DIY: Easy Wooden Crate Shelf

Welcome back! I've been feeling very crafty lately, mostly due to my late-night Pinterest binge sessions, and I came across an idea that I wanted to try. Using wooden crates as shelves is not only a really cute idea, but it also adds extra storage space to any room that you decide to put them in! I chose to use them in my bathroom for two reasons: my bathroom was very ugly and I needed more storage. Before we start, I'd like to share some background info on my bathroom. My mom and I live in a rental house, and as I'm sure some of you know there's not much you can do to renovate in these situations. There are strict rules against painting, so it's hard to make a rental space more personalized. I tried my best to work with what I had, and I think it is a huge improvement from what it was before. Just like my bedroom, everything in the bathroom is white. The walls, floors, countertop, cabinets, shower, toilet, EVERYTHING! By adding the wooden crates, a funky painting, and new towel hooks, I think that I made my bathroom look 100% better (and not as boring). With that being said, let's get into the tutorial!

This is what my bathroom looked like before:

To begin, you're going to need some wooden crates, sand paper, and wood stain.

What I used was:

1 medium wood crate ($9.99) and 2 half wood crates ($6.99) from Michael's.
1 Minwax 8oz. can of wood stain in the shade Dark Walnut ($4.77) from Lowe's.
Sandpaper that we had lying around the house (sorry this is not very helpful).

TIP: before you go buy the supplies, ALWAYS look for coupons. Michael's, Jo-Ann's, and Hobby Lobby all have coupons all the time. I saved 25% off my entire purchase at Michael's!

This is what the crates looked like before I began staining:

I started out sanding the crates, but to be honest it was taking too long and it wasn't doing much (in my opinion) so I gave up on this step and just began staining. Don't worry, they turned out FINE. To stain: I used the same method that I did in my previous DIY tutorial about how to build your own headboard.  Click Here to see headboard tutorial!

 When I was finished, I had a small problem. I couldn't leave the crates outside to dry because it was raining (in July, in Southern California, what are the odds?), so I left them in the garage. This caused the crates to become sticky due to poor ventilation, and they took about three days to completely dry, with only a very small amount of time of them being in the sun. ):

With my mom's help, we hung the crates with two drywall screws in each upper corner. This is the finished product:

ALL ABOUT THE DECOR:

1. Cork & Symbol - $3.59 from Michaels (25% off)

2. Potted Lavender - $5.99 from Michaels (25% off)

3. Pre-made Jar of Flowers - $3.99 from Michaels (25% off)

4. Bella Island Moonlight Candle - $10.49 from Target

And that sums up the tutorial! I do want to share how I finished the rest of the bathroom though. It was really easy and affordable, and it added something unique to the most generic bathroom in the world. I was originally going to use vinyl and create a triangle pattern to stick along the bathroom wall, until I came across this painting at Hobby Lobby. Not only did the colors match the look I wanted, but it was also 80% off!! 

And let's face it, buying a painting is much easier than my original plan. 

I am not kidding, it was $130 originally, and I got it for $26!

I forgot to take a picture of the towel rack that was up before, but just believe me when I say it was hideous. The previous tenants of the house had completely bent it in the middle, and whoever painted the bathroom got white paint all over it (it's silver). Not only that, but the painters painted AROUND the towel rack, so that when my mom and I took it off the wall, there were two huge rectangles where we had to un-stick the towel rack from the paint. Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about that except put spackle over it (the owners of the house will not let us paint, even if it's the same color, they obviously are very logical people), but I did not include this eye sore in any of the pictures (: 

Anyways, these two hooks are also from Hobby Lobby ($5.99 each), and I added gold accents to them with a paint pen.

Before and after of the gold paint pen accents: 

For the final touch, I bought some new towels from Target ($5.94 each), and my bathroom was complete!

 Thank you for reading, and follow my blog to get updates about whenever I post!

Foundation Routine for Dry Skin

Hello there! So this video shows you how I do my foundation routine everyday, and how I try and manage my very dry skin. If you have dry skin, then try out these products and maybe they will work for you too!

Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out my blog!

How To: Milkmaid Braids

Hello lovely readers! I finally got my new camera!! Woo-hoo! So for my first video post I decided to do a tutorial on how to do Milkmaid Braids. Let me know what you think, and I'd love to see everyone try this hairstyle out!

Thank you so much for stopping by and checking out my blog!

DIY Simple Headboard

Hello everyone! For my first "official" post I am going to show you how I made my own headboard! Very exciting!! But seriously this was really fun and exciting for me.
Okay so basically my room was ugly and boring before and I felt like I was living in an insane asylum because everything was WHITE. I decided to spice things up a bit by adding a headboard! Originally, I was just going to buy one from Urban Outfitters. They have some suuuuuper cute ones, but when I saw the price I was like "eh, that ain't so cute." Literally all of them were around $400, even one that looked exactly the same as the one I built. After talking it over with my mom, I came to the conclusion that I can make my own! And that's what I did!
I'm going to give you the steps I used to make it, and what the cost of everything was *approximately*. DISCLAIMER: My bed is a FULL size!

This is what my (messy) room looked like before:

So boring. And messy. Sorry about that.

The first thing that I did was buy the supplies! Everything was from Home Depot, and I made a total of three trips because I kept buying the wrong size screws (whoops!).

You will need:
2" x 6" x 10ft. Whitewood Planks - 6 total ($5.67 each)
1" x 2" x 8 ft. Furring Strip Board - 3 total ($0.95 each)
Minwax Water Based Stain in "Natural Peach" - 1 quart ($10.77)
Deft Water Based Satin Finish Aerosol Can - 1 can ($6.99)
2" Wood Screws - 40 total ($4.19)
Washers - 8 total ($0.15 each)
Total: $60.02 and some tax. Not bad!
Total Time: About a day and a half

You will also need a power saw, sand paper (I used a power sander), and a drill.

Step 1) Measure your bed frame and decide how long you want your headboard to extent past your bed. My bed frame was 54", and I made my boards extend 3" past my bed on each side. Total, my headboard is 60". My bed is also 2 ft. off the ground, so this is how high my headboard needed to be.

Step 2) Cut your wood! My mom helped me with this step because I have never used a power saw before, so don't be afraid to ask for help! Since each one of my planks were 120" total, I was able to cut them directly in half to achieve 12 60" boards. It worked out perfect!

Step 3) Sand all the hard edges off of each board. My mom also helped me with this step because I've never used a power sander before. You only need to sand the side that you are staining, so I recommend that you pick the side of the wood that you like the best before sanding.

Step 4) Stain! I used rubber gloves and an old sock to stain my wood, but you can use a pad or whatever you like to do yours. I only used one coat, and not even a quarter of the can. I didn't want the wood to be super "peachy" so I used the littlest amount of stain possible. In these next couple of pictures you can see my sock-hand.

Once you are done staining, lay all your boards down and wait 1 hour for them to dry.

Step 5) Spray the wood with a clear coat finish. I must warn you, I could have gone without this step. My spray literally did nothing, it made no difference and it still felt like gritty wood. It could have been a number of things as to why the happened, i.e the brand I used, how many coats I did, not spraying properly. But I really didn't care! So you can do this step if you want to or not, I did and it was a waste of time lol. After the first coat, I waited three hours and then applied a second coat. The directions on the can say that you are supposed to sand the boards in between each coat, but ain't nobody got time for that. After the second coat, you have to wait 24 hours for it to dry.

Step 6) One...day...later...time to assemble the headboard! Yay!!! This part is pretty simple, just screw the Furring Strip Boards into the back of the 12 planks! Make sure you cut the strip boards to the appropriate length of your bed height, you want the headboard to be flush with the top of your bed. For the third strip board, cut it so that it will fit diagonally across the inside of the two outer posts. This time, I cut the wood by myself and managed to keep all of my limbs intact. 

Notice how both of my posts are screwed 3" inward of the planks! 

This next strip board is optional I guess, but I wanted to add it for extra support. I would definitely recommend it, the headboard felt much sturdier after I attached it!

Step 7) If you are a weakling like me, find a local strong man (shoutout to my boyfriend Bryan for helping me out with this step) and have him carry the headboard into your bedroom. Place the headboard so that it lines up with the holes in your bed frame. Use the last four screws and the 8 washers to attach the headboard to your bed frame, and THAT'S IT! You're done!! You made your own headboard! How cool is that?

I hope you all give this a try! It saved me a ton of money and I had a lot of fun making it. And I got to use power tools (; 

And remember, it's okay if it has imperfections! I don't think I would like mine as much if it was absolutely perfect! It makes it more unique!

Big thanks to my mom, my dad, and Bryan for helping me out!

Thanks for reading!

- Justine 

Intro

Hello there! I don't know if anyone will actually be reading this but I'm going to make a post anyway. My name is Justine and I've been wanting to start a blog for years now. So here it is!

I was going back and forth between what my first post should be about, and then it finally came to me. My first post is going to be about how I really don't care about what anyone thinks about my blog. If you want to read it, fine. If you don't think it's that great, that's fine too! I don't want your negativity here anyways! Haha, but seriously if you don't like my blog then just leave.
This whole day I've been so worried and stressed about what I should make my first post about, because I didn't want anyone to think I was stupid or weird for making a blog. After a few hours of stressing out about literally the smallest problem in the world, I decided that it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks. I'm going to post what I want to post and that's that.

Side note: my blog's layout is going to be changing A LOT. I'm just getting started and I know nothing about html codes and templates and headings and blah blah blah. I'll teach myself those things eventually, but until I get my blog to where I want it to be, it will constantly be undergoing changes. So if you check back in and the template looks completely different than the last time you saw it, don't be surprised!

To finish this first post off I'll tell you a little bit about me. I am 19 years old, I go to college, and I started this blog as something to do when I am bored. I am always watching beauty guru's on Youtube, and I recently stumbled upon Cara Loren's blog (which I can't stop looking at because she is perfect and her family is perfect and her whole life is perfect) so all of these things motivate me to continue my interest in fashion, makeup, and the latest trends. I attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising for one quarter (lol) but it wasn't for me, so now I'm finishing up my general education at a community college while I get ready to transfer to a university.
I don't know what direction I'm headed in with this blog, but I'm sure I'll figure it out along the way. For now, I'm just going to post about things that interest me, and if you think I'm interesting then keep checking back in for more posts. (:

P.S. I want to give a big thanks to my friends who kept pushing me to start this blog. One of you even called me the "Lauren Conrad" of our high school, so thank you, and I will not let you down!