DIY: Chair Makeover.

Hello, hello! Here's a DIY project I want to share with you: on the left side of the photo, you can see my desk chair chair which I have been owning since my childhood days. Its quality is awesome, it is made of really good wood and my mother once bought it at an organic furnite store, but I didn't like its look anymore, so I changed the color and I sewed new covers for the pillows. :)
For painting a wooden chair, you need:
- Paint brushes and a paint roller
- Wood paint
- Sandpaper
- Tarpaulin or oilcloth to protect the floor from the paint
First of all, use the sandpaper to sand down the wooden surface evenly. Next, use your wood paint to apply the color all over the chair (everywhere where there's wood). Use the paint roller for larger surfaces and uses the brushes for little details and corners.
As you can see, you will need several layers and have to let the color dry in between until there's an even layer of paint and you don't see the wood anymore.
After having painted the chair, I sewed new covors for the pillows, one for the seating surface, one for the backrest. Therefore, I took the old covers and used them to make a pattern. I used this pattern for sewing new covers of exactly the same size. :)
Here are some details of the floral cover: in the back, one can open it with a velcro fastener and on the seating surface, it can be opened with a simple zipper and it is bound to the chair with a cord.
Moreover, I also added a little fabric cover to the chair's leg to cover it. :)
Soooo much better than before!
Happy Sunday! :) Lu

Review: Crafty magazine

Hello! :) Today I am going to review the second issue of Crafty magazine, a DIY mag from the UK which is brand new and full of DIY ideas. I had recently been contacted by the editor and been asked if I wanted to write a review for my blog - of course I wanted! :) Well, Crafty is a new crafts and lifestyle magazine with lots of tutorials for projects you can then try out yourself.

There are lots of lovely illustrations and drawings inside the magazine and the paper is so nice, I love magazines which are printed on good quality paper!
Definitely the best thing about the magazine are the many DIY projects. There's a huge variety of craft projects in there and what I liked a lot about them was that these weren't projects I've already seen on Pinterest a hundred times (unfortunately, that's currently the case with many other DIY magazines, you only see projects in there which are displayed all over the Internet anyways). :) What I rather don't like about the mag is that the layout is sometimes a bit confusing, I'm missing bigger headlines for what a page is about. Moreover, when reading the magazine, I had been expecting a lot more stories about creative people and indie businesses and insights behind the scenes of people's creative work, so that's definitely a thing I was a bit disappointed about.

I loooove the layout of the cover, the bright colors and the fonts, it's definitely pretty to look at. Furthermore, the magazine comes with a nice gift, a little purse clasp. In the magazine you can find a really detailed tutorial for how to sew a purse using this clasp, even in different styles. Who doesn't like buying a magazine and then getting an extra gift? :) All in all, I quite like the magazine - especially all the interesting DIYs, they are great - but I think there's definitely lots of potential for more interesting stories and features and to develop a clearer structure of the mag's content, because this was sometimes a bit confusing for me as a new reader.
Has anyone of you already read this mag? What is your feedback?
Lu :)

On our balcony - the little oasis.

Hello everyone! :) Aww, thanks for all the cute comments on my latest outfit! :)

Today I wanna share with you how our balcony is currently looking and how I made it ready for my favorite season of the year.

This was our balcony a few weeks ago, showing how everything was left during winter. It took me one whole afternoon to clean and reorganize everything. :)

When days got warmer, we bought some little and inexpensive flower pots to add some color to the balcony. A short time later, we received two huuuuge parcels with organic plants that my mother has ordered, awesome!!! She sent strawberry plants, four different kinds of basil and six (!!) different kinds of tomatoes (among others, really old and natural kinds of tomatoes), can't wait to eat the first ones this summer!

It took some time to carefully repot everything, but this is so relaxing and so much fun! :)

I love the two chairs, the small table and the plant sidetable, all in white. The chairs are vintage and from DaWanda (my mother got them for me as a birthday present last year :)), the table is from a local hardware store and I found the plant sidetable on the street last year. As one lovely follower then wisely commented on my Instagram photo, "one man's trash is another man's treasure!" So true! :)

About three weeks ago, I put sunflower seeds into the pots and I can watch them grow on a daily basis. :) The little bird's house was a birthday present I got from Flo last year, so cute! :) The little lantern was a birthday gift from my lovely fabric store colleague last year and as you can see, there's no perfectly-equipped balcony without soap bubbles. :)

The tomatoes are growing so incredibly fast, unbelievable!

We had some strawberry plants left from last year (they survived winter, yeah!!!) and my mother also got us new ones. The already have lots of blossoms, won't take long until I can harvest fresh strawberries!! :)

Last year, Anja got me fresh peppermint and this also survived winter. :)

This photo has just been taken today after I again repotted some plants. :) The pillows are handmade, the pillow case DIY can be found here on magnoliaelectric. :)

Now our balcony is super ready for summer and the rest of spring, we are enjoying every minute out there. The only thing which is still missing is a parasol, because there's sun on our balcony all day and in summer sometimes even too much sun. :)

Do you have a balcony? Or even are garden (lucky you!!)? ;)

Lu