RECREATING EXPENSIVE WEST ELM ROOM DECOR ✨ DIY Decor Dupes for LESS!

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Drew here from West- not West Elm, from Lone Fox. We are keeping it super casual and cozy today, and it's actually really gloomy in Los Angeles, which is so strange. It's been such a good streak of sun lately, and then the gloom comes in and I'm just like, wow. Today we are going to be doing some DIY decor, and this is going to be focused on an actual shop's decor. So we're going to be focusing on West Elm, and I actually used to work at West Elm for a year, and it was really what opened my eyes to interior design and decor. Like, I swear to you guys, I got this job just knowing that it was an aesthetic brand, and I just wanted to get my foot in the door in retail and just kind of figure out what I wanted to do with myself and my career. So I ended up getting a job at West Elm just as an on-the-floor, like, associate, and was quickly transferred actually into an in-home styling position, where I would go out and, like, bring decor and pieces with me to our clients' homes. So today we are going to be taking some popular decor pieces from West Elm that kind of cost quite a bit, and we're going to be duping them, DIYing them, and just putting our own little fun twist on them to create some really cute decor items for you guys. So if you are not already, make sure to subscribe to my channel. I post brand new home decor and DIY content every single week, but let's go ahead and jump on into our first project. So the first piece of decor we are going to be creating is a leather-wrapped vase. Now, these are super cute. I've seen these across many different websites in the past. West Elm has them. I believe Anthropologie has them. The ones on West Elm range from $130 to $220. So I wanted to go ahead and create our very own. It seemed pretty simple in my head, you know, just get a little piece of faux leather, wrap it around, lace it up, and you are good to go. So let's go ahead and create a leather-wrapped vase. The tools and supplies for our first project are actually super minimal. You're just going to need some of this faux leather material from Joanne's, along with some leather cording, and I used a Dollar Tree glass hurricane, which makes the project super affordable. So I started off by using a flexible ruler like this one to measure the outside of my container, along with the height of the vessel as well. I'm going to transfer those measurements over to my piece of leather material here, and I'm also going to go ahead and add two inches to my height measurement. So the height of the vase was around seven inches, so I ended up adding two inches, making it nine inches tall. That way, when we cut out our piece of leather material, you can wrap it around your vessel here, and you can see that at the top, there is about two inches of excess material, which will be folded in just like this when we work on the vase. Now, a little tip for you guys is that the core of faux leather has this very white edge, so I just used a sharpie to kind of camouflage that edge and make it look a lot nicer and clean. You could also use a brown one if you have that. And next, what we're going to do is create our holes for the lacing. So I measured out the height there, as you can see, and then every inch, I went ahead and I marked a little dot there. This is going to be a hole, which will then allow us to lace up our vase. So using my hole punch here, this is an industrial hole punch, but you can totally use just, you know, a needle or whatever you have access to to create the hole in your leather piece. And to get it really symmetrical on the opposite side, just simply fold it over, retrace your little hole marks, and then use your hole punch, of course, to punch out those holes as well. I use that same little sharpie trick on the holes, just making sure I had something underneath like this paper towel to catch any excess. And then I did cut out a small piece of leather material that you can see right here, and I'm going to be hot gluing it down at the front side of our vase. This is just going to allow the seam to be not as noticeable, so I'm starting to go ahead and lace up the vase here. Now, I tried a couple different methods for lacing this up, and honestly, it was just not lacing up properly, and I do believe it's because the faux leather material is very flimsy. It is not as stiff and durable as your proper leather that they would use on this project, but I did want to just go ahead and use the faux leather instead. So to achieve a similar look, I just kind of did a zigzag all the way up, going through holes that kind of matched up, and then going up to the hole above it, and just kind of lacing it up as shown here. I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory what I did for this little section here, and you can also go back and tack down any sections with hot glue. And of course, on our top rim there, just to create a nice clean finish, I did go ahead and adhere the excess leather from this area onto the inside with some hot glue, and that finishes off your leather vase. So the next piece of decor is totally one that you could purchase from West Elm, and it would not be an outrageous purchase at all. It is a set of coasters. They're $35. I don't think that is too crazy for a price for this really great, like, you know, chunky marble finish. However, I did have some ceramic coasters from Target, and I had some contact paper from my recent Amazon haul, and I figured, why not mesh the two together and create our very own set of marble coasters? And I love the way that they turned out. I think you guys are going to love this project, so let's dive on in. This little project came to be when I found these ceramic coasters in the dollar section at Target. They are $3 for three coasters, and I also pulled out this marble contact paper, which I featured in an Amazon favorites video just recently on my channel. I thought this would be a perfect material to use for these coasters, so I cut out a large rectangle here, which will allow me to then go ahead and place all three coasters on there to create a nice smooth finish on top. I just found this is the easiest method. I tried to firstly kind of trace them out on the contact paper and cut it out, but it was just so much easier to place them all down as shown here, and then cut around the edge of the coaster really close with your pair of scissors to achieve a nice clean finish. Then go in here with a little bit of sandpaper. This is just a fine grit sandpaper. To take off any excess paper or any edges that aren't super clean, this is just going to make your contact paper just kind of line up perfectly with your coaster edge there, and next what I'm doing is actually just cutting quarter-inch strips of our contact paper. This is going to be for the sides of the coaster. Since there is some actual dimension to these coasters, I did want to make sure that they looked like a full piece of marble there, so I cut out quarter-inch strips using my paper trimmer here, but you can totally use a ruler and scissors if you don't have a paper trimmer on hand. I just had one, which made the process a bit easier, and then you're just going to stick that down to the side of your coaster, making sure that it really butts up nicely to the first piece of contact paper you applied to the top there. I find that having that seam look the best is easiest, and then you could trim any excess off the bottom as shown here with a pair of scissors, and then once again you can go in with a little bit of sandpaper if you need to and kind of sand down those edges to ensure they're nice and clean, but do keep in mind when you sand down the contact paper, it does reveal again the white core, so I do suggest just kind of going back with a sharpie or whatever you have to color that white core just to make it look a little bit more cohesive and like one piece of marble. So just trimming away the excess there, and we're going to move on to the next step, which is actually applying a coat of resin over the top to make them waterproof and all around just look like one cohesive piece of marble. So using this craft resin here, I am mixing up equal parts, and you guys, I know I should be using gloves with this. I will tell you right now, I did have a mask on, but I did not have any gloves. I was looking for them all over my apartment. I didn't have any, so I just made sure to stay cautious and not get my hands in it at all. I propped up all my coasters on some paper cups along with a piece of parchment paper, and I'm just pouring a nice generous amount of resin on to each of them. You really don't need to make that much resin because we're just putting a coat over the top, and then I did use a popsicle stick just to ensure the resin was kind of falling over the edge, and it was just pushed around wherever it needed to go, and then over time, of course, all the excess resin is going to drip off of the edges and kind of fall onto your parchment paper there. I did use a heat tool to go ahead and make sure that there were no air bubbles inside of the resin, and you're gonna let those cure overnight, and that finishes off your coasters. Now, in the past for my DIYing Your DM series, I have been sent these river rock and metal sculptural objects in the past from West Elm, and I really never knew how I wanted to go ahead and try to figure out this project, but today, I was like, I have the tools and supplies. I think I can go ahead and do it. We are going to be creating these sculptural objects for a fraction of the price. Once again, these range from $30 to $60, but they're actually pretty simple to recreate, and I think you guys are going to love the outcome, so let's dive on into this one. The supplies for our river rock sculptures are also super minimal. I went ahead and used some of these rings here that have a bar down the center. You can get these at any craft store. I also had some plain rings as well, and I have a big box of clay here. I suggest just picking a box of it up at Joann's or Michael's. You can use a 50% off coupon and get it for a fraction of the price that it normally costs, and I went ahead, and for my first one, I wanted to create a larger sculpture, so I did use quite a bit of clay for this one because we're going to want to emulate the bottom as a rock. Since I'm not actually going to go out and find a river rock and drill into it, I'm going to recreate the look of one with some clay here. So once you have a shape that you like, you can go ahead and press your ring down into your clay shape here. Now, I know this seems strange to just go ahead and press it down into this clay shape, but it totally works, and do not worry, we're going to be baking the entire object as one piece, so it's going to kind of solidify and turn into one object here. So I'm just pressing the clay back together, making sure it's nice and mended, but what you're going to want to do is actually push the ring down like shown here. This just makes the baking process a lot easier, and do not worry, I'll show you guys how to make sure that it stands up later on once we have it baked out. And for this one here, I'm going to do the same thing, creating first the base for our ring. So I'm just kind of creating this oblong oval shape that kind of has a flat bottom to sit on, pushing my ring down onto the inside, and then pressing that clay back together, making sure it's nice and mended. And this kind of gives you an idea of what that's going to look like so far. So I'm going to pop these both into the oven. Now, this is a very, very thick piece of clay, so I did bake them for about an hour. I think I left them in for about an hour and 15 minutes, and once they did come out, all you have to do is pivot the ring upwards again, like back in the direction you want it to kind of sit in, and then fill in your holes with some strong bond hot glue or some super glue, whatever you feel comfortable with using. But the hot glue worked perfect for me. These aren't going to be items that are touched very often, just more so shelf decor. So I taped off the ring there and brought it outside, and used my stone finish spray paint, which again, I shared this in a recent Amazon Favorites video as well. And I just gave the clay a stone finish with this spray paint, and it looks so legitimate, you guys. I love the outcome of this. Let it dry, and you have some new little sculptural objects. And our last project in the video is a set of planters. These terracotta planters caught my eye when I was scrolling on West Elm's site. I thought they were so cute, and I wanted to go ahead and put my own little flair on them, and kind of create my own set of three planters. I was at the 99 cent store and came across a box of three planters for $7.99, and figured they'd be the perfect base for this project. So I'm going to take them and transform them into a similar looking set of planters. I will, however, say, you guys, this is not my cleanest DIY project to date. I ran out of masking tape, so I was using electrical tape, and I just tried to make it work. I think they turned out super cute all in all in the end, and I'll let you guys be the judge of them. So let's dive into this one. When I saw this set of three planters for $8 at the 99 cent store, they were substantial as well. These are some nice quality planters for eight bucks, totally customizable as well, which I love. So I brought two of them outside with my terracotta finish spray paint, and I did give them a full two coats of terracotta spray paint for both of these pots here. But I do know, you guys, that the terracotta spray paint is hard to come by. I stocked up on it whenever Amazon finally gets it back in stock. So I'm going to share with you guys a DIY terracotta paint method as well. I actually used these three colors here, starting off with quite a bit of the Pueblo color, and then I did add in there a little bit of black to kind of deepen it up, but you then have to go back with some red to kind of bring back that reddish tone in the terracotta. Now for this particular paint, I went in with a little bit of baking soda as well just to give it a slight texture. I didn't use too much because I don't want it to have too much texture, just a little bit of that kind of sandy grit. Now I would say that this one I did add a little bit too much red. I should have leaned a little bit more on the orange side, but it really just looked like more of a reddish tone terracotta, which was not a problem at all. And I just used a paintbrush from the dollar store as well to apply this on the outside, giving it a nice generous coat. And I did go ahead and apply two coats of this paint here. Once it was dry, you can see that the DIY color is on the left and the spray paint is on the right there. So next what I did was I used some electrical tape, and now I know I probably shouldn't be using electrical tape for this. I ran out of masking tape and all of my washi tapes. I had nothing on hand, so I was like, I'm just going to use this electrical tape and see how it works. And it did work pretty well. For this first one here, which is our smallest pot, I believe, I went ahead and I'm just going to be adding some stripes very similar to the West Elm pot there. So I just put the tape basically where I wanted the stripe lines to be, and I went in with my paint and applied it on to those sections there, giving two coats of the white paint to make sure you have a nice opaque finish. Once that's dried down, you can remove the tape and reveal your new little paint lines there, which give you that look of a nice kind of detail on the front of your terracotta pot, which I love. And to all of these pots, I actually used my Sculpey Gloss Glaze, and I painted these on the white sections once they were dry. And I love the way this looks because it almost looks like the white sections are glazed, and then the terracotta sections are more of a matte kind of raw finish. So I like the contrast of glossy and matte as well. Now for our larger pot here, we're doing a herringbone pattern. So you're going to want to start off by putting two pieces of vertical tape on your pot about four to six inches apart from each other, however wide you want your herringbone to be. And then you're going to add some diagonal tape sections, which are going to start off the pattern for you. So anywhere that there's open terracotta within that taped off area, that's where you're going to be painting. So I'm going in first with a layer of that white paint, and I'm just going in in any of those sections, making sure to give a nice generous coat there. And I did go in with two coats. Now as you can see, the electrical tape made the edge a little bit fuzzy there, but that's not an issue because I kind of don't mind the kind of handmade look that it gave it. Now again, I'm applying two more strips the same exact width apart that I did the first one, and then I'm applying some new pieces of diagonal tape on there to kind of fill in the sections that I want to add my white paint to as well. So as you can see, I'm going in here applying another coat of white paint to create the other half of our herringbone design. And you're just going to repeat this around the entire exterior of the pot, just putting some vertical strips first, then adding a couple of diagonal strips, and then filling in any of those sections that just make sense for that spot. You can totally mix it up as well and kind of not even create a herringbone pattern, but more so like a cluster of diagonal shapes, which I think would be really cute. And I also went ahead and finished the top rim as well. Now for our last pot, I'm going in with some triangles here. Now this one, I feel like I could have done a little bit nicer and a little bit neater, but you know what? We all, we live and we learn. So I just cut out a little piece of sponge that I've had. It's for grouting. I had it in my stash. Cut out a triangle shape, and I just used it as a stamp for this project to go ahead and stamp in my triangles. But I wish I was just a little bit more patient and tedious with this process, because I do feel like I kind of made them look a little bit wonky and not that great. I was just going too quick with the process, but I think the planter still ended up super cute in the end. I went back with a paintbrush and just filled in all of the shapes, and just cleaned up the outside edges as well. So that's what I'm doing here. I applied two coats onto each of the triangles, and I also added a little band to the bottom as well. And that finishes off your trio of terracotta planters. And there you go, you guys. That finishes off today's West Elm DIY Decor Dupes video. If there are any other stores that you would like me to go ahead and kind of recreate some decor from, totally leave them in the comment sections below. I would love to see your guys's suggestions. Make sure to leave a comment below letting me know which project was your guys's favorite in the video. And also, I will make sure to link all of the original projects from West Elm's website in the description box. That way, in case you want to go ahead and check them out, or even purchase them, you can definitely find the originals. I will link them below for you guys. Again, thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you are all having an amazing day wherever you are, and I will catch you in my next one, which is going to be a really fun makeover! We have another makeover coming to the channel, you guys, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and I'll catch you next one. Bye!