Sewing room tour....the reveal!

Hello my lovelies, I hope you're all excited as I am to show you my completely finished sewing room. Seriosuly I could burst every time I walk into it.....I absolutely love it! If you want to see it before, then have a look at this post.

If you follow me over on Instagram then would have already seen this little sneaky picture. I felt like I was teasing you all way too much so before I had a chance to sit down and write a blog post I thought it was only fair. 

So how did I choose the colour scheme? My lovely bloggy friend Rachel (*waves*) bought me a candle (quite a loooonnnng time ago) which I thought was the most gorgeous shade of mint green. I then snuck into Mr.B's office and borrowed his paint chart and tried to colour match the candle with a shade brighter and that was the colour I chose for the wall. I do think though that I have been slightly obsessed with this colour for longer than I initially thought, as since painting was complete and I started re-organising everything I found more and more things that I had either bought or been given that were almost the same colour. 

Any way I'm digressing, so this photo is of the main wall in my room, its the only wall that I painted with the mint green colour. I felt that the furniture was taking up too much of the wall and if I had put it back in the same place you wouldn't have seen as much of the colour as I would have liked. So we spent an hour or so jiggling it all about until I was happy. I also added an IKEA Lack shelf to the wall and painted it the same colour. I wanted some more space to display my favourite things. The hanging plant you can see, I've had for a while but didn't quite know where to put it, until we had moved the furniture around, then I knew exactly where it needed to go. I think the pot and hanging net came from Homebase and was only about £5 the plants I bought from our local garden centre. And you can also see that 'Sophia' my vintage Singer has pride of place in the middle of my shelving unit (also from IKEA, in fact all of my furniture, apart from the chairs is from the famous Danish store).

On the opposite wall is my desk (and the door to the room), I decided to keep my desk in the same place because this is where the best natural light is in the room. I know you're probably all thinking it would look a lot better without the TV on the wall, and I totally agree, but I do use it for listening to the radio and sometimes I sit in the other chair hand sewing whilst watching a movie. So for me, I just live with the fact its black and ugly on a pretty wall :D 

One thing you may have noticed is that there are two machines on my desk!!!! Yes I bought a new Janome!!!! I know how exciting!!!!! More about that in another post.

I pretty much re-organised everything in the room, trying to keep it all as maintenance free as possible. This has meant scaling down some of the crafty things I have stashed away :( I know how sad. Don't worry most of it has gone into a sealed box in the garage, just in case I need it lol.

My fabric drawers have moved into the corner, with my fabric boxes which hold all of my bobbins of thread. All of these drawers you see here will be sorted through in the coming weeks so if there are any of you out there that would be interested in giving some of it a new home, watch this space. I have since moved the iron after taking this photo, its an iron, who wants to see a bloody iron. Not me!! I want to see pretty, colourful and if possible fluffy or floral things.

And this is my chair in the corner, I know if doesn't look very comfortable but believe me its the perfect position for relaxing. I have sat in it many times with a tea/coffee/hot chocolate either hand sewing or watching a film or chatting on the phone....its perfect and its orange!

On the wall you might have noticed my new pin board, I decided to paint that in the wall colour too. Was it possible I could love it more? Yes, paint it mint green......YES.

Last year whilst shopping in Matalan, I saw this....in fact it wasn't long after I bought the paint, actually I'm totally lying there as we bought the paint back in Aug 2013, yes that would be a ridiculously long time to wait to paint my room, now do you understand why I was so excited to show you???? 

I thought it was destiny, a B, in mint green, with a floral pattern, surely it was made for me and me only? That's what I told myself anyway when I strode up to the checkout to pay £3.50, total bargain!

Sorry I couldnt resist showing you another shot, its just sooooooooooooooooo bloody gorgeous.

And here's my arty farty shot of my hanging plant.

So there you go, my before and after shot of the same room (sorry the image is a little distorted, far too excited whilst trying to take a panoramic shot on my iphone).

Hope my post didn't dissapoint? I'm sat in here now writing this and I have to keep glancing up just to take another look. Dont think thats gonna wear off any time soon.

Emma xxx

Creative Space : part 2

I cant tell you all how excited I am to show you my sewing room!!!! I'm almost there but there are still a few tweaks to be made before I can show you the whole thing. 

No matter how big or small a space you can always make it feel like your very own 'special place' you go to create. I have coveted this book for such a long time and have lost count of the hours I've spent on Pinterest checking out other peoples studios/sewing rooms, dreaming of what mine could look like.

Whenever we buy any kind of paint Mr.B always writes the date we bought it and what its for, an ever increasing part of his OCD. When I eventually got the tin out for my room I couldn't believe the writing said August 2013!!! Was it really that long ago that I planned to decorate???

I guess time just runs away with you. I half expected to open the tin and think, "I've changed my mind", but as soon as I saw it I remembered why I'd chose the colour in the first place. Its fresh, vibrant, calming, motivating, fun and one of my favourite colours rolled into one.

So after I'd glossed all the skirting and door architrave, I gave the whole room a new coat of Egyptian cotton (our whole house is painted this colour as a base). Already it was starting to look refreshed and clean.

I almost burst when I started the first coat, I just love the colour so much. Its more minty than in the photo and less turquoise. I must be the only weird person who loves to 'cut in', it takes me a little while as I'm a bit of a perfectionist but I love to see neat, crisp edges.

I'm saving the finished photos until I can get the room semi tidy, but I have started sorting out all my books and sewing bits and bobs.

As I was stating to Mr.B that I had some pictures I wanted to mount on the wall he suggested getting a shelf for extra places to showcase my pictures and nik-nacks (everyone has nik-nacks right?). So off we trekked to IKEA on a Sunday!!! I just want to say, if you are ever planning a trip to the very famous Danish stores, please do whatever you can to avoid a weekend, particularly a Sunday! It was ridiculous!!! 

After a lot, a lot of swearing under my breath and slaloming through the isles dodging trolleys and families, we made it to the check outs, shelf tucked firmly under Mr.B's arm and we were free!!!!! :D

Its a day off from the day job for me tomorrow so it'll be coffee in hand and full steam ahead to get everything back into the room and get re-organising.

Creative space

Since we moved here to our 'new' home (been here 4 year this Oct) I don't think I've actually shown you my sewing room properly have I?

Its in the eves of our house, right at the top, we have a 3 story house - no attic/loft but a bedroom (which is actually my sewing room) a bathroom and a walk in closet (which is actually the sh*t room where we store all the things you would normally put in your attic/loft). This is where I disappear into a world of my own. When we first viewed this house Mr.B and I looked at each other and both said "Sewing room?" So that was it.....sewing room it became.

So this is/was it.....I say was because we have finally decided to decorate it. It was wayyyyyy down on the list of "To decorate" but Mr.B said with my new sewing adventure starting it would be nice to get it all finished so I can get cracking!!! 

The desk, drawers, shelving unit and bookcase (which you cant see as its in the corner that I took the photo from) are all from Ikea. Both of my chairs are from Homesense and the plastic storage drawers you can see at the back are from Homebase I do believe. 

This is how it looks now......

If you look closely you can see that the skirting is pine (stained to look like oak). 

This is a better shot of it, its a make shift skirting board, long story short, the people who built our house have no idea what skirting should look like in a house like this so we improvised and made it look like it should.

Last weekend I spent my time undercoating them.....look how light and bright it looks now its white!!! I didn't take a photo of the door way but the frame was also wood. As we have beautiful oak doors the stained pine just looked awful :( now though the white really makes the doors pop!!!!

Wednesday evening I started the first coat of gloss and this afternoon I applied the second. It looks amazing so far, I'm really pleased. I will show you some more photos once I have removed the masking tape. Still need to decided which wall the pop of colour is going on but hopefully by next weekend it will be ready for the furniture to go back and I can get sewing again!!!!! :)