Diamonds Are My Best Friend, Forever

If you have read any of my posts thus far, I think I've made it clear that I really like bling, jewels, gems, sparklies and shiny objects in general.  Even going back to childhood, I was always very partial to them.  I'm not sure when or why that started exactly but now that I'm an adult and I have free reign over my decorating, I have felt both compelled and free to express this proclivity in full.

Let's review some of the decorating bling I have already showed you before I illustrate my point in new ways.

Here is my jeweled headboard notice the hanging ruby chandelier teardrop:

Perhaps you will recall my bowl of crystal paperweights in all types of gemstone cuts:

How about the Bling Frame mounted over my couch:

The crystal finials for my new curtains, not to mention the silver sequin curtains:

This could go on and on...

Alright, I know you want me to keep going, so here are some new things you haven't seen.  In my new place, I have a couple of bifold closets.  Another opportunity to add bling!  Really nice crystal pulls are very expensive.  I'm a woman with a budget, so I got creative.  In one word:  Ebay.  I found these awesome pulls from ebay.  The only problem is that they came with european size screws (millimeters) and they weren't long enough.  I went to Home Depot but they didn't have the size I needed. Long story short, this nice man from a local hardware store re-threaded the pulls, which I didn't know you could do, so that they fit US size screws.  Great guy.  Because the crystal is surrounded by the silver metal, the light refracts like a diamond instead of passing through like with a clear crystal.  It's hard to capture the full beauty of these pulls in pictures so I am including the ebay picture too.

In my red bedroom on my closet doors and because I only needed two, I splurged and got these red crystal pulls from Klaffs:

In my old apartment in NYC, I had a bowl of acrylic gemstones.  I was at Disney and they had an Aladdin shop, not sure if its there anymore, and they had a bin full of acrylic gemstones and you could buy a little pouch of them.  I didn't buy them there, but that sight stuck with me.  I wanted my own treasure!  I thought they would be easy to find online but I could only find the gems that were flat on one side and often they had holes drilled in them.  I went to the bead and trim district in NYC and went store to store until I found the mother load. I bought a whole bunch of different colors and different sizes. I pretty much cleared them out.  Here's what they looked like in my old apartment.  Excuse the dust.

Wow, that is a lot of dust.  I had all sorts of ideas of putting the gems in between two pieces of glass and hanging it so the light would pass through the gems.  I thought about using epoxy resin or some clear substance to pour over the gems and to suspend the gems in a lucite type of piece.  I searched for a rectangular vase that was very slim but ended up finding this cute vase from Crate and Barrel.  This is what the acrylic gems are up to now.

I have crystal lamps, rhinestone picture frames, a bling mirror on my dining room wall and more.  I have to save some for later postings but I'll give you a few more visuals.

Thanks for stopping by and Stay tuned for more creativity!

The Flowers That Bloom In the Spring, Tra La

I like to take pictures of flowers really close up, who doesn't?  Macro photography is another hobby of mine.  Example:

I wanted to use my photography in my decor.  I had one of my photos blown up on canvas by www.chiccanvas.com to the largest size they had 30 x 40. I wanted to put this canvas centered over my couch ("well, what would you do?").  So I did, but it just wasn't big enough for the wall and I wasn't satisfied.  I love the colors but something was missing.  So I thought and I thought and then it occurred to me, I love diamonds and gemstones, I use it as part of my decor, so why not bling up the canvas!  Here's what the canvas looks like on the wall before I got crafty.

See what I mean?  The proportion is all wrong.  Though my lovely white side tables and green lamps are really cool.  (excuse the sheet on the couch, have kitty need sheet)

So I made a floating bling frame to go around the canvas and here's how I did it.  First I measured of course and figured out how big I wanted the frame to be.  Then I went on to ebay and found square flat backed foil backed acrylic rhinestones that were 12mm.  I bought 2000 of those suckers for almost nothing, thank you ebay!  I then went to home goods and found white pre-painted 8 foot pieces of wood that were 3 inches wide (12mm pieces would fit in 5 rows) and 1 inch deep.  I have a hand saw, nothing fancy, that I used to cut the wood into 4 pieces.  2 longer ones and 2 shorter ones.  I then went back to home depot and found brackets and wood screws so I could join the 4 pieces in the back so it would be rock solid and invisible.  I joined the pieces - 2 long pieces on the right and left and the 2 shorter ones on top and on bottom to make the frame size I wanted.  Then I painted the whole thing silver using acrylic paint.  Then using Elmer's clear glue, I glued down 1800 individual 12mm square rhinestones, one by one and made sure they were in even lines.  This took several sessions over a few days. After it dried, I hung it up on the wall around my canvas and here's what it looks like now in all of it's AWESOMENESS!!!

Doesn't it make the wall pop!  Here is a closeup so you can see more detail.

More bling later.....

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more creativity!