Harry Potter books have never looked so cool!

Last night my boyfriend, Tim, and I had a wonderful Valentine's Day dinner at home. He cooked it! But I was sitting there after and thought how very boring my table is. Please ignore the fact that my dining room table (below) only has 3 chairs - Tim has one of them at his desk right now. But I felt like my table needed something but I just haven't done anything to it since I moved in.

boring

I've wanted some of those pretty, old vintage books with the wonderful designs on them and I've had my eyes out for some but just haven't found any yet. But I do have a lot of Harry Potter books! Then the idea occured that I should just cover them like we did in school! So I grabbed some scissors and brown paper bags and went to work...

I used some jute webbing to add a little character to one. I covered several books last night. I think I might stencil some designs onto some of them eventually.

So yay! I'm much happier with how my table looks now! Much more intersting. (Thanks, Harry! lol) I had everything here already. The tray had been stacked with two others under my coffee table. And those adorable, tarnished vintage candle holders, I got the set for $1 at the Salvation Army not long ago. Gosh I love that place!

more jute!

Also I should share another very simple project I did a few days ago. I brought this huge pickle jar home from work not long ago. Cleaned it up and tied twine around the top and pug some fruit in it. But it needed something else. Printed off a label from The Graphics Fairy on sticker paper (I can't tell you how much I love TGF!) and just stuck it on there. Voila!

I love it! Now I just have to get some wax fruit to put in there because let's face it, I'm too lazy to keep it stocked with fresh fruit all the time.

That's all for now!

-Katie

Cheap Imitations

potterybarn.com

This wasn't actually one of my projects. It was one my mom did and she made one for me as well. These books pictured above are $39.99 on the Pottery Barn website. "We’ve taken authentic vintage books and turned them into art objects by removing their covers and binding them together in sets of four." And as much as we love Pottery Barn, we're cheap and we enjoy a good project. So she copied them and made one for herself and one for me.

Here is mine (in front of the ice bucket I found at Salvation Army for $1.50... but that's another story!) How adorable is that? I love it. She said they were so easy to make. She bought old paperbacks from a thrift store, ripped the covers off and tied them in a stack using twine. I bent up the corners of the pages a little because I wanted even more of a vintage feel.