Easy DIY Poured Soy Candles

When I shared the tutorial for my DIY Earl Grey Tea scented soy candle, I hinted that I'd actually made many more.  Did you spot them in Hello Holiday?  Customized candles are such a great handmade gift idea.  The instructions on Hello Yellow are a little more in depth, so if you're thinking of making some poured soy candles as gifts, check out the tutorial.  I used a variety of vintage vessels and that's really the key to making one-of-a-kind candles.

I think this trio is my favorite - I love the gold wheat sheaf design.  I thrifted the set and always hoped to find a fourth, but no such luck.

This grey sugar bowl - with an iridescent glaze and tomato red trim - was actually something I scooped up at from the good neighbor shed.  I had to save it - it was too beautiful to get trashed.

This beautiful gold dish was another thrift store score - I had been looking for more of these for years, hoping to make a set, but I never found another one.  I'm happy I could give it a new lease on life as a candle!  (Now I'll probably find a set of three at the thrifts...)

This set of four glasses just would not sell in my vintage Etsy shop and it was heart-breaking to see them languish on my shelf.  I love how the white candle wax really helps the design stand out now.

This pink milk glass goblet was picked up at a yard sale.

I have used this glass dish all over the house: as a mini planter, as a catch all and now, as a candle.

The matching creamer to this Sadler sugar bowl was broken, so I thought it was a perfect excuse to use it as a candle.

I'd been setting aside potential candle vessels for about year and while I can't say I loved making candles (it takes a long time and is kind of fussy), seeing the beautiful assortment of one-of-a-kind soy candles I created was definitely worth it!  This is such a great way to re-purpose vintage wares that might have otherwise reached the landfill.

I hope these ideas have inspired you to turn some lonely glasses and bowls into gorgeous soy candles!  Don't forget to check out Hello Yellow for all the details and tons of step-by-step photos.

The Secret Project - Hello Holiday!

I've been hinting at some serious crafting happening in the lakehouse and I'm excited to finally be able to spill the beans about what I've been making!

By now you know that Leon's Furniture launched a great new blog this year.  Hello Yellow features DIY projects, room makeovers, renovation stories, practical tips (like how to care for your appliances), and so much more.  I've been contributing posts, along with a group of fabulously talented bloggers.

For the holidays, Leon's launched something special: Hello Holiday, a digital guide with 92 (!) pages of inspiration: crafts, recipes, holiday decorating ideas, and a peek at some gorgeous furniture!  You can find the whole magazine by clicking here.  If you see a project or room you like, just click on the image and it will take you to the full how-to post on Hello Yellow!

Here's a taste:

DIY Sequin Wreath

Guest Room Makeover

Felt Wreath Pillow

Holiday Party Appetizers

This week I'll be sharing a closer look at the four projects I contributed, with some behind the scenes details and links to the full posts - in case you didn't spot them in the guide!

I'd love to know what you think about Hello Holiday.  I'm incredibly proud to have played even a small role in such a great holiday guide.  It seems the holidays came so early this year (seriously - Christmas ornaments before Halloween?!?) and I'm totally resenting the Christmas music already playing in stores, but so many of the ideas in Hello Holiday are perfectly wintry and cozy so the timing feels just right!  I'm going to be trying out some of the recipes just to snack on - forget holiday entertaining!

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DIY Walnut Storage Bins with a Mid-Century Modern Feel

The bedside tables in our bedroom were welded at the same time my Grandfather made the headboard I designed.  We had some leftover materials and he just whipped them up!  We had glass shelves custom cut, but the whole project was really inexpensive.  I loved the airy look of the shelves, but I hated the messy look of piles of books and magazines that accumulated, so I bought two vinyl mock croc storage bins.  I've never love the look of the bins, but they fit really well - and they solved our storage problem!

Over time, those poor boxes started to disintegrate and I decided that I wanted to make something a little bit more solid.  Wandering around my local lumber yard - looking for supplies for the more complicated slatted storage bin idea I had - I stumbled across a really thin sheet of walnut plywood and fell in love!

Because the plywood was so thin, Handy Hubby and I were able to make really sizable boxes that are still lightweight - perfect for our glass tables. 

The instructions are over at Hello Yellow - you can click here to see the whole process.  Among the supplies required, you will need a kitty, for box approval:

Once the box is completed, it will look really chalky and pale:

I used Danish Oil to bring out the warmth, but I needed puppy approval first (the smell lures 'em!):

The last step was adding hardware.  I wanted something brushed silver, because I am the last person on the planet to favor brushed silver over brushed gold in my home.  I also wanted something oversize and modern, so it didn't look like a kitchen drawer pull.  I found these at Lee Valley - they're 10 5/8" long! 

I just love the scale!

After eight years of living with those vinyl bins (two of which were spent trying to repair peeling vinyl), it feels so good to have something new!  These bins are simple and do the trick, but they have such a great mid-century feel.  I didn't intend to make them quite so tall, but we wanted to maximize how much grain we could show off.

Check out the full tutorial on Hello Yellow, but first here's another look at the finished product!

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DIY Tweed Back Tab Curtains for the Bedroom

After listening to me ramble on about tweed, let me just show you the new bedroom curtains!
(Spoiler alert: they're tweed!):

With my new wide angle lens, you can see our glass sliding closet doors and the new green curtains!  Learning to handle my DSLR and wide angle lens is still a slow process, but I love that I can show you so much more of a room in one photo!  (Ignore the blank canvases - a DIY art project I'm currently working on).  

I was quite smitten with the last set of DIY back tab curtains my Mom and I made but, after I switched around the vintage Hungarian posters, the teal pattern no longer worked in the room. 

This green tweed is utterly perfect - the exact shade of green I wanted, shot with aqua.  When we moved to the lakehouse, I was on a mission to add more colour but I've realized that colour + pattern aren't necessarily what I want.  I think that colour + texture or a low contrast pattern (and smaller doses of pattern), look best in the space.  Then our beautiful artwork can take centre stage.

The fabric I chose is called Dapp Peacock and I purchased it from U-Fab, before they dropped their e-commerce site (you can still order by phone/email).

I'm so impressed by the sheen and weight of this fabric; it has a luxurious feel.  The tweed relaxed a bit after we hung them up so they break a bit more than planned.  We might re-hem them, but I'm waiting to see if the fabric relaxes more. 

Head over to Hello Yellow for the how-to, including some tips for working with this tweed - which was a bit trickier than the outdoor fabric we used for the last set of drapes.

I still have a bolt of the same tweed in aqua, calling my name from where it's propped up in the corner of my office.  I hope my Mom and I can carve out some time soon(ishly) to whip up some turquoise tweed curtains for the office, which will create a really nice cohesiveness and flow between the two bedrooms.

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New Bedroom Dressers with Mid-Century Styling

The search for new dressers is finally over!  When we moved into the lakehouse, two years ago, our master bedroom had one maple dresser on loan from my Mom (plus the vintage Mingo chair and mint side table):

After my Mom and I sewed the first set of back tab curtains in a bold, teal print, I shuffled some furniture and replaced the mint chair with our black organic chair.

I am so grateful to my Mom for loaning us a dresser because when we downsized from our three bedroom townhouse to our two bedroom lakehouse, we lost a lot of closet space and found ourselves needing a dresser for the first time!  I immediately started the quest for a replacement but I was disappointed by my first choice, dissuaded from going with some Ikea units, and discouraged by my local mid-century finds.  After short-listing many options and rejecting them for various reasons, I renewed my search at the end of last year, tirelessly checking out the options at every local furniture shop and large retailer in my small city.

I hadn't tried Leon's Furniture at that point so my Mom and I took a look around.  I was surprised by what Leon's had to offer - they had some really stylish, very modern dressers, some of which are even made in Canada!  I ended up finding two styles that appealed to my mid-century modern aesthetic: the (now discontinued) cherry veneered Noma (top) and the walnut veneered Roxy (bottom).

At the time my local Leon's didn't have either model on the floor and, although ordering in the dressers was no problem, I really wanted to see a better photo first, so I started perusing Leon's Instagram, searching for more photos of either dresser.  (I like seeing furniture in homes to get a better sense of the scale and finish).  I ended up chatting with their Director of Social Media, who invited me to collaborate on their new blog, Hello Yellow - you saw the start of my bedroom makeover for Hello Yellow when I revealed my new white glass sliding closet doors.  (You can read my newest Hello Yellow post here).

Part of my bedroom makeover includes two new dressers from Leon's, but that meant finally decided between the two dresser styles!  I loved the mid-century feel of the Noma, but the walnut veneer of the Roxy was quite striking.  In the end, I chose the Noma because I wanted to maximize storage (it is quite a few inches taller, wider, and longer than the Roxy) and I loved the curvy drawer fronts. 

When it was delivered I was a bit puzzled by the finish, which didn't look like the "cherry veneers in a graphite finish," described on the website.  

I was picturing a stain similar to the bench in this bedroom, which I hoped would pair well with the teak and walnut furniture in the rest of the house.  While in the photos I've taken it looks like an espresso finish, in real life the cherry wood beneath the stain really warms up the colour, so it looks more like chocolate - a really warm, rich brown.

Leon's was more than happy to let me swap out the dressers for any other pair I fancied, but I decided to live with the darker finish for awhile because the size fit our room so perfectly - I didn't want to give up an inch of storage.  So I kept them, and spent a lot of contemplative hours in here...

After living with them for a few days (and checking out my local Leon's, which by then had the Roxy in store), I couldn't bear to part with these dressers because I absolutely love the shape - especially the legs, with their retro metal foot caps!  The curvy draw fronts really remind me of vintage dressers like this one and this one, but with more height and spaciousness than any vintage piece I've seen.  Plus the quality is great: the drawers slide smoothly and both pieces feel really substantial and sturdy.

I looked at some mid-century dressers that I had pinned to Pinterest and realized that the darker stain was quite fetching and actually somewhat era-appropriate, demonstrated by this lovely 1950s Edward Wormley piece.

1st Dibs

While I contemplated the finish, anyone who walked through our doorway was immediately ushered into our bedroom and polled: "what do you think of these dressers?"  Most everyone agreed that while they are darker than my usual style, the dark stain really complements our DIY black welded headboard and vintage Hungarian posters.

And so, after much agonizing, it was decided that the dressers would stay!

The room feels so much more pulled together now - here's a sneak peek with the new tweed curtains:

I used my new camera for some of these photos and there's a learning curve - for sure - because I just haven't accurately captured the stain  or the brightness of the room.  I'm slowly improving and when I've got the hang of it, I'll re-take some photos of the bedroom.  In the meantime, now you've seen the progress being made in the space!

I was provided these two dressers by Leon's Furniture but was not prompted or encouraged to provide a positive review.  I had short-listed them long before we started chatting about a collaboration - getting to partner with a brand that I would happily purchase from is always the best kind of arrangement.  I've been very happy with the service from Leon's - they even offer once weekly delivery to folks in the sticks around here (thank you!). 

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