HHH Ikea Malm hack

Its time for another HHH edition! And I've got a great one for you today.
When I decided to decorate my new house in a coastal way I definitely wanted a four poster bed in the master bedroom. There is just something about the clean white lines, the thin white cotton fabric hanging over it that just screams coastal to me.
Only problem was I had a perfectly good bed and didn't really wanted to spend a lot of money on a new bed so I thought why not transform my Ikea Malm bed into a four poster! Or as they like to call it on the Internet do an Ikea hack :)

After making some drawings I had my final plan okayed by my dad and was off to buy the wood.
I gave the bed a shelve behind the head board, handy to put your lights on so you don't need bedside tables (saves space) and a little shelve underneath for books, Ipad etc. Making this out of reclaimed wood gives the bed a shabby chic look, you can use new wood and paint it in the same colour as the bed for a more modern look. Luckily my brother in law came over so he could give me a much needed hand in building the bed.

 So there you have it a fantastic four poster bed for a fraction of the price, without wasting perfectly good furniture!!

Beyond the camera magazine

 

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of welcoming Sarah Gardner from Beyond the camera magazine into my house for a behind the scene feature. Beyond the camera is a great online magazine full of inspiration for the heart and soul of the creative photographer. Or as Sarah says ''I adore the beautiful wedding blogs and swoon over the pretty pictures of Pinterest, yet I find myself wanting something that goes deeper. I seek out new craft makers, stylists, photographers, designers, image makers and bloggers, as my cravings for inspiration soar! So the aim is simple, to create an online magazine that showcases the worlds beautifully talented people through the things they're doing and creating.''

Have a look at the magazine here.

Not only those Sarah Gardner publish a beautiful free magazine she is also a wizard when it comes to using your computer to make your images look amazing. Her book Textures, shows you how with a few photoshop actions you can turn your image into art. For a look at her work and the book click here.

 

Sarah managed to capture the behind the scenes actions and my house real well, have a look here. The full article can be seen in the issue 3, here.

 

 

Did you spot Kermit the Dog and his little drawing I made of him? So cute that made the article.

Thanks Sarah!

 

 

Beach huts

I'm completely obsessed with beach huts at the moment, maybe its the sunshine finally making an appearance maybe its the idea that when you sit in front of a beach hut it really does feel like holiday, or just the fact that all the beach huts are reappearing on my local beach. Anyway I cant get enough of them ;)

Look at the picture above don't the colourful huts look beautiful, just like little crayons in a box.

Stone Bay beach huts

I took this shot last week while walking Kermit the dog on my local beach, just the look of the vibrant colours make you feel like spring has sprung. I especially love all the different blue tones of the huts, which one is your favourite?

 

 

ByHester Beach House www.byhester.org

I love beach huts so much I put one in our back garden!! Its a great little hideaway when it gets to cold to sit outside, and in the summer its a stylish way to escape the sun. We used a normal shed and painted and decorated it to look like a beach hut. If my garden and budget was a bit bigger I wouldn't mind one of these huts from my Pinterest beach hut board! Especially the ones with decking, how fab do they look!!

 

Selection from my Pinterest board

 

 

New Classics: Ellis Faas

One of my favourite makeup brands, Ellis Faas ,has just launched seven new eye shadows.
Have a look at this gorgeous campaign images, love it!
The creamy eyes eye shadows are one of the best textures I've ever worked with. They are easy to apply, stay on all day, don't crease and feel very soft. Not to mention they come in these cool pens.
For this collection Ellis took to her infinite collection of pigments and created seven new shades, Deep Purple, Teal (my favourite) , Khaki Green, Warm Brown, Ginger Freckle (very excited about this one!) Old Pink and Peachy Skin
Have a look here for the full collection, there are now 21 colours in total.

HHH Coffee bean bag curtains

 

As you know my house has a nautical theme but for the kitchen I wanted to have a slight different feel, something more ethnic. So I decided on using coffee bean bags as my curtains, a dead easy and budget friendly way of decorating your windows! The brown tones of the hessian go great with the whites and blues of the rest of the house. I bought my bean bags on Ebay, there is some good deals to be had there, I got a box of ten bags for £15

Wash your bags first this will make them easier to work with as the hessian softens in the soapy water. My bags still had lots of coffee beans in them so give them a shake before you put them in the machine.

 



Pick out your favourite bags, I used two with the same print. And as you can see had some help picking the right bags from Mister Kermit :)

Cut the side seam open, if you have a lot of time on your hands you can also pick it open, im not that patient ;)

Hem the bottom of your curtain and make a tunnel wide enough to fit your curtain pole. Then the only thing you have to do is get some thin rope and tie the curtain up in some random spots to create the draping.
And that's it, unique curtains that won't break the bank!

Toast House and Home

 

Yesterday I tweeted 'I want to live in the Toast catalogue' 

Let me show you why.

Don't those images look beautiful!! They give me lots more inspiration for my home.
Have a look on Toast's website here, were you can also order your own catalogue to dream away in ;)

PS. If you don't follow me on twitter yet you can find me at @byhesterblog

A peak in my new pad

As you all know by a my lack of new posts (so sorry!) Ive been working pretty hard on my new house. We've got the keys at the beginning of February and am proud to say we have finally finished decorating. The house was a right state when we got in, don't think it had seen a good clean in two years, and every wall, floor and ceiling had to be done. We ripped out the carpets, got out the paintbrushes, charged the drill and after lots of hard work we have a lovely beach house now!

Due to me wanting to be creative and being on a tight budget we've done most of the work ourselves.  Wallpapered, laid floors, build bookcases, Ikea hacked our Malm bed into a four poster, made tables, styled beach huts, created art works etc etc.
Over the coming weeks you will be seeing lots of these project appear in the HHH, HestersHomemadeHome section of this blog, it will hopefully inspire you to tackle some projects in your home to!

Today I would like to show you my favourite part of the house, my new dining room table.
I went to the reclamation yard to find old scaffolding boards to make my own table, but one of the first things that caught my eye was this school trestle table. Complete with paint splatters, glue spots and handwriting all over the top. The shop keeper kept trying to convince me to use the underside of the table, as that was plain undamaged wood. I explained to him I love the writing, adore the holes and think the paint is great, he just thought i was weird :)
I fixed the legs so they cant collapse anymore, made the table more stable with some extra pieces of wood, painted the underneath in a white gloss and sanded the top. Et voila my new favourite spot to write my blog posts!!
I cant wait to open the sliding doors and have thesunshine and fresh air stream in, curtain blowing in the wind, mmm.. unfortunately spring is nowhere in sight but I will dream on :)

The room had dirty old carpet that we replaced with a white wood effect laminate floor, easy to wipe of all of Kermit the dogs muddy paw prints. And it gives the room a lovely Nordic feel.
You will recognise the bench from a previous HHH post (find the tutorial here ) and the dresser is a local vintage find. I'm still after the prefect white chair to accompany the other one, but so far I'm very pleased with my little blog heaven.
So much so that I'm entering my dining room table into the Home Love photo contest.
If you are a UK blogger you can enter your favourite part of your house, which can be a single item or a massive ballroom, into the Home Love photo competition to make a change of winning £500 to spend in their awesome shop.
Have a look at their website to see how you can enter, www.fashionforhome.co.uk/home-love

Enjoy the sunshine today and I will be back with more home updates soon!
x