New Living Room

Back in the beginning of July Sean and I picked out a ‘grown up’ living room set from Ashley’s Furniture.  We have always kind of had an eclectic collection of furniture and we felt that now was a good time to upgrade.  Well after 4 delivery delays, our new furniture has finally arrived!!  Until now we had our old Ikea couch set up in the living room.  I love that couch…and I will miss having it right in the center of my living space as it has been for the past 3 some years, but it’s time to embrace my new grown up furniture and I will surly find another spot for my little couch.

I was at work when our furniture arrived so Sean had to send me a picture of it.  When I saw it I almost fell out of my chair, I couldn’t believe how big it was!  Granted, we have a large room, but this new couch towers another foot over my little Ikea couch.  It did take me a little bit of staring to get used to it, and I had to do some minor rearranging when I got home, but I think I have accepted it…and my old couch is still in view while I work through my transition period lol!

I remember when I first saw this set in the store.  I immediately fell in love with it.  I text a picture of it to Sean who replied with, “you had to pick the ugliest set in the store didn’t you…”  Once he saw it in person he came around and at the end he was the one convincing me this was the set we needed to have.  I only needed convincing because as I stated in my last post, I am extremely difficult to go furniture shopping with…thus we still have no dining room, although I have narrowed down some choices for that >.>  My favorite part about this set are the crazy patterns.  I’m not always so into bold bright colors but I love textures and patterns.

The only thing that is driving me crazy is I want to color in the outlined portion of that paisley chair!  I obviously didn’t have enough coloring books as a child…

We are really excited about our new room and between the new furniture, the Ikea couch that we just moved over and our little dining nook behind the couch we have 12 seats…and only 2 butts to fill them!  I think we need to have a house warming party soon.  Speaking of that little dining nook,

We were originally trying to get rid of that table when we moved but decided to just store it in the back of the room until we figured out what to do with it.  It actually turned out to be perfect for that spot and we spend a pretty good amount of time back there sitting at it.

Well I was going to stop my update there, but Sean insists that I need to post the pictures from our first floor now.  And because he is the one making me dinner tonight, I should probably make him happy. Plus I promised in my last post that I’d update that progress soon.

Our townhouse is 3 stories, but the front door opens up to the bottom floor, which isn’t so bad because it gives me a large open entry way.  Jack-Jack is a fan.  When I come home from work he has usually waiting for me curled up on top of the table or sitting in the basket at the bottom.

Because our unit doesn’t have a garage, we have a bonus room on this floor.  And because we have bump outs on the side, it is a very large room.  Aside from the entryway, this is all Sean’s domain.  He has effectively turned that room into a jam/recording space complete with a sound proofing booth for his drum set (thank God!)

This would have really come in handy when we lived in Florida and our house was the practice space for the band he was in -.-’   Hopefully he can get some of his guys over soon to jam with him.  And maybe catch a football game in the FINALLY finished Redskins room…

I finally finished those stripes!  I think they turned out great, and I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the Redskins logo.  And what bar isn’t complete without a liquor carousel?  Sean has also managed to get himself a mini fridge, microwave and water dispenser so on game day he never has to leave.  What a lucky dog =P

OK, that’s it, I promise!

Labor Day Weekend

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend!  Sean and I spent it…well working!

The first floor of the house is done, which includes the Redskins bar!  I promise I’ll post pictures of it soon.  I got our entryway looking really nice too and Sean has finished setting up his music studio.  I also managed to finish the upstairs guest bedroom and bath.  And just in time for our first guests to stay with us!  Just to refresh your memories, this is the room we are working with here:

And after a much more expensive than expected but well worth it trip to Target we get this:

Sean’s Aunt and Granddad stayed with us Monday night on their trip from Maine down to North Caroline.  I was so happy we could get this space done in time for them.  We had a short visit with them but it was very nice.  And of course they were awesome enough to bring some fresh lobsters with them!  I only got an ‘after they were cooked’ photo of them as I was drooling the whole time (I love me some shell fish!)  Also why I didn’t manage to get a pic of us all together either >.<

Oh sweet lobster feast!

The only thing we were missing for their stay was a decent living room set (which is OK as we spent the whole night in the kitchen anyways).  Right now we are working with an Ikea ‘loveseat’ in the living room which isn’t so great when trying to seat more then 2 people.  We should be getting our Ashley’s Furniture living room set delivered this Friday.  I’m very excited for that (even though it is a month late -.-’)  We have the cutest dining area right behind the couch though.  I hope the new furniture set isn’t too big so we can keep it there.  We hung up one of the 2 chandeliers there this weekend as well.  I took a picture of it…but I don’t remember if it was on my camera, my phone, Sean’s phone or the iPad…anyways, I can’t find it so here is the stock photo of it from Pottery Barn:

And speaking of chandeliers, I got our other one hung up in the kitchen too.  I was feeling brave and even managed to wire it myself!  Who needs an electrician when you had a high-school construction ed class and YouTube…pfffft.  And I do have a picture of that one!  The old fixture:

Which for a standard light fixture really wasn’t that bad.  I almost felt bad for replacing it…but common…

This one is just so much prettier!  And maybe someday we will have a beautiful dining room set to go along with it XD.  Sean will tell you that I’m the worst person to go shopping with…especially furniture shopping.  I can never find the “perfect piece” and I won’t rest until I do!  So until then we will sit at a half sanded down, wobbly table that’s older then both Sean and I.  Here’s hoping I can make a decision soon so maybe we can manage to sneak in a house warming party now that it’s all coming together!

First Floor Update

And the painting continues!

Since my last update we have officially moved into our new townhouse and said our final farewells to apartment living!  And we are absolutely loving every minute of it =) We have been so busy unpacking that I haven’t had a chance to post an update, but it did take me a while to recover from our basement paint job from hell.  Sean decided after one coat of paint that he no longer wanted to paint the room red and sent me to Home Depot to just pick any neutral tone that struck my fancy, and the painting resumed…

Here is what the room looked like when I last posted..

Sean decided the red was just too heavy on the walls, especially since this room is in the back of the house and gets no sun in the afternoon.  So we painted the walls a neutral tan..ish color and decided to paint the bar walls burgundy (and we were right!  It took a full 5 coats to get a solid color)  Man am I glad that we didn’t have to do 5 coats on the whole room!  We bought the Behr premium paint in the new color and I ended up not needing to do a coat of primer…which is good since it wasn’t sticking to my wall anyways! Here’s what we’re working with now…

So much more refreshing!  I think I can work with this.

Because Sean still wants his sports den we are I am going to paint gold and yellow stripes on the wall.  I am seriously racking up the wife points here….

We broke out the laser level last night to get started but just could not get it to stick to the wall.  The mount is a spike and I didn’t want to put a bunch of holes in the wall and the tape wasn’t holding it level…neither was Sean.  Frustrated I just slammed it onto the wall and was shocked that it stuck!  I am now convinced that there is something up with this room…and it’s creeping me out.  Sean had the much more reasonable explanation that there were metal braces on the corners of the walls >.>  I still think it’s some crazy voodoo magic…

It’s magic O.o…

Once we figured out that little trick I taped off the bottom of where the stripes will start.  It will start with burgundy, then a thin white, a thick gold, thin white and end in burgundy.  It took me a little longer to tape off then expected, but that is because I had two furry ‘helpers’ keeping that laser in check..

Jack-Jack letting me know it was still looking straight

Milo really wasn’t much of a help…

I did finally get the first line of tape on and painted 2 rows of white approximately where the white stripes will be.

Tonight I plan on taping off the white and top of the stripes so I can put the color on.  Sean originally wanted the room done for his pre-season game yesterday (Which we won!) but now we are shooting for the first official game of the season.  I’m hoping for this weekend…I’m not liking walking into a wall of boxes at my front door cause we can’t unpack this room yet -.-

Engaement Session in Georgetown: Stephanie + Josh

Stephanie + Josh

Over the 4th of July weekend I had to opportunity to do an engagement session for Stephanie and Josh.  They were such a fun couple!  They had a great sense of humor and they were so sweet together, which always makes my job so much easier =)  I am popping the photos in the mail for them today but I wanted to post a little sneak peek.  We did the session in Georgetown, DC as it is such a versatile location and I really hope they enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

My Painting Nightmare

This is my nightmare!  Sean and I started painting our Redskins themed basement on Sunday and we couldn’t get anything to work right!

It all started with Sean excitedly mixing his Redskins Burgundy which was going to be the wall color for the whole room.  After mixing, pouring it into the pan rolling a small section onto the wall we realized there was something wrong with this paint…

The wall was a solid layer of tiny bubbles.  This was our first time using Glidden Paint but we were pretty sure that no paint should be doing this.  We took the paint back to Home Depot, they said they had never seen anything like that before and they remixed the color for us in Behr as we knew we liked that brand.  We got the new paint back home and put a whole layer on the walls and couldn’t believe how visible the brush strokes were….I almost don’t want to show it, but here is the first coat…

Trust me, it looks much worse in person.  We knew we would have to do multiple coats but is the first coat really supposed to be that bad?  Sean’s black wall in his office only needed one coat!  As did my dark colored guest room (although I put 2 coats on for good measure)  Is this just how red works?

Well anyways, you can also see from this picture how dark it has made the room and knowing that we were going to have to paint another 4 coats on the walls (based on research and the test area where we added a second coat and saw no visible difference from the first…) we decided to change direction completely.  The new plan now is to paint the room a very very light tan color with a thick gold stripe and 2 burgundy stripes on either side of that.  Time to bring out the primer…again…

And cue Psycho violins followed by a blood curdling Scream…

For reasons unknown to me, the primer has decided to run down the wall and make wonderful textured streaks with it -.-’  The paint was an eggshell enamel (All the other painting was with a flat finish) but my ceiling up in the guest room was a glossy finish and primer had stuck to that with no problem at all, I had to just barely scuff it up.  So why, why are all the night mares happening in this room?!  It’s the last room we have to finish (and the biggest!) and the movers are coming this weekend…ugh.

Sean said bad things always come in 3′s.  First, the bad batch of paint, second, the awful first coat of burgundy and last the horrid primer streaks.  Knowing that our bad luck should probably be over now, I headed back up to the house, grabbed my scrapper and sander and tried to get back to a decent starting point.  I’m hoping to get a good layer of primer on now so we can bust out the brushes and rollers and get a solid color back on the walls before the furniture arrives.  The stripes may have to come later, although once I put those painting supplies away, I don’t want to see them again for a very, very long time…

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Over this last week we managed to knock out 2 more rooms for painting.  We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!  We even took a few truck loads of stuff over the week.  Yesterday my Grandpa came up with his trailer and we managed to take on our disastrous garage.  It was nice getting furniture out that we haven’t been able to use for the past 2 years!  Next weekend is when the movers show up and we will get the rest of our stuff in.  I just hope we finish painting by then.  If we keep up the pace we have had for the past 2 weeks I think we should be good.

Remember this room?  Again, since Sean and I do not have kids (our fur babies are boys anyways) this room needed to be redone.  Not to mention is was pretty dirty in here, but being a kids room that was understandable.  I told you before that I wanted to do a chevron wall.  It really took a lot of planning to get it just right, and that was before I even put it on the wall!

First I had to get the room primed!  It already looks brighter in here.  Next I used some graph paper to map out my pattern, trying my best to keep it to scale, although you can see where I messed it up on the bottom…oops.  I ended up putting this into Illustrator to make sure it all worked and to get the most exact measurements.

Once I started trying to apply the pattern to the wall I quickly determined this was not a one person project.  Luckily my besty Steph came to visit and helped out.  At first I was going to try drawing a grid on the wall but I knew I was going to mess that up.  I ended up taping off a ruler to the exact length of each diagonal, had Stephanie hold a laser level and just went down her laser line creating tick-marks.  Then when it was time for taping it was just a game of connect the dots!  I don’t think I started painting until around 6:30.  I was afraid I wouldn’t finish as there is only one hallway light upstairs, which didn’t exactly reach to the bedroom, but I didn manage to get two coats on before it was too dark.

The next morning I had to come in and paint all the trim work.  I don’t think the room was tapped off before so there were still pink and purple peaking out on door frames and the window sill.

Oh ya, and I painted the closet yellow.  Originally there was a rack system installed in the closet…with no shelves and a very creaky accordion door.  Not to mention the wall had black scuffs all over it.  Since this is a design studio I needed some punches of color.  Since yellow is Sean’s favorite color I went with that.  Plus it is gender neutral for when this will eventually be a kids room.  I have some teal accessories I will add to the room as well.

 

Now while I was painting upstairs I wondered where in the world everyone went…

Oh there they are!  Somehow Sean managed to get my Mother, Sister and best friend to paint his office!  Remember what this room looked like before?

It definitely needed work.  Now I wasn’t too happy that Sean managed to recruit everyone to do his bidding, but being this wasn’t even on our schedule of things to get done that day…and they finished the room, I can’t be too upset.  My Mom was a little nervous about cutting in around the ceilings but I think she did a great job!  I think it has inspired her to start doing some paint work in her own house.  I think my sister was a little nervous too, she had never painted before.  She did a great job though and was a big help!  Paint really can completely change a space and it’s something anybody could do really.

I think the room turned out really good.  And I love the black wall in the back.  This will be Sean’s music studio (the only reason his office is bigger than mine is because he has to fit a drum set in his) so I think the black wall will fit in just fine.

The next (and last!) room we need to tackle is the ‘Sports Bar’…which yes, Sean is painting in a Redskins colors….We anticipate that this room will take a lot of time so it may be the end of the week before I can post that project -.-  Wish us luck!

Paint, Paint and More Paint!

Well Sean and I went straight to work on the townhouse after closing.  Not much needed to be done, just some light cleaning and paint. The original plan was to paint just about the whole place, but that has since been narrowed down to 5 rooms…each with their very own unique challenge.  I drove up early Saturday morning to get started and have been working non stop everyday since.  I have worked through the back and shoulder pain from constantly rolling paint onto the walls, but tonight my thumbs (of all things!) are killing me!

The master bedroom was one of the only bedrooms in the house without color.  Since we have lived in 4 different apartments now, that all had the standard ‘apartment white’ walls, I was not going to pass over this room for paint.  Sean decided he wanted the room to be green, I wanted it to be blue.  Somehow Sean won.  We ended up going with Behr’s Sanctuary for the color, which ended up being a lot more green and a little darker than the swatch led on.  We have found that it’s hard to visualize what a color will look like filling the entire room compared to that little card stock rectangle.  We even bought the sample the try a swatch on the wall.  Oh well…its not so bad and it’s growing on me.

Here’s the master bedroom before the paint.  Being that it was white we didn’t have to prime, it was just tape and go.  But, I did say each room had a challenge.  This one happened to be a vaulted ceiling.  I’m still not sure how high up it is but it was just at the end of my comfort zone for heights and beyond Sean’s, so I ended up on the ladder.

With the fisheye it doesn’t seem so bad.  It was much more comfortable up there once the painting started and the taping was done.  The corners were especially tricky and I had to really stretch to reach those.

Woohoo!  All finished!  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  I liked it much better when I was finished and pulled out the tarps and took off the tape to see what it looked like with our cherry wood floors.

Alright, one room down,  four to go!

The next room I decided to tackle was the guest room (previously a nursery).  This one was actually started before the master but I didn’t finish it until today, with me working on it all 5 days.  Let me show you what I was working with here…

Now I think this room was super cute.  It had a tucan light switch cover and a tiger door knob on the closet and when I was growing up I would have killed for this room.  If Sean and I had kids this probably would have been left alone but since we are single adults who need to accommodate other adults on occasion, this room needed to be redone.  And to answer some questions, yes, those branched are stapled (with some huge staples) into the wall and ceiling; yes, that tree is painted, with glossy paint, onto the wall; and yes, the ceiling is a very dark, glossy blue with glow in the dark stars painted on and is creeping it’s way down the wall.

First thing is first, down it the tree!

OK, so several branches and several hundred staples later I could break out the sanding.  This part was probably the worst, but the primer wouldn’t stick to the tree or ceiling without it.

So I finally got a coat of primer on the wall.  The ceiling ended up needed 2 coats of primer and 2coats of paint.  By day 3 my neck and shoulders were killing me from constantly working over my head.  Today I decided if it wasn’t entirely white, after all those coats of paint and primer, it was close enough for me.  I started the walls and didn’t expect to finish today but I managed to get 2 coats on and clean up before the sun went down (We have no built in lights upstairs)

Sorry it’s a little dark.  By the time I had everything cleaned up the sun was almost down so I had to use my flash.  I am so happy this room is finally done!  I really like the color in here, Behr’s Myth, although I think I could have gone one shade lighter…again with those hard to read swatches.

I do feel a little bad for tearing down the jungle room.  It had so much creativity and I know it was a lot of work to put up in the first place, but again, we just simply didn’t have a use for it.  I’ll be kicking myself when my future children request a jungle themed room now…

I think we should see a before and after again just to really appreciate the transformation…

I got some paint on me during the process…  You can’t see here but my arms are covered with paint splatter.  I don’ t know how I got so messy with this room.  It didn’t get this messy with the primer or in the master bedroom.  Oh well, 2 rooms down, 3 to go.

The next room we will be working on, which Sean has already started taping off for me, is my office/future nursery.  Here’s what it looks like now.

Before we even got the keys to the front door I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this room.  I wanted at least one room to have a stencil wall or a wall with stripes.  While surfing through Pinterest I found the perfect compromise.

This nursery is from House 36 and you can see the author’s post about it here.  I knew I wanted the room to be grey already and that chevron wall is amazing.  I can only hope that my attempt at it turns out just as well.

For now this room will be my office and I think it will make for a very fun design studio.  The room also has a decent size closet in it with a double accordion door.  I had Sean remove the doors today and the existing wire shelves inside to make way for another project.  I want to convert the closet into a seating area with storage below and above.  It’s a little hard to describe with no photos, I’ll try to snap some while we are working tomorrow.  I probably won’t get to that project until a little further down the road but just thought I’d get ahead on the prep work now.  First we need to tackle the next 3 rooms with paint so we can move our stuff in!

We are Officially Home Owners!!!

Well, we did it!!  Sean and I had our closing tonight and now we are officially home owners!  I know I haven’t talked to much about it these last two months but that’s because we didn’t want to get too excited in case something fell through, which nowadays I hear is a lot more often then you’d think.  Not to mention that who loan process, total roller coaster.

*Here’s the townhouse and the happy new owners*

Now Sean thinks I’ll give away all the excitement and surprises for friends and family who would come to visit if I share some photos, but darn it!  I’m just so excited I can’t wait =)  Plus, as we just received the keys today, it’s an empty shell that will look completely different once we put our stuff in it.  So let the tour begin!

Here is or entrance and side yard.  I didn’t remember that little garden in the side yard when we looked at it the first time so it was a nice little surprise when we stopped by tonight.  The front also has a nice garden going.  I just hope I can keep it all alive!

I am in love with the covered entry way.  No doubt a life saver while it’s snowing or raining and I’m fumbling through my purse trying to find my keys.  Sean and I will be paining most of the interior of the house over the next week or so and I think I want to paint the front door black.  I think it will add some nice contrast, plus the shutters on the front of the house are black so it would only make sense…right?

Here is our main entry.  The owners were nice enough to leave the coat rack for us.  Eventually I’ll have a bench or hallway table here.

Just off to the side of the entry way is the downstairs bedroom.  It is by far the biggest bedroom in the house but with an unfinished bathroom, and being right off the sidewalk, it’s impractical for it to be our master bedroom…darn.  This will be Sean’s music room.  In fact, he has already claimed the whole floor.  This room needs the most work out of all of them.  And when I say work I mean a layer of paint and a set of new blinds.  For now the unfinished rooms will serve as storage.

In the back of the first floor is the bar.  This will most definitely be the party zone.  This room will probably be painted first.  That sea foam green makes us both sick to our stomachs.  Sean was thinking a Redskins themed sports den…

Just off the back is our lovely fenced in yard and patio, complete with twinkle lights =)  We just need to add a fire pit down there and we’ll be good to go.

We actually have a very decent sized yard, storage shed included.  The previous owners put in a lovely garden and even left us a cute bird bath.  They planted a peach tree in the corner and said this is the first year it has had fruit on it.  Sean asked at closing if there was anything we had to look out for with the townhouse, any troublesome neighbors, tricky reception…the only thing they had for us was we had a family of bunnies in the backyard.  If that’s as bad as it gets then bring ‘em on!

Now that we have finally made it up the stairs we arrive in our living room.  This space is so perfect, very open.  I can’t decide yet if I want to put a mini office in the small nook just at the top of the stairs.  If not, it will most likely be a reading nook.

And just off of the living room is the kitchen.  I think Sean loves this space the most.  I cannot wait until we get to host one of the holiday gatherings here.  Somehow we need to figure out how to change the chandelier.  The existing one is very nice and I will reuse it but we received a beautiful one for the wedding and it needs a place to shine.  Oh, and is it strange that I am super excited about that refrigerator and the custom pots and pans storage in the cabinets?!

We even have a mountain view from the kitchen.  It’s not much but it’s better then the view we have of the apartment building next door to us now.  The second shot is our powder room.  They did a great job updating it but I sense some more projects coming along.  Some custom storage perhaps?  (It’s a very small powder room)  I think I might also venture into building a window seat in the bay window of the kitchen.  I haven’t picked up a power tool in a while, but hey!  I think I still got it =P

And I almost forgot!  We have a pretty nice deck off the living room.  Sean can’t wait to get his grill back out.  Poor thing has been garaged for the past 3 years because the last two apartments we’ve lived in hasn’t allowed them.  Not to mention we didn’t want to haul it up 3 flights of stairs just for it to take up the little patio space we have.

So once you make it up to the top floor, you are blasted with color!  These were children’s rooms, obviously.  The pink room off to the left will be turned into my office after a paint job.  That room also has a great mountain view from it.  The 7 year old me would have flipped out over the ‘jungle’ room, right up my alley =)  Unfortunately as adults we don’t have use for it and this will be converted into a guest room (again, after some paint) unless our guests feel like they’d like to have a safari get-a-way when they visit…anyone…anyone?

And finally we make it to the master bedroom!  Somehow the only room in the house to escape paint.  I am in love with the wood floors they put up here and on the main floor.  I am also in love with our new jet tub =D

And that’s about it for the new place.  Sorry if Sean was right and it ruined the big surprise (although I’m not sure who we are surprising…)

Oh, one last thing…

*NOTICE TO SMALL FURRY FRIENDS: DO NOT jump from the 3rd floor railing…you will end up on the first floor.  I think we should install a net…*

Time Flies…

WOW!  So I have been very neglectful but this last month has been insanely busy.  Let me explain…

The last week of April Sean and I decided we should start looking at houses.  After a few test drives out to West Virginia we tried narrowing our search to Frederick.  We contacted our realtor on Wednesday, gathered a list of properties by Saturday, Looked at a handful of the properties of Sunday…fell in love with the first one and put an offer in O.o!  My this is all moving so fast!  Sean and I hadn’t planned on it but the first home was so perfect.  What we didn’t know was that there was an open house scheduled in the afternoon and another offer was submitted.  We had to scurry to get one in that night and after some hiccups we got our sloppily put together offer in and by some miracle they picked ours. Now…Sean had all 4 of his wisdom teeth out the Monday we put our offer in so I had to figure out how this whole buying our first home thing worked out while taking care of him and still managing to fit in my 8 hour work day.  It all got done and Sean was happy when he finally came out of his daze a week later that we had an offer in and all was going smoothly so far.  It’s been a month now and we are just playing the waiting game…but our closing (if all does go well) is at the end of this month.  We should probably start packing…

Here’s the townhouse!

Forgive the awful picture…all I had was my camera phone.  When(/if) we settle in we will have to take some better pictures.  I already have so many wonderful projects planned out!  (Thank you Pinterest!)

Well Sean had a very exciting last couple weeks.  He was in Chicago working the NATO conferences.  He told me it was a very surreal experience sitting in a room with our President and all the World leaders.  I don’t know very much more of what went on other then turning on the TV and seeing all the crazy protesters but he assured me they were never even aware anything was happening outside until they turned on the TV later that night to see for themselves.  He is home safe and sound now though.  Maybe one day we’ll get to travel to Chicago and he’ll actually get to see the city and not just his hotel rom and the convention center.  It’s supposed to be a wonderful city and I wouldn’t mind seeing it too.  Next week Sean is traveling to Las Vegas.  Oh the places he gets to go!  I told him he needs to take a lot of pictures while he’s there, or he could just sneak me in his luggage so I can see it myself.   It probably won’t be that second one.  Oh well, while the husbands away, the wife shall play…..the packing game.  By the time he comes back we’ll be a little over a week out from closing.  At least our time in our apartment will lapse one month so we will have a full 30 days between the apartment and townhouse to pack and move and make any changes that we want to the townhouse before we move in.  We’ll keep you posted!

Procrastination…

So I’ve been awful the last week and haven’t told you anything about my fun new Silhouette Cameo D=  But that is because I have just been having too much fun with it!!

I have wanted a die cutting machine for some time now but I didn’t want to be limited to designs from cartridges (I also didn’t want to shell out all the $$ for the machine, and then have to get all of the cartridges)  I ended up finding the silhouette by chance when I saw a post on Little Pink Monster about creating a mockingjay pin for the Hunger Games movie in theaters.  As a graphic designer, I was in love with the fact that you could create your own designs and have them printed on the machine.  I ordered it online from Amazon, as they had the best pricing, and decided to get the rolling tote that goes with it.  It was a nice surprise that all of the innards of the tote are removable so I can use it for something other then the Silhouette.

There is a lot that was included in the box, not that I payed to much attention though, I was just ready to just plug it in and go!  The blade system is pretty neat but I think I received a dull blade, as I read was possible in several reviews.  It still cuts so no big deal, I just have to set it on a deeper setting then is recommended for the media type being cut.

The software does include a bundle of designs, one of them being a pattern for the control panel of the machine!  Me thinks a great design for a first cut and it came out great.  I bought a couple of bundles of paper from the Recollections line at Michaels, It seems to work great with the machine and they have such a fun section of patterns.

Well I wasn’t so thrilled with the rest of the stock patterns and although you can buy patterns through the Silhouettes online store for just 99 cents, I thought I’d take to the internet for some free .svg files.  I found a few websites that had a lot of give-away patterns that were fantastic!  I promise I’ll link to them after I dig them out again.  Read that the Silhouette had a ‘print and cut’ feature.  I didn’t quite understand how that worked so I downloaded the pattern for 3 cute little owls and watched a quick YouTube video and my mind was blown.

First, you use your home printer to print the pattern.  Next, just load it in your silhouette, it reads some register marks that were printed and cuts exactly where the color was printed.  How freaking neat is that!  All that’s left is to assemble.  It’s great to have the ability to print these cute little designs and not have to load in each color paper individually, or have all that colored paper on hand in the first place!

I had seen enough and I wanted to try printing one of my own designs.  It was really my first challenge with the machine as I had to pull the picture I wanted to create into Illustrator and create a dozen individual layers.

Here’s what I ended up with!  This is a doll I made for a motion graphics project back in college.  I didn’t have plaid but I had another cute patterned paper for her dress.  My home printer isn’t that great, thus the lines in her hair and stockings, but for my first design I think she is adorable!

After I had enough with the paper I decided to try my hand at vinyl.  I ordered the silhouette vinyl starter kit with my machine as I am a little bit of a sticker collector.  The first thing I could think to make stickers for was a car.  I decided to make one for my Mom’s truck.  It was a pair of Canadian geese that I drew in Illustrator based off of the tattoo she has on her back.  How cute to have her and her truck match, right?

The machine cuts vinyl beautifully and I just about used up all of my sample rolls in the first night >.<  Oh well, I think all my family and friends now have customized stickers.

Well I can’t post everything I created here, that would be torture….so I’ll just leave you with some sure little eggs that I cut out for Easter.

Hope you had a great one!

-Rachel