A while back I bought a vintage chair intending to reupholster it; I liked its curvy lines but the fabric was quite blah, so I thought it would be a perfect upholstery-learning project. Well. A year and a half went by and I had done nothing to the chair, and I knew that learning upholstery was nowhere near making it to the top of the to-do list, so I decided to try painting the chair instead–fabric and all.

This kind of painted upholstery has been all over the web lately, and I’ve always been very intrigued by it. I wasn’t sure I trusted it at all (wouldn’t the fabric be awfully stiff and crunchy?!), but I figured this was a good piece to try it out on–I was ultimately planning to reupholster it anyway, so either way it didn’t matter. Worst case scenario, I could just tear the fabric off.

This is how the chair started out–fun shape, but plain colors. When I first brought this piece home I declared it to be Fifi’s chair, because she immediately claimed it as so.

Here she is giving me the stinkeye for making plans to change her chair. Oh, Fifi. Don’t worry. Change is good!

Ok! Let’s talk paint! I’m not going to lie, I took a very lazy approach with this project. I decided to paint the trim and the fabric all the same color, partly because I thought it would be an interesting effect, but more because I realized that by painting the whole chair one color, I wouldn’t have to worry about taping anything off or being neat at all!

So, first I started by scuffing the wood slightly with some sandpaper, then wiping it down, and vacuuming the whole chair really well, including the fabric and all the crevices. (If you were painting the trim and fabric different colors (or not painting the trim at all), you’d have to take an extra step here and carefully tape off the fabric/wood.)

I started by painting the wood. If I were more serious about the longevity of this chair I would have primed the wood first with an oil-based primer, but I didn’t bother in this case, I just painted directly onto the wood, using regular old acrylic wall paint. (Priming the wood first would just help the paint to stick and discourage chipping, and is generally a good step to take when painting wood.)

As for the paint color. I had a lot of black, white and grey wall paint leftover from various projects, so I just mixed up my own shade of grey and went to work!

I applied two light coats of paint to the wood. (As you can see, I got some paint on the fabric, but it didn’t matter. Gotta love that.)

Here’s how she looked with all the trim painted. Next it was time for the fabric!

To paint fabric, you can either add a fabric medium to regular acrylic paint, or use fabric paint. Either option will give you a result that’s (somewhat) soft and flexible once dry, rather than crispy the way regular paint would be on fabric. Because I wanted to use the exact same color paint as I was using on my trim, I chose to go the fabric medium route, using a product I picked up at an art store (the Golden brand bottle up above). This type of fabric medium simply gets mixed in with your acrylic paint, and you’re good to go.

The other option is to use a special fabric paint, which you can find easily in craft stores. Tulip makes a great line and I kind of wish I’d done a test with the Tulip paints and this fabric medium/paint mixture to compare results.

It was super freaky to paint the fabric, it just felt wrong–but I persevered! The fabric medium made the paint really watery, and I just slopped it on and kept going. I needed two coats to get full coverage on the fabric.

After the paint was dry it had to be heat-set, either with an iron or a hair dryer. I used a combination of both. The paint was very crispy before being heat-set, and a bit less after the fact, but still crispy nonetheless.

After the paint was done, all that was left to do was add some color! I had been thinking about doing bright-colored buttons, but as I was staring at the chair one day it just occurred to me to try sticking some felt balls into the divots of the tufting…

And what do you know, it worked! The felt balls fit perfectly in the tufting and I thought they were a fun touch. They add lots of texture and they make this chair very playful. And, since they’re not permanent, I can easily swap them out if I get tired of them. (I think fabric-covered buttons in all one shade would look great, and definitely more sophisticated. But the balls are fun for now.)

And that’s it! This really was a quick and easy project, and I love that I was able to do the whole makeover using materials I already had around the house, except for the fabric medium.

The verdict? I like the way it looks–I wouldn’t say this chair is Miss Forever, but she’s definitely Miss Fun For Now. As for the comfort, I have to give the painted fabric a low score. It is crunchy, sort of just like you would expect it to be. It might be the fabric medium I used (again, wish I’d tried the Tulip paints, to compare). I definitely wouldn’t recommend painting a piece of fabric furniture that you want to cuddle up on, because it doesn’t have a cozy feeling. But for a piece like this that’s more decorative than functional, and especially for a piece that you don’t intend to keep forever but would like to play with for the time being, it’s a fun quick fix.

But the most important question is, what did Fifi think?

I think she likes it!

She really likes it!

And here’s the final before and after! All in all, I feel like this is a fun facelift for a quirky piece that wasn’t valuable or particularly special to me. Why not, right?

What about you, have you tried this painting fabric furniture trend? Have any tips to share about fabric paints in general? Post ‘em in the comments!

Like any devoted catlady, I think my kitty is the cutest creature in the entire world and all I really want out of life is to bask in her cuteness. To that end, I had the idea a little while back to make a crochet version of Miss Fifi. (I know that the crafty catladies out there will totally understand this, right?) I just thought it would be funny, but it turns out that Fifi was not amused by her yarny doppleganger. Apparently this apartment ain’t big enough for two smooshy kitties. Who knew?

And, well, crochet Fifi was not too fond of her flesh-and-fur counterpart, either. Sigh.

Seriously you guys, I made this amigurumi Fifi for I Love Yarn Day back in the fall, and all I was really hoping to do was get a cute picture of real Fifi and crochet Fifi together. But real Fifi took one look at crochet Fifi and she did not like what she saw. She stalked crochet Fifi from behind for quite a while, and then attacked her over and over, with particular attention to her tail. It was the funniest thing ever. I knew Fifi liked being an only cat, but this was a more violent reaction than I anticipated!

Point taken, Fifi! We will not be getting another kitty anytime soon, I promise.

But! If you want to make your own crochet Fifi, I have a free pattern for you: Click here to download the free pattern to crochet your own Amigurumi Fifi!

(And PS, if you’re looking for safety eyes like the ones I used, a great place to buy them is Etsy shop 6060.)

Enjoy! xoxo, Brett & Fifi

Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, and yesterday I got a little desperate with my nails. I was getting ready to go to my first holiday party of the season, and at the last minute I realized I had no festive nail polish colors in the house! Egads! I did a major cabinet-clean recently, and all that I had left in my polish collection was a few basic colors… not even any red. So I grabbed this neon orange (that’s a basic color, right?) and thought I’d try blinging it up with some glitter from my craft room.

Did you know you can use regular craft glitter on your nails? All you do is paint your base color the way you normally would; then, immediately after adding your last coat (while it’s still super wet), sprinkle on a light coat of glitter. Fine glitter works best (if you ever look closely at glitter you’ll notice it comes in a range of sizes, from very fine to rather course. I used this Martha glitter, which is really fine and worked great).

Then, paint on a clear top coat, and you’re done! This method was a total success, and so simple–I got lots of compliments at the party and the little bit of sparkle has been making me happy today every time I glance down at my hands.

Glitter mani: not just for tweens anymore. Try it this holiday season!

Last week I posted about fixing up the ugly window corner of my dining room; in addition to covering the weird window with a quilt, I also gave this little light fixture a neon makeover. This light is kind of random to begin with; originally when I moved in, there was some super-outdated track lighting in this spot. I removed it, but then I needed to do something with the wiring hanging out of the ceiling, so I thought I’d install a really minimal fixture and call it a day.

So I put in the light that you see here–just a basic black cord, porcelain socket, and an edison bulb. (I got mine at a lighting store in the city but you can find something similar here.) It was fine, but it kind of lacked oomph, and I started thinking that it might need a little shade or something. But once the quilt went up, the light really looked blah; it totally blended into the quilt and disappeared. But then, I remembered that I had THIS STUFF hanging around:

Well hello, neon pink duck tape and nylon cord, aren’t you marvelous! These were both impulse purchases that I picked up in the past few months. They just jumped out at me in the store with their flashy neon fabulousless and begged to be taken home, and obviously, I couldn’t resist them. I wasn’t sure what I would do with them, I just knew I needed them. But when I looked at that plain black lighting fixture just blending into that quilt, their purpose in my life finally became clear.

Wrap that boring black cord! Easy peasy. So, all I did was knot the nylon cord up at the top of the electrical cord (the end near the ceiling), then begin wrapping.

Just wrap, wrap, wrap. And wrap some more.

And wrap until you can’t wrap no more! When you reach the end of the cord, tie it off in a knot. (I covered the knotted end with a bit of duck tape to hide the knot.) Then, to spiff up the socket itself, I wrapped another piece of duck tape around it, just for looks.

Done and done! Super simple.

I have to say, this light makes me really happy, and I love that it’s totally temporary. When I get tired of neon pink (which I guess will happen someday, though it’s hard to imagine), I can just unwrap the tape and cord, and do something different!

But for now we’re totally in love.

The other day was my very good friend’s birthday–a very big birthday!–so I made him a very big cake. This here confection is a chocolate cake with salted chocolate caramel ganache filling and salted chocolate caramel butter cream, with a sprinkling of fleur de sel (fancy sea salt). Pure choco-salt-insanity!!! This flavor profile is based on a salty chocolate caramel truffle I’ve been making forever and which is a favorite treat of the birthday man in question, so I decided to see if I could turn the truffle into a cake. What do you know, it worked!

I’m going to share the recipe in another post, but for now I thought I’d talk a little about how I did the decorations. This cake was super, super easy to decorate and required just about zero skills, and was also really quick–so the next time you’re looking for something festive but fast and foolproof to put on a cake, try this! Start by piping the dots on the sides of the cake, working in rows from the bottom up. I used chocolate ganache for my side dots, but you could use butter cream or any type of frosting you have on hand, even the stuff that comes in the tube from the supermarket. I used a large tip, like a #12 for the bottom round of dots, then went down in size for the subsequent rows, down to a #2 or so. Easy peasy!

For the top I used butter cream and a #12 tip, and just piped dollops all over the surface, working from the outside in. You might think you need to have a really steady hand for this kind of thing, but honestly it doesn’t have to be perfect–in the end, you won’t even be able to tell whether all your rounds are perfectly circular or whether there are gaps between some dollops here and there. I swear!

I finished off the top with a light snow shower of fleur de sel. Because what’s better than a salty show shower?

Oh, chocolate and salt. I love you so.

Sigh.

So all that was left to do after the cake was dotted and salted was to party down and gobble it up (oh, and light a bazillion candles)…

Check back soon for the recipe for this cake… and I’ll have to post my truffle recipe too. Oof, there’s gonna be a lot of chocolate hanging around this house.

*Special thanks to Laura for the party pics! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY D! xoxo

When I moved into my apartment, oh, well over a year ago, there were no towel racks in the bathroom. The walls in that room are floor-to-ceiling tile, so installing a rack would involve drilling into the tile, which is probably why no one had bothered to do it till now. But it’s so crazy–how can you live without towel racks? I know for a fact that a family of four lived in my apartment for several years, and for the life of me I can’t imagine where they put all their towels. It must have been a nightmare. How did they ever survive?

Well, all of that was about to change, I vowed over a year ago. I certainly couldn’t survive for any length of time without a respectable place to hang my towel! Shortly after moving in, I purchased a nice shiny towel rack so I could end this nightmare once and for all. I got the rack home, opened up the box, and then I stared at it for like a year. Paralyzed by tile-drilling fear.

Seriously, how was I going to hang that thing? I had visions of gnarly cracks shooting out in all directions from giant mangled holes, mocking me every time I entered the room. And there would be no one to blame but myself.

I did some research online and asked around, and basically everything I read and heard told me that I should fear drilling into tiles, because it’s hard, and because it’s very likely you’ll crack a tile, and you might even break your drill, and apparently it is a very, very scary thing. I believed all the fear-mongering for quite some time, but the other day I finally got sick of tripping over the towel rack box so I decided to give it a go.

What do you know, it was crazy easy and the whole thing went off without a hitch. Drilling into tile–there is nothing to fear! So if you need to hang a towel rack in your bathroom or a even a knife rack on your kitchen back splash, or any kind of thing onto any kind of tile, you can do it. Here’s how I did it.

The important tools you’ll need are your power drill, a spray bottle filled with water and–this is the most crucial thing–the right kind of drill bit. My research told me I could use a masonry bit, but the masonry bit did not work for me. So after some trial and error, I found this to be the best type of bit to use.

This carbide-tipped glass & tile bit was a dream. Its pointy tip penetrated the surface of the tile straight away, with no slipping or sliding, and no cracking whatsoever.

OK so here’s what you do. Figure out where you need to drill your hole, and make an X over that spot with two pieces of masking tape. (The tape will help prevent the drill bit from slipping on the tile.)

Then, with your special bit loaded in your drill, just start drilling away, with the drill on a low speed and without applying a lot of pressure. Just let the drill do the work, don’t try to force it. Now, meanwhile, start spraying the tip of the bit with the water, just a little squirt every few seconds. This will help cool the drill bit, which would otherwise get super hot from all the friction.

It will take a while to drill one hole–like at least a few minutes. It will be boring and you’ll think you’re getting nowhere and your hand might even get tired, but just be patient; you’ll be able to see the bit slowly making its way into the tile. At first you’ll just be penetrating the glazed surface of the tile, and then after that you’ll be through to the interior of the tile, which is more of a terra cotta color. That’s how you know you’re getting somewhere! Just keep drilling and spraying till you’re all the way through, and then you’ll go through whatever is behind your tile (drywall or whatever). And then you’re IN!

Here’s how your holes will look–gorgeous! No cracks! Rejoice!

Next you’ll probably want to use plastic anchors (you can’t just drive a screw into tile since the screw needs something to grip on to). Most likely all of this will come with your towel rack or whatever you’re hanging, so just check your instructions. My towel rack came with the screws and anchors, and it told me exactly what size drill bit to use for the enclosed hardware.

Then you screw the mounting brackets into the plastic anchors (this is the mounting thingie that goes with my towel rack; the chrome rack pops onto this piece).

Pop the rack onto the brackets, and there’s nothing left to do but take a shower.

Seriously, this was an easy job that took maybe an hour and was so not worth procrastinating for a year. So if you’ve got things you want to hang in tile, I say to you: just do it!

PS: How do you like my new shower curtain? It’s this one from Urban Outfitters.

I’ve got a new project up over on my Design Sponge Sewing 101 column: how to sew a triangle patchwork!

Have you noticed the geometric triangle trend that seems to be everywhere right now? I’m seeing triangles all over the place, from art prints to textiles to housewares. And each and every time, it makes me think of quilting. So I got inspired to whip up a couple patchwork triangle pieces to frame and hang on my (still bare) pink living room walls. (But careful readers may notice the walls are now a slightly different shade of pink! I’ll share the details on that soon.)

This isn’t technically a quilting project, since it’s not actually quilted — just pieces of fabric sewn together into a patchwork. But you could quilt this piece, or take the basic tutorial and turn it into just about anything, from a larger wall hanging to a pillow or baby quilt or even a bed quilt. (I would so love a triangle quilt for my bed!)

So click on over to Design Sponge to check out the full post and learn everything you need to know about sewing a triangle patchwork. It’s crazy-easy, not to mention simple to personalize–once you understand the basic construction, you’ll see that you can modify this project and make your triangles in any size or configuration you like.

Super big or super small! So go crazy & get your triangle on!

Recently I teamed up with my friends at YOLO Colorhouse to design some cute and easy sewing projects for baby nurseries. YOLO is a great indie paint company based in Portland, Oregon, that’s all about creating their products responsibly, sustainably, and free of harmful chemicals. (You may remember YOLO from when we teamed up to paint my living room pink!) Exciting things are happening over at YOLO hq, because in addition to their fantastic line of paints, they just debuted their first line of fabrics!

The fabrics are 100% organic and come in a wide range of chic baby colors and patterns, in both cotton sateen and knit. (I love that they offer a knit range, because it can be so hard to find good-looking knit prints.)

The fine folks at YOLO asked me to design a collection of patterns to showcase their fabrics–everything that new parents might need to deck out a green nursery, while being quick and easy to make.

I designed a simple baby quilt, a fitted crib sheet, some throw pillows, a stuffed bird…

…curtains, flag bunting, and more!

So click on over to the YOLO site to download all these patterns for FREE and to check out their new line of fabrics as well as their eco-friendly paints. Because you know you have some baby gifts to make (who doesn’t?!).

When I woke up this morning, Fifi was suspiciously missing. I looked all around the apartment for her and she was nowhere to be seen–all I found was this little grey bunny in the dining room!

I guess it’s true what they say about bunnies multiplying so quickly, because what do you know, all of a sudden I found more…

This crabby little rabbit was hiding by a log in the living room…

And this one was trying to take a nap on Fifi’s chair!

Then I found this little rascal hopping along by the hallway…

And this especially cute one hanging out in the dining room. I think I’ll keep this one.

But as for the rest of them… I just don’t know what I’m going to do with all these bunnies.

Happy Easter, all! If you’ve got a little time for last-minute crafting this weekend, check out my recent eggy projects: 

• Doodle on some easy Chalkboard Eggs (great for kids!)
• Impress your guests with Ukrainian Pysanky-inspired cut-out cookies
• Blow everybody’s minds with embroidered eggs, as seen on the Martha Stewart Blog
• Use up all those hard-boiled eggs with my 12 recipes for deviled eggs, as featured on West Elm!
• Or go non-traditional and make some chocolate gems for your Easter baskets.

Have fun! xoxo Brett & Fifi

This week in my Sewing 101 column at Design Sponge I’m showing how to make pleated, lined curtains like the ones I made recently for my dining room!

I break down the whole process step by step, like how to make the lining so your exterior fabric wraps around and makes a border on the back (so if your curtain edges ever flip out a bit, you’ll see the “good” fabric and not the lining). Love that.

And I also talk about curtain weights, and how easy they are to use and how they give your curtains that extra profesh touch.

But the really, really juicy nugget in this tutorial is: PLEATING TAPE! We’ll talk about how to use it, and how generally easy and awesome it is, and how it will make you look like a total star and really never even ask you to give it any credit.

You just stick your pins into your tape–

And you get yourself some pleats that would make Betty Draper proud. Well, nothing makes Betty proud, but maybe she would scowl less intensely in the presence of these pleats. I think she would approve.

Hanging finished handmade curtains? Best feeling ever.

Pleated, lined drapes that look like a million bucks–they can be yours!

Click on over to Design Sponge to read the full how to!