Cardboard Magazine Folder Restyle

Hey, guys! You know the feeling of excitement when you first start decorating a new apartment or house? Man, all the possibilities! It's like staring at a blank canvas before starting to paint. Not that I've ever done that, I don't have a clue about painting. The point is, you can choose whatever you like. But, ay, there's the rub, ha? Every tiny decision suddenly becomes this big thing. Do we leave the colors white or repaint? If we paint, what color? Oh, that opens up another Bandora's box. Then there's furniture to pick out, curtains, throw pillows, wall art. Too. Many. Possibilities.

And what do I do? I choose black and white. Every. Single. Time. It's become my biggest obsession lately. Black and white pictures. Black and white (and gold) decor. Black and white outfits (wanna guess what colors I'm wearing at the moment?). So, there's no need to act all surprised when I tell you I restyled some white cardboard files with black watercolor. Apparently it's genetic, because my Mom just told me my Dad used to me obsessed with black and white when he was my age. Wanted to do our whole house in black and white (you go, Dad!).

 Despite my mild worry about this new obsession, I love how these magazine folders turned out. Way better than expected. At first I thought about doing gold polka dots on all of them, but then I channeled my inner Elsie Larson, and just went with black watercolor and a different simple pattern for each. And, I'm so glad I did. I like how there's variety in patterns, but how the color scheme binds them together. Plus, of course I had to add a touch of gold.

Here's my process in case you want to repeat:

 1. I started with the IKEA Flyt magazine files (my first IKEA hack!). They are super cheap, so right up our alley, and they are just the perfect white canvas I needed. Also, really easy to paint on. For the paint I just bought some black watercolor. I wanted to buy a cheap kids watercolor set, but then I found these colors that you can buy one by one, and I bought just the one, because I honestly don't know when I'll be using watercolors again, so buying a whole lot seemed unnecessary.

 2. Then, I played around with the patterns on a scrap piece of paper. I tried to find patterns that would be easy to draw (cause I suck at drawing), and easy to repeat. Something I could easily repeat during the whole process.
I settled on different formations of single brush-strokes. Shorter and longer ones, at different angles, and I had to do one with dots as well.

 3. When I had my patterns selected, the only thing to do was to paint. When I was done with one side, I let it dry, and painted the other ones in the mean time, then came back to the other side of the first one. Rinse. Repeat. Let dry. Fold. All done.

I also added some gold tags which I made by painting regular white sticker tags gold with a marker.

All of my Burdas almost fit in the 5 folders, but I think I need to make one more set. These would make great storage for our sheet music and documents as well.

My little sewing corner is coming together nicely. Now, all I need is a couple of shelves to put all my crafting tools on and pretty storage for those as well. I'm sure I can figure something out. It will probably involve some recycled packaging and a gold and a black marker. Really, gold and black AGAIN? Well, what can I say...

xo. Hanna