Watercolor Wallcoverings

Since I have abstract painting techniques on the brain, I've been dying to recreate a version of this French-made wallcovering from Elitis that looks exactly like hand-painted silk. Could that red-pink-coral color combo be any more perfect?

I spied the paper hanging in a dressing room at Neimans and could barely take my eyes off its gorgeousness long enough to try on my clothes. For something so intense, I found the pattern oddly dreamy and soothing.

I'd love to try to recreate the look for the inside of my closet. Wouldn't that be pretty? I'd feel like I was shopping at Neimans every day! ;)

PS Remember this nursery with its ikat fabric wallcovering?

Neon and Lucite Vanity Desk

One of the things I was excited to pick up for Heather's room redo surprise was this vintage lucite vanity desk from the Chelsea flea market. I loved its cool shape and I liked that the hinged mirror top could fold all the way down.

The laminate desktop underneath the hinged mirror was not in the best shape though and it was a dingy-looking cream color. So, inspired by the side table in this image, I picked up a little tub of neon orange paint at my local hardware store...

I ended up adding a little Penetrol to the paint to make sure there would be no brush marks.It's hard to photograph neon, but the color is great in here - it's punchy and perfect for Heather's room.

I picked up the brass cube floor lamp at the flea market too. And Heather and I picked out the art together.

We both thought something in the purple-blue-indigo family would be pretty in here, so when we stumbled across these gorgeous (and affordable!) screenprints from the Vivian and Beverly etsy shop, we knew our search was over. (PS I think I need the flamingos print too and maybe the zebra?)

I love the print and think it's a great color combo with the desk color.

Also, I like how the bright orange is a more intense version of the orangey coral velvet bedframe. I think the "tone on tone for a cohesive room" approach works even with neons! :)

I know it's a bold look, but this is a pretty contained application. Plus, how easy will it be to change up when we tire of the color? It's usually a good idea to do more neutral/classic colors on expensive upholstery, but paint is such an easy way to try out color trends without making a huge commitment 

So, what's the craziest painted piece you have in your home?

(PS If you're struggling to find a good balance of painted pieces to stained wood pieces in your home, I usually suggest a 1:1 ratio. A little too heavy either way feels unbalanced to me. What do you think?)

Talking Shop, Letting Go and Trimming a Lampshade

Dear Readers,

I'm at my parent's house in Arizona. And I always get a little wordy with my posts when I'm out here in the country. All this fresh air clears my head, I think. :)

I've been keeping up this site for a long time - going on six whole years! (how did that happen?!) I've been a blog reader for even longer, and by now, I've learned a bit as both a producer and a consumer of creative sites. It feels like there's a change in the wind lately, doesn't it?

All of us content-producers that work for ourselves, we're all trying to figure out our place in this fast-paced, idea-sharing world - with its Pinterests and Tumblrs and Instagrams (and now Vines!). I know it's weird to be on the content-consumer end of things right now as well. Blogging is such a new, and kind of weird media. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, we are not (which I think is part of the charm and allure of blogging). As we all know, most of the time, blogs are run by one person, out of their home, who happens to have a passion, who wants to share it, and who hopes to eventually make a fair wage for their labors. We're still trying to figure out the money bit. What's appropriate when we genuinely feel that our readers are our friends, and when we're often talking about deeply personal things? You readers are front and center as we muddle through all of this and more: sponsorship opportunities, attending and feeling the need to report on conferences about blogging, then also dealing with difficult "real life" situations as well as just the small-scale highs and lows of everyday life. And then of course (!), producing content all the while.

I've tried to be better about this in recent years, but back in the day I felt like I had to have a project *done* before I shared it here. It wasn't like that in the very beginning though. When I first started blogging, I was openly sharing everything I had on my mind - big and small. When no one's reading your site (and with no mean-spirited comments occasionally coming in) there's nothing to be self-conscious of. When I started getting more traffic (and some of those less-fun comments), I noticed myself holding back a little more. Also, some of the real joy of sharing was starting to leave, which is a bummer for me to think about.

Well, I've decided to let go a little, to get back to basics. And I'm determined to reclaim some of that lost joy, especially now that my interiors business is doing well and other media opportunities are opening up to me. I know now that I'm not blogging as a means to an end. It's the blogging itself that I think I love the most. So, how to make that more sustainable and more fun?

As a blog reader, I know that I love getting to know the writer behind the blog as much as I love their great content. I love the small projects just as much as (sometimes even more than) the grandiose room reveals. I like feeling like I'm along for the ride as the blogger lets me get inside his/her head. This is where bloggers can differentiate themselves from the other social media outlets. We can dig deeper into the story. We can share more. 

And what's the point if we're not? Might as well stick with Instagram.

I know this is a rather wordy, out-of-left-field post, and I don't mean to pull back the curtain in an unsavory way. And I don't write it to make any sort of announcements about the future of this site. But, as my site redesign and url change (!!!) are finally reaching completion (and after several lengthy, late-night conversations with other bloggers at Alt), I've come to the realization that if I want to keep going with LGN, I need to be willing to share more. All with less worry for what other people think of my projects and my style, because that is the whole point. I named this site Little Green Notebook after an idea journal I used to keep in my bag (before the days of iPhones) that would record all my notes to self. Project ideas with sketches, shopping lists, clothes and shoes to save up for, stores to look up online, dreams and goals. So, all that to say, I hope you keep joining me here during the week as I get back to sharing more of these things again. I love, love, love having you. I imagine you all as my girlfriends that I feel comfortable enough to have over even when my house is a bit messy. Thanks for being so chill, thoughtful, respectful and cool to me as I put my ideas and my personal life out there. :)

I did this little project last week. As I snapped the photos I thought, no one is going to care about a piece of ribbon on a lampshade in an unfinished room. But those sound like the worries of Old Jenny, don't they? And New Jenny digs simple, achievable projects and shares. So, onward with the post!

Before I went to Alt, I was changing the girls' sheets, dreaming/lamenting about how much I want to do to their room this year (like new bedding - stat!). In the spirit of making small, but impactful changes, I decided there needed to be more red in the room. I ran down to the lamp graveyard (as Michael calls it) in the basement and grabbed this tomato red ginger jar lamp (seen here previously). I wish I had a black paper shade on hand, but this cheapy white one from Target worked too. (It is so hard to pass up those dang uno shades at Target. They are SO inexpensive and accessible! I just wish they would make more shades that work with harps. Same with IKEA's shades).

Table lamps in kids rooms can look a little stuffy, you know? So one of my favorite tricks is to glue colorful trim to the top and bottom lips of the shade. Instant whimsy! (...I hate myself a little bit for saying that word). Like with almost every textile project I do, I used MagnaTac here (but Fabritac works equally well). Also, I used to recommend grosgrain for trimming out shades, but I think something with more stretch and give works best with shades that have any kind of sloped sides. This orange and violet vintage woven trim I picked up from SAS in Phoenix worked perfectly. Just roll under and glue the last inch where the ends meet to prevent fraying.

Five minutes of gluing later, I had some tangy, bright persimmon red in the room, and I felt better about the space. And (to bring it all back home) isn't that what it's all about? Small and simple steps. :)

Thanks again for sticking around, friends. Here's to six more years of DIY adventures on this little piece of the interwebs.

xo, Jenny

Cheater Shades and Red Frames

We need roman shades for a few rooms in our house. I'm thinking about tackling the real-deal sewing project for the shades I want to put in our living room. But the others will hang in bedrooms, and I think I'd like to do something a little faster there. I still use and love my shades from mini-blinds project, but when I need something really sturdy, that can be used and abused, and I'm in a time pinch, I just glue fabric to store-bought fabric or bamboo shades.

I glued this heavy linen (Schumacher's Zimba) to bamboo shades from Home Depot for Abbey's kitchen redo. I used spray glue to adhere the front and Fabritac to glue the wrapped around edges. I also glued a piece of black-out liner on the back for a cleaner look from the outside. If you're going to use bamboo shades as the base, make sure your fabric is thick or else you will see the texture of the bamboo peek through a little bit. Using a fabric shade as a base is an easy project too (as seen here).

PS How cute are the framed pictures in Abbey's kitchen? She picked up a ton of the $1 frames at IKEA and framed her toddler son's art. Such a big visual impact for not a lot of money. Reminds me of this Steven Gambrel room.

Bottom photo by Seth Smoot, styling by Kendra Smoot for this Cup of Jo house tour.

Room Tour: Lauren Leonard Interiors

Lauren emailed to share photos of her daughter Ellie's room. I hope it's not too ridiculous for me to be jealous of a six year-old's bedroom, because I totally am. I would swipe that gold + KWID chair from her so fast! :)

Lauren said the John Robshaw fabric on the bed was her starting point but was also her budget-buster (SO worth it I say!), so she had to get creative with the other elements in the room, like framing prints from a $6 calendar and painting the pattern on a simple IKEA rug (here's a similar project).

For all the details on this lovely bedroom, check out Lauren's post.

Thanks for sharing, Lauren! If you'd like to share a space or project with LGN readers, feel free to submit here.

Entry Progress: A Bright Red Secretary

The entry on our parlor level is pretty small. There's a coat closet across from the powder bath and a teeny tiny little bump out next to the front door and that's about it. Here's what the space looked like on move in day.

Not pretty, I know. We've since had all the walls painted Farrow and Ball's Cabbage White, which is bright and fresh, and the doors were painted Pitch Black. We still need to do all the trim work in here, but we had the small floor boards painted BM Decorators White.

When I was trying to figure out how to best use this space, I sort of fell in love with the idea of a secretary (a really narrow one), so there would be a place to throw mail down, but we'd also have lots of hidden storage. The issue was finding a secretary that was less than 23" wide so that the door could open all the way. Not easy!

For a while we kept the vintage vanity desk from this post in this spot because it fit and it was a place to put things down (you can see it peeking out in this post), but I definitely was left wanting something taller with storage after a couple months of that. Then one day at an antiques store in the burbs, a vintage Thomasville beauty presented itself. It wasn't in perfect shape and the dated-looking fruitwood needed to be painted out, but the size was exactly perfect and the price was right at $175. (Especially compared to the inspiration pieces I was eying on 1st dibs! yikes!)

I knew I wanted to paint the secretary a fun color (aren't you surprised!?) because the entry is pretty bland and it needed some cheer. I went to Home Depot to get a color mixed and I stumbled across and ENTIRE GALLON of my beloved Safety Red, formally known to me as only-available-in-spray-can-form-Safety-Red. It's been a four year love affair, so I couldn't not try it, right? 

I expected it to smell as horrible as the other Rustoleum oil-based paints (like this one), but this paint smelled more like linseed oil and less like fumes. Sort of like the Ben Moore Advanced line. It had an interesting, very thick consistency too. The finish was great though (smooth as glass), so I can't complain.

You're probably wondering what happened to the glass here. I have plans to get mirror cut, but I decided to paint out the glass from the inside so no one could see the things I have stored inside. (it's a whole bunch of vases and it looks really sloppy). I'm not completely minding the white actually, but I think the mirror will help to brighten up the space. (I was going for this and this look.)

I'm really loving it and am just aching to get that moulding up now!

I did put down a small rug and that helped too (seen here formerly),

And I hung the peacock mirror on the wall next to the kitchen. I need to put art on the wall to the left of the kitchen though and I think that will help even more. 

But, it's progress! And just in time for holiday dinner parties (thank you so much for your votes, by the way! If you haven't had a chance to pop over, the $500 contest will go through the 23rd. xx)

PS A little tip about painting mirrors or cabinets with glass panes without using painter's tape.

Don't forget the inside

Thank you all for your kind comments about our work-in-progress kitchen! (It is a mess right this minute. Flour and sugar and spices everywhere as we begin the prep for the Feast (somehow what my kids have been calling Thanksgiving?). Exhibit A.)

I took it as a sign that my readers know me well (and not at all that I'm boring and predictable) when a few of you guessed early that I would probably be painting the inside of the cabinets a crazy color. 

Who, ME?

The insides of these old cabinets were not great and they had to be painted no matter what. So I thought to myself, why not bright persimmon red?! (which happens to be the answer to a lot of my color conundrums.) I figured something this bright would be a welcome addition to my dark kitchen. But it would be like a secret-surprise-bright-welcome-addition, you know?

My friend came over last week, opened the drawer for a spoon and yelled "Red drawer!!!" Mission accomplished, I say.

PS Just found this. So predictable.