From the category archives:

DIY

Accessories

How to make a pennant garland

Here’s one rea­son why my boyfriend is a killer catch—his charm­ing lit­tle col­lec­tion of old pen­nants.
Pen­nants are a fan­tas­tic cot­tage acces­sory; they add so much his­tory and char­ac­ter. And although I love these ones, I’d love to be able to dis­play them in a less clunky way. Sure those push pins stuck through the dry­wall do the trick, but […]

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DIY

Weekend projects using salvaged windows

Many thanks to loyal reader Mag­gie for tip­ping me off to what seems to be a epi­demic of cre­ativ­ity over in the Cot­tage Life forums. Sev­eral mem­bers are show­ing off their own crafty ways of using sal­vaged win­dows.
I love the look of old win­dows in a house, although real­ize that they are quite inef­fi­cient com­pared to newer […]

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DIY

What to do with old Ikea furniture

Every time I’ve moved into a new home, I’ve pur­chased make-​​​​do Ikea fur­ni­ture “just until I get some­thing else.” I always tell myself that I’ll upgrade to some­thing more sub­stan­tial, an invest­ment piece, once I can afford it. But the only rea­son I’ve ever actu­ally upgraded (and even that has only hap­pened maybe…once) is when the Ikea “just for […]

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DIY

DIY Wool Blanket">DIY Wool Blanket

I wanted to share with you my cur­rent DIY project: a wool blan­ket. I was vis­it­ing my favourite fab­ric store (Len’s Mill in Port Dover) and I came across a fab­u­lous black, red, and cream tar­tan. Right away I thought it would make a great blan­ket.
After squar­ing up the piece (easy to do because of the pat­tern), I began blan­ket stitch­ing around […]

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DIY

Driftwood light fixture

At the mag­a­zine, we always talk about design and décor that brings the out­side in. Using ele­ments of nature in cot­tage design can be large-​​​​scale (a piece of bedrock exposed in the cot­tage floor, for exam­ple) or as sim­ple as plac­ing dec­o­ra­tive pinecones on the din­ner table.
One way we bring the out­side in at our cottage […]

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Accessories

DIY Birchbark Votive Candles">DIY Birchbark Votive Candles

Here’s a DIY project to bring some rus­tic charm to your cot­tage din­ner table using found pieces of birch­bark.
You’ll need: Birch­bark, clear-​​​​glass votive or tea light holder (a glass jar can also work), double-​​​​sided tape, scis­sors or util­ity knife.
How-​​​​to
1. Start with a piece of birch­bark that is more than suf­fi­cient to wrap around the can­dle holder. Sep­a­rate the […]

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DIY

Spring Mattress Wine Rack

Mat­tresses tend to stick around a lot longer than they should at a cot­tage, long past any point of being com­fort­able. Next time you’re ready to retire a squeaky spring mat­tress, give it a sec­ond chance as a wine rack.

Ready­Made mag­a­zine has posted the instruc­tions on how to make a mat­tress wine rack like the one at Radio Bean Cof­fee House in Burlington, […]

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