The Trouble with Paint

The precise conundrum I seem to be in will not be fully appreciated by the world wide web unless we all calibrate our monitors to register the exact same color. This is the only way I can guarantee that you will truly see my problem.

My problem: I keep picking the same paint color. I blame my modern architect father who taught me that white has many shades and who needs more. But seriously, I keep picking the same color. Three different brands and names: pilgrim haze, silver strand, cold steel. Perhaps the trouble is that paint names have nothing to actually do with the color they represent.

To be fair, they are not the exact same color. Our hallway, the first to be painted is a lovely pale blue. Our bedroom the second room to don a coat of paint is darker, although in the same family. But now there is the paint I bought for our bathroom. I didn’t want to go too far, I was looking for a nice gray with a bit of blue in it. And I found it, except it is pretty darn close to the others just a bit paler. And so it seems I am no longer allowed to buy paint in the blue/gray range. Clearly I have a problem. Do they make support groups for this?

Bedroom

Hallway

Bathroom

Too Intense Revisited

I came home early today to stare at the bookshelf. Actually, I was a bit under the weather and came home in the interest of keeping my germs to myself. But I ended up staring at the bookshelves.

I got a letter from my biggest blogging fan, my adopted grandma Avice. She said I either needed to stop staring at the bookshelves or mix things up a bit. Not staring at the bookshelves might be a good idea but I can’t seem to stop, so mixing things up sounded good. Actually covering things up sounded even better. For a while now I have been wanting to put up more pictures of friends and things that make me laugh, but committing it to the wall has seemed a bit to permanent. Committing it to the bookshelves is perfect. So here is a start. My plan is to eventually have a whole host of pictures, big and little, all framed rotating on our bookshelves. If I can’t stop myself from staring at them at least I can stare at things I like, right? Right!

Craftacular Room

We moved 3 months ago and for the last 4 months I haven't been able to find a single crafting item. Why is it the thing we love is always the last to get our attention?
Well no more, yesterday I removed ever single item, yes you heard me right, every ball of yarn, stay needle, piece of felt and scrap of paper with an idea on it and got organized. The result: my very own Craftacular Room! Yipee! Crafting here I come

Rainy Day Crafting

I had kinda a hard rainy day yesterday. At first the best thing for the mean reds seemed to be laying in the dark watching my secret pleasure, How I Met Your Mother on DVD. And although Neil Patrick Harris did make things somewhat better, it became clear that some crafting was needed.

Rather then picking up some on going projects I tackled two very different projects. The thing they had in common: immediate gratification.

First Craftiness:

In some fit of being cooped up due to rain I wallpapered one of my bathroom walls in contact paper. Now I know this may sound very strange but you have to appreciate the truly crazy status of our very long and skinny bathroom. Not only can you touch the walls width wise without actually spreading your arms all the way but you can actually get dizzy if you spend too much time contemplating the odd pinkish mustard and black tile combination. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what color to paint the walls to make this situation better, only to succumb to being completely overwhelmed.

However, this contact paper somehow did the trick. A glue stick, exacto knife and two rolls did was all it took to make our bathroom have more of a homey feel. And as a special bonus, I think I finally figured out what color to paint the walls: a very pail nutty brown.

Second Craft Action:

We have an ever growing collection of bottle tops and wine corks. The wine corks I have a plan for (to be reveled later), but the bottle tops have stumped me up until today. I know they have good crafting potential but what, where, how?

I think I may have answered some of these questions: refrigerator magnets. I used a super strong adhesive and magnet to create these supper cute fridge magnets. The cork magnets are a little more decorative then useful. I tried to reuse the magnet that comes with the credit card junk mail. It wasn’t strong enough to do much once I cut it up. But they sure are cute and I do love cork.

The Problem with a Long and Narrow Hallway…

So I didn’t finish the green bag as planned last night. Instead I sat riveted to my tv watching Frontline. Which does make me ponder politics before craft? Usually I craft while listening to the radio or the news but there was something about “Bush’s War” that kept me glued to my seat gasping.

But because I have a California contingency that has demanded I not fall off the face of blogging earth I thought I would tell you all about a little apartment craft that happened not that long ago. We have the world’s longest hallway into our apartment that has been begging for something cool for a long time. I think I got the idea from the purl bee website but it might have been somewhere else. I know I got the idea a long time ago because I bought the hoops last summer and the idea had been simmering for a while. The problem with having a really long narrow hallway is that it is really hard to get a good photo of everything on the wall.

But I tried and here are a couple close ups to help.