Creative Shoe Organization

Happy Friday Dinosaurs! Today I'd like to share with you a little organization project I came up with this past weekend. If you know anything about me, you'd know that I absolutely love organization! My husband often likes to tease me about how intense I can get about my organizing (guilty!). I am so much more efficient and feel so much better when I can clear my space and life of clutter.

So when my shoes were wreaking havoc in my closet, I knew I had to take order! While I had thought they were sitting neatly, lined up against the closet walls, I was still kicking them and making a mess during my daily rummaging through our tiny closet. So I made a plan for something much more practical, with a little creative twist!

I spotted these storage boxes at A.C. Moore, commonly used for photo storage, but are also the perfect size for shoes! I loved the assortment of patterns and snagged up as many as I could when they were on sale (4 for $10)! But since these weren't clear boxes, I didn't want to have to open each box just to find a particular pair shoes. Thus enter the Fuji Instax Camera.

I used my instant camera to snap a photo of each of the pairs of shoes.

I used Scotch double sided removable tape (in the scrapbooking department) to place 2 strips on the back of each photograph. I then simply attached it to the front of the shoe box, covering the little metal plate. The great thing about this tape is that it's removable, so if you decide to change the pair in the box, you can remove the picture without damaging the box!

Place the appropriate pair in your box, and voilà! You now have a lovely set of shoe boxes and know exactly which pair is in each box! You can stack the boxes wherever you need to in your closet and keep everything tidy! My closet already feels so much more organized!

I hope some of you will find this little project easy to recreate and useful  for the needs in your home!

How do you keep your closet under control?

Have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for reading!

<3

Creating Gallery Walls

Hey Dinosaurs! This Friday, I'm bringing you a little feature on gallery walls! This interest of mine came about after my wedding, when I realized I had so many pictures and pieces I wanted to share and display. So, I decided to group them together and create a gallery wall. I actually ended up creating 2 galleries, since I had so many pieces! Check out the galleries below, then I'll tell you how I set them up!

The first gallery wall was dedicated to the print aspect of my wedding. I loved all of the invitations and cards we incorporated, so I had to make sure they were framed! 

This gallery includes: shadowbox of special details, thank you card, wedding invitation, rehearsal dinner invitation, save the date card, and wedding ceremony program. The shadowbox includes some of the special details that were part of our attire and some of the table decor. I chose to set up the print gallery above our corner table, designated for keys and mail; it was just the perfect size!

Next, I created a larger gallery wall to incorporate my favorite pictures and some significant art.

This gallery included: portraits of us, with our families, and our wedding party, a shot from our ceremony, and a print from Pokémon and one of clever 'wedding computer code' (from Redbubble). I had so much fun putting this one together! I loved so many different shots from our wedding day, I found this was the perfect way to remember and enjoy all of it. I hung this gallery over our couch, spanning the full length of the couch, for all to enjoy! Though some may find it tedious, I thoroughly enjoy choosing mats and frames to complement each of these pieces! And seeing how doing that kind of thing is part of my job certainly helped ;)

Setting up your gallery wall

First, I had all my pictures/art pieces printed and framed. Once I knew what all of my pieces were, I could choose how to organize the together. I realize this may not always be the best method - the sizes of everything you chose may not go together cohesively - but I don't like to restrict myself to just choosing a couple of sizes and fitting my pictures within that.

Next, I laid all my frames out on the floor to see what setup I wanted. Once I had them organized, I cut paper out to the size of each of the frames, and taped each of them up to the wall in the fashion I had already chosen. This really helped to make sure you liked it on the wall, and as a reference as to the exact location I needed to place my hanging materials.

Tips: 

-For my portrait gallery, I had one portrait that I wanted to be the focal point, then organized everything around that. If you have one significant or larger piece, you may want to center that on your gallery. This wasn't the case for my print gallery, so I just set the frames so that they all looked good together.

-If you have a lot of pictures and don't think you can fit them all in individual frames, think about printing them in smaller sizes and grouping them together into collage frames. You can see how I had two of these in my portrait gallery, one on each side. This helped me add multiple shots I loved with our family and wedding party.

All frames were purchased from A.C. Moore, some of which were custom jobs (large couple portrait, wedding invitation, and rehearsal dinner invitation), with the exception of the save the date frame (purchased from Art to Frames).

I hope you all enjoyed taking this little picture tour with me and I hope you might be inspired for your own gallery walls! I'd love to see any that you create!

Happy Friday Dinos!
<3

Washi Tape Love

Happy Friday Dinosaurs!

This week I'd like to share a simple and fun washi tape project I completed this week, which you can easily recreate with anything in your home that needs a little sprucing up! If you haven't used washi tape before, it's such an easy to use decorative tape that has millions of uses! It's thin and removable, so it's perfect for almost any surface!

I recently purchased these two baskets for a little organization in our apartment. They're great in themselves, but I thought they could use a little more life in them!

For this black letter basket (from Target), I went with some fun patterns, cherry blossoms and chevron, to decorate the inside and outside rim. I decided to go with a bright solid to add a pop of color to the base. It's a cute, simple piece to add to my office!

I had so much fun with this next basket! We needed something to store our mail, but wanted to separate it from each other's. I found this great mint basket from the Martha Stewart collection at Staples, and decided that washi tape was the perfect solution to make His and Hers sections! Add some fun colors as a border and you're done!

Do you think you'll want to use washi tape in your home? How have you used washi tape before? I'd love to hear about any of your projects! Feel free to link in the comments!

Thanks for reading Dinos! Have a great weekend!

<3

A Few Personalized Wedding DIYs

Hey Dinosaurs! Today I'm sharing a few more DIY projects I used to personalize my wedding. I really wanted to take ownership in turning my wedding into something I would love and cherish forever, so really tried to make it a unique event with many personal touches. I love the feeling after working hard on a project and seeing the outcome.

So here's some of my personal touches and descriptions on how I did it!

Manzanita Centerpieces

[Lauryn Galloway Photography]

It was actually my mom's idea to use manzanita branches for the centerpieces. She thought it went well with the Asian influence we were going for and I couldn't agree more! She found this great video tutorial which helped give us the basis of the centerpieces. We bought the branches and bases at Blooms & Branches.

But I of course had to add my own little touch when it came to decorating the centerpieces. I used this tutorial to fold over 200 origami flowers (no joke). We just hot glued these all over the trees and they came to life! The last touch was tying some loose beads on clear wire, adding a touch of sparkle to the trees. I tied in some teal and tulle by adding a bow to the base, threw in some mini fans in the pebbles and the centerpiece was complete!

Pokéball Garter

[Lauryn Galloway Photography]

I really wanted to make my garter unique, so I decided to make my own. I'd been told that they were fairly simple to make and that definitely turned out to be true! I found this great tutorial that I only varied slightly, by using two different trims for the top and bottom, instead of just one really wide piece of lace. Tip: when cutting the length of your ribbon and trim, measure your leg where you want the garter to rest, then multiply that number by 1.5. This will give you enough extra material to bunch it. For a different style or more garter help, I recommend checking out this video.

This was the ultimate nerdy garter, I was super happy with how it turned out! I made two so that one could be tossed and I could keep one, since I was just so proud of this project!

Boutonnieres

To continue incorporating Pokémon into our wedding, I decided to use them for the boutonnieres. But I couldn't just have the guys wearing them, so us girls also wore them on our waistbands! ;) I asked each member of our bridal party who their favorite Pokémon was, then made each one out of felt. It was a slightly tedious process, but I was absolutely thrilled with the result! Everyone loved their little Poké-pal and they added such a fun touch to the wedding! See them on each of us here.

Escort Cards

[Lauryn Galloway Photography]

For our escort cards, I wanted to do something fun and cute, something that would make people want to keep their card or get excited about it. And what isn't more fun than Gameboys?! My maid of honor, Heather, drew out the Gameboys for me in the 8bit style that I love, even cutomizing the button colors to match the wedding! I then proceeded to add each guests' name into the "screen" as well as the table where they would be sitting at. Each of the tables were named after a city or town in the Pokémon world!


I had such a great time making all of these DIY projects for my wedding! It really gave it a personalized touch and the satisfaction of seeing your hard work pay off feels great! Also check out my hair bow and ribbon bouquet tutorials!

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of these personal projects and can be inspired to personalize your own events! Thanks for reading!

<3

Ribbon Wedding Bouquet DIY

Hey Dinosaurs!

Today I'm bringing you a special DIY project that I absolutely loved making! If you saw some of the shots from my wedding, you probably noticed that my bouquet was not made of real flowers, as it usually is. Instead, I decided to go for a unique, everlasting look and made my and my bridesmaids' bouquets out of ribbon!

This project took some time, but it was totally worth it. I had previously found this tutorial from BurdaStyle, which inspired me to make the bouquet. The tutorial is fairly easy to follow, showing you how to make the individual ribbon flowers. Unfortunately that's all the tutorial offers, so when it came time to putting the flowers together into a bouquet, I was pretty much on my own.

So here is a little how-to into making the ribbon flowers into the bouquet! For my bridesmaids' bouquets, I used around 13 roses each, and for mine, I used around 22 roses. But these can be made however big/small you want!

Supplies Needed: Ribbon flowers (made from 1.5"ribbon), floral wire, floral tape, scissors, hot glue, 3/4" ribbon for wrapping, other decorative ribbon for outside wrapping (seen here 1" white ribbon), corsage pins (not pictured), and tulle (optional)

1. Begin by cutting out wire to a length slightly shorter than the tails on your ribbon flower and insert into the base of the rose. I recommend using the ribbon tail to wrap around the wire, especially if your wire is not very thick (like mine). If you want a shorter stem, just cut down the length of your ribbon tail.

2. Starting from the base of the rose bud, use floral tape to wrap around the ribbon tails and wire, creating a stem for your flower. Make sure to overlap your tape as you wind it around the wire. Continue all the way down until the bottom of the stem.

3. Once you've taped up all of your flowers, gather and arrange the together into a bouquet that you are happy with!

4. Beginning at the top, wrap floral tape around the entire bouquet stem, joining everything together. Tip: It may be difficult to hold everything together, I recommend using a rubber band to hold it together as you begin to wrap the floral tape.

5. Now comes time to add ribbon to the stem! I first began by adding a few strips vertically with hot glue, covering some of the outside stems that might be seen. After that, just wrap the base with your thin, dark ribbon, overlapping it as you go. I secured it with hot glue at the start and end.

6. Next, repeat with a wider or fancier ribbon, wrapping around the center of the stand, where you would hold the bouquet. I chose a ribbon that had dots on it, to go along with the polka dots in my dress!

7. For an extra touch (and maybe to cover up anything that doesn't look so great...), add corsage pins to the bottom of your stem. Warning, it may be a little difficult to push them into the bouquet.

8. Optional: If you want to add a touch of tulle, start by tying it around the top of the stem, then wrapping the tulle a few times around the bouquet. To secure, add corsage pins all around , keeping the tulle in place. For the bridesmaids' bouquets that were smaller, I could use 6" tulle, but for my bouquet that was much larger, I had to use wider fabric.

[Lauryn Galloway Photography]

And you're done! Here is the final product, in action! It takes some time and patience, but is totally worth it in the end! You can play around with whatever colors and textures you want! I used satin ribbon for the teal and pink ribbon, and grosgrain for the purple. For all three bouquets I used a total of 10 rolls of ribbon! And since I could not dare part with my bouquet, I made an even smaller one, using just two colors, for the bouquet toss!

I hope you guys enjoyed this unique twist on the classic bridal bouquet! I'd love to hear if anyone gives it a try!

Thanks for reading!

<3

Pixelated and Tulle Hair Bow DIY

Hello Dinosaurs! As many of you have probably noticed, wearing bows in my hair is my trademark. So it was only natural that I wanted to include this for me and my bridesmaids at my wedding!

So today I'm showing you how I made our customized bows! It's an easy, quick project that will allow you to customize your own bow!

Supplies needed: perler bead bows or other art, scissors, hot glue, needle, thread, and sharp knife (not pictured)

1. First, create your pixelated art using perler beads, following its provided directions. 

2. Place tulle underneath perler bead bow. Using the bow as reference, cut the tulle in a rectangle, about an inch larger than bow on all sides. (The tulle could be larger or smaller depending on how much tulle you want behind the perler bead bow).

3. Repeat and cut out multiple layers of tulle of the same size. For this bow I used 6 layers. Stack the layers on top of one another.

4. Pinch the stack of tulle in the center to create a bow shape.

5. Using your needle and thread, sew together the layers of tulle at the center where you pinched, keeping it in its bow shape.

6. Using a sharp knife, carefully score the back of the perler bead bow multiple times all over the center area. This will help the glue to stick better, since the surface is normally very slick.

7. Take your hot glue gun and add glue to the center of the tulle bow.  Place perler bead bow on top, pressing the two together firmly until glue dries.

8. You now have one complete bow piece!

9. To attach the hair clip, add hot glue to the clip and press onto the back of the bow. After the glue dries, sew the clip onto the bow for additional support, if your particular hair clip allows.

And you're done! These bows are super easy to make for any occasion! Below is the finished product used at the wedding:

[Lauryn Galloway Photography]

For my bow, I made the perler bead portion white and used both teal and purple tulle, to combine both of our wedding colors. I was super happy with the results!

I hope you enjoyed this fun little craft project! Thank you for reading!

<3