New year new studio! - Studio tour

I cannot believe I finally have a proper studio to work in! I have worked in my parents loft, a spare bedroom, the corner of a living room and a dining room,  now I have a purpose built building completely separate to our house! It feels like I have a 'proper' job, I can go to work in the morning and then at the end of the day shut all my work away and head home - the long commute home!

I thought I would share a few photos so you can see where I work - 

If you prefer a video tour head over to my instagram to watch a tour on IGTV 

I set up the room into sections , George built this amazing desk which I have one section as a laptop/admin space, a design area and then my favourite area! The hot chocolate station :)

The next area is the back wall where I have my two embroidery machines , then a large blue work station which I found for super cheap at a car boot sale in the summer! I think its supposed to be for a kitchen but it works perfectly in my work room.

I have my janome sewing machine which was a gift for my 16th birthday! its still going strong 14 years later! Bea is a big fan of the new space , she gets to snooze in the sun whilst watching the birds in the field - best life ever or what?!

I hope you have enjoyed this little look around! Links to everything I can find below in case you want to shop! 

Yellow office chairs

Do what you love neon - we took the plastic backing off and replaced with wood 

similar pink heart neon

Flamingo neon

Iridescent Biscuit tin

Bed makeover with Leesa - Bedroom makeover part one

The highlight of my day is getting into bed of an evening so when Leesa mattresses contacted me asking if I would like to review one of their mattresses of course I jumped at the chance!

Our old mattress was just a standard middle of the road mattress that we purchased when we moved into our new house back in January. We didn’t put much thought into buying it and kind of just went for a mid-price range thinking that it would be fine. As soon as we switched out this mattresses for our new Leesa king I noticed a difference in comfort even after just one night sleep!! It even made our 9 month old puppy stop for a few seconds to rest !!

The mattress 

The Leesa mattress is made up of three foam layers that adjust to your body for optimum support and comfort, the top layer contains cooling foam that allows air to circulate. Leesa are so confident in the comfort of their mattresses they allow you to try for 100 days before deciding if would like to keep or refund in full! What is also lovely about the brand is for every ten mattresses they sell they donate one to charities supporting the homeless as well as those seeking refuge from domestic abuse and human trafficking.

Delivery
The Leesa arrives in a box! I was so shocked when it arrived and a king sized mattress was inside! This is super handy especially if you live in a flat or house with restricted access.

The makeover

As we are working our way around the house renovating each room the delivery of the Leesa came at the perfect time for our main bedroom makeover! With the comfort and luxury the Leesa mattress provides I wanted to create a hotel kind of feel with the rest of the room but on a budget of course!

Before

I wanted the main focus of the room to be the bed and surrounding the bed creating a look of luxury. The bed frame was a super affordable basic wooden frame that I knew we could transform pretty easily. I wanted to create quite a dramatic headboard to sit against the rich navy blue paint I had chosen for a statement wall behind the bed – I searched Pinterest for inspiration and came up with the idea of a chevron type oversized wooden headboard which luckily my partner is a joiner so I set him to work! We stained the wood a dark brown to match in with the old beams within the room. We also upcycled some old bedside tables that George made for our bedroom in our last house by painting them in the same rich navy colour attaching them to the wall to give the appearance that they are floating. Dressed with cushions in the same colour ,  adding a pop of colour with the cute bee cushion. We found these super quirky flamingo lights removed the shades and added a large globe type bulb to add some personality and warmth to the bedside.

After

I am now in search of a throw for the end of the bed to add extra warmth and colour., then I can start dressing the room with prints and fabrics! 

I love the overall look of the bed and thanks to Leesa I think I will struggle to get up in the morning!

I am excited to share the rest of the room with you in another post! It will be full of DIYS!

Thank you to leesa for sponsoring this post, for gifting me a king mattress – for the purpose of this post the views and photography are all my own. You can head over to Leesa for more information and they are kindly offering all of my readers £100 off a mattress of any size with the code THETURQUOISEDOOR 

Bathroom before and after - Botanical

Bathroom makeover 

The second room we decorated was the bathroom, as you can see from the before photos below the bathroom was very blue with a fish toilet seat that I just could not wait to get rid of!

The sink , toilet, bath and shower looked pretty new so this saved a lot of money, we do eventually want to change the bath to a free standing pretty but for now the standard tub will do. I actually really liked the tiles too which made this make over super simple.

Paint
First up we painted all the walls white which instantly brightened and cleaned up the room, as you would have seen from previous posts from the renovation of our first home I love to accessorise and actually that styling a room is what makes a room. We are lucky to benefit from the most beautiful countryside views and from the bathroom in particular which looks out onto fields - I liked the idea of bringing in the green from outside in.

As we are keeping the bath for now we opted to painting the wooden bath panel a dark emerald green which I love and am now thinking of maybe painting another wall entirely in the same dark green! I love using plants when styling a room so I've opted for a mix of faux and real plants ( lets see how long I can keep them alive!!)  

Storage

I wanted to create a feature shelf in the space above the toilet which would look lovely but also house all of our bathroom essentials. I saw a similar design of a single hanging shelf on pinterest so George and I came up with this design which George put together by drilling four holes in each piece of wood and threading the rope through adding knots to fix the wood in place finally attaching two little hooks in which to hang them from - I think this is really successful and actually looks like it could be from a higher end interiors shop when in fact it cost us under £10! 

Prints

As the walls are plain white I wanted to add some print to the walls - a cheap way to do this is to frame your fav wallpaper! We picked up this botanical theme wallpaper from B&Q for £10 a roll which I framed in Ikea photo frames. I love how this adds print to the room without the effort of wallpapering an entire wall and is super affordable.

Accessories 

I like to mix and match accessories , I am always collecting random bits and bobs that some how just seem to come together. Lots of the pieces for this make up are actually from Matalan! I like to play with height and textures within a room so when I saw the raised planters for under £20 I snapped up three and used two for my Lush product storage. I actually used the stand from the big planter and sat a terrarium also from matalan for all my bath bombs which I love!

Gold terrarium

Large metal raised planter 

Small metal raised planter

Small hanging frame 

I like to mix metals too so opted for mostly gold accessories but kept the silver/chrome taps/radiator. We found this amazing circle mirror from Home sense along with the hanging planter which adds some height and a splash of green to this side of the room.

Details

I love adding interest with small details , a shelf is the perfect place to add some personality to a room by grouping together objects. The black wire basket is actually supposed to be used as a cutlery holder in a kitchen but it holds my skincare products perfectly! and adds another texture and a splash of black to the room. Next to this the wooden box which actually makes the boring toilet rolls look cute!

The little hexagonal box was made by George when he was at school , the random little brass apple I picked up at a carboot years ago for 20p! I use it to store my rings in when I am doing my skincare.

The test tube vases have to be one of favourite affordable accessories I have found! They are so unusual and I have just used some faux eucalyptus stems again to add in some more green and height.

 Single stem test tube vase

Multi test tube vase

Black wire basket

Wooden storage box

I am super pleased with the bathroom but now I am thinking should I add more green? maybe to the window wall? Let me know what you think and If you purchase any of the accessories I did! 

New home - First before and after - Utility/ toilet room

The first of my before and after series documenting the new house is not the most exciting room, however a very practical grown up room... We started with this room to relieve my mum of washing duties but also because it was a super simple makeover which has made a huge difference.

Before the room was a weird shade of dirty yellow but the actual toilet/sink was in pretty good condition , we will change the radiator at some point but for now it will do. I wanted to keep it pretty simple so opted for my fav white wall and print combo, adding in splashes of colour through artwork and accessories. 

There is a space that perfectly fits the washing machine and dryer but not much space for storage so we added two little shelves above the toilet and used crates and baskets for storage - this is perfect to keep washing powder ect out of reach of our 'little' thief puppy Bea! 

Just because this is a utility doesn't mean it has to be boring , so we added a collection of old butterfly prints , patterned tiles to inject a little colour along with a hexagon mirror.

 The hall is a working progress as we still need a new door and eventually flooring, but for now we continued the white walls and added a gallery wall for some interest. This is a super easy way to update a space on a budget and when you get bored of the prints you can switch them around creating a different look. I like to group artwork together that kind of complement or tell a story , I've opted for a nature/ botanical theme made up of greeting cards, illustrations, wallpaper samples and butterflies picked up from charity shops.

 I hope you liked this super easy/quick update! I am so excited to share the next room with you!! Only a few little bits left to finish off in the bathroom then I should be able to share next week :)