Killer Kantha

I'm dying over these kantha quilts offered by One King's Lane. If you've ever bought anything from OKL, you know that you have to act FAST! Get 'em while they last. I would kill for the orange one (birthday gods, hook me up!) Kantha and Suzani- double love. And the prices are perfect.

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The Happy Habitat Shop is Open!

I've hinted about a shop opening on Happy Habitat, and I'm proud to say, it's officially OPEN for business! While my blog is about being Happy in your own Habitat, I think you should always feel inspired outside your home as well.

Welcome pocket-sized portable pattern! Phone cases with a wee bit of personality. Here's a lil sample:

 

The designs are inspired from geometric patterns found around the world. You can customize your case with an initial or leave it simple. Cases fit iPhone 4, Verizon iPhone 4, iPhone 3G/3GS, iPod Touch 4, BlackBerry Bold 9700, BlackBerry Curve 8520/9300/3G and Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant.

Don't see anything you like? Want your name or monogram on there? I can personalize a case for you-- talk to me!

Stop by the shop to see more options and come back often-- new patterned products are being added to the shop soon!

Can't get enough FRETWORK!

I'm sure you've noticed that I have a thing for fretwork. It's a huge inspiration for my patterns and seems to add architectural interest no matter how it used. "Fretwork" is a term that most often brings readers to my blog, so I feel obligated to tell everyone about this. I fell in love when I saw these fretwork panels made for adding to furniture, walls, doors, whatever you can think of. They look so easy to use, flexible and lightweight. I hope to find a way to use these somewhere soon. Great job Danika and Cheryle! Be sure to check out their shop and Danika's blog. Here's a lil sample:

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By the way, I'm not compensated in any way to endorse O'verlays. I just think they are too great to keep to myself.

DIY Ikat Fabric Tray

Back when I was going a little tray crazy, I picked up a bunch of unfinished trays when they were on sale. I think they were all less than $3. My mom recently gave me some remnant fabric in a gorgeous grey and bronze ikat print, so I thought I'd try my hand at a fabric tray. I chose the coral because I'm trying to not be so matchy-matchy. Normally, I would have just done ivory paint on the tray, but I like the way the coral works with it.

So here's how I did it:
Materials:

• wooden tray (I got my from Jo-Ann)
• spray primer
• spray paint
• fabric (mine was pretty thick, and I think that worked to my advantage, but I will try again with a thinner fabric and see how that works)
• spray adhesive
• Scotchgard spray
• glass or plexiglass cut to fit the inside of the tray

1) Spray paint the tray with a primer.
2) Spray paint the tray with your choice of color, as many coats as you need. Be sure to let the paint dry between coats.
3) Spray paint the tray with lacquer (I use Rust-Oleum, according to this post).
4) Cut a piece of thin cardboard for the inside size of your tray. I used the cardboard back of a large pad of paper (I always keep those, you never know when they might come in handy!) I did this by pressing the cardboard into the back of the tray, then tracing a line along a ruler on the bend mark. There's probably a more accurate way, but worked for me.
5) Cut your fabric about an inch or so larger than your cardboard piece.
6) Iron your fabric.
7) Place cardboard piece in top of the fabric and iron the sides over the edges of the cardboard. Fold the corners in any way that works. You can cut them later.
8) Using spray adhesive, spray the cardboard piece (do this outside so the stick doesn't get everywhere)
9) Place the cardboard so that it fits within the ironed edges and smooth out well with your fingertips. 
10) Using spray adhesive, spray the fabric pieces that will be folded over. The spray adhesive is forgiving. I went back after I was done, and pulled all the edges tighter. Fold the corners however it works for you. I liked it to have a squared edge because it fit nice and tight in the tray. I tried giving it an edge that was not squared and it left a gap in the corners of the tray and didn't look so good. 
11) Cut any bulky pieces off the corners.
12) Spray the front of the fabric with Scotch-gard spray if you have it. 
12) Place cardboard fabric piece into tray. I left a big book on mine overnight because the corners seemed to pop up. Maybe because the corners were a bit higher because of  the way the fabric was layered in the corners. The book helped to smash it down flat. 
13) You could leave it as it is, but I wanted the beautiful ikat to be even more protected and wanted it a finished look, so I put a piece of cut glass into it. I had the piece of glass leftover from something, so I just took it to the hardware store and had them cut it to size. The nice guys at Hartman & Sons Hardware did it for FREE, gotta love that! You could also use plexiglass if you wanted.

For me this was a $3 tray. I got the tray on sale, the fabric was given to me and I already had the rest. Not bad.
Happy Tray Making!

My Word Art Posters

I'm thinking I need some inspiration since I'm getting ready to launch a store on this site and I've been spending a lot of time in my office. I am in need of some motivation to help keep the faith in what I'm doing. I did a little searching and found some great ones. And here are the inspirational quotes turned wall art that I came up with:

(look familar? imitation is the sincerest form of flattery)

PS-- I think I have a lot to learn about typography. 

I struggled on these, and I'm not sure that they are quite my aesthetic, 

but I like the messages on each one!

I'm back...

Miss me? Apparently there is a big problem with spam blogs out there. You know those junky websites that you land on and think to yourself, "what is this? how did I get here? and how do I get OUT of here as fast I can?" Happy Habitat was cloned to look like a legitimate website/blog, but then the spammers added a bunch of inappropriate junk to it. It's a bit foreign to me, but what I do know is that Blogger shut down Happy Habitat until they could verify that it was the original and not one of the spam sites. Frustrating.

The good news is that while I wasn't busy blogging, I was busy getting ready to open my shop. One step at a time, but I have a mountain of items in my head that I'm excited about. Everything in the shop is inspired by geometric patterns from around the world, such as: Moroccan fretwork, Indian jali work and Spanish tiles.  Here's a peek of some of the patterns I've been working on:

PS- If you look closely, things are a bit out of whack on the Happy Habitat site. Please excuse the site construction while I work to get my shop up and things back in order.