DIY home decor

I am on a pretty small decorating budget, and given that I don't like most of the decorative items that I see in catalogues (or cannot afford the ones I love), I made some of my own.

One wall art idea that I had was to take pretty tissue paper from a recent purchase at Anthropologie and frame it with large Ikea Clips frames. The pattern is bleached white leaves and branches on blue paper, and it goes really well with my red sideboard, which you can see in some of the other pictures. Because tissue paper is cheap and thin, it is VERY easy to frame.



Another project I may undertake soon is to use the Ikea canvas framing kit to frame some pretty fabric. I can't find it on the website right now but I definitely saw it in the store yesterday.


The other major project I've worked on is finding and making decorative pillows for my bright, cornflower blue couch. All of the pillows that I found were either too expensive (who pays $50-100 for a pillow!?!?!) or not of the right color palette. Yesterday, out of desperation, I went to a fabric store to see if it would be less expensive to make my own. It was so much less expensive, in fact, that the cost of my supplies was less than one pillow that I was going to buy on Etsy for $22. Not only that, but I have an extra yard or so of fabric left over to make other things for around the house (or a cool skirt maybe?).

Here is the evolution of my decorative pillows. First, I sewed the covers. I don't have a sewing machine so this is all by hand. The fabric is canary yellow twill (kind of like the material that khaki pants are made of) and the filling is a down alternative because I'm allergic to down.


Here you can kind of see the brightness of my primary colored-living room, heightened by the addition of this pillow:


I decided to sew on some buttons before finishing up.




The finished product:



Now, if only I could find something for the wall behind that couch.