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I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! We're still in holiday mode around here since Ethan has the whole week off, so that explains my blogging break. I still have holiday-brain, but I do have some posts that I took photos for over the past few weeks, so I thought I'd share a few of those. Today I wanted to share an easy trick I've used around the house lately for our IKEA Expedit shelves. I think we all have one or two of these, and although I'm sooo weary of them, they are great to store kids stuff like books and toys.
This is the boys' book shelf (above) and although books can be a pretty accent themselves, most of the books the boys have are paperback and just not that pretty to look at on the shelf. So I came up with an easy way to cover them up to get rid of the visual clutter.
You can use any fabric of your choice. Heavy upholstery fabric is nice because it doesn't get as wrinkley, like this curtain I used on the boys' toy shelf. I made this curtain from a vintage curtain I found on Ebay. From what I remember it fit the width perfectly and all I had to do was cut off some length and sew that hem.
I hung the curtains with sew-on velcro. I used my sewing machine to sew on one side of the velcro to the curtain, and then I used a staple gun to attach the other side of the velcro to the top of the cabinet. For the toy and book shelf, the curtains don't actually need to come off (I have another method for those that I'll share in a minute), but the ones I created for our "formal" living room entertainment shelf - one of those curtains actually comes off because it hides our TV (the top curtain). This is the great thing about the velcro - just pull it right off when you need to use the TV and then easily attach it back when you're done.
The other two curtains hide our electronics like DVD player, video game players, cords, etc. The remote controls actually work right through those, so we don't even have to take them off. It's SO nice to be able to hide all of that ugly stuff! Technically if you ever wanted to use your shelves again, you could just remove the staples from your velcro strip and fill in the holes with caulk or something.
Ok, back to the other shelves. For the boys to easily use those shelves, I hand-sewed some little loops with embroidery thread onto the front of the curtain. I then attached some little plastic hooks to the top of the Expedit shelf. You can find these at hardware stores or even Target or the craft store. Since the hooks are on the top of the shelf, you can't see them which is nice. We just keep the curtains up most of the time so the boys have easy access to their toys and books.
Below is the center hook for the bookshelf. Since there are two curtains for this shelf, they both hook in the middle. And then there is a hook on the far left of the cabinet and the far right of the cabinet for the ends of the curtains (as seen above).
Since you add the loops about two-thirds down on the front, when you pull up the curtain, you can still see the fabric pattern which is nice (not the ugly back side of the curtain). And it only covers up the top shelf which is mostly just decorative items that the boys don't need access to. And when you have company over and want to hide the clutter, you just pull the curtains down. So easy.
As you can see on the photo below, just add your loops at the X's on the front of your curtain. This shelf is set up with two curtains to make it easier for pulling up and down. I used some vintage curtains on these as well, but they were kind of see-through, so I added a layer of fabric interfacing on the back to make them more opaque and not so flimsy. When you pull them up, just hook the loops around those hooks on top of the shelf.
These curtains are a great way to add color and pattern to a room as well.
I also wanted to share some of those Alain Gree prints I have above these shelves! I actually scanned these illustrations from a couple of Alain Gree illustrated books I have. I had them enlarged and printed at Staples. They came out great! I used this book and this book. I would looove to have a whole collection of Alain Gree books. sigh. He's one of my favs. I added the "Lights, Camera, Action" on the below illustration myself. The orange cat is from this vintage craft book.
This one is above a different cabinet in the same room.
And somehow many months ago, I become obsessed with finding vintage inflatable toys on Ebay! The giraffe and Sinclair dino are two that I found. They make such cute decorative pieces! I also have a Pan-Am airplane that I need to blow up and put in my studio.
Do you have one (or two or three?) of these Expedit IKEA shelves? They're pretty handy to have and even more fun to hack. ; )
