craft .. play .. love: team pretty

I like to pretty.

I've always decorated around me.

rewind - I'm 3.
My mom bought a brand new bathroom 'cover set' .. one of those awful 80's sets of shag carpet covers for 'prettying' bathroom stuffs. One on the toilet, one onto the back of the tank, and a couple matchers on the floor. Then, BOOM! your bathroom is totally matching .. totally hideous

As a toddler and lover of anything colorful - I found her new pure white pieces offensively boring .. so I decided I needed to decorate for her.

what can I say ?

I've ALWAYS been a giver.

I took her brightest, prettiest, reddest nail polish and flung the liquid stain EVERYWHERE! Making sure to not miss a single spot on her lovely carpet decor.

WHAT?!?!?

I thought it was pretty. However, she screamed and cursed a lot more than I would expect coming from someone who had just received a free bathroom makeover.

fast foward - I'm 6.

My mom hasn't changed the curtains in my room since I was a toddler.

I don't LIKE Winnie the Pooh, ANYMORE !! So ..I randomly poked 42 billionty holes with a metal nail file.

Voila!

Now they are 'fancy' and let the sun into the room. Clearly not the kind of 'fancy' my mom likes. I know this, because the next day she went out and purchased me 'whole' curtains again; throwing away my 'refashioned' curtains; without regard for all my efforts in redecorating.

fast forward 30 something years later :

we laugh about these stories, until we cry and/or snort.

it's apparently just in my nature to pretty :)

and yes - I sometimes use 'pretty' as a verb .. don't judge me.

so, in my recent efforts to pretty the world - I joined the washi tape movement.

I'm a little late on the 'craze' - but I'm Danielle and I'm far from trendy.

so what if washi tape was ''cool'' last year .. that means I'm cool this year !! right!?!?! >_<

wrong - but who cares?

moving on .. I know someone just said - 'What is washi tape?'

it's a cute, fancy, japanese tape with the feel of masking tape.

I may or may not have gone a little mad after seeing so many Washi crafts on Pinterest .. which may or may not have led to me ordering a box filled with $50-60 worth of washi tape ..

special thanks to both WillowWashi as well as Consumer Crafts for contributing to my craftaddiction.

Once I opened up my box of pretties, I realized I needed somewhere to store the sticky cuteness.

I remembered having a thrift store spice rack somewhere deep in my 'holding cell' for crafties.
Holding cell ?
lol - let me explain .. in this post, you can see my entire 'room' for crafting. There are 16 cupboards on the wall and even though I would have loved to claim ALL of the cupboards .. I was forced to share. After packing away our camping gear, holiday decorations, suitcases, etc - I was left with these 5 cupboards.

I've deemed them 'the holding cell' for crafting. Meaning that IF I purchase something and I'm not sure what to do with it .. it goes into the holding cell. As you can see - I've had no problem filling the cell.

I grabbed out the spice rack and snapped a photo of it, for the before; when my teenager 'called me out.' All I'd done was lay a piece of corduroy fabric over the 'mess' on the table and snapped the photo, below.

"Mom .. why do you do that?"
"what?"
"make everything look so 'perfect'?"
"huh?"
"Why don't you just take the picture as it is .. KEEP IT REAL!"

so fine .. here it is .. the mess before I covered it with corduroy.

so instead of the peaceful picture on corduroy, she'd prefer I show you this.

curtains, a recycleosaurus shopping bag, soccer shin guards, flashlights, lunch box, half-eaten goldfish crackers, my makeup bag, bottled water, money and scissors ..

Happy now, teen? :) *smirk - she's lucky I don't put any of the billion embarrassing picture of her up*

moving on .. we painted the rack white, so we could use the washi tape to it's full potential.
Potential ? In tape?
lol - a lot of washi tape is partially transparent - so the underneath being white just allows for the awesome to shine through.

after the rack was dry, it finally occured to me that I should be sure sure the tape would stay on the shelves. Well .. of course it didn't, so I had the awesome G. man screw in some wires, to hold the tape in.