Cartwheels In My Mind

Her Room. Part One.

Welcome back to Cartwheels y'all.  Nothing like a little break to get you motivated and inspired. 

Today I'd like to share my daughter's room with you.  Granted, if you'd stop by today it'd look NOTHING like this!  The inhabitant is an eleven year old girl after all.  Right now there's a million earrings, books and ponytail holders covering the floor.  We gave her the smallest room in the house for a reason!

So, back in fall we redid her room.  And not "redid" like bought furniture and accessories... but "shopped in our home" and repurposed pieces to make a non-girly retreat.

Welcome.

On one side of the room we have her bed and a little bedside table.  The bedside table was in our house when we moved it (yes, we moved our house... three miles over onto our farmyard). A quick coat of white paint and that little bedside table fit right in.  Her bed we found in the summer kitchen on our property.  That got some powder-coating and it was good to go.  The hardest part about her bed was finding a mattress that fit. 

Underneath her bed are drawers from an old dresser.  Another coat of white paint, some handles, and they're the perfect place for her to store out of season clothes and books.  The problem with old houses is that there are no closets (our house is 120 years old).  So storage like this is a neccessity.

 

The light fixture was a cast off from my aunt.  Some more paint and it's a perfect fit. 

Above her bed is a collage of art.  An old window frame backed with wire from our dog kennel makes the perfect "bulletin board".  Right now it's littered with Selena Gomez and Harry Potter.  :(  Sigh.   

Other framed art was made from some simple scrapbooking supplies and some overlays from vol. 25.  Love that Martha Stewart butterfly punch.  I just punched out some butterflies from dictionary paper and glued them down.  Voila.  And I love that the colors of the vol. 25 overlays can be altered to fit any decor.  I printed this one in a turquoise.

So, that's this side of the room.  Well, at 9x10 it's not much of a side... but still!  I'll be back on Wednesday with the other half!

Organization Inspiration - Vintage Locker Bins

 

I have a confession....I have a serious crush on containers.  I love baskets, bags, plastic bins, boxes, metal buckets, glass jars, bowls....if it can hold something then I love it!  I probably own way to many containers right now, but that doesn't stop me from looking (and sometimes buying) new ones.  I am drawn to the aisles with storage containers and baskets when I'm shopping.  If I'm in an antique or thrift store, I'm drawn to all the vintage buckets, boxes, and jars.  Sometimes I buy containers without a specific purpose in mind...I just know they look awesome and that I can surely find something to store in them.  That's the way it was with the vintage locker bins I found while shopping at an antique store.  I had lusted over them when seeing pictures of them on the internet and was so excited when I found not one but FIVE vintage locker bins at a reasonable price.  So of course I snatched up all five, even though I had no idea what I would do with them.

For about a year, they served as storage in my scrapbook area (which was really a corner in the unfinished portion of our basement).  I used them to store punches, sticker letters, stamps, and ribbons.  But when my husband refinished our basement and built me a brand new scrapbook room, the locker bins didn't quite fit the decor style in the new room anymore.  So for the past year they have been sitting in a corner in my basement just waiting on me to find some fabulous use for them.  I recently decided what to do with them (you'll have to wait and see...it's a project for later this spring), but in the meantime found lots of fun ideas for using locker bins on the internet.

 

Happy Organizing!!

 

Anatomy Of A Room :: A Vintage Nursery 03, Bob Marley Bird Canvas.

Howdy, Howdy friends and neighbors!! Raise your hand if you are excited that it's Friday! I know I am...I have big plans to hit a bunch of thrift stores in Baltimore tomorrow. My favorite kind of day. :)

Anyways...I thought I'd pop in and share with all of you some nursery art. Now, some of you that have read my personal blog might remember something very similar posted there, but I took it apart and redid the whole thing so this isn't technically a double share. 

It IS, however, that very same Bob Marley song that I used before. We are huge Marley fans around here...we've usually got one of his cds playing at least 70% of the time. Anywhoo...this is one of my favorites of his and I just feel like it's the perfect quote for a nursery. 

To design it I:

1. Used the same paint color as the cabinet in the nursery so that it would be a perfect color match. (Random fact, for this blue I matched up the color of the Sassafras vintage patterned papers and then used it to paint my kitchen and furniture around the apartment.)

2. I used stamps from the teacher store to stamp out the lyrics using white ink.

3. I then just freehand cut out everything but the birds (JBS chipboard shapes) onto patterned paper and then adhered them to the canvas using permanent bond glue.

And voila!!! A one of a kind canvas that matches the room to perfection is born. Fun, right!? :)

It now sits on this little wooden dresser that was my dad's when he was a kid (sentimental alert!) with this little group of loveliness that i found at various thrift stores around here. I love used stuff! 

What are YOU working on this week? Don't forget to share your art in our FLICKR GROUP so that we can share it here on the site. We love art from our readers!

x's and o's my friends! And happy happy Friday!

C. Amet

Anthropologie Necklace :: Fresh Start Give-Away Number Two.

Hi friends! I'm back...and this time I come bearing gifts! :) 

I was in Anthropologie around Christmastime buying gifts and when I saw this necklace I knew that I had to get it for someone. And today I am going to give it to one lucky give-away winner! 

Want to see?

So gorgeous, right? I just love that Anthro always does something a little quirky with their stuff. 

But onto the important stuff...who wants it? If you would like to be added to the mix of names to be drawn out just leave a comment here with a little quirky fact about yourself (I am obsessed with random facts...they intrigue me so much.:D).

And that's it...comment, submit and pray that your name is drawn!

x's and o's

C Amet.

Scrapbooking With Wallet Sized Photos.

Happy Thursday, my friends! Or is it Friday? The days are kind of all blending together for me this week year. Anyways, I have some inspiration to share with you! I know that alot of you first knew me as a scrapbooker, and I'm not going to lie...as much as I love me some handmade art, scrapbooking will always be my first love. The heart of that entire art just grabs me and holds me captive. Which is why I'm going to try to bring a little more of it back into the site (and my life) over time. Starting with a couple pages today.

So...how many of you print your own photos? I tend to print my own until I get a big batch that I can't narrow down to my favorites and then I head to Walgreens. But to be honest, I very rarely use printed photos on my layouts. I just love the fact that I can print whatever photo I want at any given time...and more importantly, I can make it any size I want. Which, in my case, is almost always wallet sized. There is just something about a miniature photo that inspires me so much. 

So I decided to share a little post that shares 2 different types of layouts using the miniature photo...one that covers the entire background page, and one that leaves a ton of white space.

First up, this little photo of gracie just makes me heart smile for days. She has a certain magnetism that draws people in wherever we go (and makes her very shy daddy quite uncomfortable...he says it's like going out with a celebrity, you can't go anywhere without people stopping and wanting to gush over her.)...and I wanted to capture that for her to see when she's older. The Bruno Mars song was just the icing on the cake. So perfect for who she is... 

Next up is this very minimalistic layout of one my my favorite photos of my kids. I wanted the focus to completely be on them and the words I typed up. And I feel like in a very different way it highlights the photo just as much as the Gracie one above.

So what do you think? Have you used wallet sized photos on your layouts? If so, I'd love to see them! And if not, you should definitely try it...it's incredibly liberating to throw away what you normally do and just work outside your comfort zone!

x's and o's,

C. Amet

P.S. Next time I'm sharing some fun ways to use photostrips in your projects...and where you can make your own strips for free!

Who Wants A Little Cartwheel's Love In Their Mailbox? :: Fresh Start Give-away Numero Uno.

Happy Tuesday, my friends! Are you loving the posts we've had from the lovely and widely creative mind of Elizabeth Mudge the past two days? Because I have. So much...it's so fun for me to see her fresh take on the world. And what better time to celebrate that fresh take than the beginning of her new partnership with me as co-owner of Cartwheels In My Mind? 

Speaking of fresh takes...one of my favorite things in the entire world is to sit in the evenings after the kids are sleeping and watch gritty documentaries while making tons of fun jewelry. And just recently I made a small batch of these lovely purple rings...and upon wearing them to run errands out and about this week I've gotten alot of compliments on them...so I thought it would be fun to do a giveaway where you can win a chance to receive one of your own.

What do you have to do? Just leave a comment on this post over the next week and I'll announce the winner a week from today on Tuesday, March 1st. So tell us what you think...about the site, the ring, the articles...anything. Just as long as you leave one you will be entered into the drawing.

Good luck!

xo's and o's,

Cheryl

P.S. Do you have a specific type of post you'd like to see shared on the site? Or one that we used to share but discontinued? We are always 100% open to any feedback you might want to send our way!