Over on the West Elm blog today I’m sharing an easy DIY tutorial for making your own billy ball pillow! It starts with a purchased pillow cover, which is great if you don’t sew or if you’re just looking for a little crafty embellishment to spruce up a pillow you already have around the house.

All you need is a pillow cover (of course you can use any pillow cover, but in this post we’re using the West Elm Cotton Velvet Duo Pillow Cover, which I love because it’s made from a linen fabric that has a great criss-cross weave that’s the perfect texture for embroidery. It’s kind of begging to be cross-stitched, too!), plus a little bit of yarn and embroidery floss, and of course needles and scissors.

The billy ball stems are made from split stitch (sometimes called back stitch), which is my all-time favorite embroidery stitch for making basic lines. I use it all the time. Over in the post I give a very detailed step-by-step for how to make this stitch, so head over there to check it out if it’s new to you!

The billy ball tops are made from cute little yarn pom poms, and I show my favorite method for pom-makin’. (Personally, I find the pom pom tools confusing/cumbersome and I like to make them just by wrapping the yarn around my hands!)

And voila! DIY billy balls! Isn’t this project so springy, and doesn’t it give you so much hope that someday we will see the sun again?! Sigh.

Head on over to the West Elm blog for the full tutorial on this project (there are tons of photos, if embroidery and pom poms are new to you, it’s broken down into really easy steps). Thanks to West Elm for having me! xo

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!

Happy new year!!! I hope you all had a wonderfully sparkly and bubbly holiday season. I’m super excited for 2013–I have a really big, really exciting crafty project that will be launching in just a couple weeks and I can’t wait to share it… but first, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at some DIY moments in 2012.

This was the year of home projects for me–I definitely spent most of my creative free time working on my apartment. Last year, I declared that my new year’s resolution for 2012 was to finish decorating my place. I can’t quite say I finished, but I’m almost there. So before leaping into 2013, I thought I’d take a look back at what happened this year in my little world of DIY decorating on a dime. Ready? (You can click the links on each project to see before shots as well as how-to’s.)

My first project of 2012 was making over this old credenza I found. A few coats of paint and new door curtains in lime green silk, and voila! I didn’t love the green at first, but then I became obsessed with neon this year like everyone else, and now I think it’s perfect.

Next up, I built floating night stands for my bedroom, even though I had no woodworking tools (or skills, for that matter). It was amazingly easy, and this became one of my most popular projects on Pinterest this year. Woo!

And with the completion of my floating night stands and lamps, my DIY bedroom was officially finished! (I also made the headboard and quilt, but those were in 2011 so I technically shouldn’t count them here. But the whole ensemble was complete in 2012, so I just have to share the photo for posterity’s sake.) I really do love my lil’ bedroom.

Oh! I almost forgot–I also installed a new light fixture in my bedroom! This was a pivotal moment for me–conquering the fear of doing electrical work. After this, I went on to replace all the light switches in my entire apartment too–I couldn’t believe how much it freshened up the rooms to have modern switches. And thus one of my 2012 epiphanies happened: Doing electrical work makes me feel like the most badass lady in the world.

Meanwhile, back in the dining room, I spruced up a set of vintage chairs I got on Craigslist. Just a couple coats of glossy black paint and some new cushions, with fabric by my fabric crush, Jay McCarroll.

This is one of my favorites from the year, in terms of cost (cheap), ease (crazy easy) and results (fabulous, I think!). I made an area rug for my dining room using industrial-type carpet runner that’s sold by the roll. I love how this turned out and I’m happy to report, a year later, that it has held up great. This stuff is practically bullet-proof; nothing can harm it. And I think it looks so modern and who would ever know it came from a roll at Home Depot?!

I finally sewed curtains for my naked dining room windows–four big, long, lined and pleated panels that almost killed me but were so worth it.

This was another big moment of the year: empowered by my bedroom light, I went for broke and installed a new chandelier in my dining room! ALL BY MYSELF! (Well, a friend did help me hold up the fixture while installing it, so I guess I had a little assistance.) Sometimes I still look at this thing and say to myself, Girl you installed a freakin’ chandelier!

And then I took a brief detour to the bathroom and hung a towel rack in a tile wall. It was terrifying, but in the end very easy, and I would like everyone to know that drilling in tile should not be feared!

There is a really crazy-ugly diamond-shaped glass block interior window in the wall between my living and dining room. It mocked me day and night, until finally I sewed a quilt to cover it up! So much better.

And then I hung this little light fixure (more electricity!!) which was plain boring black until I gave it a neon pink makeover with nylon cord and almighty duck tape.

To cover the living-room side of the ugly diamond-shaped glass block window, I made a big abstract painting to hang over it! (With the help of my painter friend Christina, without whom this surely would have been a disaster.)

And the last big decorating move of the year was repainting my living room a medium shade of pink (to replace the deep, almost-red pink that I started with), and also replacing my sofa with this loungy dreamboat (I love it so much).

So there it is! It’s cool to look back and see that my apartment really has come a long way this year. (I actually have quite a few more finished projects that haven’t been blogged yet, so I guess those will go on the record for 2013. That’s okay.) My apartment resolution for 2013 is to really finish decorating–well, I guess these things are never really finished, but I still want to accessorize in a few spots, and figure out some things in the living room. And then I’ll try to get some full room shots to share.

By the way–you can follow all my apartment adventures in my DIY Decorating Series, which you can always find by clicking on the sidebar to the right. (That page goes all the way back to the beginning, including “before” shots of the empty space.)

And lastly, I couldn’t close out 2012 without reposting my favorite catlady photo of the year–Fifi bunny!!!! Gah. What would I do without this little smooshyface lovebug?

Happy 2013, everyone!! Here’s to a marvelously crafty year for all!
xoxo, Brett & Fifi

You can see “hiding the ugly window (part 1)” right here.

As I’ve mentioned previously, this crazy-pants diamond-shaped glass-block interior-window-to-nowhere graces the shared wall between my living room and dining room. I’m not sure what I did to make the decorating gods smite me with this, um, feature, but clearly it is my DIY mission in life to figure out a fix for it. After much contemplation, on the dining room side I covered it up with a big quilt, which worked out great. On the living room side, I finally came up with this:

Giant painting! Ta-daaaaa! After considering tons of options varying from covering the whole wall in wood paneling to wallpaper-covered foamcore, I finally decided to go the painting route. And really, it’s such a simple solution, I have to wonder why I didn’t just do this immediately. Ugly thing on your wall? Hang a painting over it! Duh!

This work of art was a joint collaboration between me and my friend Christina, a fellow crafty lady (and amazing jewelry designer) who is also an accomplished painter. I don’t know anything about making paintings, so, lured over to my place with promises of margaritas, popcorn and kitty love, Christina generously agreed to help.

My vision was for a very simple abstract painting with big sections of color (or lack of color, as it were); since the Marimekko wallpaper and the patterned curtains are close by, I wanted to keep the painting somewhat uncomplicated so that the whole corner didn’t get too busy.

Luckily I had Christina there to help, because once we got into it I realized I was completely clueless and never would have been able to pull it off without her. We really kind of tag-teamed the whole process: she helped me test out lots of colors and textures of paints, then I chose what I liked and applied the big sections of colors to achieve the composition I was seeing in my head, then she came in behind me and helped me finesse the texture of the paint on the canvas so that we got the effect we were looking for.

We used lots of different techniques to accomplish the various textures, including applying straight paint with a large brush; diluting the paint with a ton of water and brushing, splashing or smearing it on; mixing the paint with other mediums (I can’t remember what exactly) to create a more transparent effect; applying watered-down paint like stain with a rag; and using a dry brush to soften the edges of the sections of paint.

While we were making the painting we kept joking that it was like very bad teenage angst art, but once I got it up on the pink walls I really liked it. I think the pink walls needed some angst to tone them down, and I feel like the bad angstiness is a much-needed foil to the girly vintage pieces in this room. Angst: a decorator’s best friend?

I have to say I’m really happy with how this turned out! I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea and some may think it looks like teenage angst art gone wrong (ha!) but I think it’s perfect for me. And can we just say a little hallelujah that the crazy-diamond-window is gone, gone gone?!

PS: I also took down the bad eighties track lighting that was above the painting (you can see it in the before photo at the top of this post). Now I need to decide if I want to install a new light fixture, which I don’t think is needed, or just cap off the wires. Anyway, that’s why those bare wires and hanging out up there!

 Oh and, thank you for your help, Christina!! xoxo

The big moment finally came this week–the great sofa switcheroo has taken place! On Monday, a very nice couple who live in my neighborhood came and purchased the old couch. I was a little sad to see it go, but they were so sweet and I knew they were going to give it a good home. Afterwards, Fifi sat in the empty spot where the sofa had been, and tried to make sense of it all. Finally, yesterday, the new couch arrived!! I love it, though I am a little freaked out by how large it is (and am admittedly having a bit of a Goldilocks moment. This one is too small… This one is too big!). But hopefully after living with it for a while I’ll decide that it’s actually just right. I don’t have much else in the way of furniture for this room, so I think I’m going to go with it and do a big-luxurious-sofa-minimalist-room thing. The trick will be figuring out the scale of the other pieces, and the wall art. So, yeah, I’m gonna go work on that. Riiiight after I curl up on that big comfy couch and watch a movie or ten. I mean, work on my knitting deadlines!

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.

I wrote in my recent decorating my living room post about the unfortunate diamond-shaped glass block window in my otherwise lovely apartment. Well, what I didn’t mention in that post is that the same window is also present in my dining room–yes, it’s an interior window, a window to nowhere, a big ugly eyesore that serves no actual window function! The rooms don’t even need the light, they both have plenty of real windows which provide real light. The existence of this window is truly a glass-block mystery.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve stared at this window in dismay, followed by shaking my fists at the heavens and asking why the decorating gods must smite me so–I’d have the fancy apartment of my dreams. Alas, I do not have have said nickels, so I’ve come up with an alternate fix for this unfortunate situation: Cover. That. Mess. Up.

And so, voila! I made a big quilt to hang on the wall over the unfortunate window. I think it’s not too bad!

I mean, look at that before shot again. Shudder.

Ah. So much better.

And I added that kooky hot pink light fixture, which was also a DIY project–I’ll post a how-to on that next week.  I like how the quilt plays nicely with my chandelier too. (By the way, the white version of this chandelier is still available at West Elm, on sale for a crazy $110. Somebody go buy it!)

This is a really, really easy quilt to make and would be a great beginner project for anyone who wants to try quilting. I made the whole thing in about two afternoons, using all leftover fabrics I had hanging around–so I was able to create large-scale wall art for just about no money. Love that.

I’ll be posting a tutorial for this quilt, as well as for the neon light fixture, next week–so stop back!

PS: A random detail shot. A framed butterfly from Puerto Rico, creepy boy head from Etsy, and one of my terrariums on a cake plate.

PPS: I don’t think this post would be complete without taking a walk down memory lane to my last apartment, where I covered up that insane 3-D mosaic in the kitchen with pegboard. Fellow renters, don’t dismay! There is no “design feature” so terrible that it can’t be fixed by Covering. That. Mess. Up!

Well, I finally bit the bullet over the weekend and ordered my new sofa! Here she is: the lovely Chelsea. It was kinda crazy, I went into the store intending to order the Jasper, and then impulsively got this one instead. Insanity, I tell you.

But I think we’re going to be happy together. She’s really quite long, and even though she’ll fit in my living room measurement-wise, I’m worried that she may feel too hulking and overwhelm the space. But I hope she’ll just fill it out nicely and create an awesome loungey vibe. We shall see!

Counting down the days till delivery. It’ll be 6-8 weeks… agony!

I cleaned this weekend, which is something of a rare event (heh), so I thought it would be a good time to take some pictures of the living room and do a little update about where I am in the decorating process. Things haven’t exactly been speeding along, but the basic bones of the room are mostly in place. First, let’s take a look back at the history of this space, shall we?

A year ago, this is what I was working with. My new couch had arrived (yay!), and I had my big piece of Marimekko fabric tacked up on the wall, trying to decide if I liked it there. The walls were the color of sadness and boredom.

Then I started thinking pink…

And then I actually went for it! I painted the whole room a deep pink and made a video about it with the indie paint company Yolo Colorhouse. I loved the look, but after living with the color for several months, I ultimately decided it was just too saturated. At many times of the day the walls appeared red rather than pink, which wasn’t what I was going for. So I decided to repaint.

After the video photo shoot, I had about three leftover gallons of Yolo tinted primer (this is the primer we used before painting the dark pink color). I decided to re-prime my walls with all the leftover primer before starting over with a whole new color, when lo and behold, once I got the primer up on my walls I realized that it was, in fact, the exact shade of pink I wanted!

So I just painted the whole room with the primer! Surprisingly, it looked fantastic. I thought maybe it would be too matte or otherwise just not have a nice finish, but it actually looks great, just like regular paint. I’m 100% happy with it! And I love that I was able to paint an entire room using leftover materials. It’s so green… yet so pink.

Thanks once again to Yolo for helping me paint this room! If you’re wondering what color this is exactly, that’s a bit tricky. Technically it’s whatever color primer the paint store mixes up if you ask for tinted primer to go with Yolo color Petal.04. But if the sales clerk looks at you like you’re crazy when you make that request, you can also ask them to use Benjamin Moore 2079-50 Rhododendron, which is just about the same color. (Did you know you can have any brand paint tinted with another brand’s colors? So, for example, if you want the environmentally-positive aspects of Yolo paint but in a Ben Moore color, you can do that. Crazy right?)

I’m feeling good about the walls in this room, but there’s still a lot to do with the other elements. For starters–this is a little crazy–I think I’m going to get a different couch. I love my current couch, it is a true beauty, but I’ve come to realize over the past year that it’s actually too small for the room. I’ve been having a heck of a time figuring out what additional seating to get, and one day it dawned on me that I just need a larger couch. I have this one picked out from Room & Board but I haven’t pulled the trigger just yet:

It’s the Jasper. It’s not a huge departure from my current sofa; same color, same basic lines. It’s just longer, and it has the chaise (yay snuggletime!), and the fabric won’t be velvet. As yummy as the current velvet sofa is, the truth is I worry about it way too much, and I just don’t want to live in a world where I have to be afraid of my own furniture. If you so much as look at the velvet the wrong way, it stains. And I’m not above admitting that my sofa often serves as my dining table and happy hour spot, so… yeah. I need a more durable fabric.

I’m cool with switching couches though. I’m not beating myself up over having made the “wrong” decision, I tried one thing and it wasn’t the best, so I’m just making the decision to change and move on. I’ll sell the old one on Craigslist and someone will love it to death, and everyone will be happy. Done and done.

Let’s see, what else is happening in this room. I love the way the new pink looks with the Marimekko hallway (but note to self I have to fix that straggling cable!)

I’m still loving the gold sideboard, but I’m rethinking it as a TV stand. It’s a bit deeper than I’d really like for the spot it’s in–it blocks the traffic flow a bit too much for my comfort. I’m thinking I may just move the sideboard elsewhere and mount the TV on the wall, which should really open up the room. It’s a little crowded now in between the coffee table and the TV.

This is the other side of the room, still quite empty as you can see. Maybe the sideboard will go on the far wall and I’ll find a cool little side chair for the corner, something ultra modern perhaps. And obviously, I need some wall art.

And this is the other side of the room. EEEK!! I have a very We Need To Talk About Kevin feeling about that diamond window. We Need To Talk About That Window. It’s trouble. It’s not right. Something must be done! I’ve decided I’m going to cover it up with a giant piece of artwork, which will do wonders I think. So that’s one of my upcoming projects. SOON, I hope, because, really, that thing has got to GO. The 1980′s called and they need it back.

Oh and the new curtains are actually from my grandma’s house–they’ve been in storage for decades but they used to hang in her house back in the fifties and sixties. My aunts found them in my grandma’s closet and pulled them out for me, thinking they would match my new living room. And they’re perfect! What are the chances? I want to lengthen them so they’ll reach to the floor (I have another matching panel which I can use for that)–so that’ll be another post. One of these days.

So that’s the scoop on my living room as of June 2012! In some ways I’m bummed that I’ve been here over a year and it’s still half empty, but what are you gonna do. I made a promise to myself to hold off and acquire nice pieces rather than just filling up my space with junk I don’t love, and that takes time. But after I switch out the couch, really all that’s left to do is a lot of accessorizing, so hopefully I will start to make some progress on that soon. I’ll keep you posted!

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.