Category Archives: funky projects

DIY: Nate Berkus Inspired Mirror

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Amy

Ready for another crazy DIY?!? Would you believe me if I told you this mirror is made of the following: $1 plastic plate charger / an old shoelace / a mirror tile from IKEA* / Sharpie marker / Paint Pen. I only spent $1.00 on this project and that was for buying the plastic charger! Everything else was found on a treasure hunt in my garage. [*I checked IKEA’s website for these mirror tiles and do not see them for sale. I did however see that Hobby Lobby has craft mirrors for $3.99]

I picked up a gold plastic plate charger at Michael’s and glued the mirror tile onto it using Gorilla Glue. I was a little heavy-handed with the glue and the next morning I had foam leaking out everywhere!

After I chipped off most of the crunchy glue boogers I was left with this ugliness and the dilemma of how the hell to make it look decent. Let the garage rummaging begin!

First off, I found this old shoelace in some dusty corner of the garage and covered up the messy glue residue.

This is loooongest shoelace I’ve ever seen, but I’m sure glad we had it on hand. I thought about leaving it as is, but pushed myself to make it something gorgeous. So out came the black Sharpie!

I love chevron, especially black+white chevron. So…a chevron mirror I was to have! I free handed this ENTIRE design, but it’s easy if you let any fear or hesitation go. I started with a zig zag pattern around the edge, then filled the lines in a bit to give them more weight.

Once that was done, I brought out my white Painty pen and added now a white zig zag adjacent to the black one. I kept repeating this process…

Black zig zags

Then white zig zags

Almost done!

Once my zig zags reached the shoelace I simply colored in the triangles and it was done!

I took these pictures at night thus explaining the yellowish tone to the pictures.

AND HERE SHE IS!

I decided it looked best in our master bathroom on top of the chunky shelves I recently made [stay tuned for that tutorial!].

I would say this mirror took about 1-2 hours to make, not including glue drying time. It’s such a fun project and I think the results are pretty amazing.

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POSTED IN: black and white decor, diy decor, make your own accent mirror, nate berkus inspired, use what you have

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DIY: modern+funky towel holder

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Amy

I’m back in the kids’ bathroom today [well, not literally] to show you a cute DIY project I banged out in 30 minutes. I posted about using curtain hold backs as towel holders, but they were just too dang big…

kids bathroom_hold back

Do you ever go ahead with something even though you have this feeling in your gut that it’s wrong?! The above picture is case in point.

After wallpapering the kids’ bathroom things have snowballed, but in a good way. The ideas are flowing and things are falling into place.

My next idea was to replace the monstrosity of a towel holder with a smaller, much simpler one. Since the funds for DIY’ing this month are a bit tight, I decided to make one with scrap pieces of wood and some bright red spray paint I had on hand.

I used a scrap piece of furring strip [apx $2.00 at HD for an 8' piece] and wooden dowel that is 0.75″ thick. I simply cut the furring strip to the above measurements you see [4.25" x 3" x 3"]. I then cut the dowel at a 45 degree angle and cut to 2.25″ long at the highest point. I felt this length would look best and most proportionate to the base of the towel holder.

Next simply add a blob of wood glue [Gorilla glue is the shizzle] onto the angled part of the dowel and set onto the triangle base.

Lightly press the dowel onto the base so it sets a bit. Now simply rest this piece at a slight angle against something and let sit for at least an hour.

Once the glue has set, give it a light sanding with a fine grit sandpaper.

The next step is to spray paint this guy any color you like. I chose this bright red color in a lacquer finish so it’s super glossy. I chose red to go with the funky [temp] wallpaper I used recently in the kids’ bathroom. I let this dry overnight.

To attach this to the wall I drilled a small shallow hole on the back in order to hang it from a nail. And that’s it!

I love how it’s a bit sculptural, modern and funky!

As soon as I hung a hand towel from the hook I couldn’t see this towel holder anymore! I want to be able to admire my genius work [I know...barf!] so I grabbed an old curtain ring and used that to hold the kids’ hand towel.