View-Master inspired bathroom

 

I while back, I fell in love with this fabric. Like serious love.





I love the colors, you know I love the graphic nature of the pattern, and I love the heavy, natural woven cotton texture. I also love the nostalgia behind it. Didn't you have a View-Master when you were a kid? I remember loving to click through the little scenes. Well, this fabric is just meant to bring back that joy.

So I bought the rest of the bolt at the fabric store, and made it into a shower curtain for our downstairs guest bath. The fabric wasn't quite wide enough for a shower curtain, so I flanked it with dark denim to pick up the navy in the print. Yes, it's quirky. But it is also very happy.

Then, last weekend, at the flea market, I found this amazing View-Master to go in the room! I remember having the red plastic Fisher-Price version from the 70's when I was kid. But this beauty is a shiny, black, Bakelite model from the 40's. It is heavy, and has a satisfying metal lever to switch from frame to frame. (I told my kids like twenty times to be gentle! as they tried it out.)

This guy needs a special little shelf of his own.

I also bought three vintage View-Master reels, each of special places to which we've traveled. I clipped them on a strip of decorative scrapbooking paper, and clipped that to a clipboard I covered with fabric using Mod Podge (actually, I used "Paper Mod Podge" because that's all I had, and it worked fine).

And while I was at it, I created this list of reminders for my kids who sometimes get ready in here.

I wanted to hang such a list for a while, but didn't want to stick up an ugly piece of paper, and I don't love the messiness of chalkboards (what a surprise). So I layed this out in Photoshop using a background from Ava7 as if it were an 8x10 photo, added text using Picnik and printed it on photo paper. Yay for camouflaged rules. I'm so tricky.

Last but not least, remember my spray paint revolution? Well, this is where my newly painted towel bar ended up. That awesome Tomato colored spray paint went perfectly with the persimmon color in the fabric.

Don't those things make you happy? The next time you come over, you should check out my bathroom. Be prepared, though. There's good entertainment in there, which means you may have to wait in line.