The Accessorized Hemnes Entertainment Center

After finally convincing my hubby to let me buy the Ikea Hemnes Entertainment Center, 

it took me quite a while to accessorize it. 

I didn't just want to fill it up for the sake of just filling it up. 

I wanted it to look pretty, but also contain items that are meaningful to us as a family.

I also didn't want to spend much money.

So I shopped around our house for most of the items 

and filled in the rest of the bookcases with a few other minor purchases.

basket with balls (Michael's)

white square Ribba frame (Ikea) with keys from our past homes

faux plant (TJMaxx)

silver Ribba frame (Ikea) with sepia picture of the kiddos

old toolbox (Antiques Warehouse in Shonomish, WA)

blue jars (M&M Antiques in Monroe, WA)
wooden spools (M&M Antiques in Monroe, WA)

books covered in brown paper

artificial plant and Fridfull planter (Ikea)

blue jar  (Ruffles and Rust in Snohomish, WA)

Kvarnvik photo box (Ikea)

blue wood box (Goodwill, painted with Benjamin Moore Woodlawn Blue)

white Ribba frame (Ikea) with picture I took in Seabrook, WA

hourglass (TJMaxx)

vintage books (Goodwill)

brown Ribba frame (Ikea) with picture of my daughter's hand

knick-knacks collected from various vacations

gray Byholma baskets (Ikea)
white fish plate (TJMaxx)
silver frame (Target on clearance last year) with picture of the kiddos
round glass vase (World Market) filled with sand collected from past vacation spots

wire "locker" basket (Fred Meyer)
shell prints above entertainment center (Art.com) in Ribba frames (Ikea)

It may have taken me a while to fill up, 
but I absolutely love how the unit has the 'collected over time' look
and that most of the items were things I already had around the house. 

Hemnes Entertainment Center

Three years later, I finally convinced Jacob to let me go white with our entertainment center. 

My original plan was to paint our existing wood toned entertainment center white, but that just seemed like biting off more than I could chew right now. 

And I was never really happy with the size of the unit either.

 

So instead, I sold our entertainment center and I bought the Hemnes Entertainment Center from Ikea. 

*I'm still working on the accessorizing*

It looks a million times better than what we had before. It's taller, wider, and the color looks so much better with the rest of our decor.

Here's a before and after shot for comparison...

It was a pain in the rear to assemble it all, but it was totally worth it. 

I absolutely l.o.v.e it.

Shell (or rock) Shadow Box

I am still working on filling in the frames in our family room gallery wall, but I have made a little progress :)

In addition to adding in our decorative vintage clock face, I also wanted to add in a few other unexpected elements other than just framed prints. And since I'm a shell hoarder, I thought a shadow box filled with shells would be the perfect addition.

This was a super cheap and easy little project to complete and turned out looking pretty dang cute too.

I bought all of the supplies at Micheal's (white shadow box, 4 bags of varying sized shells) and got to work. 

I started by strategically placing all of the larger shells in the frame.

And then kept filling in with the small shells until all of the gaps were filled in.

Then I placed the back on and hung it up. It was as easy as that :)

I also tried it with rocks, but didn't like how it looked in our room as much as I liked the shells.

Now if I could just get the rest of the frames filled up!

Linking up to:

Adding Family Photos to a Gallery Wall

Remember the gallery wall I started way back when in our Family Room?

The picture frames have been hung for quite awhile, but most of them still sat empty.

It's a little embarrassing when people come over and I see them give my wall a sideways look as if they are thinking, What is that all about!? 

And I always find myself quickly defending my project, saying, "It's a work in progress!"

So last month, we went and had some family photos taken to put in some of the frames. Since our Family Room has a casual, cottage feel with a hint of coastal-ness, I wanted our pictures to blend in with the look and feel of the room. This do this, our outfits have to be carefully selected and we had to choose the perfect location (with the help of our photographer).

We ended up going with white shirts and denim bottoms for a casual look and had the photos taken at Discover Park in Magnolia (Seattle), which is a beach-front park. See for yourself...

Getting all three 2-year-olds to cooperate for a photo shoot was quite the challenge, but I think overall, the pictures turned out pretty good!

And while I still haven't had any of the pictures printed out, here's a (rough) photo-shopped plan of how they will look once added to the gallery wall...

It still needs some tweaking, so we'll see how it finally turns out...

Linking up to:

Today's Creative Blog

The Making of a Gallery Wall

The giant blank wall that sits behind the couch in our family has plagued me ever since we moved in...

What do you hang on a big wall that won't look end up looking puny?

Do you center your art above the couch or center it on the wall?

How do you jazz up the room and give it some personality?

After contemplating these issues for quite a while and spending a lot of time staring at the wall,

I finally decided a gallery wall would be the perfect solution.

It fills up the wall,

it doesn't have to be perfectly centered any which way,

and it gives us the opportunity to infuse our personality into the room through the use of different pictures and prints.

                                                                                     Source: None via Erin on Pinterest

                                                                                    Source: potterybarn.com via Erin on Pinterest

                                                                   Source: ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com via Erin on Pinterest

But, MAN ALIVE, who knew gallery walls took so much planning!?

I started out by getting 2 Ribba frames from Ikea to hold two pictures I had purchased from Art.com (using a 50% off certificate from Groupon!) a while back.

 Close-up of Nautilus Shell Spirals by Eric Kamp

Harbor I by Amy Melious

From there, I cut out a bunch of newspapers that were the same size as the various sizes of Ribba frames from Ikea and started experimenting with placement on the wall.

I also knew I wanted to incorporate some non-framed elements into the gallery, like the faux clock face I made a while ago and a metal Schweppes clock face I found at an antique store, so I cut out newspaper circles too.

For weeks, I had various sizes of newspaper taped all over the wall.

I would place them and then look at it for a few days, then readjust, the look at it some more, then readjust, and on and on...until I was finally happy with the overall shape of the gallery.

Then it was off to Ikea to purchase the rest of the frames.

I took all three kiddos with me, thinking I could just drop them for a little play session in Ikea's Playland while I zipped through the store to grab my frames. After getting the kids all pumped up, their shoes off, and standing in line, I learned that kids have to be 3 years old AND potty trained to be left to play. 

Uuuugggghhh.

How did I miss that little tidbit of info!?

My kids are 3 months shy of their 3rd birthday and only one of them is potty trained.

So I begrudgingly drug all three of my toddlers, who are in the midst of their terrible twos, all through Ikea with me. Thank goodness for Ikea's Swedish Fish candy that I was able to use as a bribe for good behavior :)

But I digress...

Now the frames are all hung on the wall, waiting to be filled with gorgeousness. 

I'm not in love with how the lighthouse picture in the middle (taken during an East Coast road trip in the Outer Banks) looks, so I am planning on replacing it with a different picture of the same lighthouse, but in color instead of black and white. 
Like this...

I had wanted to incorporate the print below into the gallery, but after having in printed out at Kinko's, I realized it doesn't fit well into any of the frames, so am not sure if I will be using it after all.

                                                                    Source: simpleblueprint.typepad.com via Erin on Pinterest

As for the other pictures, we are scheduled to get our family pictures taken towards the end of the month, so hopefully those will turn out good and we can use some of those to fill up some more of the frames.

Here's one more look at how the gallery wall currently looks...

 

I'm still working on Jacob, trying to convince him to let me paint the entertainment center white...

DIY Faux Clock Face

When I saw this gallery wall in one of my Pottery Barn catalogs, I knew it would be the perfect solution to the big blank wall that sits behind the couch in our family room.

I love the incorporation of unexpected elements, like vintage clocks and mirrors 

in addition to the mixture of frames housing art & photos.

While I was perusing for goodies at Ruffles and Rust Square in Snohomish recently, 

I spied this rustic faux clock face.

I thought it would be a great starting point for our gallery wall...

but instead of buying it, I thought I'd try and recreate it myself.

So I ran to Lowe's and picked up a 24" circular piece of plywood.

 

After giving it a good sand-down to smooth it out, I applied 2 coats of stain-blocking primer.

Then I gave it two coats of semi-gloss white paint from Sherwin Williams.

I would have rather used a matte paint, but I wanted to try and use supplies I already had on hand at home and I knew I could sand the sheen off after the paint dried.

Which leads me to the next step, which was...

sanding.

Boy, do I love my mouse sander. 

One of the best gifts. Ever.

I wanted my clock to have a rustic, vintage look, so I roughed it up around the edges and tried to ding it up in random patches as well.

After doing a google search for roman numeral clock faces, I found the above image, which I printed off an blew up on our copier.

Once I was happy with the size of the numerals, I cut them out and taped them to my painted circle. Notice that I taped the smaller clock to the center to the board to use a guide for placement and also kept the arches above my numbers to help me space them evenly from the outside edge.

To transfer my numerals onto the clock, I used carbon paper {from Staples}, cut into little pieces and stuck behind my numbers. Then I simply traced the outline of the numbers with a ballpoint pen.

Using a combination of a black paint pen and a tiny paint brush with black acrylic paint, I filled in all of the numbers. This part was very time consuming!!

I used the same method for the lettering in the middle of the clock 

{which I copied from one of the Pottery Barn clocks}.

After getting some advice from my fabulous sister-in-law, I used a piece of twine tied to a pencil to draw the large circle onto my clock. To fill it in, I again used a tiny paint brush and acrylic paint.

For the radial lines between the numbers, I laid a ruler from the center point to the outside edge and just eye-balled it to make sure it was centered between each number.

 The next step was kind of a disaster because, well, I had no idea what I was doing.

I wanted to try and 'glaze' the clock to give it an antiqued look...

but I didn't have any glaze nor had I ever used any in my life.

So I took some walnut stain that I had and spread it all over my clock.

Then I wiped and wiped and tried to get it all off.

It looked terrible.

It turned the whole clock brownish gray. I was so dissapointed.

So I sanded it all off, which also nearly took off all of my numbers and lettering.

Which meant, I had to repaint it all back on. Uuuuuugggghhhh.

I decided I would have to fork out a little money for some real glaze and enlist advice from someone who actually knew what they were doing.

After a trip to the hardware store and tons of questions answered by the sweet paint gal working there, 

I came home with some glaze and insight.

Attempt #2 worked like a charm.

Just rub a little on, rub a little off until you are happy with the result.

A great tip I was given was to keep a spray bottle with water handy, so that if your glaze gets too dark, you just spray some water on it and wipe it off.

 Once the glaze dried, I tapped in some bronze furniture nails {from Lowe's} above each number for some added detail.

And last, I sprayed the whole thing with some flat, non-yellowing polyurethane to protect all of my hard work.

She may not be perfect, but she's perfectly imperfect :)

 

Linking up to:

Home Stories A to Z Tutorials & Tips Link Party

Today's Creative Blog Craft Link Party
Tip Junkie's Tip Me Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife's Show Me What Ya Got #36
Hookin' Up With HoH