ashandthebabes: decor

goodbye floral wallpaper; the living room makeover

decor 18:33:00

DIY faux marble dining table

If you haven't seen the 102463735 posts on instagram of perfectly placed objects on beautiful white marble top tables then where on earth have you been?!

I'm a lover for anything copper and marble, as a Libra apparently my lucky metal is copper so maybe that's why. Anyway whether is was something to do with my star sign or my crazily expensive taste i found a marble top table in a furniture store for the sweet price of £1250, now unfortunately I'm not with a top league footballer so £1250 was just slightly out of price range! so I headed to pinterest to see if i could do it myself without it looking tacky. there were hundreds of tutorials so i thought why not. And now heres one more to add to them!

Things you will need;

- Ikea melltrop table £35 found here

- 1 roll of marble effect self adhesive £6 found here

- 1 razor blade

- 1 card of somesort, my nandos one worked fine!

so before we start i guess you should see the before picture. nothing really anything wrong with the plain table but its slightly boring and has absolutely no wow factor.

1. The first thing i did was cleaned the table and made sure it was free from dust and was nice and dry,

2. your'll see from the roll of self adhesive its not quite wide enough to cover the width of the table to do it length ways so i did it in 2 sections. so i lined up the top corner with the straight edge of the sticky adhesive, ( my biggest tip here is to not pull off the back off. do it bit by bit pushing out all the air bubbles)

3. work your way across the table swiping your chosen card downwards to get rid of the air bubbles. if you get loads just start again, it doesn't loose its stickiness.

4. when you get to the bottom get you razor blade and hold it close to the edge of the table and slowly cut off the excess as straight as possible.

5. this bit is tricky, depending on how your roll of adhesive as been cut you might be able to use the edge that you have just cut to match the edge down the middle of the table, if you cant turn it around. you should have a good 50cm to mess around with so that the design in the middle matches.

6.once you get a match follow the same steps, removing the air bubbles and excess.

7. double check the table for all air bubbles and push out any you might have.

8. your done! you now have a beautiful inexpensive table that's cost you less than £50

let me know if you give this a go! also comment below if you need to know where any of my dining table items are from, I'm more than happy to inform!

hope you enjoy!

A S H L E I G H

Create a beautiful bouquet for under a fiver

decor 10:01:00

I'm a sucker for fresh flowers and especially cheap fresh flowers. I don't have a massive disposable income because every penny is going towards saving as you know so when I can get cheap things it's always a winning situation!!

1. When people offer you pretty things just say yes! So the bowl my flowers are in was free!yes free. Work were going to throw it out and I had to grab it. I had no idea what I was going to use it for, at one point it was a fish bowl for masons robo fish. But it now has a beautiful place in my heart.

2. Get to the supermarkets. My favourite time to go and get flowers are in the evenings, and mainly from tesco. And I go and hunt for the reduced ones. I always buy two bunches. A full priced and a reduced one. That way you can fill in the gaps and you know your not going to get a perfect bunch.

3. If you have a bigger budget take a visit to a florist on a Friday afternoon. The florist will be off to the flower markets on a Saturday morning so they will be wanting to get rid flowers on their way out. So you could cut a good deal- pardon the pun.

4. Make your flowers last by leaving them to dry. About a month ago I brought some pretty little bunches of gypsophila(baby's breath) for £1.50 at good old tesco. It dried out and didn't really discolour so I was able to use it again in this arrangement. I just popped it in where I thought it would look cute.

5.explore your garden, turns out I have a eucalyptus tree growing in the front of mine. So I went out and cute a free branches/twigs off. You could add anything really, and it's free.

6.lastly just arrange the flowers so they look pretty, keep the, away from heat like radiators and leave them in a window when no ones in the room. When I'm at work I put mine in my windows but when I'm home they sit nicely on my bedside table.