a little retro makeover!

I've been feeling like a bit of a blog makeover for a few months now.  My inspiration for this retro re-do was a very prolific pinup artist named Enoch Bolles. 

Not as well known as Vargas or Elvgren, but I love love love his style, and his "girl".  All of the girls on my blog were taken (and altered a bit for my blog design) from Mr. Bolles' "girlie magazine" covers from the 30s and 40s.  If you'd like to read more about Enoch Bolles and his art, I highly recommend this fabulous blog dedicated to his work.

And now we are off to the vast wonderful wilderness that is Yellowstone National Park. 

I've got one small but fun post scheduled for while I'm gone, but other than that it will be quiet for a few days!  Don't miss me too much!

(**Disclaimer: Copyright is a hard thing to grasp, and public domain availability an even harder thing to track down.  As far as I could find in my research, Mr. Bolles' suffered the same fate as many other unknown artists of his time and did not retain ownership or royalties rights to his work, and all publications ceased long ago.  Even though I believe Mr. Bolles still has living heirs, it would seem most of his pinup illustrations are in the public domain.  In any case, certainly no copyright infringement is ever intended here, and I hope my blog graphics will serve to play homage to a great pinup artist and introduce new fans to his work.)

The $5 Makeover

Tomorrow, it's back to school for me. Sigh. Today, instead of surfing all your pretty blogs, I re-did a favorite old chair of mine. And just in case you might have a similar chair tucked away because it's not quite fabulous enough...here's a brief tute on how easy you can complete a chair makeover in an afternoon!

Here's the before picture. Keep in mind, this little chair has already suffered through one of my makeovers, but I'm frankly sick of the cheery yellow.


and here's the seat removed; see it has a stain and needed to be recovered anyway!


Usually these types of padded seat cushions have a thin wood base and are attached to the chair with screws. Just flip the chair over & unscrew it...the padded top will pull right off.

I removed the old home-dec fabric & lay it over my newly chosen fabric to cut out the right size piece (no pattern needed! yay!)


Next, I ironed on a slightly smaller piece of Pellon fusible batting to my fabric, because I chose a quilting cotton this time, not a home-dec fabric. This will give it a little body. Keep in mind I didn't remove any of the original foam or anything, I'm just covering right over the top of it.


(Now's the time all you upholstery purists should stop reading and skip to the bottom for the after picture. ) I lay the Pellon fused fabric over the padded seat and position it so the pattern is pretty & centered. Flip the padded top over & pull from opposite sides to get it even, taut & smooth. I used pins to hold for gluing. Uh, yup. I said the G word. Now, I also use a staple gun, but I'm telling you a glue gun works really well for this project!

I pull the corners over first before gluing the sides, so I can get a nice , smooth corner.


Then glue (or staple) the sides down. Remember, work from opposite sides and everything will stay nice and smooth. Here's the bottom after gluing all the sides.


Since this will never be seen, I'm leaving it the way it is. You could cover with a nice piece of felt or something if you wanted a finished seat bottom though. Here's the pretty seat all finished:


A can of Krylon in a new yummy aqua shade completes this pretty chair makeover!

a different angle of the seat


Parting shot...a fabulous vintage cushion I picked up while at the flea market this weekend):

New Year, New Look

Um, I spent way too much time on this.

And now I'm gonna go have a bologna sandwich. Happy 1st day of 2008!!

UPDATE: I forget some of the world uses IE. Phooey. New blogfantastico isn't pretty nor fantastic in IE. If you got to see it in Firefox, le sigh. Working on it now, but I'm getting tired so it may be tomorrow before I figure it out. CSS makes my head hurt.

UPDATE Pt 2: It's fixed! Yay!

ps...so, what are your thoughts on playlists? I don't always like to have them pop up unexpectedly on blogs, but I do like seeing & hearing what others are listening to. I've found a lot of great music through other people's blogs!