heating solar panels made with 180 soda cans.

How to Make Your Own Solar Panels

You can see I am on a greenhouse / gardening – kick. And so I followed Daniel Strohl from Hemmings.com, who made this solar panel out of need for heating. He wanted to tinker in his garage but it was too cold in Winter. So, he created his own heating system. After 3 years of refining his solar heating project, here it is:

I love Daniels’ practical approach of just finding a key element and then adjusting all the other elements to match. For this version of his solar panel, he found an old glass sliding door, and then used that as his measuring stick for all the other materials. He cut his 2×4’s and back plywood to that size for the box, and just filled it up with cans, with turned out are 180. 

Panel Effectiveness: How Much Heat Does it Produce?

Daniel recorded temperature differentials up to 120 degrees in full sun and up to about 80 degrees in a mixture of sun and clouds.  Not enough to boil water (almost), but sure enough to heat up a garage, greenhouse or garden guest house.

source: Daniel Strohl who writes for Hemmings.com, yes, that funky car site!  You can find the full details of how to make heating solar panels on his site.

We Can

"We Can Do It."   Buy From Art.com

Easy enough. We can do this…

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Not fair that Pinterest followers were getting my best design ideas, instead of my loyal blog readers. Being Chinese New Year, I’m changing it now, and during the coming year, I’ll add a Daily Pinterest Favorite to my blog.

I’ll feature a mix of interior design styles, home decorating DIY projects, knititng, crochet, paper art, and of course holiday crafts.

TODAY’S FAVORITE HOME DECOR

If you wonder how to make a charming Italian Farmhouse kitchen, that it’s essential you start with some rustic basics, such as this authentic …

1. Farmhouse Kitchen DIY table. This table is a classic to be found everywhere in the Italian country side. I hope to inherit one, rather than to have to build my own, as it can take the good part of a week, besides a couple of hundred dollars worth of timber.
   
   However, without such luck, I’ll use these instructions.

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It’s perfect if you don’t yet have a Christmas tree.  There’s something far better: an adorable Christmas tree alternative that you can make on a dime, and that’ll be loved by Mother Nature and your kids alike.

Materials for Alternative Christmas Trees

Look over my list, and let your own creative juices flow to decide what you could make.

Alternative Christmas Trees

Here are some ideas…

Pretty Fountain of Christmas Cheer Glorious Christmas tree from tulle balls on a golden stand. This is image is from a 1959 out-of-print white stone publication ‘how to Christmas’ book.  Will probably be in the 1958 version as well.	Christmas Tree Collage from Useless but Pretty Objects This Christmas tree shape collage is very good way to show off your souvenirs, thingies, letters, and fun pictures.    by Dutch designer Jane Schouten at All the Luck in the World .
Christmas in a Pot An sweet pink Christmas tree in a pot from pin / red decoupaged wood sticks.  Originally intended as a Valentine’s tree by ThenSheMade, but I’m not bothered by that.  Would be a perfect Christmas decoration for a girl’s room.	7 simple planks hammered on an 8th plank, with some hooks for toy ornaments. 100% recycled, but could be mistaken for stacked ice-cream cakes… I suppose it requires a bit more Christmassy decorating to be a perfect 10/10. by Woodwoolstool.com
Squiggly Christmas Branches ~ 1 3 curly branches in a tall glass vase and hung with natural, crochet and other lightweight Christmassy things. Not a Christmas tree, but says ‘Christmas’ nonetheless. By seahorse-design.com	Christmas Tree Ladder Repurpose that year-round useful home decorating ladder to be your Christmas tree this year. Hang present and ornaments in groups. Put a star on top, I’d say. By Lisa Wohnen und Dekorieren
Squiggly Christmas Branches ~ 2 More Squiggly branches decorated with seed balls and accent Christmas lights. Cute, but the balls and the lights make it look a bit like you’re in a disco place…	Christmas Toy Tree 20 twigs from the garden with a hole in the center. Glued onto a central metal wire or wooden stick and placed on a flat piece of wood. Cute, but there’s no space for decorations.   a toy for sale
Spaghetti  Christmas Tree I dig this sooo much. I have seen many varieties of these in shops here in Rome, Italy. Why?  It’s a painted pasta Christmas tree. How great is that!!! By Bhg.com	Hawaiian Christmas Tree Arguably the most unusual Christmas tree alternative: stacked hula girl skirts….ribbon-ed with Christmas lights…. Great reminder of warmer weather throughout the festive season..   By Doecdoe
Calling all green ragpipe cleaners for a new job: be a Jolly Christmas tree ornament this year. String on red or silver beads and hang from a short string loop.
Craft Stick Christmas Tree You need: 6 wooden craft sticks, green craft paint, some sequins and a few bitty bits of glitter rag pipe cleaner.  Oh, and a toddler to make this for you.	Rubber Stamp Christmas Tree … there’s a story to this one… see below…
Letter Tree On thick clear plastic	White Silver Leaf Tree No Christmas tree, but sure conveys the snow winter mood of Christmas. Quite pretty. Only need some spray paint and a walk into your garden or the park to pick up some oak tree leaves.   by Real Simple
Coffee Filter Christmas Tree Add glue, red buttons and a star topper. By CraftsbyAmanda.com	Delightful Twiggs  Christmas Tree     During the day you can’t see it’s a Christmas tree, but in the eve, it sure is a delight on the porch. by Lisa Says Why Ben says Yup

Are you inspired??

These are great trees to make. Now, you don’t have to do what they did, of course. There are so many materials you could use, and so many themes you could pursue.

Your POLKA DOT Christmas Tree

One thing I like is to take one style/material/theme, and then apply that theme/imagery/color scheme/style for all the Christmas tree items for that year. 

Like the year I fell in love with this polka dot tree. It’s just a darn stamp.  See it printed, really enlarged, and see collaged upon with your favorite family photos and hung on your show wall in the living room.

Continue the theme of polka dot Christmas tree on all your holiday entertainment items: stamp it on napkins, table runners, tea towels, glasses, vases, Christmas party invitations & dinner table place cards, guest soaps… etc.

This Christmas card below took me < 4 min. to create and post. Gotta love stamps. Get your own, and get a couple...

Click the polka dot tree ‘buy’ link to browse through their christmas and other stamp sets and see what you like (eg. Russian doll set), or you can make your own with either text or images:

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A winning tutorial: easy, fast and gorgeous.

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Some bloggers are amazing, and this is one of them:  Carry from ‘Two Friends, Two Cities’. She created this lovely bench from start –to – finish in just 2 hours for the tiny budget of $65.  I actually just bought this exact same bold marine blue/white stripped fabric from IKEA, as well as some matching, sturdy, thin-striped red/white fabric.    I was wondering what to do with it….. 

Ballards Designer Bench

Sometimes all we need is an idea (or an obsession rather) and then someone who triggers us into action. 

It never occurred to me that making such a bench would be so simple as there’s no backing. Just a plank with batting, a cover and four legs.  Easy!

The Ballards Obsession Bench:

This essentially is a knock-off of a $599 designer bench from Ballards.

(image on the left) This was it. Amazing legs, btw, but for that price, they better be nice!

Overall, I think these two benches look remarkably similar, and I feel inspired to make my own.

Find the tutorial here: DIY Ballard designs bench

tags: bench, chair, seat, sofa

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A fence like you’ve never seen before, have you?!  You gotta go to Carrboro in NC to see this beauty.  Artistic and practical.

This particular fence does not come with a manual, however, there are however plenty of YouTube tutorials on fence making from which to borrow the design ideas needed to pull this one off on your own.

Start collecting’ ‘stuff’ would be step #1.

image source: Re-nest

DIY Fence Making Instructions

I thought to give you some tips and hints on how to make fences, however, these folks at the lumberyard really know best. Let them advice you.

Here are their hips and hints on how to make a really good fence – or rather, they are good step-by-step how-to instructions: 1. spacing the fence posts, 2. setting the fence posts, and 3. adding rails to the posts ~ exactly what you’ll need to make the fence above.

Not for beginners ~ sorry, but not that hard either.

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Comfortable bed headboards are easy to make and transform ordinary bedroom furniture.

Actually good bed headboards have to follow certain design criteria:

1. Decorative items on (or above) the headboard should not be able to fall onto my head.

2. It should be high enough to support my back when having breakfast in bed.

3. My head should be able to lean back, i.e. the headboard should not be too high

4. It should be padded so that it will feel like a chair when leaning against it

5. it should be beautiful, and not too loud in color or design that it overpowers other design elements in the house

6. it should be large & attention grabbing enough that it makes a significant design statement.

I like to see all this in a headboard, please, if it’s not too much to ask.

While this seems like a long list of ‘must have’s, actually many headboards actually meet these criteria.  Those that qualify, tend to be neutral-toned, with textures and patterns that accent other elements in the bedroom.   Have a look at these examples that I picked as the best from the headboards currently on bhg.com:

Top 3 Bed Headboard Ideas / Designs

1. My favorite headboard is this shabby chic cottage headboard. Essentially it’s a padded pillow hung above the bed on hooks from a strip of molding. I like the cottage style. Plus, this can be an easy DIY project.

The base idea is also flexible: I can also see how this can be adapted into say a nautical theme when molding would be replaced with an old rowing ore with hooks. 

2. Classy neutral-toned linen headboard that you might find in a 5 star hotel.

3. ‘Gorgeous’ is what came to mind when I saw this headboard.  A professional seamstress could pull it off as a DIY project, but I ??!!

Fabric covered buttons, rounded corners lift this headboard from boring to sophisticated.

Pairing it with the ultra-modern mirrored night stand plus glass lampshade makes me want to crawl into this picture.

Upholstered Headboards

How to Make Your Own Upholstered Headboard

	Headboard DIY   This DIY video shows how you can make this over-sized upholstered headboard.   It explains everything, from how to cut the wooden frame, how to make the headboard padded, and more.
	The ‘DIY headboards’- video teaches you how to create this beautiful upholstered headboard.
The fabric pattern is made using the stencils out of this book: Printing by Hand: A Modern Guide to Printing with Handmade Stamps, Stencils, and Silk Screens.	DIY Stenciling for Your Headboard & Other Bedroom Furniture By stenciling the fabric of your headboard you will be able to create a wonderful symmetrical design that might be more difficult & costly to achieve with ready-bought printed fabric.   Purchase simple calico, sturdy cotton or linen fabric .   Use the stencils from this project or buy the book here.    Use fabric paint to complete the project.

  Other Bedroom Designs, Projects & Ideas

Child Bedroom Furniture w/ Stencils Kids Furniture Home Decor Kids Wall Painting Designs Yellow-pink Color Combination/ Make Your Own Lampshade Anthropologie for Less, Decorating Craft Ideas/ Italian Bedroom Furniture/

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This adorable birdhouse is the culmination of a few different craft techniques: creating floral wall art from toilet paper rolls, making a beaded  accent charm, and painting, stenciling and decorating a birdhouse.

What makes this wall decoration work is repetition of color, shape and pattern.

The How-to

How to Make Toilet Paper Roll Flowers

1. Mix red and white tempura and paint the toilet paper rolls. Let it dry. Repeat as is needed to give a nice coverage.

2. Flatten 3 toilet paper rolls lengthwise, and cut them in 1/3 of an inch circular strips.

3. Staple 5 together for the medium sized flower; staple 8 together for a large flower and staple 1 onto the middle of a second ring for the lotus flower bud.

4. These three flowers were originally designed as a mobile where the flowers hang below each other, and the end piece is a grouping of a few beads to give it the weight required to hang straight down.  (Note: toilet paper rolls are very light). I just used simple sewing thread and tied the beaded accent charm * on first, and then looped the thread through each toilet paper roll flower, allowing a bit of spacing in between each flower.  I made a loop at the end of the thread to hang the flower mobile up.

For this wall vignette, I simply ‘draped’ the flowers mobile over the birdhouse.

* How to Make a Beaded Charm

Simple. String several beads of different sizes & materials with compatible colors onto a metal pin and with your jewelry supplies, create a loop at the end of the pin and clip of the excess metal. In this case, I’ve uses a glass bead at the bottom, then a hand-painted wooden bead, a midsized glass bead and a smaller glass bead.

How to Paint a Wooden Birdhouse

1. Decide on a color scheme and style for the house.
We wanted a whimsical, girly design and very pink approach to decorating here. But you might like to choose something more rustic, classic or romantic ! The actual decoration design is up to you.

2. First lightly sand the store-bought birdhouse form. Apply a coat of white as a grounding. We used simple tempura.

3. For the second coat of paint, mix your paint to achieve the right shade. Always remember that paint becomes lighter when dry.

4. We choose to accentuate the shape of the birdhouse with our decorations.

5. Our stencil: we chose the flat end of a pencil to be our stencil. It was lightly dipped in tempura paint to create our polka dots. To create smooth dots, roll your pencil lightly in your fingers when holding it against the surface of the object to be painted. This will create a smooth round edge. 

If …

you are planning to hang your birdhouse outside, place it in a protected area so that the birds will be safe, plus use durable materials that are non-toxic for birds.

Craft Materials Needed

1. Toilet Paper rolls.

2. Tempura paint to paint the rolls.

3. Stapler

4. Beads & thread.

5. Unfinished wooden bird house (Click for 4 pack of quality birdhouses in which birds actually like to nest, but which you can also paint and use inside for decoration. )  For indoor use, you can also use a paper Mache birdhouse kit.

6. Stencils & Paint Brushes.

7. Sealer, acrylics paint & Varnish. Liquitex Acrylics Paint, or even folk art paint, will do the job just fine for a decorative birdhouse that’s mostly kept indoors or protected outside.

Indoor vs.. Outdoor Birdhouses

For a birdhouse you wish to enjoy outdoors, you’ll need completely different materials.  Give your  bird house a (white) base coat to seal the wood.  Then paint over it using either an acrylics paint for detailed decoration, or an outdoor paint in case you do not want to embellish it too much.  If you’ve painted your birdhouse with acrylic paint, you should really give your birdhouse one or two coats of protective varnish at the end.

Note that exterior house paint is much harder to work with than water-based tempura or acrylics. If you use that, you should keep your design simple and perhaps even leave your birdhouse plain after giving it one or two coats of color.  Painting tip: choose painting products (base coat, paint and varnish) which are compatible with each other.

Protect your birdhouse and protect your birds: place the birdhouse where it is a bit protected from the elements and from predator animals.

Additional Resources

Making & Painting Victorian Birdhouses	20 Upscale Homes for Sophisticated Birds	Folk Art Acrylic-Paint Liquitex Acrylics Paint Set
Birdhouse Construction	Birdhouses you can Paint & Decorate	Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day

Build Your Own Birdhouse Kits

There are several styles of ‘Build your own birdhouse’-kits that you can buy.

Tip: If you buy the cheapy ‘build your birdhouse’-kits with the paint included, you are advised to also order an extra tube of white or your favorite color as these kits usually come with way to little paint to cover the whole birdhouse.  Not a problem if you know this in advance and can make up for it.

Also see:  Eco Friendly DIY garden projects Ideas & tutorials,

including a really cute eco-friendly Bird Feeder.

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You might have recently seen this article with furniture made with pallets whereby we showcase a few indoor ideas on how to use pallets for furniture.

And you might have seen Tiffany’s pallet chair \ bench?

As the weather is improving, we all want to play outside. What better way than to cut up a few pallets and make them into outdoor planters or furniture instead.

Here are a handful of planter and garden decorating ideas for balconies and/or gardens.

Which kid would not want to have a garden play house like this? All made from recycled pallets.

This project requires some advanced woodworking skills, but it’s doable, and the how to make this child playhouse from old pallets, step-by-step instructions and building plan can be found at instuctables.com

“Advanced”

photo: instructables.com

Re-used, Re-purposed Pallets as Balcony Planters

Have a look at these cool Balcony pallet wall-planters!  This beginners- pallet recycling project can be just as much fun. They are great for balconies in cooler climates as there is not a lot of soil to hold the water. However, you can practically fit a whole herb garden into one of these!  I just adore them. 

Source: Life on the Balcony

“Beginners”

Pallet Garden Planters

If you are a bit more daring, and skilled using power tools, and can get your mind around actually chopping up a pallet or two, then here are two planter box designs for you. 

	The complete how-to step-by-step instructions on how to make this recycled pallet planter can be found here, at Esprit Cabane.
This larger green box is designed by The Daily Green. Again, it comes with complete instructions so you get to make your own.
Pallet Rose Climbing Trellis, by Sandy Coughlin, Reluctant Entertainer

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Create a coffee mess and get away with it. Only this one day…!!! This is an excellent video tutorial on how to be a Pro coffee-spill-trickster this April Fools day. You get to fool people the whole day, easily. Even if you are not so ‘into these things’, prepping for this one is kind of crafty and something you will really enjoy. And best of all, you’ll have all your supplies already in your kitchen/craft cabinet.

THE TRICK SCENE

Imagine someone find this at their desk. Oh no!! A Coffee mess! 

STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL

ON HOW TO PULL OF THIS APRIL FOOL’S DAY TRICK

OK. Here we go.

It takes just minutes to prepare,

but you do need to make it a few days ahead of time.

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

STEP 4

STEP 5

STEP 6

STEP 7

Peel of the wax paper when dry.

Enjoy.

Best of all, you can pull this coffee spill trick over and over again, as the props are easily portable. 

Have a really fun day, this April Fools Day!

source: wonderhowto.com (metacafe)

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Tons of pallets are being used, abused and thus discarded, all the time.   Great opportunity of us, reclaimers, upcyclers and creative misfits to transform these bastards into glorious work of artsy home decoration.  Pallets are major recycling opportunities.

Here are three easy but oh-so-functional DIY projects that stand out:

1=

RECYCLED PALLET DAYBED

By Ashley Ann

2=

CHOPPED PALLET SHELVES

By Ana White

3 =

RECYCLED PALLET LIBRARY BOOKSHELVES

By  Die Frau Im Haus (discontinued)

we love all three projects.

click on the first & second link for further info and  a how-to.

the third link however goes to a discontinued blog.

however, her ideas are great and I think

by just looking at the bookshelves

you can figure out how it’s made.

Recommended Read

Build It! With Pallets

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