The Beat That My Heart Skipped - A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations. By Rohini Wahi. » Things To Make and Do

DIY Tin Cans

Rohini — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:11 +0000

My boyfriend made me these for Christmas last year, but actually they are pretty neat for summer time so I’m giving it a go myself – the plan is to put them out on the windowsill (the closest I’ll be getting to a garden in my London flat) while the nights are still warm enough to go to bed with the window open. If you get the patterns right you’ll find you can stare at them flickering away for hours.

You’ll need a bit of patience, as there’s a lot of waiting around for water to freeze (best bet is overnight), and paint to dry. And then also a bit of skill depending on how complicated you want the patterns to be (notice I’ve kept it pretty simple but the patterns can get as elaborate as you wish!).

You will need

Tin cans
Hammer and nails/screwdriver
Metal paint
Paint brush
Turps (to wash the brush)
Sticky tape (optional)

Step One – Clean up Cans
Remove labels and clean up the empty cans. When you remove the label, try and take off in one piece. It might help to score/cut it with a knife to do this.

Step Two – Fill with water and freeze
Fill the cans with water and leave to freeze overnight

Step Three – Create Design

If you feel confident then you can punch the holes into the can freehand. But if you’re worried about how the pattern is going to come out, it’s a good idea to draw it out on paper first and stick it onto the can. I think the best way to do this is to use the label from the can and draw on the back, as it’ll be the perfect size. Otherwise you can use greaseproof paper as you can cut it from the roll to fit the size of the can. Then draw out your pattern and stick it around the can to use as a template.

Step four – Make Holes

Now for the fiddly bit. You need to hold the tin cans one at a time (I suggest using a cloth) and then hammer the holes in. Depending how big you want to make the holes (obviously the bigger the holes the more light’s going to come through) you can use nails of different sizes or a screwdriver. If you have screwdrivers with different ends, this can be useful for making different shapes of hole which can look sweet.

You will have realised by now what the ice is for – it’s much easier and safer to hammer the nails/screwdrivers into something solid behind the can.

Step Five – Paint

Once you’ve finished making the holes and all the ice has melted it’s time to get painting. Make sure the whole tin can is dry. Metail paint is oil-based and it’s hard to get out of things so make sure you cover the area you are working.

It is also slow to dry, and you’ll probably need about two or three coats, so be patient!

Quick Scarf Cushion Cover

Rohini — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:00:26 +0000

A few weeks ago I popped into Yalla Yalla, a sweet little Lebanese café in Soho to pick up some lunch. As we waited for our food to take away, we were invited to wait on a bench which was scattered with cushions made from scarves:

Sorry about the rubbish picture (I had to take is surreptitiously on my phone) but I promise, in real life they look great and what’s more they looked really easy to make. I decided to try my own take on it, using this (Indian, I think?) scarf that I picked up for a couple of pounds from the charity shop at the end of my road. The point is you could do this with any old scarf or loose fabric from any far off land to add a bit of an exotic feel to your living room, garden furniture, or even to picnic in style and comfort!

By the way, I stitched mine by hand just to prove how quick and easy it is to do this without any fancy equipment, but of course if you have a sewing machine it might be a little neater. Here goes. Cat x

You will need:

Cushion
Scarf
Needle and thread
Pins
Tape measure
Scissors

Step 1 Wrap the fabric over the cushion and line up the edge (the edge with tassles if you have one) with the seam of the cushion

Step 2 Once it’s lined up, measure 7 inches or so (depending on how bit your cushion is – basically this needs to be about a third the length of your cushion) of extra fabric from the edge of the cushion.

Step 3 Cut off the remaining fabric.

Step 4 Wrap the extra fabric up and over the cushion. This will become the fold that means you can take the cushion out of the cover later on.

Step 5 Now stitch together the two edges of that folded part, but just on the one side.

Step 6 Now pull the rest of the fabric back over the top – exactly as you did in step one, so the tasselled edge is lined up with the bottom of the cushion. Pin the right hand edge of the cushion cover in place, so that it overlaps the stitching you’ve just done with the extra fold of fabric.

Now sew along the whole edge, stitching the front and the back of the cushion cover together

Step 7 You should now have the right hand side of the cover looking finished, and a whole load of extra fabric on the left. So trim off the fabric you don’t need from the left hand side so the remainder just covers the cushion. Now you can take the cushion out from the inside and turn the whole thing inside out.

Step 8 Pin along the opposite side of the cushion cover to the one you already sewed. As with the other side, there should be an extra fold of fabric, but this time we’ll stitch it in place all at once.

Now stitch along the whole edge

Basically, that’s it! all you have to do now it turn it the right way in. As you can see, the extra fold of material is there so that when you put the cushion back in it can sit inside the fold with no need for a zip or buttons.

DIY Concrete bookend from Chez Larsson

Rohini — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:44:27 +0000

It must be my all time favourite DIY blog, just crammed with super clever projects and DIY tutorials . So I am really pleased and excited that Benita Larsson, the brain behind the blog Chez Larsson has agreed to contribute a guest blog post this week.

Recently Benita was asked by hobby craft shop Panduro Hobby to take part in a pretty challenging competition, alongside 39 other Swedish bloggers. Each competitor was sent a kit containing concrete and other supplies and were asked to be creative and come up with fun ideas that could inspire others to try the crafting with concrete.

I have to admit, I’ve never considered using concrete for my projects because I’d imagined it would be too complicated to use.

Benita proved this isn’t the case though, and she submitted seven different concrete crafts projects – ending up winning the grand prize, a gift card with 4000 kronor / £350.

Here Benita’s going to show us how to use concrete to make a heavy, raw looking book end. So clever, no wonder she won the prize! But all the ideas are wonderful so it’s worth going to the blog and checking the rest out too. I can’t wait to get my hands on some concrete and try them myself, but in the meantime, here’s Benita with the details.

Cat x

I prefer making stuff that has a use and a purpose rather than just being decorative and I really needed a bookend. Here it is! B goes three ways. B for Benita, B for books and B for böcker (that’s books in Swedish).

My bookend started it’s life out as a Ferrero Rocher container. I know, too yummy. The MDF letter B came in a craft swap about a year ago.

When filling concrete into a hard container like this plastic one it’s advised to coat the inside with some vegetable oil. I ended up breaking the container to get my bookend out but I think it would have been even harder without the oil.

So again after filling the two sides of the container with the concrete mix and with the B placed at the bottom of the lid I left it for 24 hours in the garage (don’t leave it outside in the sun, it’ll dry too quickly and won’t cure well). Broke the mold, got the bookend out (had to do a bit of scraping to get the letter to emerge as some concrete had seeped in under) and sprayed with water several times over the next day.

I ended up painting the B white and added felt dots underneath so my bookend won’t scratch the shelf it sits on.

DIY Paper Flower Garland

Rohini — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:00:25 +0000

After an ambitious tutorial last week today’s tutorial is something relaxing and easy to do of a summer’s afternoon (it’s always a bonus when you can make something crafty at the same time as drinking Pimm’s in the park). You can use these flowers as a decorative garland, to decorate a table, or even to adorn cakes.

For this pretty origami flower garland, you will need:

Small squares of thin/origami paper (five for each flower you want to make – so I started with 25)
Gue
Thread
Needle

Now remember, like with any origami project, it’s key to take care to make sure the folds line up neatly as you go along, or gradually the whole flower will end up warped. So maybe don’t have too much of that Pimm’s before you start! Also, if you are cutting your squares from larger sheets of paper, it’s crucial that all the edges really are identical lengths.

Step 1 Fold your square in half diagonally into a triangle

Step 2 With the long edge of the triangle as the base, fold the left and right points up to the top point of the triangle.

Step 3 Carefully flatten out these little triangles into kite shapes.

Step 4 Fold the top of the kite down so it forms a triangle.

Repeat on the other side.

Step 5 Now fold both the kites down the middle so the flap you made in step 4 is hidden inside.

Step 6 Glue the edges together to make a petal shape.

While the glue is drying, repeat steps 1 – 6 until you have five petals.

Step 7 When all the glue is dry, carefully stick the five petals together into a flower.

Step 8 Repeat steps 1-7 for each flower

Step 9 Use a needle and thread to string together the flowers, attaching each one by the top of one of the petals

Step 10 All that’s left to do now is hang them up. Cat x

DIY Headboard turned Coat rack

Rohini — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:00:16 +0000

This week, I’m leaving you in the capable hands of a special guest blogger – Centsational Girl, aka Kate. If you haven’t already come across Kate’s Blog , this is where she shares her incredible talent for budget friendly DIYs and revamping old items on a shoestring. In her own words, Kate is “a simple gal with a simple dream: transforming the drab into the fab with an arsenal of paintbrushes, primer and power tools. I’m in pursuit of diamond style on a dime, and I refuse to believe quality must always be expensive.” That’s our kind of thinking!

Kate will be sharing a wonderfully inventive tutorial with us this week, in which she turns a rickety old headboard into a beautiful, and practical, coat rack. Over to you Kate.

Cat x

Headboard turned Coat rack

You will need [as well as the old headboard]:

sandpaper
wood filler (optional)
saw
primer
paint
a second, contrasting paint colour
an old cloth
hooks
D rings x2
screwdriver

A little while ago, I bought a spindly old-fashioned twin headboard at the local thrift store with every intention of turning it into a bench. I’d seen the idea traveling around on some blogs, and loved it.

After some thought, I decided I had less use for a bench, and greater use for a coat rack in my guest space. I had a bare wall, so why not fashion the headboard into a rack for scarves, sweaters, jackets, robes, or hats for my guests ? You may recall, I’ve done this before, turning a footboard into a message centre with some white and chalkboard paint.

So I decided to do it again, but this time with a headboard. I also used a different paint technique to give my coat rack an antiquated look. Now, the twin headboard has been transformed into an architecturally decorative piece, providing both form and function.

Follow along and I’ll show how I turned this:

Into this:

First, take a look at the headboard that I brought home from the thrift store. You’ve seen these before. They were popular many decades ago. Not so much anymore.

The wood was in pretty poor shape. It would be fine to refurbish the headboard by simply staining or painting it, but it just came across as too old fashioned for my taste, so I repurposed it for a better cause.

Step One: I cut the bottom legs off with my compound miter saw. I’ve recently learned to operate this bad boy.

Step Two: I sanded the piece with a coarse sanding pad to remove any debris or trace of remaining varnish. This piece was pretty dried out, so not much was there.

Step Three: I removed the spindles with a saw from the center for a more modern look, and filled the holes with wood filler.

Step Four: I primed my piece with durable primer so my paint job would last.

For my new coat rack, I wanted to “antique” the appearance of this older piece to pay homage to the fact that my wood had been around for several decades. I wanted that vintage French distressed paint treatment with creamy white paint and exposed wood edges underneath.

If you desire the same look, but your wood is in poor condition, or is a paler tone wood like maple or natural oak, then what can happen is when you sand away your creamy white paint, you expose that poor wood condition or pale wood tone underneath. In such circumstances, I prefer to cheat. I like to guarantee a rich espresso tone underneath my cream paint. So I fake it. Here’s how.

Step Five: Paint just the edges of your piece where you want the “wood” to show through with espresso brown paint. Allow to dry.

Step Six: Paint your piece with your color of choice. I chose to spray with a favorite: Rustoleum’s ‘Heirloom White’. I allowed the paint to settle for 30 seconds, then I used my fingernail underneath a slightly moistened paper towel to scrape away the white paint and expose the “wood” [brown paint] underneath.

Note: I have used sandpaper in the past to expose wood edges underneath my paint job. Sandpaper works just as well, but this is another alternative. I like this moist wipe away technique because it guarantees the result I want. And if I scrape too much white paint, I just spray over the smear, and start over.

Step Seven: When my paint was dry, I attached ‘D’ ring hangers to the back of my headboard. I also attached three brown hooks to the front.

I’m really crazy about these deep brown iron hooks against the crisp white paint.

We’re expecting a lot of guests this autumn during the harvest season, so now they have an extra place for their fall scarves, hats, and mittens : )