Best of Etsy // DIY Printable Art

Artwork can make a significant dent into any design budget. Sometimes the design starts and builds around a favorite piece of art. But it's been all too common that I find myself nearing the end of a design project, wondering what to hang on a glaringly bare wall with little budget remaining to acquire an art piece - much less frame it. More often than not, the printable art options on Etsy have saved the day - and to my delight, allowed me secure art for my project affordably and quickly. 

Calling all Fall 2017 One Room Challenge Link-up Participants! Looking to build an expensive gallery art wall or find a focal piece for your design project? Here are my picks for some of the best DIY art prints on Etsy, organized by categories that are trending right now. The Etsy shops I'm featuring here also have dozens of other selections available as well.  Be sure to click on through and check them out.

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Above the Sea: 

EmDesignsPaper // DeziDeziDesigns // HelloGorgeousWallArt // ILovePrintable // SALTYNALU

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Wild Wild West: 

PrintmyInk // synplus // LILAxLola 

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Above the Trees: 

FullMoonStudioCo // ModeaPrints // ScandiHomeDesign // AevaPrints 

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Cali Vibes: 

TheScandinavianHome // inthepinkprints // LittleBigAdventure // StoryPrintsCo // LILAxLola 

***Favorite places to have your DIY artwork printed to size:

ArtifactUprising

Staples

UPrinting

SHOWER IDEA // BUILD YOUR OWN FRAGRANCE BAR

Perhaps the only positive from my blog hiatus was that I have a backlog of some really good stuff to share with you - one of which is the build your own fragrance bar I pulled together for my sister in law's bridal shower. Tasked with styling up the party and incorporating an activity of the non-game variety, I created a fragrance bar that would address both. This decorative assembly of oils, pipettes and pretty packaging allowed guests to mingle and create something useful and personal to take home from the shower. In today's post, I'm showing you how you too can create a similar build-your-own fragrance oil bar set up for your shower guests. I did all the legwork for you and am sharing my well researched resources and experience to make your set up easy and more affordable.

In approaching set up, you'll want to focus on both the aesthetics and self-serve quality, lest you'll need to station an attendant at the table to direct guests on how to assemble for the duration of the party. Know up front that it will be helpful to have someone who knows what they are doing on hand to get guests going. But I found that a quick guide to assembly, framed and placed front and center on the bar went a long way to encourage guests to create and experiment on their own. Also helpful- create and publish 3-5 pre-tested scent recipes for guests who want to participate, but are not feeling particularly experimental.

Creating your fragrance oil blends

Your fragrance oils will need to be made ahead of the party. These are the pretty bottles from which guests will layer together in a roller bottle to create their own personal scent. To create these, I added therapeutic / cosmetic grade essential oils to each bottle filled with a carrier oil - in this case sweet almond oil. Be cautious - you do not want oils that are solely used in candle making. These may contain other ingredients that you don't want to put on your body. There is a bit of science involved in this step and I am not an expert. However, I will refer you to a couple of expert resources here and here that will guide you through the steps. Safety first - I would always err on the side of caution for a skin safe ratio (in this case, essential oil to carrier oil) and keep your pre-blended solution at the lowest recommended percentage. Remember, guests will be layering multiple scents anyway so a blend that seems very light at first will build in intensity within the roller.

You'll note the bottles are relatively full above. Unless you plan to use these again at another party or have more than 50 guests, I would suggest you only fill these to half to save yourself the extra cost. We had 50 guests and bottles were hardly depleted. I recommend you use a 4oz bottle filled 3/4 full or an 8 oz bottle (like we did) filled to half with your carrier oil. It will still present nicely but you won't have as much waste.

Selecting your oils

I am sharing the list of oil blends I created and featured at our fragrance bar and some notes on how to blend. These are presented in order - so the base note would go into the roller bottle first, then the heart and finally the top note. You don't have to use the scents I used - there are many others to select from. Essential oils have become increasingly popular for use in home diffusers so you may even already have some of these in your oil collection. Brand selection is somewhat controversial depending upon who you talk to and cost can really add up.

That said, I thought this collection was reasonably priced and offered a nice array of different scents to build on. 

Table Essentials

Blending oils can get messy so consider that as you plan your set up. You will want to be sure you your fragrance bar is not in a carpeted area so that any spills might be easily cleaned up. Linens will be soiled (as I learned) so hard surfaces like the tile samples I put to use above went a long way in both presentation and maintenance. Open the bottles up and present them with ready to use pipettes. These pipettes should remain in each bottle - guests should not use them in different bottles as scents will cross pollinate. Keep in mind that guests will also want to sample the scent before they commit to it, so sample cards available on the table (and a receptacle for used cards) will be helpful. 

Label your bottles using tags you create or those generated by a label maker as I did. Coffee beans are also useful to guests who want to clear their olfactory palette before inhaling another scent.

(Complete list of sources below!)

Packaging for Take Home

We actually hosted this shower close to Christmas time and I found many guests were creating a personalized scent for gift giving. Regardless, its a nice touch to send guests home with some swag in a pretty package.  Clear plastic cylinders (see below!) often used for candy packaging were a perfect solution. Pre-stuffed with a little wood excelsior, the rollers slid easily into the cylinder before being capped and sealed with some decorative washi tape.

The DIY fragrance bar was a hit at the shower. Just ahead of the upcoming wedding, there were so many guests meeting each other for the first time and this non-game activity encouraged mingling and interaction. It was fun, made a decorative statement and guests got something useful to take home.

Source List

Bottles - these are the ones used above, but these would also be extra pretty!

Carrier Oil

Pipettes

Label Maker

Essential Oil Kit

Roller Bottles

Clear Cylinders

Wood Excelsior

Washi Tape

Arrangement of the Month: September 2017

Full of fluffy white hydrangea and roses, this month's floral arrangement represents a clean slate as the season changes from summer to fall. Too busy with the getting back to business, business, I plucked these right from the grocery store and created a statement arrangement where we'd be greeted at each trip in and out the door. Despite a methodical selection of buds, it's the greenery that really steals the show here. Our garden is turning over as well, so pruned cuttings from our formerly out of control Lady Banks climbing rose were also added in for some extra dangling drama. 

REAL LIFE: END OF SUMMER MUSINGS

I've always been fond of this little limbo-land time lapse between summer and fall. For so many years, it's signaled renewal much more positively to me than the post-holiday void of January, when the wallet is spare and the diet and gym membership beckon. Like clockwork every September, there's a bustle of activity around back to school and the forming of game plans that lead into the holidays. There's the changing of the wardrobe, the opening of the windows once again, a difference in the way the light washes across the room and a cozy, but spirited energy that I feel only fall can bring.

The inner nerd in me also craves a bit of back-to-productivity. The downtime that comes with summer fun is good for all of us, but I'm happiest when I'm on schedule. Truth be told, my fall calendar is already filled out with things I hope to accomplish before the year officially ends in January - personal goals, plans for my online shop, Bird + Belle and around the house.  I guess I'm not too far away from that kid who was once first out the door with my packed-to-the-gills book-bag on the first day of school after all.

Reflecting a bit, this summer was good to me. We finished our kitchen remodel just before the calendar turned over, spent a lot of time in the pool, threw a couple of good parties and closed it all out with a weeklong vacation by the beach with friends who feel like family.  Before our extended crew arrived, Ryan and I had a few days alone on a mostly empty beach with little Valentino and to me, it was some of the very best days of this year. After 18 years together, we have an easy vacation cadence that we're quick to settle into once we arrive and its a comforting thing to know that we can fall back into sync that easily, especially when the demands of the work week can often take us off track. So the time alone was a good chance to regroup and reconnect with my little family and I'm moving into this next season fueled by that.

Speaking of family... I feel like there is something I've wanted to say for some time, but I've hesitated over relevance to this blog and a reluctancy to disclose something so private. Still, it has impacted my time here, resulting in a year long blog hiatus and all too infrequent posts. So for that reason alone, it feels somewhat remiss to not mention it. For the past 3 years, we've been trying for baby - 3 years this fall in fact. In that one regard, the transition into this new season is a bit of a bittersweet milestone. For much of this time, I've retreated and internalized the frustration, loneliness and anguish that comes with all that, not wanting to make others uncomfortable by discussing it or appear as though I was appealing for sympathy.  My sole goal in raising it now is certainly not to do either of those things, but to sort of release a bit of that internalized struggle out into the wild, to vent the steam in the pot so to speak in a healthy way. I've opened up in other ways recently and I've actually found some catharsis in doing so. I've also realized that one couple's experience with infertility is not someone else's either, so while it's important to recognize that others are going through it too, it can be somewhat difficult to connect through details, something that is oddly isolating on both ends. The reality of that might keep me on the fence from talking about it more here (or maybe it wont - maybe its something that should be talked about to break down all those walls). But I'll just say simply that where I am now with this is that I want to be more open about it as my current reality behind the pretty Instagram pictures and recipe posts. There are scenic seafood boils on the beach, busy remodels and fully decked out parties being had. But there will always be the behind the scenes happenings too and I wouldn't want anybody to misinterpret all that for the real-life human stuff.