It's Not Easy Being Green

This summer our good friends Paulina and Ross are having a reception to celebrate their marriage this last December. Both Mary and I stood up in beautiful winter wedding and now we get to celebrate the summer reception! Since we've already done the matching dress thing for the ceremony, Paulina took a page from Sex and the City and has decided that the bridesmaids should all dress in brightly colored dresses. We love this idea!

So, after "calling" green (apparently you're never too old to call dibs) I set out to find a summery green dress. I was hoping for something along the lines of these beautiful lily pads which I assumed was called kelly green. More on that later. 

I can't think of anything more summery and bright than a nice green. So how hard could it be to find a dress that color, right? Well, it's a lot harder than you'd think! Why is it that you see a color everywhere until you need it, then it's nowhere to be found. One of life's little mysteries, I guess!

I quickly decided that calling dibs on green was not my best move. Why didn't I go for pink or blue which seem to be more in season this year? But then I went to Target to pick up a few things and casually strolled through the clothing department as I often always do and I found this pretty lady

Maybe I should clarify, by "lady" I mean dress of course. Although I'm sure she's very pretty too. But this dress is great. It's a nice light linen and I love the detail by the shoulder. Here's an up close picture for you.

I'm sure you must be a little confused right now. The dress isn't green. Correction: the dress isn't green yet. Cue the fabric dye.

I've been seeing things about the brand iDye for a while now and have only heard good things. It's washing machine friendly and easy to use. I got a nice kelly green packet on Amazon for about $6. Not to shabby, right?

The process is really simple. Combine the dye packet with 1 cup of salt for 100% natural fabrics and enough hot water to dissolve it all. Then, pour it into the filling washing machine. Soak your fabric in water before putting it in the washer. If you put it in dry, the fabric won't be evenly dyed. Set the washer to run an extra rinse cycle and whala! Green dress.

Now I have to say I was expecting the green to come out a bit darker. But I suppose the color is pretty true to the picture on the front of the packet. While it's very pretty, I was envisioning something a little more rich in color. So I hopped back on Amazon and I have a packet of emerald green coming my way.

I've read that dyeing one color over another isn't a problem as long as you're going darker. Obviously it wouldn't work so well to try and take a dress from emerald to kelly green so I'm happy I made the mistake in the right order! I'll keep you posted on the dress progress as soon as I have access to another washing machine! Oh the joys of apartment living...

How's it hanging?

I love weddings. Blogs, photography, floral arrangements, dresses, you name it, I love it. This past month one of my best friends Meghan got married. It was an amazing celebration that I will never forget. I had the privilege of standing in the wedding, and not to mention helping along the way of the engagement. Last fall Meghan was browsing on Etsy, and found a wonderful handmade floral hanger for a wedding dress. Costing about $40.00, Meghan passed, and I took a mental note.

A few weeks later, the roomies and I went to check out an estate sale. Again, we are huge estate sale fans, remember when we got our dresser here? Luck was on our side, and amongst the ornaments, furniture, and silverware, there were these hangers. Fate, is that you?

Next step was fabric. I decided that cotton would be the easiest to manipulate, and create plenty of rose buds. Since this was a present, I could not ask what color Meghan wanted. I knew that she wanted a beachy-natural colored wedding, so I searched for a peachy yellow color. The subtle tone of the color wasn’t too much of a distraction from the dress, but didn’t blend with the dress either.

I cut the fabric into strips, then squares, then circles. Just think of making snowflakes in first grade: fold the square in half twice, then cut a rounded edge. Each circle had about a 3 inch diameter. Each rose bud was made out of four circles. The hanger in total had just under 40 rosebuds. Also, since I was working with cotton, the edges of the rose buds were fraying. I liked the look, but didn’t want the hanger to unravel completely. I used Fray Check to seal the edges:

And now the final product...

                                                                            

Ode to Spray Paint

As you can probably tell from this title, we're big fans of the can here at sawyer|three.

It's amazing what a coat of glossy paint can do to refresh an old piece or a thrift store find. Seriously, it's amazing. It also helps that holding that can makes me feel like an artist when in reality, anyone who has the dexterity to press the nozzle has the skill to spray paint an object. Not to crush your dreams of being an artist. You still had to choose the color and actually go buy it. So don your beret, twirl your mustache and do that thing where you stick your thumb in the air anyway. I do.

The great thing about spray paint is that it sticks to EVERYTHING; metal, wood, wicker, wrought iron, hard vinyl, plaster, ceramic, plastic, my hands when I get overzealous. Everything. Of course certain types of spray paint stick to certain surfaces better than others. But it's easy enough to see what sticks where by taking a gander at the label on the can. Easy enough, right?

Needless to say, we've used spray paint on multiple surfaces in our apartment. Multiple. Yeah, we're super artsy and talented like that.

In fact it was the paint of choice when we created our little frame collage slash sawyer|three logo. We used a can of glossy black pray paint on these bad boys a while back. We collected frames we liked at the thrift store intending to make some kind of art collage on our living room wall. It wasn't long till we realized the frames themselves could be the art. Since they're all different there's a lot of fun textures going on which we love.

I even used the remnants of a spray paint can to refresh an old pair of metal earrings. They were starting to rust but it was nothing a little hot pink spray paint couldn't handle. I wish I had a picture for you, but I must admit I forgot to take one. But trust me, the paint made a world of difference.

I also mentioned that I'm planning on taking a can to at least one of these guys. I'm still undecided on the color at this point. But I'm leaning toward a nice bright matte color. That's right, you can buy matte spray paint. Yet another reason to love it!

Have you used spray paint on anything around your house lately? We'd love to hear about it!

Christmas in July

More like a review of Christmas in July. This past winter, my friend Alex was raving about the aprons from Anthropologie, and how she wanted one. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Anthropologie, and would shop-spree there anytime. Although a $50.00 apron seems a little silly to me, so I decided to take on this challenge, I’m sure Heidi and Michael would approve...

                                             

I began to search on Etsy so see if there was any fabrics that caught my eye. What an understatement. I came across this handsome design, and the decision was made for me...

Really, who could resist? Next I found black stretchy lace, and bright red ribbon for the band and tie. I pieced the apron together in four parts. The skirt, the top (two pieces), and the tie/band.

A close up of the graphics...

The top portion is lined with the black lace. The band is layered with the fabric, the black lace, and the bright red ribbon. This provided stability to the band so it was able to tie in the back.

And the proud owner, Alex. What better way to celebrate the fourth of July, than with this apron? Everyone loves a little Christmas in July!

                                                               

Village Visions

There is nothing quite like the thrill of thrifting. I don't know what it is but there's something so exciting about a well stocked thrift store. Of course, there's a lot not to like; the over-crowded aisles, the disorganization and the general smell to name a few. But let's just focus on the positive, shall we? 

When Mary and I get the itch to thrift we like to hit up our favorite local spot, Village Discount Outlet. These bad boys are all over Chicago and Northwest Indiana so if you live in either state there's a good chance you have a Village near you.

Before you start thinking this is just an ode to Village Discount, let me just explain why I bring it up. Mary and I decided it would be fun to do a segment of sorts about our fun thrift store finds. And so "Village Visions" was born.

The thing about thrift stores is that it's really a hit or a miss when it comes to finding anything worth buying. Sometimes I find myself fooled by the low, low prices and when I get home I wonder why I ever thought I needed yet another clear glass vase. Sure, it was $.80 but I already have three just like it. It's taken a while but I've learned to go in with a plan. The plan goes as follows:

Know what you're looking for.
Know how much you'd like to spend on it.
And stick to that.

Of course from time to time I find something too good to pass up. Sure I wasn't looking for it, but that's because I didn't know it existed. So my general rule of thumb is that if it gives me sweaty palms, butterflies in my stomach and I'd sell my first born to own it then I can take it home. Ok, so maybe that's a bit dramatic but you get the idea.

So when Mary and I went to the Village a while back with a pretty simple game plan. We needed more decorative stuff for the apartment. Simple enough, right? And here's what we found.

Check out these beautiful, shiny, ladies. They are candle stick holders when you flip them right side up, but we figure we can use them for votives too. See how you could easily plop a votive or tea light into what is meant to be the underside? At $.50 a piece it was a steal. There were more there but we settled on three because we love uneven numbers for decorating.

 

Here's a gratuitous shot from above just because they're so shiny and pretty.

We also found two of these gorgeous bowls at $.80 a piece. We love the square shape and the texture on the sides. They can be used to put out candy for guests, serve chips with salsa and guacamole or even enjoy our morning cereal. And not to be a label snob, but check it out.

That's right. I even found similar ones for sale online for $15 each. Pier One is reasonably priced so we probably could have found these on clearance for $3 each but then again, we didn't even pay $3 for the two we brought home. So score one for sawyerthree.

This little guy is maybe my favorite thrift store find ever. I know it looks simple and it is but I find it so charming. It's just a scrap of fabric. It was in a ratty frame but I loved from the moment I set eyes on it. In fact, it's even awarded itself a place on our Great Wall of Frames. In a new and freshly painted frame, of course.

Here is the last find in this edition of Village Visions. Not one, but two sets of bookends. You might wonder why one would need so many book ends and it's a fair question. A question I don't have an answer to. I just love them and I'm fairly certain Mary does too. If not, she's a very good friend. I just love how intricate they are. And while they look pretty great as is, I can definitely see us whipping out a can of spray paint at some point to give them a funky makeover. Turquoise anyone? They are so cute. I found myself going all paparazi on them in our dining room but I was able to hold back and only bore you with one picture.

So there you have it! I'm sure we'll be back very soon with some more thrift store finds. In the meantime, we'd love to hear about yours!

Dresser

When Sofia, Meghan, and I first moved in to Sawyer Three, we were inspired by the plethora of freedom that was bestowed upon us, and decided to express ourselves with.. well a plethora of colors. With a yellow sunroom, orange living room, green dining room, blue kitchen, and pink bathroom (which you witnessed the transformation of here), and not to mention purple, green, and gray bedrooms, we were living in a crayola box. Please don’t judge us; we have since learned to calm ourselves and slowly transform our apartment into an oasis of cohesive luxury. Too far? Well we've come a long way..

In the midst of pulling colors left and right, we thought, “what would go better in an orange living room than a purple dresser”, duh. Again, we are two years older, and much wiser, and have since changed our living room walls to represent the soothing tone that we would like to represent our penthouse:

Our purple dresser no longer had a place in this living room and desperately needed a makeover. We snagged this dresser from an estate sale when we moved into our apartment. Speaking of, most of our furniture came from that estate sale, and I recommend that for any college grads looking for furniture. Back to our dresser:

I am in love with this handle. Greek god meets mermaid...

The challenge with this piece of furniture, was that the colors needed to match: our new soothing walls, the black frames on the walls, our dark wood coffee table, grey and white space rug, and tan couch covers. My goal was to somehow make the whole room feel cohesive, and not let the dresser be the main attention of the room. For the new colors I chose:

I wanted to the colors to be similar, so there was no drastic difference between the drawers and base of the dresser.

And without further ado, our new dresser....

                                                     



The Great Wall of Frames: Part Two

It is finished!

So a few weeks back I mentioned that Mary and I were working on a wall of frames like the one the Petersik's over at Young House Love did in their house. You can check their beautiful wall out here. Up until a few short days ago, this is what our hallway looked like.

Pretty bland, huh?

So with the frame wall inspiration fresh in our minds we got to work. Read about how we collected the frames and the things inside them here .

Then it was time to hang everything. This is the tricky part. We knew we wanted the arrangement to be semi-random. I say semi-random because there is a fine line between organized randomness and throwing caution to the wind. Guess which side of the line we hang out on.

We decided the best way to get the semi-random look we were going for was to lay the frames out on the floor in front of the wall.

That way we could see the arrangement before we made 100 little holes in the wall. We find the best way to start is in the middle. We knew we wanted this baby front and center to pay homage to the bloggers who inspired us.

Once we knew where we wanted the first frame to go it was easy to build out. For us, it's not a big deal if the space between frames isn't the same all the way around. That's what gives it that semi-random look.

Once we had the arrangement exactly how we wanted it (after moving things around, taking a step back to look, hating it, moving things around again, rinse and repeat) it was time to start hammering.

We hung the Petersiks first and worked our way out. Here's what it looked like after a little progress.

About half an hour later we had this.

Cue the whomp whoooooomp. Nothing is worse than a crooked picture. Except maybe 25 crooked pictures. We knew we could not live with a crooked gallery for long so we had to do something.

Well hello double sided mounting tape! What a lifesaver! All we had to do was whip out the old level and apply a small piece of mounting tape to the back side of the bottom of each frame and presto chango, we had this beauty!

Don't mind the crappy lighting/picture taking skills. It was all Mary. Just kidding, it was me. But you get the point, right? We love it. And since taking the picture above I've already found another cute addition. That's the great thing about a wall of frames like this one, you can add frames, remove frames or change things out to keep it looking fresh. Trust me when I say my picture does the wall no justice. It really adds a lot to the space! Ok, I'm done gushing about it now.