Photowall wallpaper review

 A Sweden based wallpaper company, Photowall, has kindly approached me and asked if I'd be up for trying out one of their products. I am quite picky when it comes to anything that goes on the wall so my immediate thought was probably nope, but I changed my mind when I started looking at their stunning collection of designs! There are SO many amazing and unique designs that I would dream to have in any of the rooms in my house. I couldn't stop finding designs to add to my favorites and ended up looking through every one of their over 20,000 designs! Here are some of my favorites including some designs by the famous Stockholm based designer Ingela P Arrhenius who I have admired for YEARS!

Space - Green by Ingela Arrhenius

Circle IV by the Artcircle

The Board and the Balloon by Marika Maijala

Fruits and Vegetables by The Artcircle 

Photowall lets you choose from wallpapers/murals, canvas prints, and art posters of your choice of design. What makes them a very cool place to order these is that you don't have to do the complicated math before hands. Typically a wallpaper is sold as a roll. Depending on the scale of the design, you may need more rolls to make sure designs match up as you apply it on the wall. It can be quite time consuming to do the math and also waste of resource - wallpaper itself and cost that associated with it.

With Photowall, all you need to know is a measurement of the wall you plan to apply a wallpaper on. Then they will do the math and customize the wallpaper at the exact length and the exact number of strips to hung your wall perfectly. Each strip is labeled with a number, so you know exactly which one to start off with and which one comes next to and so on.

This is truly a life saver! (Here you can find their very easy-to-follow tutorial on their website.) This room I hang up the wallpaper has a quite high ceiling. It would have been a killer if I'd had to measure up every single strip and do the tricky math to line up designs perfectly. 

The same rule goes for other products like canvas and art posters. There are a lot of websites that you can choose from multiple sizes, but Photowall allows you to make your art at the exact measurement you want. How cool is that!? I had never seen any other companies that offer this amazing feature. When you place an order, you get to see a preview of how your wallpaper will be printed, given the measurement of your wall, which gives you a very good idea of the scale of the design which you can even modify! There is so much room to customize.

Included in the box with wallpapers was glue mix, which was nice, but I first wanted to see how the wallpaper would look like, so I made it removable this time by using painter's tapes and double sided tapes (Thanks to a great tutorial like this!) I will eventually use the glue to make it permanent though now that my whole family is loving it ;)

I ordered mine to be premium quality. It certainly has a very quality plastic, yet smooth feel. I love that it is wipeable so I won't have to fret when my kiddos eat or do some painting projects in the room. It is also nicely sturdy and has good thickness to it so I never had to worry about it being ripped or having permanent creases during the process of cutting it and putting it up on the wall. I felt it wanted to cooperate with me and it did! 

I had a lot of fun seeing the transformation of this room as I put up this wallpaper (Happy Forest - Grey by Sne design). This room was one boring, neglected, and pretty dark room that I have always wanted to do something about because it is actually where we spend a lot of time in. Now this room is bright, cheerful, and even taller! I picked this design for this room not just because it was perfectly Nordic (that I have always been keen to), but also because I wanted this room to provide a calm, peaceful mind. Kids work on a lot of mindful projects daily in here like reading, doing homework, drawing, and playing the piano. I feel like I am in a sunny spot in some beautiful forest when I am in there now. It makes me feel relaxed and productive at the same time. This is exactly what I wanted this room to do for us! It is quite stunning how a simple thing like just putting up a wallpaper can do to change the whole atmosphere of the room and our mind. My girl claims it her room now that it is pretty, but my husband wants to be everyone's room!

I am so thankful of this opportunity to try out Photowall's high quality and beautiful wallpapers. I think I will order more from them in the future because I have some other room that needs more love. If you are like me and have a room or two that could get help of inspiring wallpapers to spiffy up, go ahead and check out their great, unique designs. There is a 25% off discount code on any products for you that is valid for a month from today : ayu2021mills

Thank you for reading! 

Printable holiday messages

Thank you so much to those of you who have purchased the Dresden Photo Frame pattern from my shop. I really hope you will find it as fun and addictive as I feel about this little project. Even if you are a beginner of hand-applique, I still recommend giving it a try. I am quite far from calling hand applique my comfortable method, but this one is easy for me. It's much easier than English paper piecing hexagons in my opinion. I have a lot of photos to walk you through the steps in the instruction.

A couple of friends told me they are making these frames for Christmas gifts. When I gift these frames, I always want to have something already framed. It helps recipients to know that it is a picture frame and she can either keep what's in it or replace it with a picture of her choice. 

Yesterday, I made some printable simple holiday messages. Each one measures a 3.25" perfect square to fit your Dresden photo frames. They are all very simple to let your pretty dresden shine.  If you would like to print these for your frames or whatever holiday gift purposes, I'd be tickled pink! If you purchase a kit from my shop by December 20th, 2019, I will include a printed sheet of holiday messages for you.

Download Holiday Messages here :)

Have a lovely Thanksgiving!!

Dresden Photo Frame Pattern

So I finally finished up my pattern for Dresden photo frame. Yes, it took me only 5 years. That's it! lol. For those of you who have kindly reached out to me and asked if I would make this into a pattern back then, thank you SO very much and I am very sorry it took me all these years. The pattern will be always available for you in my shop now.  

This is probably one of my favorite things I made for the Japanese magazine (Patchwork Tsushin, that has unfortunately ended its publication.) I recall having a lot of fun choosing my very favorite picture of my daughter from the birth to 1 month period, 1 month to 2 month period, and so on. I still hang up these pictures on the wall and I get good comments on them often from guests. It sure is a cheerful way of framing some precious pictures. Depending on the type of fabric you use, this can be pretty versatile pattern. It can be a personalized Christmas ornaments for example. :)

Because I wanted to make sure that even a beginner can tackle this project, I included 40 step-by-step photos for a tutorial, a lot like my tutorials in this blog.

This project requires you to print petal patterns on cardstock (or matte photo paper) which I know isn't necessarily at everyone's house, so I made several kits available for my shop also. A kit of this pattern includes a printed PDF, petal patterns printed on cardstock like paper, and stabilizer piece that has patterns already drawn on for you, so you can start making your frame right away with your fabric.

Both PDF download and Kit will be on sale - 15% off - til November 22nd.

Thank you so much for reading! 

Have a lovely weekend!

Tissue boxes to shine!

I got to gift these to my friends yesterday so I can finally post. Yay! The 'Shine' pattern is from Sew Ichigo shop, owned by uber talented Kerry and Penny, where you can find the cutest paper-piecing patterns possible! The actual pattern is 6" square finished, but I had to distort just a tiny bit to get it to the right size for one side of a Kleenex tissue box. 

I love this pattern so much. It had been such a long time since I got to work on very intricate paper-piecing patterns and forgot the joy of working with teeny tiny pieces and seeing how they can SHINE :)

How I made it is basically the same way I made this tutorial (Goodness it is over 10 years old! LOL!), but I made the hole on the top a round shape, and also used two thin (like 1/4") elastics to two opposite sides rather than having one thick elastic in the middle.(Well, I made it that way first and it turned out it doesn't work for this smaller Kleenex box) So there were a lot of trial and error as I worked on it and I can still think of a few things I could have done differently, but I guess that is what I can say about all my projects, haha. 

Sewing gifts for friends who can sew anything can be tricky. You know they probably have plenty pouches, potholders, pincushions... so I had to think of something they are likely to not have yet and also could use an extra even if they already have it.

I'll have to make one for my living room for sure. This Shine pattern makes me very happy.

This is one of Dresden photo frames I made for a Japanese magazine more than 5 years ago. (Blogged about here.) I have had many kind requests to make it into a pattern and I am finally, finally, putting it together and is almost done! Once it is ready, I will have it available in my shop and will come back to blog about it!

Thank you for reading this! Have a lovely weekend!

Mini Liberty Tote

Thank you so much for all of you for welcoming me back so warmly. To be honest, it was extremely nerve wrecking to post something on the blog and instagram. It is just so wonderful to have time to enjoy sewing without feeling any guilt now.

As you can see I am still addicted to Dresden plate applique. At least this time I made a little difference by having two petals away, like "He loves me not" daisy. Most fabric I used for the Dresden plate is Liberty of London that I had bought in Japan. As much as I love Liberty of London, I can't afford a whole lot, so most Liberty of London I have is only a fat eighth or even smaller.

It felt great to be able to play with small scraps of Liberty. Goodness they are so pretty together. I've listed this mini tote in the shop.

Have a great rest of the week!