Made By HtA

Simple DIY Clay Photo Display Stands

After working on the travel photos confetti project, I started looking for more ways to display photographs around the house. This is the first time I’ve used air drying clay (it feels funny) – so there was a little bit of experimenting involved.

Here is the first batch of diy photo stands:

I was using DAS air drying clay, so after cutting a piece of the clay to shape I waited 5-10 minutes for the clay to harden a bit before creating a grove for the photos to sit in.

I thought I could create tiny little pieces, but soon realized that air drying clay is pretty light weight and so any large photographs would tip the photo stand over. The first batch was hand molded. It’s quite tough to get a perfect shape (sphere, cube, etc.). So for the next batch I went looking for things I could use as molds/cutters.

The triangular pencil sharpener ended up making the best shapes:

Here are some of my travel photographs I printed out on some thick watercolor paper:

Here are some pictures of the final pieces, painted with glossy white and black paint:

Trying out different shapes:

Miniatures:

In the end, the triangle shape worked best:

DIY Shadow Box Wall Decor

May 30, 2013 in DIY, Made By HtA

DIY Shadow Box Wall Decor

This was a simple project. After seeing the shadow boxes on Restoration Hardware with the sea fans, I was inspired. The first step was trying to find a square shadow box – enter the IKEA RIBBA frame. The only other major things I needed were some decorative organic pieces that I could spray paint, and some fabric for the background.

My collection after taking a walk around the neighborhood.

An IKEA shopping bag comes in handy when spray painting.

The plan was to create two shadow boxes. One with a dark fabric background with a light/white colored decor piece. The second box would have a light colored background with a black display piece. Here are the semi-finalist decor items.

After seeing how the pieces turned out after being spray painted (also considering the size and how decorative they are) here are the final two pieces.

Here is the fabric choice. There is the off white canvas style fabric which I had lying around. The grey one was hard to come by. A) I didn’t want to spend a whole bunch on it (men’s suit fabric comes at a high price), and B) I didn’t want there to be any pattern (which a lot of them have) or any shine. I ended up finding this piece in a luxury fabric shop in the scrap basket.

The next step was cutting a piece of cardboard to stick the fabric to.

The board and fabric cut and glued together.

The back of the organic pieces were a bit odd. I ended up gluing a strip of fabric into the crevices and glued the other end to the fabric board.

And that’s it. I stuck with basic colors black/white for the custom DIY shadow box designs, but am curious to know how colorful versions of this would look like. Here are some close ups.

Travel Photos Confetti Display – Plus DIY Printables Guide

May 24, 2013 in DIY, Made By HtA

Getting Creative: IKEA RUSCH DIY Wall Clock Hacks

This was an exercise in getting creative. The RUSCH clocks from IKEA here only cost US0.84 each. So I bought a few, and tried to come up with some ideas on how to hack them into better looking clocks. My first attempt was spray painting the clock frame. I soon realized that anyone who’s been to IKEA would know I just sprayed painted their clock black. So my focus shifted to taking the clock frame apart and using the black box that holds all the mechanical parts, and even reusing the round plastic cover.

Here are the clocks:

The Black Beast

For this one I ended up reusing the round plastic cover of the clock. Those little number points – they were made from cutting up the seconds hand.

About to drill the plastic cover. This was also done for the White on White and the Dressed Up clocks below. Wire cutters were used to cut of the plastic tabs that hold the cover into the RUSCH’s frame.

Cutting up the seconds hand to create the number placements.

Since I didn’t want the seconds hands on any of the clocks, I ended up cutting them off the round tabs. I still needed this part to cover up the hole. The tabs were then spray painted.

White on White

This was one of the other clocks that reused the RUSCH’s plastic cover. No number placements this time.

Dressed Up

The last clock to reuse the plastic cover. This time fabric was glued over the cover and little mohawks were created around the edges.

Double Dose

Double Dose makes use of the RUSCH clock and the MARIT place mat.

Glued cardboard to the back of the mat to make it stiff, then stabbed a hole through.

Horizon

This last clock was made out of a serving tray found at the dollar store. Drilled a hole through it then hit that bad boy with some white, then black spray paint.

Spray painting inside an IKEA shopping bag. Hitting the serving tray with the first coat of white.

The End

May 23, 2013 in DIY, Made By HtA

Travel Photos Confetti Display – Plus DIY Printables Guide

So I was trying to figure out a way of displaying some travel photos, and decided to arrange a bunch of tiny photos on one sheet in Photoshop – photo confetti style. I was a bit worried about how the quality of the tiny pictures would turn out. But it turned out great.

I created two versions. The first is of the cities I’ve lived/worked in: London, Ho Chi Minh, New York, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai. This one I decided to create in black and white.

The second version is confetti of travel photos, including the trip to Thailand I came back from last week. This one was done in color.

I also tried doing the cities one with a black background, but liked the white one better.

Doing It Yourself: This will be much easier to do in Photoshop or Gimp. But it can also be done in PowerPoint. The images below that you can download are in the ‘png’ format, this means that there are holes where the circles are. So you don’t have to create this part of the image.

So just take the masked images below to your program of choice, arrange the photos behind it, and then it is off to the printers. The printable images below are meant for A4 sizes. Hope that helps.

When you click to the white background downloads, the image is there – it is just pure white so you can’t see it. Just right click and save.