Coordinates and Longitude/Latitude Art - Valentines Day Gift for my Husband

Long time, no post! I know I have been absent for a long time. I would like to apologize and give you a valid reason but I can't. Life has been busy, so my blog has been ignored but not forgotten.

I have not stopped doing the things I love, I just haven't had time to share them with you. I will stop by Full of Great Ideas every once and a while to share things. I won't promise I will be consistent and I will say you will see more 'art' style of pieces, since I make loads of them for gifts.  I hope you can understand and stop by every once and a while to see if there is anything new.

For those of you know have followed me for a few years, you might remember my $0 spending months (if you want to see how previous years went, check it out here) Well we are officially 19 days into our third spend free month and it has been going well. My pantry is not overflowing anymore, I have purged three rooms and we have saved loads of money. I will admit it is very difficult to do this in January when you find all Christmas stuff on clearance for 90% off, but we are staying tough and sticking to it.

Valentines day is quickly approaching, so I thought I would work on something for my husband. We don't normally buy each other gifts but I thought it would be nice to make him something using a frame I had kicking around the house.

I had seen on Etsy various coordinates art and immediately knew I had to have one and thought they wouldn't be difficult to make.

I designed my version of the coordinates art using my personal favorite tool, Microsoft Publisher, but you can use almost any other program. It is really just a box in background filled with a solid color and a text box over it with the coordinates. The entire thing will only take you 10 minutes to design! Honestly, it is that simple.

Start by determining what size frame you want to use. I used an old IKEA Ribba frame I had laying around the house. I will explain how I altered the mat later in this post, but I knew my image had to be 6.5x17.  Since Costco will not print that size, I designed my image as 12x18 and cut away the excess. You can see in the image below the inner box (it doesn't show when printed) is what I needed for the frame but the entire image is much larger.

Important: Photo developers will only print standard size images (for example - 8x10, 12x18 etc.). What will happen is if I design my image to my frame size and it will be stretched or shrunk to fit within a standard photo size. So, I will be stuck with a image that won't fit into the frame. What you need to do is find the a standard size that is larger than the size you need and use that for your design. Therefore, if you have a frame opening that is 6x7 and you create the image as that size, when you print it, it will be stretched to 8x10. Instead if you design your image as an 8x10 and make the text fit within a 6x7 box, then when you print, you can cut off the excess and your finished product will fit in your frame. Confusing I know...but I hope you understand what I am saying :)

Once you get your design to be the correct size, Insert a box for the background. You can fill that box with whatever color you like.

Then Insert a Text box to the size you want your image to be. Set the background color for this box as Transparent and make sure there is no boarder. You can center that box in the middle of the overall design size by moving the box around.

If you have issue with wrapping, select the text box and select no wrapping and bring to front.

The fonts I used are Euphemia (coordinates) and Jayne Print (saying).

I found a website that gives you the exact coordinates location. Simply visit the iTouch website, enter the street address and the site will automatically generate the longitude and latitude for you. If you don't have an exact address (i.e. the middle of a park, lake etc.), enter an address that is close and then move the marker on the map to get the exact coordinates.

For this example, I entered New York City. To get the coordinates numbers, you will use the digits on the right side of the image above. The coordinates would be 43 degrees 18' 76" N and 79 degrees 38' 04' W. If you have a negative in the first number, you would switch the N (North) to S (South) and a positive in the second number, you would switch the W (West) to E (East). In order to get the degrees symbol, you will have to select "Insert" and then "Symbol" and find it within the library of symbols.

Once you are happy with the design, save the image as a high resolution JPEG (to do this in Publisher follow theses steps: 'Save As', 'Save as type', 'JPEG', 'Change...' (Resolution), 'High quality printing or commercial printing (300dpi)') .   Then upload the image to your favorite photo developer and you have a beautiful but very cheap reasonable Valentine's Day gift!

I thinks this would make a great wedding gift, anniversary gift, birth announcement...the options are really endless.


This image has a digital frame added to my final image since I can't print my creation until February 1st (when my spend free month is over).  But you get the idea how it will look! AMAZING!

For how I addressed the mat issue:

I knew the frame I had from IKEA Ribba had 3 5x7 openings in the mat but I wanted a long image.

Source Ikea

 So I trimmed the mat using an exacto knife and metal ruler.

Since the mat is cut on an angle, I scored the mat in two places (for each cut). The first score was inline with the outside of the mat angle and the other is inline with the inner side of the mat angle.

 

 I then cut through the mat on the inner most line.

Once the inner divider is removed, you can cut with a sharp exacto knife to follow the angle of the mat.

I will say if you look really, really close you can see where I altered the mat, but it does look good. If people want to look at anything in my house from a few inches away...well they are no friends of mine :)

Do you have any DIY Valentine's Day gifts planned?

Do you think you can use this for a gift idea? Let me know what you think!
Stephanie

Transforming Wasted Space in Walk in Closet

For three years we have struggled with our master bedroom walk in closet. I knew there were things I could fix, like how we used the space but there were bigger things I could not change, like the fact it is small. It amazes me that a builder would make our bedroom the ridiculous size it is, but put a small walk in closet. Wouldn't the average person prefer to have 2 or 3 less feet in an enormous bedroom and have a larger closet? Maybe it is just me.

 I did not have the budget to rip all the builder grade shelves out and start from scratch, so I had to figure out solutions to the things I hated without spending much money. I had tried patch fixes to deal with the builder grade closet, like adding hooks on the back of the door and putting those horrible 'hanging organizers' from Ikea to arrange our sweaters and t-shirts. You know the ones. They hang from the rod with no support on the bottom of each row, so nothing says nicely folded and if you put too much in them or bump it the wrong way everything falls out of the back.

Source Ikea

So I felt like I was back to square one. Here is my list of problems I felt I needed to tackle to make this a workable space:

• we stacked our sweaters and pants on the top shelf  all the way up to the ceiling, making the piles over three feet high
• we had our t-shirts housed within hanging closet organizers
• my purses were in a big pile on the floor
• we had no room for a laundry basket
• there was always so much stuff hanging on the back of the door that we could barely open it.

So with a small budget and but big dreams, I dragged my husband and two kids from hardware store to hardware store in search of a miracle solution.  Obviously, there was not one. So here is what I did.

The first thing we did was get rid of all of those hanging closet organizers and replaced them with the Expedit shelf. I love these shelves because they are deep, not too wide and sturdy.

Source Ikea

It is pricier at $80 but it works so much nicer and it fit perfectly into the space. I was able to fold all our t-shirts, fitness clothes and still have two spots for purses at the bottom.

We then thought we would tackle was the wasted space above the top shelf.  I thought if we could move our off season clothes us higher without having the 3 foot high stacks, then we would have more usable space. So that is what we did.

We went to Lowes and found decorative black brackets for $10 for a package of 2 (we needed 3 packages in total) and we bought the cheapest white shelves we could find. We could have used the really cheap industrial brackets at under $1 each but we thought we would splurge a bit :)

See how lazy I am...I didn't even take down all the clothes when he was putting up the shelves. I moved them from side to side so they wouldn't get dust on them. Shhhh my little secret.

My husband cut the shelves to the correct length and he installed the new shelf half way between the ceiling and the previous top shelf.

I would like to say we had the forethought to line this new shelf up with my husband's dress shirt shelf but we didn't and got really lucky that it all lined up. That would have been an oops on my part because it would have annoyed me horribly if they didn't line up. Now it looks like the new shelf was suppose to be there.

I really should have done the fancy folding and color coordinating but as you already know I do not stage photos. Organizing all our clothes and refolding them would take way too long and I believe there are better things to do then convince you all that I can keep my closet color coordinated. I am a mom to two busy kids, I can't even get my laundry put away.

So here are my official after photos:

No more 3 foot high piles. Don't you love my new light? See the previous post for how I made it.

We use the ultra slim hangers from Costco and LOVE them.

I can now fit a laundry basket under my hanging shirts.

 So how did I do with my list?

• we stacked our sweaters and pants on the top shelf  all the way up to the ceiling, making the piles over three feet high - FIXED
• we had our t-shirts housed within hanging closet organizers -FIXED
• my purses were in a big pile on the floor - FIXED
• we had no room for a laundry basket- FIXED
• there was always so much stuff hanging on the back of the door that we could barely open it - Sort of fixed. We still have the hooks but they aren't overflowing anymore!

I am very happy with how it turned out. I can't say it is my dream walk-in closet but reality is, it is a space that holds our clothes and does it really need to serve any other purpose than being practical? I don't think so.

If you missed my first two posts I did for my walk in closet, the budget closet light transformation and hanging my sleeveless/short sleeve dress shirts on pant hangers, be sure to check them out. I love both of them too.

So have any of you tried to deal with a builder closet and succeeded? Or have you failed a few times like me before you found a solution that works well?

We will be adding the top shelf to our other three bedroom closets to store off season clothes too. It really is a cheap solution with a big impact on space.

Have a great day,
Stephanie

Light up my life - Master Closet Light on a Budget

Work has officially started on my one major household annoyance...my master walk-in closet. By walk-in, I mean a closet that I can step into and turn around. It is not grand by any means, but it is bigger than I have had in the past.

I have dreamed about having beautiful built-ins though out the closet along with hanging a lovely chandelier from the ceiling. Until I, out of curiosity, priced how much it would cost for us to install the built-ins; I mean with us doing the work and buying them from a big box hardware store. Well that bubble of a dream was popped really quickly. Then I realized the idea of a chandelier hanging from our ceiling, where the is no room to get around and in a room where we get dressed (hence lifting our hands above our heads on a daily basis), wasn't really practical either.

Well my beauty desiring subconscious has been beat up and kicked to the curb by its evil nemesis, my practical subconscious.   So my plans for my walk-in have changed and gone to the dark side, practical!

The first thing I have finished in our walk-in closet is replacing the horrible light. When we moved in we had, what I called, upside down mushrooms in almost every room. Here is one for you to admire:

Nice huh!

I had Pinned a few ideas that I thought would be beautiful since I can't do a chandelier. These two images were my inspiration:
Embarcadero Mount sells for the extremely reasonable price of $278! It is nice isn't it but come on $278!?

Source Amazon

Then there was the Lithonia Lighting Linon Black Bronze Flush for the more acceptable price of $100.

Source Amazon

I loved the brown/black trim, the linen and woven texture of the fabric and the metal medallion in the bottom. However, I still could not justify $100 for my small, not grand walk-in closet. Who really could?

So one day when my husband and I were at Ikea picking up something else for the walk-in (more on that tomorrow), I saw this ceiling light for $30. I have seen it before and walked right past it thinking nothing of it. It is a great size at 14 inches diameter and 6 inches deep.

Source Ikea - Alang Ceiling Light

Well this time I saw it, I knew there was huge potential! A little grosgrain ribbon, a wooden disk spray painted and you have a close duplicate of the much more expensive ceiling lights.

 Materials:

Alang ceiling light - Ikea ($30)

5/8 inch Brown Grosgrain ribbon

2 x 1/2 inch disk -  painted Brown

Method:

I had the grosgrain ribbon on hand so I do know what it cost (I think I bought it for around $3 at Michaels). It was 5/8 inches wide and 8 yards long. I did not use the entire package to do the ceiling light. This is what it looked like.

I melted the one edge of the ribbon to prevent fraying. Be careful when doing this. I always do it next to a sink in case I need to run it under water.

 Here is what it looks like after you carefully put a flame to the edge of it.

I fired up my fancy hot glue gun, and started gluing the ribbon at the seam on the light. I could have used permanent fabric glue, but I worried if it didn't work then I would be out $30. But of course since I am sharing this, it did work well. Once I got the entire way around, I overlapped the ribbon slightly. Be sure to melt the other end of the ribbon too.

I had initially thought I would only do the top of the light with the grosgrain ribbon like my first inspiration photo, but when it was done and installed, I really thought it needed a second band like the second inspiration photo. Here it is with only one band of ribbon.

 

So back to the hot glue gun I went. I glued another row of grosgrain ribbon around the bottom.

I then had my husband cut a small disc of wood off a dowel we had laying around. It was approximately 2 inches in diameter and we cut it about 1/2 an inch in depth. 

 

 I then spray painted it dark brown to match the ribbon.

We located the middle of the base of the ceiling light and put a small dot with pencil. I again hot glued the disk to base of the light.

 

That was it! 10 minutes of work (plus drying time for spray paint) and I have a new beautiful light. 

 

I tried to do one of those fancy slip shots with the before and after images with my inspirational photo (left) with my end result photo (right) but it didn't work very well. You get the idea though that I did a pretty good job at getting them to look similar.

What do you think? Not bad for $30 and 10 minutes of work. I think this is my favorite DIY light so far...and I have done many. Click here for all my other DIY lights.

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter tomorrow and if I can find a few minutes, I will share with you what we are working on today.

Stephanie.