CHIC DIY Projects that look EXPENSIVE!

Today I'm sharing with you four DIY projects that are actually worth your time, effort, and money. Starting with this first one here, it's one of my absolute favorites because it feels like it's something that could belong from the art deco period, and I'm going to be using a simple black framed mirror, some curtain tie backs, just one, and then some wooden dowels. These are half inch wooden dowels, and I'll link all my supplies for all the projects below for you. My inspiration actually came from this mirror here, which I've had saved, and I've just been loving the use of tassels on really everything and anything lately. Sort of stepped skyscraper, almost geometric design is very reminiscent of art deco and very much feels like that era. So I'm going to be creating that actually using these dowels, and in the end you're going to want a 10 inch, an 11 inch, and a 12 inch dowel per side. So I'm basically cutting an inch off of two dowels, and then two inches off of two dowels, and then I want to keep the little end pieces because they're going to make the perfect little kind of sections that we're going to be adding our tassel from, which you'll see shortly. It'll all come together. These small little cutoffs are actually going to be holding our tassels that hang from the mirror, and so you're going to want to drill a hole through the wood dowel at the end, but not all the way through. I actually only drilled it about halfway through. That's going to be allowing us to glue our tassel on the inside while still giving you a nice clean finish. So I prepped my mirror because we're going to be spray painting all of this together, but I wanted to glue together our little wood cuts first, so I'm just sandwiching these and centering them on top of each other to create these wooden panels, which are then going to be glued directly onto the mirror. I just bought this affordable little framed mirror because it cuts out a step in the process, and I feel like cutting mirrors is not the most fun thing to do, so I thought buying one and just having it pre-framed would be ideal for this process. So I glued together our little wood sections, which this is really going to transform the silhouette of our mirror, and once we spray paint it all together, this is going to make so much more sense. So I'm gluing these to the sides of the mirror and making sure they're positioned along the top edge so that they're not, like, because these dowels weren't as thick as the mirror, I wanted them just kind of aligned with the top, if that makes sense. And then I'm finding where I want to place my little tassel tabs, if you will. I don't even know what to call these. They're little, like, arms that stick out from the mirror that are going to hold our tassels, but I actually marked about five inches down from the top and placed them on either side with hot glue, and I'll link the hot glue I use as well. It's Gorilla Hot Glue, but for this project, I knew I wanted to use a high-gloss lacquer spray paint because I feel like that's also very reminiscent of the Art Deco period. It's going to be perfect for the finish on this mirror, and it's really going to contrast beautifully with the tassel because you have that sort of silky fabric tassel and then the high-gloss lacquer from the spray paint. And high-gloss spray paint definitely takes a bit longer to dry, but it creates such a finish. So I did multiple coats of that to get kind of a lacquered feel, and now it's time to add our tassels, which I simply cut one of these little curtain tie backs in half at the top, and then I used some very thin wire to wrap the top so it didn't come undone and also made it a lot easier to glue the cord from the tassel onto the mirror because, if you can imagine, it's a very silky cord that this tie back is made of, and so if you wrap it with some wire, it gives it a lot more structure, and it's also going to contain that sort of cut frayed end, and then you could cut off all the extra and then just add some hot glue into that hole that you drilled and just kind of push this in there, and it's going to conceal all the wire once you push it in the hole. You're going to want to make sure that the hole is larger than kind of the top of the cord, but once it's glued up in there, you are good to go, and this genuinely, you guys, looks so good. For our next project, we are going to be using the sun to create our very own art prints. This is a sun-powered printmaking kit, which is also known as cyanotypes, but that is a more technical process. This is kind of the more DIY process, and this kit is super affordable. I'll link it below for you. There's going to be the sunlight dye, and then there's also going to be a concentrated wash that you're going to use, so I'm grabbing a piece of watercolor paper, and I'm just pouring a couple little drops of this on the surface. As you can see, I didn't use too much, so you can make a whole bunch of with this kit, and I'm moving it around with a sponge that comes with it as well, just making sure that it's saturated on the paper, and the cool thing about this is whatever you place over the top of the area that you added the dye, it's not going to actually die from the sun, so we're going to bring this outside once I have all of these shells in place, and these are just sliced shells that I found online, and I placed them on top to create this sort of beachy print. I'm actually going to be giving this one to my mom for her beach house because it turned out way better than I could have even expected, and I brought this outside, and you can see immediately the sun starts to change the color, and this is normal speed here, and then right here, it's hitting eight times speed. You can start seeing how intense that color starts to get, and I really only left it outside for maybe five minutes or so, but once I was done and I felt like it got dark enough, which was kind of looking like this, I brought it back inside, and I was going to start revealing our print. Oh, that one's good. It has like some nice shadowing in there. So once you remove everything, you're going to want to give this a nice rinse under the water, and then you're also going to want to use some of that cleansing solution that came in the kit because it's going to basically make the dye stop working, because if you think about it, there's still active dye under these areas, and if you brought this back out in the sun, it would start color changing even more. So I wanted this to stop at this point, so I added the concentrate and just washed it out and let this dry fully, and you can do absolutely whatever you want. Even if the items are more on the 3D side, I wanted to share with you how you can also use something like this and use a couple of faux florals and then just use a piece of glass over the top because the sun can still, of course, penetrate through the glass, but to finish off our print, I just got this simple frame online with a linen mat, which I'm going to pop our watercolor print in, and I love the texture that the paper has, but in the end this just looks so cute and high-end. I love how it looks, and it's an original one-of-a-kind piece of art. Today's video is kindly sponsored by Helix, and their Labor Day promo they're offering the Lone Fox family is top tier, so wait until the end. If you've never heard of Helix, they are a premium mattress-in-a-box company that ships directly to you. Your mattress comes in a box, but this mattress is not like any other mattress. It is so luxurious, you guys. 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Like, I genuinely, even if I wasn't sponsored by Helix, I would purchase and recommend their products. I think the price point is great for the quality, and they also offer things like mattress pads, if you don't want to get a full-on mattress, and even their comfort adjust pillow, which I think is really cool because you could pull out the filling and kind of adjust it to your own comfort, so it's perfect for you, and it can be customized for your own sleep. And I know a mattress is definitely an investment purchase, so they also offer flexible payment plans and financing options, a 10-year warranty, and free shipping within the U.S. So if you've been in the market for a new mattress, it is the perfect time to take advantage of this offer. You can get up to 30% off select mattresses over on Helix's site by using my link at the top of the description box below. These sconces turned out better than I could have ever imagined, and it all starts with this super inexpensive half-round fabric sconce set. And the thing I love about these is they come in hardwired, they come in battery-operated, corded, so everyone can make this. And I also got some silk fabric that has some nice little slubs in it. I got this at the fabric store, I just got half a yard of it, so you really don't need that much. And I took the fabric panels out of the sconce pack and brought them outside and taped them down to some cardboard, because I'm going to want to recover these in our silk fabric, just to give them a more elevated feel. This is totally optional, and it's kind of why I'm diving into this quite quickly, because this is just an extra step that I wanted to do. You can cover these in whatever fabric you like for your space, so if you have a specific scheme you're going for, you can do that. But I just something that felt a little bit more luxury and high-end. And once I had that stuck down and let it dry for a bit, I brought it back inside and cut off the fabric using an X-Acto knife. And I'm actually working on top of a butcher block, it doesn't look like it because it's wrapped in paper. But it's all beat up under here, so do not worry, I'm not just chopping into some random table. And I could have cut that with scissors, but all my scissors were so dull, I just couldn't even cut the edge. It was so bad, you guys. So I ended up creating the little form, and then it has these little clips on the inside of your fabric section. And you're going to clip those all the way around the wire, and then velcro it on the back side. But it was looking pretty good at this point. I loved how it looked, and I knew I was going to be covering up the edges regardless. So I wasn't too worried with how that looked, because I got this edge banding, which is actually normally used for furniture or for like the edges of MDF shelves. And I just wanted to have kind of a contrast sort of tuxedo stripe on these sconces. And I wanted it on the top and bottom, but something about this edge banding, I thought it was going to be more of a black lacquer. It was actually more of like a matte carbon vibe. It was really not the vibe. So I added a little bit of rope trim over top of it. If you guys recall, I used this in my guest room makeover, and I lined all the walls like in the creases and around the windows with this trim. But I just added small dots of hot glue and ran this right down the center of that edge banding, because I'm actually going to be using the other little tassel tie back that came in the pair from our first project. Because you get two of those curtain tie backs, and we're going to be adding that to this sconce. And it has a very similar rope trim in the middle of it. So I cut that off. I lined the top, and I also lined the bottom. And time for the star of the show. I swear tassels are just transforming everything lately. Like they really add such an elegant feel to something and give it such a finished look as well. So I'm just adding this little bit of tassel. I cut it to like four inches in length, and I just glued it to the top inner rim. And this is going to hang from the inside. And I just love, love, love how these sconces turned out, especially for the under $50 price point we paid. If you've made it this far, you are in for a treat. This project is one of my favorite DIYs I think I've ever made actually. And we are starting off with some gemstone cabochons. I will link below the sets I got online. They're an oval and circle. And I also got this tissue box cover in a silver. I also used some copper foil tape and some 6040 solder and some flux as well. So the supplies are pretty minimal, but they're going to be so impactful, you guys. So I'm starting off by wrapping our cabochons to start. And using the copper tape, you're going to want to wrap the cabochon. But the tape is going to be halfway on the top of the cabochon and halfway on the bottom. We're essentially going to be creating a little bezel. If you could imagine this was implanted in a necklace or in a bracelet or something, how that would look and how the metal would encase the edge of that, that is what we're creating with this tape. And we're going to be doing this on all the little gemstones that we're going to want to add to our tissue box cover. And the cool thing about this DIY is you can do this on a phone case. You can do this on a matchbox cover, on a lighter case. You can do this on virtually anything. I've even seen a trash can done like this before on Pinterest. That's kind of what sparked the inspo for this project. And this little bone folder here is actually going to work and come in so handy when pressing the foil down. And I believe this came actually with the foil tape, but I wrapped all my gemstones and here's how they were looking so beautiful. I love seeing all these together. And now's the fun part of getting a little random and sporadic with your foil tape. You're just going to create almost like some stained glass lines. And I wanted mine to be extremely organic. So I started off with a bunch of horizontal lines. Then I went in with my vertical lines and I just connected them up in different ways that made me feel happy. And all of these copper lines are going to end up with solder on top of them and kind of create like a stained glass looking effect in the end with your gemstones implanted in there. So I just went and free handed my placement of all of that and then started gluing down some of these gemstones. The glue is really just a temporary placeholder to hold everything in place. And then I also decided that I wanted to create a very wonky abstract little bit. I've seen so many homes in Los Angeles that have this little sort of a stray skewed stained glass effect in them. And I always love that one little wonky touch. I think it adds such a unique quality. So I added all of my gemstones. I then am using the paste flux and a little brush to go in and brush the flux on every single section that we're going to be adding our solder to, which is basically all of our copper tape that is surrounding our gemstones and then also the strips that we added. And the solder I'm using is a 60-40 solder, which allows it to flow nice and evenly, but still keep some of its shape as well. And as you can see here, it kind of flows down the edges. So I'm working with it just nice and slowly. I like to create a nice bead of the solder on either end of the gemstone and then sort of move that solder around the gemstone and sort of encapsulate it, if you will. This is my first time ever doing a project like this. So don't think I have done this so many times and you're going to ruin your first one because soldering is a lot easier than it looks. And it really is only going to stick to the foil tape sections that you have down. So I took my time and soldered all of my stones and all of my grid lines with the solder and you can build it up as well. If you feel like you want some sections to be a little bit more chunky or thicker, you can add more or you can also remove it. It's extremely easy to work with and solder is quickly becoming one of my like favorite new mediums to work with. And I discovered it recently through stained glass, but I found out or I feel like I can just do so much with soldering. I have so much on my mind that I want to do with soldering. So I'm sure you will be seeing more of that on the channel in the future and I would definitely recommend investing in a soldering gun. They're not too bad, they're like $40-$50 for a good quality one. And I just love how this tissue box cover turned out. This is a project I'm going to cherish for a long time and I hope that you guys enjoyed this DIY video. Make sure to subscribe to my channel for brand new home decor and DIY videos every single week. I'm going to let this roll for a bit longer, but I will catch you guys in my next one. Bye!