Visualize Your Completed Redecorating Project Before You Start!

With the summer heat upon us, we're spending some time indoors, where the air conditioning keeps things nice and cool. However, some things inside your house may be calling out for a change! You may be contemplating doing some redecoration...but where to begin?

Maybe you don't like the floors. Or, maybe you want to shake things up by moving your furniture. However, before you get started with projects like this, you probably want to do a little planning. Otherwise, you could end up with a mess on your hands or a decorating mistake.

PlanningWiz has a free tool that will help. You simply begin by entering the dimensions of your room. Then you can begin to add existing structural elements like doors, arches and windows. Now you're ready to have some fun!

You can add new structural elements to your room—if you're planning on doing some heavy-duty remodeling. You can also change the floor covering. Then add furniture to see how things will look. Once you're done, save or e-mail your plan for future reference.

How to Paint Professional Looking Words on Your Walls

By DonnaGrazia

Paint Professional Looking Words on Your Walls

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You don't have to be an artist to paint a sentiment, a quote, or child's name on the wall. Just follow these directions and you can get a very professional looking result, adding a personal touch to any room in your home.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Computer w/ Word Processing program
• Printer
• Use of a Copy Machine
• Transfer Paper (like carbon paper but not as smudgy, available at art or craft stores)
• Blue Painters Tape
• chalk, pencil
• ballpoint pen
• Yard stick
• Level
• Acrylic paint in bottles
• Small Lettering Brush

Step1

Decide what you would like to paint on your wall. If you need inspiration, Google "famous quotes".
It can be interesting to use a quote in another language. Google "free translation" to translate what you would like to paint. Another idea is to paint your child's name in their bedroom, they will love it!

Step2

Paint or faux finish wall where you plan to paint words in desired color

Step3

Type your quote on computer, experimenting with fonts until you find one that you like. Make the font as large as you can. Print a copy. If not large enough, take to a copy store and enlarge to the size you need. It doesn't matter if it is on several sheets of paper, you can tape them together if necessary.

Step4

Using a level and yardstick and tiny pencil or chalk marks on the wall to make sure the lines of your letters are straight, tape sheet of copied words to wall using tape only at top. Now slide transfer paper (make sure you have the transferring side of the paper facing the wall) underneath the sheet of copied words, and tape with small pieces of tape to secure.
With a pencil or ballpoint pen, trace letters on copied sheet. When you are done you should have the words on your wall.

Step5

Welcome to my Beautiful Kitchen, in Italian!

Create A Headboard Using Mural Transfers

You can create a headboard like this in any size (twin, full, queen, king, ca king) using a Wall Dressed Up Wrought Iron Mural Transfer. This is a fun project and you can create a headboard like this using our wrought iron elements! This headboard was created using only one wrought iron order for $68 (we even had leftovers)! This is a fraction of the cost of a “real” wrought iron headboard. It’s a great value and a really fun project.

14 year old Lindsay had redecorated her room in beautiful shades of steel blue and brown. All that was missing was a headboard! We will show you pictures from start to finish of her headboard project. This entire project took about 2 hours from start to finish. Lindsay’s beautiful bed looks complete now that she has a “headboard”!

This is Lindsay! Here she is measuring the length that she wants her headboard to be!

She cut the wrought iron pieces apart, leaving the backing paper on and did a rough layout of the design she wanted for her headboard.

Lindsay measured to make sure the medallion was centered and would be above the her decorative bed pillows and marked center with a light pencil mark. She taped up a few pieces to get the height correct and then started rubbing the medallion onto the wall!

This shows Lindsay rubbing the mural transfer off the transfer paper onto her wall. Only the thin as paint artwork transfers, making your mural look hand painted!

Here she has a little help continuing to rub the elements on the wall. Light pencil marks and the use of a level make sure that the design goes up straight and even!

Another picture of the mural going up!

The finishing touches….

Here is the finished project!

Mr. Picasso Head

Oh...this is like Mr. Potato Head in a fun on a drag and drop interface that uses Picasso like elements to create a face. Drag drop, make larger, color and just have a few minutes of creativity! Mr Picasso Head is retro fun for anyone, but especially for arty types like me! You can even sign and email your creations. Here is a link to one of my creations :-) Just a little diversion in your day.

Interior Decoration: What's Your Color?

Interior Decoration: What's Your Color?

Drawing Lessons

It has been too long since I have added any cool sites, but I have been bookmarking like crazy, so I have lots of recommendations for the new year! I will be blogging regularly in 2008, but as 2007 marked the launch of our business, Wall Dressed Up...mural transfers for instantly stylish walls. and I was a bit too "crazy busy " to post with regularity here.

I will write a bit about our Mural business as time goes on, but for today, I wanted to suggest a site with lots of great Drawing Lessons. Obviously, art is my thing and I would have loved to have had access to a site like this when I was learning to draw. I believe that you can LEARN to draw, it is not an inherited talent. Everyone always says that. They never really say it about musical instruments; they know you have to spend hours and hours practicing the piano for instance. For some reason people never think you have to practice art to get better. That is SO not true. It is true, that some will have an interest in art that makes them practice until they can express it the way they see it in their heads (I always say that is half the work), but everyone can learn to draw, we just give up too early in life! So here Drawing Lessons is a site that will teach you a few things....and if you want to be an artist, draw every day!

P.S. How did I learn to draw? I really love animals, but when I was 7 , we had to give our dog (an adorable Sheltie named Ginger) away because my brother was allergic. I was so sad, and I wanted a dog so badly and I also loved horses, so I got lots of books about dogs and horses from the library and started to copy the illustrations. The BEST lessons came from the books by C.W. Anderson. He illustrated books about horses in pencil drawings that were just amazing! I wanted to be able to draw like that, so I just practiced over and over and over again. People always tell me I have talent, but really, I just practiced until I could draw the way I wanted to.

Quote of the Day

By the way, if you want to add a "quote of the day" to your blog or website (like the "Art Quote of the Day" that I have to the right), just visit Brainy Quotes, decide what topic of quotes you want, ie. art, funny, love, nature...... click on that and code will come up that you can copy onto your site. The cool thing is that the quotes rotate daily without any additional work on your part once you copy in the code. These things continue to amaze me. The internet is so cool. Aren't we lucky? Let me know how this works for you.

Reservations for Dinner

Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Do you dread calling around trying to make reservations? After the 2nd or 3rd call will you give up? Well, try OpenTable.com before you do. This cool site allows you to choose the city and/or town, select the time you would like to get a reservation for along with the amount of people in your party and then lists all the open tables available at finer restaurants that take reservations. The best part is that if your exact time is not open it suggests an alternative. You can book your reservation on the computer. This is handy at the last minute, but also a great way to find restaurant suggestions or to book in advance. The larger cities are better represented here, but it is a good site to check out your town's restaurants. I would imagine the more this site is used, the more restaurants will want to be listed. Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

What IS the name of that song???

I was sent this link today in a newsletter that I get each day, and it is just the coolest thing! Have you ever wanted to know the name of a song that you only remember part of? Or you have been hearing it on the radio and you want to know the artist? Some of us have radios in our car that scroll the artist and the name of the song, but certainly not all of us, and sometimes you just miss it or keep replaying a chorus in your head later on. This site, Midomi.com, allows you to sing or hum part of a song and identifies it for you. How cool is THAT! This is definately a link to pass on.

Color Scheme Generator

Here is a link to a very useful tool if you are building a website, especially on a site like ibuilt, or the very similar netidnow. It is a color scheme generator and as you click on any color you like on the color wheel, you can build instant color schemes with a single click. You can choose mono, contrast, triad, tetrad or analog color combinations, go lighter, darker, pastel etc. and you get a color coded list with all the corresponding color numbers you can just type into your site. It is easier than I am even describing and a very useful tool!

Remember The Milk

Here is another cool site, called "Remember The Milk". It is basically a place to list tasks, but it will email or phone you at a predesignated time before appointments, you can add tasks to it by email. It can sync with icalendar if you are a Mac user, but it really is worth checking out. To do lists can be added and will automatically update on your Google home page. Between this and Hassle Me, we shouldn't forget another thing!!!

Hassle Me!

Oh, this one is good. You can set up email reminders for anything you want! It is called Hassle Me and I think they will eventually even have text messages for your phone in the future. Add this to a site called Joe's Goals which I will blog about tomorrow and you will be well on your way to a whole new set of good habits!

Popular Hassles

* Go to the gym roughly every 4 days
* Write an entry in my diary roughly every 3 days
* Call your mother roughly every 7 days
* Go to the theatre roughly every 21 days
* Spend 5 hours doing something for mySociety roughly every 28 days
* Practice the piano roughly every 3 days
* Go for a walk in the park roughly every 10 days

The Things I Want

Whenever you come across something you want to buy on the web, wouldn't it be nice to organize that list in one place? No matter how much I bookmark into my "shopping" bookmark , it always takes me a while to find things or remember where I saw it even. Also, you have to revisit and open all the sites to search for things and that just takes too much TIME. Well, I found a feally cool tool to solve these problems, called
The Things I Want that saves the page and the exact item you are looking for. To add this cool tool to your computer, all you have to do is download the button, which I have added to my toolbar and voila....you have a place to save ALL the things you want. So, next time your honey asks what you want for your birthday the answer will NOT be..."let me think..."! You can even send a link to your list to someone or create a wedding or baby shower "wish list". Pretty cool!

Create Your Own Free E-Store

If you haven't heard about Cafe Press, I just have to tell you about how cool it is that this site allows you to create a totally free one page "store" of your own that sells t-shirts, mugs, hoody jackets, bumper stickers, tile boxes, calendars etc...with your own artwork which you can then sell on your free page that is yours to set up. You can upload a saying, or express yourself any way you want. You can just upload your design and order one single item yourself or sell tons of things on a site you create for yourself. You CAN create a multi page store at a nominal monthly fee, and have more designs, but a simple page site is free, and the cool thing is that they do all the work for you! You upload the artwork....set up your page if you want(easy), set the price and Cafe Press processes the order, prints the item, ships the product and sends you a check! They have some cool products and as there is a standard price for each item, you can set your price to whatever you think appropriate and you get a check for the difference. The page I linked to shows the main site where people can search for your product, but if you have a blog or anywhere to post a picture of your artwork or photo or graphics t-shirt, you can link it to your site to get some customers. I see these links on sites and I am always curious to see if it is a Cafe Press product and it usually is. Even if you are a Plumber you can create a company t-shirt for your employees. For my 11 year old daughter who is into riding horses, this is much better than babysitting or a lemonade stand as a way to be entrepreneurial and make a little $$. She is selling horse related t-shirts to the girls at the barn this summer. There are so many ways to play with this, and I just thought I would pass it on. I know I will have some products for my new business as soon as we launch. I am sure to put a Cafe Press link on this blog too! Have fun!

"Ibuilt" My Own WebSite

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

So, if you have been reading this blog, you are aware that I am in the process of starting a business. I will write about that someday soon, but one of the main reasons I started this blog is to pass along cool things that I happen across in the process of creating this business. So, one of the things I realized , as my idea for my business took form, is that I needed to become more computer saavy. So, I have been on a mission...to teach myself as much as possible about how business is done on the web. One of the reasons I started this blog is to become more familiar w/the blogging medium too. I believe the web is the way most/many things will be marketed now and even more so in the future. People are just becoming more and more comfortable ordering on the web and receiving their packages right on their doorstep.

I decided to build my own web site. Now, I am not a girl w/any experience writing code and to be honest, I don't want to make that my focus. I tried out so many "trials" on web site host/builders that I have to pass along the one that stands out so far and has become a favorite, ibuilt! This site is very easy to edit, no code required...and lots of templates to play with...No, I am not set up as an affiliate of theirs, so I don't get any $$ for recommending this, but the web sites you create are packed w/features, the e-commerce plans have features like automatic uploading to froogle etc...so, even if you think you could never do this, try out a free 2 week trial just for fun. You may learn something and it is a blast to mess around to see what you can do. So...ibuilt...it's one to try and I will be back with more as I continue to try these out.

2/9/07-UPDATE-The exact same web sitebuilder can be found at Netidnow, and I find it to have a few more plan options (click on WEB STUDIO). It is actually the exact same program, though. Netidnow web studio is the one I am using, but the differences are negligible. After all this time, I still find this the most intuitive and easy to work with! You can be a beginner or a pretty advanced user and this program will suit your needs.

Ticker Factory

Well, this is a cool little site that lets you create a countdown ticker to any event, weight loss, birthday etc...
You just go to the site, Tickerfactory and follow the directions to set up a fun little ticker to count something down and it creates the code for you to copy and paste into most anything. It's a cool little motivational tool. If I was brave I would have created one to use as an example of my weight loss so far, but I am not quite that brave. Maybe you are. Either way, this is a fun thing to check out! If you use it, let me know what you think!

Evite Invitations

I was out of the country for a week and then went to Scottsdale, Arizona (where we used to live) for another week, so I have been away from my computer for a while. However, I did run across something very cool as I was trying to organize a lunch get-together with my girlfriends from afar. I really did not have time to make 10 phone calls, wait for people to call me back, and then call everyone back with the final date. There is a really great website called Evite that sends a FREE customized invitation via email...allows guests to vote on a choice of dates and they type in a response...often a little message back and "voila", the party is planned. You get to see when the message is read and send additional messages, like the final choice of date, if you gave that option. The invitations are really hip and there are also free cards to send too. There are menu suggestions for at home parties, recipes or events to suggest for your area and lots more. You can even have a list of things to bring if you are organizing a "pot luck" and as someone signs up for something , that item is taken off the list. Pretty easy way to organize a party and eliminate a lot of phone calls. Definately a site worth recommending! Check it out and let me know!!! I really love this site and will use it to organize parties from now on!

Organization and Creativity

The one thing I have found to be absolutely true for me is that when my house (and therefore my life) is in chaos and disorder, I can never get into my studio and live up to my creative potential. A messy house steals time from my life, but I have found something that works for this cleaning challenged soul (when I do it)...you may have also heard of FLYLADY and scoffed at the idea because it comes across a little hokey, but I have to admit, this program has helped me tremendously. I must say I still only do bits and parts, but as a whole this system has changed my life. I HATE to do housework and I used to let it weigh like an anchor around my neck, smothering all my creative impulses because I was too overwhelmed with all the DAILY stuff. The whole concept behind FLYLADY is to create small routines for different parts of your day. It is free to join and you will get TONS of email, but the email gives you different 15 minute cleaning chores a day, and with that alone, the "messy-house-can't-think-straight" creativity stealer will no longer rear it's ugly head. Try it! It's a little goofy, but from the email testimonials that I read...it works for A LOT of people and frees them up to live their lives in much more positive ways. We can all use our extra time and creative juice to contribute to the world!!!!! Even if you don't join the email group, her book, Sink Reflections is quite helpful.

Prefab Houses....going green in STYLE!

Wow...I have lived all over the country, moving every 4-5 years with my husband's job. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. All this moving has certainly made me think about where I want to live permanently someday. We vacation every summer on Coronado Island off San Diego. I absolutely love it there and could definitely downsize into a cottage (if I can ever afford 2 million for a cottage!) there on the island, minutes from downtown San Diego. I have noticed every year some of the cottages without historical relevance (and yikes, even some with historical relevance!) are torn down and rebuilt by those who have the $$ to invest in such places. Yesterday, while I was searching for something else, I serendipitously came across the Sunset Breezehouse, a modular modernistic prefab dwelling designed by Michelle Kaufman. Wow..., now you might say, "How's that going to fit in with Coronado's cottages?" and while maybe I can see it fitting in, especially since the building is customizable and very "green" in nature; they probably have some major restrictions in Coronado. But, be that as it may, I couldn't help but be totally jazzed at least by the concept. A customizable, very green dwelling that has clean lines and looks just great with all the windows and light an artist (that's me) could ever want. Incorporated in every breezehouse is the "breezeway element" with window walls that open up completely, transitioning your indoor space into outside space. It just makes so much sense! The world is a crazy place these days and I would love to do my part, and do it in style.I think these Sunset Breezehouses are a very cool idea for residential architecture.