Behind the scenes of my Patio Style Challenge

Like I mentioned last Wednesday, this will be a post today about some of the DIYs I did for my Home Depot Patio Style Challenge. If you missed it, you can check out the reveal by clicking HERE and HERE.

But before I get started I want to send you over to Domino for a Mother’s day special where I talk about my mother and grand-mother’s design influence on me. Click HERE to read it.

Now lets talk about my patio again, shall we?

Not only was my yard a mess until I was finally able to stage some pretty pictures but my house was too. And I want to show you the truth behind it all. It seriously is all in taking pictures from the right angles to hide the truth.

I had plants and decor stacked in my living room and dining room. It seriously stressed me out to have such a mess.

Painting the aluminum flashing on the floor and the rest stacked everywhere.

And here is a true yard photo:

In the first left photo you can see why I needed the flashing and that is to hide the collapsable metal structure of the tent.

In all the photos in my Home Depot post, I didn’t show any of these though, this is what you got to see:

Lots of angles with plants to hide the truth! Oh and you can find the patio set HERE.

And let me talk about the pillows I made from this Waverly Lotus Lake Porcelain fabric. I love them so so much.
The problem was that the fabric is a little on the thin side so I backed it with thick fabric. I actually took an Ikea Gurli pillow apart and layered the Waverly fabric over it. By taking an existing cheap white pillow, I didn’t have to worry about buying the zipper or measuring a pillow size.

I wanted to add a little extra detail to it, so I made custom black and white striped piping from a fabric scrap that I had left over. I don’t have a tutorial though because it just so happens that I have awesome blog friends with great tutorials. So if you want to make your own piping just hop on over to my friend Jennifer (click HERE) to follow her great piping tutorial.

I did as she instructed as you can see in the photo above. It wasn’t all that difficult to do. Sewing is definitely not my favorite thing to do.

Such a small detail that makes a huge difference though. Don’t you think so?

I also painted some existing old flower pots that I had left and the cats were in serious inspection mode:

Like I mentioned in my Home Depot post, all it was is metal spray primer, black spray paint and electrical tape detail for the stripe.

And the painted and duct taped aluminum flashing made all the difference to hide the metal structure of the tent.

And here is another awful after.

So silly.

Oh and you can buy the tent HERE and the star lantern HERE.

I have the feeling that I will do an updated post when all our plants are finally grown in again. We were actually mulching all weekend and the yard looks a million times better already. The power of mulch!

Tschüß

(Youleeya)