Renters Solutions | Apartment Therapy.

By the way, I highly recommend Apartment Therapy and Renters Solutions for people in apartments that want to make the space look more attactive. It can be done! 🙂

Thinking of painting one wall in your house a different colour? Before you do, consider this

Not for everyone of course, but this article shows you a novel way of turning a good idea – painting one wall of a room a different colour to make the room more interesting – and going one step further. The result is something like this:

If you are still interested, see Before & After: Maura’s $13 DIY Wall Art! | Apartment Therapy. Get the lamp, too.